So much of how we're living our lives right now seems to have changed perhaps forever and as much as we can all understand and appreciate that change is part of life, many of us, present company included, much prefer it as a concept or (better yet) as a spectator sport happening in someone else's life rather than as applied to our own.
Right now, as we struggle to keep our own boat from being swamped by COVID-19 and its associated circumstances we can be forgiven for losing sight that the slogan/mantra of #AloneTogether also means there's an ocean full of boats each just like our own.
This past weekend's announcement of the closing of Apollo Cycles in the Sunlight Emporium on Franklin Street about a year after it opened as a consequence of COVID-19 is, I think, a fitting metaphor of the economic and social landscape and the changes we face at this moment, not just here in Norwich but across the Land of Steady Habits and beyond our state's borders.
As recently as May 2, in the pages of the Bulletin, there was a story on the shop's success entitled "Bike Business Booming During Outbreak" The report noted 'With the coronavirus pandemic forcing families out of work and school, Connecticut has seen an increase in pedestrians and bikers in the state’s trails and parks. (As) an essential business, Apollo Cycles is facing a steady stream of repairs for bikes of all different types and models. Mainly a repair shop, the store also sells refurbished bikes.'
However, as one of those hair bands once sang, 'every rose has its thorn' and in this case, the coronavirus pandemic, less than one hundred days after that news story was published, created both a national shortage of new bicycles to sell and parts to repair older ones leaving an entrepreneur like Apollo Ziembroski and his shop with not a lot of choices but to close.
I wasn't a customer of Apollo Cycles though I did (s)poke my head in to say 'hi' the day he opened up because that's what neighbors do and I regret the shop's closure not just because I have a bicycle that may someday be in need of repair but because there's one less point of light on our local horizon and no one I know has any idea how much longer this dark night of the pandemic will last or what we will look like when/if it does end.
Maybe if we spent less time impersonating virologists and constitutional scholars while arguing about the medical implications or impacts on our civil rights of wearing masks in public and maintaining physical distance as public health professionals recommend, we'd see even greater declines in the rates of infection, hospitalization and (I'd hope) fatalities which would then allow us to responsibly rather than rush to reopen our schools, sports leagues, businesses, and public institutions.
As I write this, just about 175,000 of us in this country have died (that's almost as many people as the populations of Bridgeport and Norwich combined), and arguing among ourselves hasn't saved a soul.
So maybe we should try something else and soon. Damn soon.
-bill kenny
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