Burgeoning through these Social Distancing Times
Dear friends,
Meadings to you all!
What a world we live in eh? Four weeks go by and it seems like we’re in a different reality!
The first week of the Corona experience, the week of the 7th and 8th of March, we here at Golden Coast Mead were like, whoa, this could be a big deal, what are we going to do about it?
Farmer’s Markets are slowing down, tasting room business is slowing down… hmmm… interesting... oh, now schools are shutting down, and big events are getting cancelled or postponed… But events under 50 people are still ok, so we went ahead and had a concert on 13 March at the tasting room. Attendance was sparse, and we encouraged distance and hand washing. Beautiful music was made and we all felt like something was shifting.
The second week, the week of the 14th and 15th of March, we were like, whoa, they shut down the farmer’s markets, and on Thursday the chief executive of our state issued a stay at home order… all restaurants were told to do to-go only and tasting rooms were told to close.
We wondered, if we go to work will we be breaking the law?
Luckily, we found out within about 36 hours that to the Great State of California, wine manufacture and distribution (as well as beer and cannabis business) is considered essential infrastructure so we could go about our business with confidence and humility.
There were a lot of people in our industry who had already lost their jobs. So we worked together to pack and ship out our mead club orders and it felt like we were sending out packages of liquid light (three million flower visits in a box!) to people who had committed to sticking with us through uncertain times.
My heart swelled with gratitude and joy. We delivered to them a box of wonder and pleasure that could provide them and those with whom they shared it an experience of delight and connection.
There was uncertainty for me, being so joyful in the face of so much shift.
I took the packages to UPS to make sure they would be sent.
There was a crazy guy outside the front door.
To be fair, I can’t diagnose whether he was crazy or not. But, he called me names, man.
I tried my best to gently ignore him and yet my inner monologue was something I would not share the uncensored version of with my children.
The owner of the UPS store seemed stressed to me when I brought the packages in after that uncomfortable interaction.
But the UPS store owner was working to provide his essential service too, connecting nodes of our society with each other through the delivery of physical objects.
I mentioned, with a casual attempt at confident good humor after a somewhat stressful experience, that some of the noise we often overlook seems louder when the background noise of city life has quieted down. He smirked a bit. I asked him if that loud guy outside was usually there outside his store. He said, sometimes…
We both work in an industrial park and a shopping center along a stream bed adjacent to a fair amount of undeveloped land in the city of Oceanside where a significant population of houseless people live.
It’s not uncommon for people who live on the edge of our society to come into Golden Coast Mead and use our bathroom. In normal times, there is enough other stuff going on where an experience like this sort of melds into the background of normal life, but that day, it came up in stark relief.
That whole subconscious exploration into wealth and poverty and power and powerlessness fading in my mind, I asked my UPS store owning friend if he’d heard about the relief, the Small Business Administration’s loans yet. He hadn’t. He seemed relieved to me after we discussed the details.
When I finished dropping off the packages at UPS, the guy who was angrily yelling things out loud to no one in particular was still there. I used my intergalactic communication device (AKA cell phone) to dial the non emergency number of the local police station. I told the dispatcher that there was a man shouting and cursing at people who had shouted and cursed at me. She asked if he was homeless or appeared to be under the influence of drugs. I said he appeared that he could be both, but he could also be neither.
After asking for a clear description of the location, she told me that they would go check on him.
Another essential service, health and public safety, was being provided by essential personnel.
For some odd reason, my side view mirrors didn’t extend when I started my car. My thoughts immediately went to the angry guy.
I drove through the shopping center somewhat aimlessly, processing everything that had occured.
I parked next to the grocery store.
I turned off my car.
I turned it on again. Still the mirrors didn’t extend.
I took a deep breath. I let go of the angry guy who called me names.
I turned on the car. And hit the lock and unlock button on my keys.
And the mirrors opened up.
So, I got out, locked my car, and headed into the store.
Bugger, there was no toilet paper.
There were no napkins, nor paper towels.
I bought five cans of salmon and a gallon of grapeseed oil (blended with canola oil I later found out) for a good price.
The checker was in her early 20s. The customers were either relatively young or kind of old and people were giving each other distance.
There was traffic on my drive home even though “non-essential” people weren’t supposed to be on the road. My 30 minute commute took over an hour.
My wife, who is a nurse at a local hospital, reported that work was stressful.
Then, the next day, she started gifting mead to her co-workers. They started asking her how they could buy it.
We were able to pay our team.
The third week, the week of the 21st and the 22nd, we set up local delivery. We set up to-go growler fills.
We built a website called Operation Play Nice and tested it with our friend and mead customer Nate Murray.
We imagined making simple rules to ride this experience through and share a path through this experience with others if it would help them. The rules are:
Connect with Friends.
Set the Rules.
Find the Joy.
Repeat.
And in a way, we started to implement those rules.
Congress worked together and passed the biggest social stimulus package we’ve ever seen.
Two Trillion Dollars.
Or “Doll Hairs” as my YMCA site director used to say.
The idea of direct payments to individuals which Andrew Yang had formed a presidential campaign about was now happening.
Sure the process has its inefficiencies and congressional sausage was made, but as a team here at Golden Coast Mead, a sense of relief settled in that there was some kind of safety net for our people beyond our ability to keep them paid.
Week four saw the nation focus thoughts and prayers on New York City.
Now we’re in week five. And it feels like something bigger is shifting.
Maybe the four rules mentioned earlier are a key.
If we connect with our friends, agree on rules that work for all of us, and spend our time finding joy together, that can set us free.. Then all we need to do is repeat.
Bee well,
Bee safe,
Drink Sunlight.
Cheers,
Frank from Golden Coast Mead