 Welcome to Longmont Voices and Vision, a project of Longmont public media. In the midst of the darkest period in our lives, when we're bombarded 24 hours a day with news of the coronavirus and the human and economic carnage it's causing in our society, we're challenged to cope with our fears and anxieties, we're remaining hopeful about what lies on the other side of this crisis. This project presents an opportunity for Longmont residents to share with others how they're adjusting to new realities of social distancing and the kind of future they hope to experience on the other side of the crisis. I'm Tim Waters, host of these conversations in a Longmont public media volunteer. In this series I'll be asking Longmont residents, many of them your friends and neighbors, three questions. What are you doing to get through this crisis? Even though we cannot be together right now, how are we staying connected to friends and families? And what's the future you are hoping to see and experience on the other side of this crisis? I hope you'll stay with this series and enjoy listening to your friends and neighbors and learn from them how they're getting through and what they're looking forward to in a new reality on the other side. Dick Lyons, thank you for your willingness to lend your voice and your vision to this project, Voices and Vision of Longmonters. At a time where we are experiencing unprecedented changes in our lives with physical isolation and social distancing. We're all struggling with getting through this, but first tell us about who you are and then I've got three quick questions for you. Okay, well I'm a grandfather of three, father of two, and married to my lovely wife Jody for 48 years I think this year. Yes, I always get the numbers, but that's what happens to it. I'm a retired attorney and we've lived in Longmont for 41 years. So long time residents raised in Boulder and Estes Park went to the University of Colorado undergraduate, did a stint in the army I got, I was one of those that got drafted. So Jody and I got married while I was in the army and decided to go to law school afterwards and and so Jody put me through law school and came back here after a stint as a city. There was just a little bit of feedback on somebody's from somebody's microphone there so but tell us in an unprecedented moment in history how are you getting through this period of social distancing. Well you know, I think it's kind of interesting and I think after talking to some of my friends about this I think that all of us have gone through kind of three phases in this the first, the first phase when this first started what like three and a half weeks ago or whatever. We couldn't get enough of the news to find out all the facts how's going to affect us. What's going on. How bad is it. It alludes to the television all day all evening just trying to gather the information to see what was going on. And then I think we entered into the next phase, after about three or four days of that. And the next phase was what I call the survival mode, where we assessed what, what do we need, you know. We determined early on we needed the disinfectants and the gloves and the masks, possibly and so. And then of course the whole food situation and figuring out how to order online or pick up groceries and whatever. So, I call that the survival mode, survivalist mode phase. So we've got through that and once we figured out, you know what was going on. I think this past week. Last week, we finally entered into the third phase which is an adjusted routine. We've adjusted to what what's going on. So we've, we figure out what housework is needed and we do do that we exercise we contact family and friends to keep in touch. We do update, you know, we keep current on the news, but we're not watching it 24 seven like we used to. And we also make time. Excuse me, I think my allergies are really active. So for a long time, you know, we were fortunate to have a house that has an upstairs and a downstairs and so that gives us an opportunity, either by design or by accident to have a little alone time. I'm not sure if I mentioned we'd love to go for walks and exercising now with masks. I noticed that the neighbors are are doing the same thing with respect to being outside and passing each other with masks, giving space and whatnot. And then in the evening, we try to jointly watch some movie or Netflix or Amazon or something to try to entertain ourselves and take our minds off the situation. So that's that's basically what we've been doing. How do you stay connected to family and friends. Well, fortunately, with the modern conveniences are family. We have children back on the East Coast and then in Europe and so we do why and FaceTime. We try to FaceTime with the grandkids, if not every day every other day or as often as we can. We read to them and and keep in contact with them and so that's really important and now we've discovered this magic tool called Zoom and which we're using right now, which we're using right now. And so in the past five days, I think we've had a couple of virtual cocktail parties with friends where we pour a glass of wine and zoom in or FaceTime with them, depending on how many are participating. We did one last night with our dinner group. So that was kind of fun first time. And so we're trying to connect and keep in touch that way. Also, just the old fashioned emails. I've taken a lot of time to reconnect with friends and and and my sisters. Don't live around here and so we've made some good contacts with that or emailing regularly so yeah, that's what we're doing. I'm feeling that life will settle into some kind of routine on the other side of this, but it's I think fair to assume that life will be different. Whatever the new normal is will won't won't reflect totally you know where we've come from so as we anticipate whatever that new normal is what do you want to see what's your preferred future on the other side of this. You know, I think I think that the number one thing we need to do as a community is after this is over with and I think that you as a community leader on city council could could, you know, make this happen. I think the community needs to come together and have a discussion about where we're going to go from here there's there are going to be some tremendous changes both in the private and public sectors. I think, let's just take schooling. I was talking with a friend the other day online about education and he expressed his concern that he hopes that at least on the college and university level. That they don't abandon the traditional model of bringing young people together on a campus, because it's going to be very easy for them to say wait a minute this is this is this online stuff is pretty easy. And he said, you know, in college especially, there's so much to learn in a social gathering. So I think, you know, that's an example I think we're going to have problems with retail, a small retail. I think people are now getting into the habit and are now custom becoming a custom and really have learned how to use these new things that you can order anything online, do anything you need to do or the majority of things. I was impressed that you know, our church of course went online. And so last Sunday, you can see down at the bottom how many people are participating and it's grown. And we have quite a few of older people, I can older than I am 72. So I can say older old folks. And I'm impressed that they have adjusted and have figured out how to use zoom and how to figure it out. You know, I'm very, very impressed by that and I think we need to recognize that that everyone is has stepped up to a new level of technology. Education, they may not know all of what all of these little things on the bottom mean or what do you what you do but they can click, you know, for the connection. The, I think that the businesses in Longmont, I think the mayor delivered the message in the wrong manner but I understand the basic nature of his concerns about how I think this is having on small retail up and down Main Street or even in the shopping centers around town. It is going to have a profound effect and we're going to have to figure that out as well I'm, I am confident that there's going to be a lot of empty service offices in town that have figured out that they can do business online. I talked to one friend that has this over in Boulder, and he's already given notice to his landlord that he's not going to use their office anymore that they can really conduct their national business and and it's pretty successful national business entirely online with their sales people and their whatever and I thought wow that's that's a big change. So I think that's going to to really really have a profound effect. I think from the public I think we've we really need and I don't know if this is probably not a discussion for the city. Well, maybe it is, but what is the role of government. I think we need to take another look at that. You know, for more decades we've heard certain political segments of society saying, you know, we don't need the federal government smaller is better. Don't get involved in my life and then boom, this comes along and we're seeing that we do have a need the federal government does have a huge role in this and we're not sure if the federal government is performing that role, which is okay if it goes into the concept and then the states are empowered and have the ability to do what they can do. But as you as we're watching and observing there's only a few states that have done that. And, you know, I was reading last night about California. They've done such a marvelous job. Now they're going to export some of their PPE and and masks and ventilators to states that are also hard hit. I think Colorado I kudos to a Polish I think he's done a marvelous job. But I think that whole relationship between federal and state has to be examined we need to figure out where we're going on that. And I guess from state to local for with respect to the city and counties I think that's going to be important. I think we need to reach a consensus on who what role, each of those governments each level has to play how to coordinate and be prepared for the next next issue. And do we only come together for crises, or do we do it on a regular basis I mean these are big, big policy issues. Socially, as someone mentioned, Twitter the other day, do you think anybody is going to eat a piece of cake after a birthday cake. When the, when the celebrant blows out the candles anymore I think you know, he's going to be, wait a minute, I don't want to have a contagious piece of birthday cake. I say that humorously but I think that's just an example of some of the things that are going on. For instance, I was listening the other day and they said well, we may be flattening the curve we may be able to loosen this up, but we really don't have a vaccine yet so we may have to do this all over again. Next fall and next winter. Oh my gosh, I hope not. But the point is, we're going to have to start changing and evolving our social structures. You know, I think that's, that's going to be very important. And I noticed it took about two weeks. I'm kind of involved in in many of the nonprofit boards and commissions in town and, and at first it was all emails but now everybody's come together and figured out how to handle it. And so we've had meetings, I even, we even had a very important vote on on one board the other just yesterday. And we've never done that before. Doing a roll call by email and it was pretty interesting to. I think up and down the line from a private sector public sector and social. We're going to have some tremendous upheaval and we need to be prepared to figure out how we're going to meet those challenges. And, and, and I think they, you know, there's different ways to do that but I think discussion groups and community events and whatnot would be of help. So please thank you for contributing to this project. Take good care of yourself and your family. Okay, you too. Thanks. I want to thank Matt Elbridge for lending your voice in your vision to the Longmont Voices and Vision Project. Let's start by just learning a little bit about who you are. Thanks for having me. So, yes, my name is Matt Elbridge. I'm the executive director for TLC learning center, formerly known as the tiny Tim center of 65 plus year old nonprofit organization here in Longmont that serves children with special needs and also typical children from ages birth through age six and childcare early education setting and children with special needs for occupational physical and speech therapy needs from age birth to 12. And this kind of unprecedented moment in anyone's life and history. Everybody is challenged to figure out how to get through the kind of current situation. Yeah, share with us how you're getting through. Are you getting yourself through this. Yeah, so I guess my my theme for the, the period that we're in right now is connection versus content. I think right now we're in a time where just being able to connect with people is sometimes more important than the content that we're getting or that we're sharing. We have great resources from our county human services, state departments and even federal sites that give great information. Although you can go down a lot of different rabbit holes and spend hours and hours trying to figure out an answer to a question that you didn't even know you were asking. But what we're finding is is that just the connection through virtual ways or even in social distancing physical contact ways right now is probably more important than ever. We know that that's the case for children we've been preaching that for years about the connection and the relationships that are important for children to build from the ages birth to five. But I am realizing now more than ever that that is just as important for adults, especially as we're trying to be mindful of our social distancing and stay at home orders and trying to be safe, but also trying to stay connected not only to the outside world, but to those that we're closest to, and you kind of take that for granted and so I think right now connection versus content is the thing that we're saying for our staff as they try to connect with their children, for our parents that they can stay connected both as they need to work, as well as now that they're thrusted in some roles that maybe they didn't know, and they were underprepared for where they're doing school from home, or they're doing trying to juggle childcare where they are more appreciative for the six to eight to 10 hours a day sometimes of the care that their kids were getting. We're finding that that is, we're seeing a lot more people that are thankful for the services that they were receiving when they're not receiving them anymore. So connection versus the content the content is great. The resources are super, but it's really about staying connected with people this time. What are the forms? How are you staying connected? Yeah, so the other thing that we know is that children birth to five are much smarter and for whatever reason it is built into their DNA that they understand technology sometimes better than I felt like I was at least up on some things. My boys would say that I don't know anything, but I know that three and four and five year olds, it's intuitive. So it has been virtually seamless in our ability to do therapeutic services via telehealth. I never would have thought that a nonverbal kid on a wheelchair could do a zoom therapy session. What I didn't realize is that they were probably more able to do that in their parents and the therapist. And so we've been able to see that our kids have been able to do this. We preach, you know, limiting screen time and all of those things I think which are still really important, but again staying connected in these ways has not been as difficult as I thought it would be for therapy sessions. Our kids are now doing zoom and WebEx circle times. Our teachers are creating YouTube pages, which is creating content that I'm going to steal for years that they're creating right now. So some of those methods have been really fun. We've done now weekly staff meetings because we are currently closed. As far as physically, we don't have children in the building or teachers in the building, but we're doing weekly staff meetings. I've seen more about people's homes. I see you've got a City of Longmont map. It looks like behind you with all the districts and zones. We are probably more personally involved in each other's lives through this. I know that our therapists are saying that some of the things that they've been trying to do where they're teaching parents how to do certain physical things. That's not an option anymore now because they're not physically in the room. So a parent has to participate. So those have been some really positive things. And I guess the final thing is I'd say as our teachers again, we've been able to connect via zoom with 45 plus people. And the best parts of the meetings are probably the last 10 seconds where we just unmute everybody. And it's hello. I miss you. It's good to see your kids. So that's been really good. I think fair to assume that on the other side of this crisis that we're in, whatever the new normal is, whatever we settle into is going to be different than life before the pandemic. So as we do that, there's some value in framing and understanding what our preferred futures are. So what would be a preferred future for you? What do you want to move toward? What do you want to see an experience on the other side of this? Yeah. So, you know, I think that the floods were a really good example of how we were able to rebuild and how the local community comes together. And in the end, we're stronger than we were before. I know that for us as far as TLC learning center in the childcare world in general, we often live in silos. We say we have wait lists and the place next door has a wait list and the place next door has a wait list. But we don't really know what the need is. And this has kind of forced us as an industry to come together to figure out what are your needs, childcare center X, what are my needs, and how do we work better together? So we've been able to share resources. We've been able to share trainings. We've been able to share communications to our parents. How do you communicate? If and when you are open, those childcare centers that are open right now have some really good wellness policies in place that they're willing to share now with others, where maybe before we were all kind of doing our own thing. So I think some some centralized coordinated efforts. We're having to do that now. And I hope that on the other side of this that we won't lose those. Some of those systems that we're building now, both from a county level down to a local level, even down to an industry level, the childcare industry, we're now sharing. Hey, do you have a family? I can't open, but I know there's three families that really need a place that are essential workers. We are better coordinating our efforts in terms of how do we meet the demand of the need for something as simple as childcare but as complicated as we haven't been able to figure it out in the last 65 years of TLC Learning Center at least. So I think on the other side, we will have some coordinated systems, I think we'll have some opportunities to build on those. So here's some things that we've already started. We've started an early childhood coalition that is talking about how do we better deliver a service to all families, whether they're able to afford it or not. I think now we're having to have those conversations because it's very real that some of us may not be able to open or some of us might be able to open sooner than others. The future looks really good in terms of how do we support each other in terms of some systems deliveries. I think that's going to relate to some funding opportunities. I think even public will around the need for how do we as an employment workforce. This issue around childcare, we've been talking about the importance of it, but it is never any more important than it is now when our essential workforce needs to be at work, and some of their barriers are, but what do I do with my kids? And Eldred, thanks for contributing to the Longmont Voices and Visions project. Take care of yourself and your family. Thank you much. Thank you for your contribution to of your voices in your vision to this project. Tyler, Kyson, and Macy may. So to get this started just tell us a little bit about yourselves. I'm Macy may and, you know, I work for public media and long on observer, and these are my two boys, Tyler and Kyson. And, you know, we just, you know, community members and we're just here to help out however we can and to share our thoughts. In a time that's unprecedented in any of our lives here with how you're getting through the current situation. Do you want to talk about how you're getting through. Oh, I've just been playing a lot of video game calling it friends. That seems to be helping me get through. What about you buddy how are you getting through. Same as Ty. Except for the friend calling. So we, we have a classroom set up in the dining room and my office in the dining room so we're kind of, you know, co working if you will. And, you know, we have a good system going so that we can get our school we're done and get mom's work done. And then we have another system so that we make sure that we're exercising and staying healthy and not just sitting all day. Doing some other things to feed our brains like reading books and just, you know, trying to endure what we can. So in an era of physical distance, social distancing and physical isolation. How are you staying connected. Obviously, we can see how you're staying connected among the three of you. Are you staying connected to other family members in France. Um, we, we have a very unique. Well, maybe not unique, but a situation where I'm divorced with their dad, and he was kind of an isolation before the stay at home orders happened and so we, we aren't mixing our households. And so one of the ways that he, he will come visit and sit like 10 feet away from us and we try to have a conversation, you know, that way so there's, you know, face to face time but then this weekend is Easter weekend. We have a zoom meeting set up with their grandparents to have Easter dinner with them. Tyler's birthday is coming up so we're already planning on like a virtual birthday party and inviting our front family at least to have dessert of their choice and making and, you know, have a few minutes of time with them. Beyond virtual and we just would just kind of say hi to people on the street at our social distancing set backs and, you know, just kind of get through otherwise. It's not too much different I think for them they tend to talk to their friends virtually anyway so they kind of just have more of that. We know that Tyler spent more time on the telephone it sounds like. On the other side of this and there will be another side of this. It's, it's I think fair to assume that life will be different we just don't know how. So, the third question really is what would you like to see. What would you, what would you like to at least parts of what the new normal will be what would you like to see an experience on the other side of this what's your preferred future. What do you think the future is going to be. I just hope it goes back to normal. Wow, that's that's a interesting question since you know I've been tied into the media so much that the constant changes is very noticeable to me and the social distancing and you know working from home and seeing how businesses have been hit and how they've adapted as best as they can. I think it's going to be a very remote world that we're going to enter into because I think employers are really going to see some value to some of that. But hopefully we can get back into where we can socialize again and people don't feel that that social distancing is such an important part of their lives that that the opposite is actually true because there's a lot of value and being in a group and a community physically together. All right. Tyler, Tyson and Macy may. Thanks again for lending your voices and your vision to this project. Thank you.