'Third places': The ways losing our local haunts hurts us (2021)
The pandemic definitely hit me where it hurts, in terms of social groups.<p>For over 20 years, a small circle of friends had met at a coffeehouse to play games. For a long time, it was Magic: the Gathering, and then in later years it was gin rummy, Clue, Sequence, and all sorts of other board and card games. We met in a large, very social local coffeehouse, then when that closed down we moved to a Starbucks right on the main drag, and then I found a very cute college-oriented teahouse, off the beaten path, and it was there where we whiled away the hours in the before-times.<p>Then the lockdowns hit, and of course we could no longer meet. Unfortunately, our circle of friends had stabilized with me and two elderly folks, and one of them wasn&#x27;t savvy enough with Zoom for us to feasibly meet online and do our thing.<p>For a while, I tried to play online games with the other friend, but it definitely wasn&#x27;t the same. We couldn&#x27;t see each other and we couldn&#x27;t even text-chat while the games were being played, so it really defeated the social purpose of playing the games over a table and a cup of tea, just to solve all the problems of the world.<p>I still chat with that one friend over the phone, and I share links with her and whatnot, but our social group never recovered from the lockdowns. In fact, the teahouse shut down, never to return. We went our separate ways.<p>I was also dismayed at how church handled lockdowns. That fateful Easter 2020 was a livestream from a small chapel, with none of the faithful allowed to partake. Bishops around the world essentially canceled every public Mass and told us all to stay home. This was known in earlier days as &quot;Interdict&quot;, and Interdict is traditionally wielded as a punishment against nations and rulers who are hostile to the Church. Interdict, or withholding the sacraments from the faithful, is intended to elicit a cry of rebellion from them, that they rise up and demand their religious rights. This is exactly what happened in Mexico in the Cristero Wars, when the atheist government expelled priests and forbade them even to confer baptism.<p>It took a while, but church did recover, at least my local parish did. They restored the picnic tables and chairs, they put back the holy water, they restarted Masses and allowed us to sing, they began holding public events and even serving food. I&#x27;m thankful that the lockdowns did not last forever, for them.<p>Unfortunately, for me, several social options have evaporated. I work from home now, although the nature of my remote work would allow me to hook up anywhere that has WiFi. I have gone to the library once in a while, when there&#x27;s an issue at home. I really think libraries are great third places, and kudos to the municipalities that strive to make them welcoming and useful to taxpayers.