Open!

What a thrill to be able to go into my library again and be able to browse the shelves, as well as pick up books that I ordered online!

My favorite librarian was on duty today, and we caught up on each other's lives for a few minutes at a safe distance. I'm continuing to be very careful, including wearing masks inside stores, despite being fully vaccinated. 

Our county health department's website posted an update on the Delta variant today that reinforced my focus on being cautious: "The Delta variant of COVID-19 has been detected in Whatcom County and has become the dominant variant in Washington, making up 58% of all variant cases in the state. This variant is also about 50-60% more contagious than the Alpha variant--which is itself 50% more transmissible than the original strain of COVID-19. According to a recent study, the Delta variant's viral load is about 1,000 times higher than the original COVID-19 strain."

Earlier this month, I stopped putting COVID-19 in my photo tags, as it seemed that things were getting better. I'm going back to those entries and put that tag in again, and on future blips. We're nowhere near the end of this pandemic.

[Addendum: The Fairhaven Carnegie Library was built in 1904, one of the 1,689 Carnegie libraries built in the United States between 1883 and 1929 with money donated by Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist. An additional 820 Carnegie libraries were built in other countries, mostly the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Canada.]

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