Danelle Manthey

I just have to get up and eat every morning and when I remember what's going on, I calm myself back down and know that it's in God's hands. I definitely think that I do. I learned new skills, I learned how to zoom, I learned technology and I've always worked around everything anyway, so I'm going around the rock in the stream, just like the water, kind of flows around it.

I think since this pandemic started there's been an uptick in people buying from us because people are concerned about where their food is going to come from. There's very little beef in the stores. There's a limit on how much people are allowed to buy. There's not a limit with us. It's also healthy food that's not produced in a bad way. We honor our animals, we love our animals. And so, I think people see that and all of a sudden there's a drawing inward. People are really thinking, they have time to think, and I think they're thinking about where their food comes from.

What I find is that people are either extremely terrified for no reason or they're not concerned enough and should be. So, they're operating in exactly the opposite of how they should and that's really frustrating.

You asked us how it's affected us emotionally and we actually really are okay. But last night we were lying in bed and we were just kind of quiet and talking and there was a lull and I said, you know, I'm starting to feel a little unnerved. I think this is getting a little scary because I think it's going to go on a lot longer and it's not just going to end and people are going to be free. It's not going to be like that. The doctor I work for thinks there's going to be another uptick in the virus, maybe in the fall, and that's a little unnerving. It does change everything.

We reduced our hours and we're trying to be careful. But, you know, closing could have ultimately been a death sentence for a small business like me, because we still have to pay our rent and our overhead and as far as I know, my vendors aren't extending any deadlines on the bills that are coming due. So, being able to stay open has been good.

We were seeing a little bit of an increase in business and then once this (Covid) happened, it was almost like turning off the faucet, you know, everybody kind of just stopped for a little bit. It's sort of trickling back on a little bit now, but there's just so much uncertainty.

The sad thing is this is where shops like me, like actual stores that service the community, are going to be hurt by the internet because people are stuck in their houses and it's a lot easier for them to buy stuff online cheap from wherever, so that is what really worries me.

It's like people are holding back what they wanna do and they're not acting normally. I think there is a bit of a piece of that where people do just want to have that normal usual interaction but then I also had two customers today, that wouldn't get out of their car, and I had to go out to the car and get their bikes. So, I think people are just really scared. They don't know what's going on. There's not a lot of concrete information out there, so it's just sketchy.

There's a lot of things that are really special about this place, but number one for me has been and always will be the horses, the connection with the horses, and sharing my love for horses with other people.

I think what they do for me personally is they force me to be present in the moment and really that's all we have. You know, the future isn't promised and the past is the past and you have to be there physically for your safety, you have to be there emotionally, you have to be there spiritually and you're there as a partner with your horse, whether it's just brushing them and connecting with them or riding them or anything else you can do with them. You have to be there in the moment with them. And I think, that for me is one thing that's been very beneficial for me in my personal life.

How do I think life is going to be different after all this? I wish I had a crystal ball to really answer that. However, I would say that, on the lighter note, hopefully everybody's going to wash their hands more regularly and it doesn't take a pandemic for people to take care of themselves properly. But I think it's going to be a different world for small businesses. Small businesses are struggling and people that have worked 30 years, I mean, I'm a newbie to this, but people who've worked 30 years that closed their doors and may or may not reopen. So, I think that a lot of our favorite places right now are really struggling with no sort of certain future. And you know, I think that it's important for everybody to try and pay it forward and to try and support their favorite place. Whether that's buying a gift certificate now or putting a deposit down on something for next year, people are going to have to support their favorite places. That's the only way they're going to stick around.

It is tough for everybody. I understand that, but I am thankful to my God that we are still open. Like I am doing much better than other people. Those who are sitting in the house not doing anything, they have no income, but I'm still making a reasonable salary and I'm glad that I could help in this hard time with people, when they need it most. So, I'm glad that I'm here.

A lot of people are thankful that we are still open because they understand this is the news, which I don't see much because I don't have much time to see the news, but I see the basic news, but they understand the situation and they understand our limited service too but they don't mind because they are concerned with their medical necessities and for other things they can always buy from different places, the big chain stores are open but this is a little inconvenient for them maybe.

The core Christian message is that we die and we rise in Jesus, right? And this is a great time to be preaching that core message. We're leading and I'm trying through my preaching, to help us just follow Jesus through the dying, but also get to the rising, cause that's what life is about, over and over again in all of our lives. We go through periods of dying and rising. It's a pattern. So, trying to honor the pattern and that there's hope in that pattern. Unfortunately, we kind of wish we could miss the dying part.

I think it's irresponsible not to shut down. I think there's a lot of bravado in that saying that we're Christians, were untouchable, which is nonsense, we’re as touchable as everyone else, that's the whole point of Christianity. It's an incarnational religion. Jesus became flesh, right? So, I think it's irresponsible. I think it's really hard not to be together and I'd much rather say to people, yes, let's gather on Sunday, we'll take our chances, but it's not the responsible thing to do.

We're all adapting and sometimes it takes something of significance to happen, to really force that adaptation and to force us to evolve.

I think that's really where we need to take advantage of the situation being what it is, what can you take out of it that's positive. And those are the things that you can take out of it. What should be in a positive light, is everyone adapting how they do business. Everyone is adapting how they communicate. Everyone is adapting how we socialize, still being able to do it, just we do it in different ways. You know, taking a moment to slow down and recognize the beauty that we have around us and not have to be in such a fast paced world all the time.

And I think the biggest thing too, is it's sense of community and I would hope that every place is feeling the same sense of community that we are here. We are fortunate that we live in an area with different towns and cities, all within Ulster County and the areas that are around us in upstate New York, who are reaching out to folks because everybody going through this is having a different experience. And a lot of us, you know, might be fortunate to be very bored right now, stuck in their homes, watching their Netflix and doing all of those things. But at the same time, there's a lot of people who don't have anything close to that kind of a luxury to be bored right now. We need to, I think, stay focused on that, that there's a lot of people who need help and if you can help them, then get out there and help.

I love just being able to work with the animals and having them around me every day, because they really are stress relievers. You know, you can't sit there petting a dog and not be happy and you can't be more centered and focused. So that's kind of the joy that our pets bring to us and being able to see that, you know, a lot of them come from really, really bad backgrounds and really sad stories.

And the beauty of what we do here is that we don't focus on that, we focus on that's their past and right now their present is with us and we give them every bit of everything that we possibly can to make it as much like a home here as we can. But really then also knowing that when they find that home, what a wonderful thing it is for them and for the people who are associated with them. So, there's a lot to really be happy about having this job. I mean, I think pets in general provide a significant amount of comfort, as being a part of your family and in your home. And I think that in times of increased stress, our animals don't understand the words that come out of our mouth, but they certainly can read our body language. They know when we're upset, they know when we're sad and a lot of times our pets are there to comfort us and make us feel better because they recognize that in us. I think that having a pet in your home, no matter what's going on, is always a source of comfort and a source of joy. I think that having them in this particular time is certainly lending to a lot more mental health and quality of life for a lot of people.

I try to keep it as upbeat as possible. So as soon as this happened, I switched to poetry. It was poetry month. So, I've just been organizing my lessons around the core values of the high school, such as humor, responsibility, respect, kindness was the first one. So just trying to find poems and activities that relate to those very heartwarming types of concepts. And how do you reach out to them? How do you go from every day you're used to seeing your 10th graders you're used to seeing and interacting to them to all of a sudden having create this new platform? Well, actually, some of them I've been texting, I call their homes. So, I'm calling them. I'm texting them, I'm communicating with them through email. So that's how we're doing that.

I think society is forever changed. I think that people maybe will see the interdependence that we have with each other and with mother nature and how we're just all connected and we can't live and exist in isolation and we have to treat our earth with respect.

It's very hard for anybody who's trying to grow and continue their life, you know, who has graduated and has gone to college to then want to continue with their lives around here, because there's really not too much being offered at the present time. So that's hard. You see our younger people basically moving away.

The truth of the matter is that from a biblical point of view, okay if you read your Bible which I do, okay. The Lord said, he's going to make you mind him one way or another. This is a way of making people notice, hey, it ain't about you. Did you forget me? Is what he's saying. And I've been preaching that to everybody around me. And they're like, you know, you're right. I read that in the Bible. And I was like, yeah there you go. So, my faith is what carries me, has always done so since I've been a teenager. But what scares me is, is that people are going to go back to their ways and they're going to forget. People have gotten so involved with the fast pace of life that they have failed to understand what truly is important.

I think it's going to be a slow, it's going to be slow coming back but I'm still optimistic that I can maintain my guys. I've always been able to find work. I haven't had to lay people off in the past. I do think it's going to be a slow road, but I don't know how they're going to open this. You know, they're not going to open it all at once, but you know, we can do it. You know, I figured it out in the past, we've been working here when we were in between jobs. We've been working on the office, we've been working on the barns. So, you know, we do find things to do.

Our customers have been with us since we've opened our doors. We've seen little kids that were babes in arms, and now I'm doing their weddings now, so we've seen the whole progression of life in our community. It's (the store) also kind of like a touchstone place for a lot of people that have walked through here. The atmosphere is a very nurturing one. People feel very comfortable and safe here, so that's what's weird about right now.

It came to a screeching halt one day. And we ran around, we were cleaning everything, you know, bleaching everything, putting everything away, it's emotional, you know, to shut down. Bye. See you whenever. It's weird. It's very strange.

I'm confident that our business will, if we can survive, will grow back again because of what I was saying before, in terms of people coming in, they liked the vibe in here. People like to be able to meander looking at little nooks and crannies and find things that are unique and that you don't see everywhere.

I feel nervous about the future, how long this is going to be? I think we can sustain this for six months, but beyond that is going to be quite troublesome. We want our staff back. We're afraid to do the PPP loan because it's only a two-month loan. I don't see us reopening or New York state reopening safely in two months. I mean, I think realistically you watch the news, I think it's going to be a year. I mean, I think it's going to really take us through the winter into next spring before we really either have a vaccine or it's really flattened out enough where people do feel comfortable to just come in and we have the kind of business that we had before, which was very busy and, you know, it's a small place. So there could be 10 customers in here at a time. I don't see how that would happen. I don't think that we could have more than three people in here at a time safely. And that's, that's the hard part.

A lot of people have been hurting churches and unfortunately, you know, we as people, no one is perfect. And even in this great country, God's name has been desecrated and used as a weapon. And that is something that I've always preached that we need some sort of light to come through because, God is love. God is love.

I had to admit that there's no person on this earth, regardless of how much power they have, has put the sun or the moon in the sky. So therefore, it must be a God; and since then, my spiritual journey has grown. So, it is a passion of mine to be able to share that with humanity, because I am of the belief that is when we get loved. Perfect, perfect love, casts out all fear. Perfect love covers a multitude of sin and it is not our job to judge one another, it is our job to love. And that's what Jesus said, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. And when we, as a community can do that, we will see the kingdom of heaven coming upon the earth. I'm confident of that.

Humanity is in need of a revival, meaning that we need to come together and put aside our differences and love each other, to the point where we don't harm each other.

I was here at this reservoir with my friends and all of a sudden, we just got a call. The school was canceled for two weeks, then two became four. And then it's been two months since I learned to be more resilient and flexible because like all of a sudden everything started getting canceled and all of a sudden, I had to deal with that.

Senior year only comes once, so I'm kind of disappointed, but at the same time I kind of need a break from school.

It's ironic in this time that they (theaters) are a place of gathering. I mean, that's what the whole point of these places are to bring people together in a joyous, uplifting and moving powerful way.

And it's so sad that we can't do this together now.

Six weeks ago, I was crowded into a rehearsal space and it was exciting; with these classical musicians and all these French performers. And everybody, all the artists, all the musicians, everybody, was so warm and happy, because that's what we do, right? There’s this whole energy that flows when we're in a good place and it's just mind blowing that a week later, one fucking week, all that stops. I was super depressed for about, I don't know, a week or so at least after we closed up and, and then I had to just focus on finding money, which is what I do and how I’m going to figure it out. How do I keep 21 full time people employed, insured and safe? And at first, I was thinking through the summer, and now I'm realizing no, it's till next September. At least if I'm lucky, if we're lucky and if there’s some miracle cure; fucking hallelujah, but I doubt it. And so that's all I do now is move shows, keep moving them and moving them and moving them. It's a real clusterfuck right now in March and April, but I know in my head, they're all gonna move again anyway, so it doesn't matter. It's like we work in this kind of limbo state.

Every single day it started to add up, you know, the 6th of March, the 7th of March, the 8th of March, it kept marching through March. And I think around the 9th or 10th I called Steven, our head of production here and my total right hand forever, and I said, dude, we can't, we have close, we can't do this. We can't, I was like, I can't go into my fucking yoga class. I can't sit in there with all these people breathing heavily, I can't do that, you know? And if I can't do that, I can't ask fucking 1500 people to come here. And so, we sort of came to it at the same time.

It was like the day before we saw people saying, Oh, you can't go out, you can't go out. And I was like, fuck you. And then the day after I was like, I can't go out. We can't go out. Fuck me. You know? And so that's what we decided. And then we said, well, let's get a staff meeting or something. And I said, no, we can't have a staff meeting. We have to be done. So, it all began.

I mean we're always aggressively moving forward. You have to, especially if you're freelance, which I did forever. This is my first straight job in my fucking life, you know, in 50 years of working. You never take the one day at a time approach and never take the time to enjoy gratitude and all this shit we talk about, talk about it in yoga or whatever. Now we have to live this thing, we really have to kind of be grateful for Kerhonkson or whatever it is where we are. And I'm really, I'm just beginning to get there. And part of it is I still feel the stress of figuring out how I'm going to keep everybody okay.

I'm still kind of trying to embrace it. You know, I'm trying to embrace it on a day to day basis and not get obsessed or, frantic or anxious or anything, keep walking, keep doing yoga.

My world is smaller and I just have to embrace that and know that there is a big world and I'm part of it, but not right now.

Roscoe: March 12th was the changing day for me. We met a couple of friends at a museum and had lunch with them, while we were having lunch, I kept getting notifications on my phone. The museum is closed. The metropolitan opera is closed. MOMA is closed - every few minutes. And at that point I thought; it's time to get away if there's a way to get out. Of course, there were also rumors starting at that point that the city was going to be closed and I thought maybe we won't even be able to leave, but the next day we packed up, not knowing how long it would be, but thinking that it was better to be out of the city, if it was possible.

The people that we both had lunch with on our last day in New York, they were trying to talk us into going to the theater over that last weekend because there were tickets available to all the Broadway shows and they suggested that we see something that they saw and really enjoyed. And I said to them, no, we're going to get out of town as soon as we can and I would suggest that you get on the next flight out of here as well. They did end up getting a flight the following morning. One of them is dead. I don't know if it happened when they were in New York, they went to lots of theatrical performances, they went to restaurants and it was either then that he got infected or during his travel back to Portland. At any rate, he ended up in the hospital, about 10 days later in the emergency room, he was diagnosed with pneumonia, sent home, ended up back in the hospital a few days later he’d been intubated.

He was taken off the respirator and seemingly recovering. And the next day we heard that he had passed away. So that, yeah, that hit me really, really hard.

Well, at that point, I couldn't go out at all. I mean, I couldn't go to a supermarket or I couldn't be around another human being, except for Steve, who I'd been with since we've been up here. It just moved me to the point that I was basically, paralyzed really. I mean, socially paralyzed.

It kind of hit us more because this was a person who was of our age. He was in his fifties and was in very good physical health and had just done a bicycle race and was not, you know a so-called person with underlying conditions or a very old person. So, it helped us to realize just how real that pandemic was to know this person and then to realize that he was taken down.

Steven: I feel neither hopeless nor hopeful. I don't want to say negative, but very low to the ground in my approach and looking up to the sky for that next thing. One of the few things I had to say when I left my last big job, was to the young people who I was working with. It was during the last recession, and I wanted them to know that random, good things happen all the time. I said, you've been hit by a lot of random bad things and so you're stuck working for this lousy firm and in a situation where you're not sure what's going to happen next and I want you to know many random good things happen.

It's really important to remember that random, positive things happen and will happen. And my biggest fear was that they wouldn't recognize when some randomly positive thing happened to them and they wouldn't take advantage of it so I wanted to leave them with that thought. And that's my current position during the pandemic.

In the early AIDS epidemic activists were actually told by pharmaceutical executives that there wasn't any money in finding therapies and treatments for people with AIDS. The federal government was also not stepping in. It wasn't just Reagan who was not responsive, it was the business world. We had an activist expression when the police were getting a little bit aggressive; the whole world is watching; well, you know, now the whole world is watching. So, it's a real comfort to me. If I can say that, in this current pandemic sense, we're all in it together and the whole world is involved. Then my idea that random positive things happen and that everyone's actually working really hard on some kind of random positive thing happening.

It has been the worst thing to lose a job during a pandemic because you can't really look for work. People aren't really hiring and you can't just reach out to your contacts because you're not sure where they are professionally or health wise, you know, being in New York City, it feels a little tone deaf to just be like, Hey, I lost my job. How are you doing? You know of anything? So, in some ways it's more stressful losing your job when unemployment has never been higher and people are slashing budgets, but I think also losing your job during a global pandemic gives you perspective as to what's important because when I work, I work really hard and it's very consuming and I don't think about a lot of other things. I don't have time to really think about a lot of other things.

I think that what's happening in the world right now has made a lot of people realize how sometimes the work we do, isn't the most important thing, that it's really about the people that we love.

It felt strange when hundreds of people were dying every day in New York city to be thinking about how to sell real estate during a pandemic. It just felt really abstract to work so hard. It was so hard to do it remotely and I wanted to do a good job and I was so concerned about the people who I work with. So in some ways it feels, even though it's very stressful financially, better to not have to think about that right now.

I have to figure out personally how to fill my own time now because I'm so used to being on this New York City work treadmill and now I have endless days ahead of me because I don't really know when this is going to go on until.

I mean my heart breaks because I absolutely love New York City, you know, I was born there and there's nowhere else that I would rather be. I mean, it's beautiful up here, but if I had to choose between New York and up here before the pandemic, I would a hundred percent pick New York City, the freedom of expression and the international feel of it. I just love it and it makes me really heartbroken to think about all the small businesses that are the things that I love about New York.

I always really appreciated my friends and family, but now that I think of all the times when I was just lazy and I was supposed to meet up with friends and I just didn't, I just went home and did nothing. And I didn't realize what a privilege that is to be able to just see a girlfriend and give them a hug and sit on a bar stool next to them and sip out of their drink and share a plate of food. It was just such a normal way of being and overnight that could never happen again. And for me I always really valued the people that I love in my life, but now, like the fact that I can't go see my mom, I would always complain about having to go see my mom. And now it's like…..

I think it's hard because my sister works in the largest city hospital in Brooklyn. So she's taking the subway five days a week out there and working with the mentally ill who are not washing their hands for 20 seconds while singing happy birthday twice. There is a part of me that has some weird misplaced guilt. One of our closest friends is an ER nurse, she's working in the ER at Beth Israel and everyday people are dying where she works. So, it's weird. It's abstract. We're up here by the stream in this beautiful house.

It's exhausting. It's absolutely exhausting. I find myself getting angry at the littlest things, and I think that's part of the reason I get home and I don't jump on my bike. I don't hike every day, it's because I'm just, I feel like I might be getting depressed a little bit.

I'm not gonna let it happen, but you can feel it, you know, you can feel it. And I hear other people talking and they're saying the same thing and what's really upsetting is when patients are dying, whether it's from COVID or whatnot, their families can't even come in. They're literally coming to the windows and watching their family member die. The worst story. And I wasn't there, the nurse was there, he went in with this patient who he said was drowning. She was just drowning. And the family's very religious. They're outside sobbing, it's pouring rain and they're out peering in the window and the nurse is on his knees holding this woman's hand while she's dying. You know, he walked out of the room crying, I'm gonna cry. He's he walked out of the room sobbing. And that's the hard part it's just, it's heart wrenching, it's heart wrenching.

We have a couple of patients that tested positive, have no symptoms at all. And then you get the ones that are so sick and so compromised, it just sucks. And you just don't see the end in sight.

The day of March 11th was when we closed on this house and March 11th was also the day we were supposed to leave for six weeks for tour, which is crazy, but we're crazy. We were supposed to leave with our full band that night and we were going to be gone for six weeks and we were headed out to California to meet up with another band and do a West Coast and Canadian tour and basically, as we were packing our bags, the plug got pulled on the whole thing. So right off the bat, we lost 30 shows or more than 30 shows and those were going to be a big opportunity because being in front of a bigger band’s audience, that was going to be a good opportunity.

The fact that everybody is dealing with the same thing, strangely, makes me feel better about it because we are all in this together and everybody is dealing with the same hardships and the same confusion and trying to figure out how we can make this work and everybody's suffering and everybody misses live music and everybody misses…not everybody misses their job, but I mean, I do in some ways.

I can't wait for it to be over, as a first responder it's definitely added a level of pensiveness to calls. But in actuality, I would say that we were actually probably slower than usual because we have less traffic on the road, so we're getting less calls to car accidents. People being home during the day, I think oddly enough, has made everyone more aware of their surroundings and it seems like we're getting less false alarms and things like that.

I actually ended up with a lot of people I know having COVID, my brother and his wife, her brother and his wife, a friend of mine who's a nurse and, my father in law and probably my mother right now, she's showing symptoms.

They're both in nursing homes, different nursing homes. My mom's showing symptoms, but they're not retesting. They're just assuming she has it and my father in law at his nursing home, he's tested positive, but isn't showing symptoms. So, everybody outside of my mother and father in law, that I know who’ve had it, has been through it at this point and are fine and back to their normal lives. So, we're waiting to see what happens symptom-wise with them.

I think what's going to happen is we're going to open up just because it's going to happen and I think we're going to see some spikes. Yeah definitely, I know we're going to see some spikes. There's no doubt.

I don't want to bring it home to my family. So, I guess I'm going to have to look at how bad it is hitting our community and evaluate each call, my wife has a compromised immune system.

I think that we're getting a little complacent is what I think, because you don't see it. So, people that haven't been affected by it are being complacent. People in areas that aren't hit as hard are kind of tired of carrying the weight of places that are closer to Manhattan we people are kind of grouped in.

It seems highly contagious, you know, even going beyond how serious it is as a disease, the contagious level of it. It just seems off the charts, you know?