Coastal Alabamians celebrated May Day this year by mingling maskless by the thousands at the Arts and Crafts Festival in Fairhope, the charming Mobile Bay town sometimes considered to be the Carmel of the South.
In only mildly humid 80-degree sunshine, it was abundantly clear that some parts of America are simply done worrying about COVID-19. We’ll see soon enough if the coronavirus is ready to be done with Alabamians.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey lifted most coronavirus-related restrictions, including government-enforced mask mandates, on April 9. Still, it took an event like the arts festival to realize just how fully the populace has abandoned pandemic panic. With people congregating in semi-close quarters throughout six square blocks of streets generously adorned with brightly flowered hanging baskets and sidewalk plantings, perhaps only 1 in every 100 attendees wore face coverings.
Who could bother with such appurtenances when there were hot-food trucks from which to sample, fresh-squeezed lemonade aplenty, and ice cream available at every corner? And with a refreshing breeze blowing off the bay, how could a nasty virus possibly invade areas so full of human-created beauty?
Witness the craftsman from Georgia selling artfully made hand-whisk brooms — lovely handles of various woods, turned and polished for a nice grip. Or the local Fairhope artist with pretty, impressionistic-style landscapes — my wife said they “evoke the dream vision that Fairhope sometimes seems to be.” And there was a young lady selling beautiful copper “paintings”: green and aqua patina on copper plate, giving a sense of being underwater or on a moonscape. In all, 100 artists were on display, along with plenty more from which to choose in surrounding permanent shops and parlors. To borrow from the title of a mini-hit movie filmed in Fairhope, one could certainly see a whole lot of “tiny, perfect things.”
One might think it was just this celebratory event that made everyone so COVID-carefree. At a well-attended Catholic Mass the next day, though, only about 1 out of every 40 people wore masks indoors. Be not afraid.
Had Dr. Anthony Fauci attended, he might have died of a heart attack.
As April ended, Alabama ranked last in the nation in its overall vaccination rate, with only a third of the population having secured at least one inoculation dose. Alabama Public Radio reported May 3 that nearly 50% of Alabamians expressed “vaccine hesitancy,” worrying (wrongly) that the shot’s effects would be worse than the disease. And as of April 28, Alabama was ranked the 14th-worst in the country for the total number of cases per capita since the pandemic began — but its more recent case numbers were way down among the nation’s fewest.
If those numbers suddenly spike now that masks are passe, then Alabama’s mayday will be of the distress-signal variety. For this weekend, though, May Day meant a glorious celebration of spring, fair and full of hope.
