Alissa Keller was home alone Saturday evening for her 39th birthday dinner. She had Chicken Cordon Bleu with green beans and a salad. Her dessert choices were a pink birthday cupcake and a trio of caramel, peanut butter mousse and lemon curd tarts.
Since she was the only one in the house, Keller had to light her own birthday candle. Then, right on cue, her friends, Melanie and Cody Noffsinger, and Brooke and Chris Jung, sang “Happy Birthday” from their respective homes at opposite ends of town.
Keller heard them loud and clear. It was as if they were all in the same room. And if a Zoom internet connection counts, they were together in spirit.
“Last night was good for all of us,” said Keller, who is the executive director of the Museums of Historic Hopkinsville-Christian County. “We needed to get together as much as we could. I think my birthday was a really good excuse.”
Like many others across the country this week, Keller and her friends turned to technology to deal with the physical separation that’s needed to help slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus.
A month ago, hardly anyone had heard of social distancing. Now it’s a term spoken dozens of times a day to remind everyone to stay at least 6 feet apart. Even from best friends. Even on their birthdays.
Keller learned her friends had created the birthday surprise when she looked outside Saturday afternoon and saw them converging in her yard. The Jungs brought salads and desserts for everyone. The Noffsingers brought the entrees. They had presents for Keller.
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After a brief visit in the front yard and time for photos and a video to share later on Facebook, everyone headed out with their meals and a plan. They would meet up shortly after 5 p.m. on Zoom and have dinner together.
They carried on through a thunderstorm and a tornado watch. It was 11 p.m. before they called it a night.
Earlier in the day, Keller had visited on Zoom with six friends who grew up together in Hopkinsville. They connected from Indianapolis, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, Brentwood and Clarksville. It was that group’s second Zoom birthday gathering of the week.
Zoom is a video conferencing program. As a result of coronavirus quarantines and self-isolation, it’s being used for everything from weddings and online high school classes to yoga lessons and impromptu friend reunions.
“Everyone is working a lot harder to keep in contact,” Keller said.
Keller, who bought her first home last fall in the Mooreland-Latham-Alumni neighborhood, has been working mainly from home for the past week.
Watching her yard emerge in the warm weather, she’s seeing for the first time where the tulips and buttercups are planted. She has two Japanese cherry blossom trees that are visually brilliant.
All of that is an odd backdrop to the country’s partial shutdown amid fears the virus will overwhelm the ability of hospitals to treat people who become seriously ill.
Keller said she’s felt the absence of people around her. During the day, she often looks through the glass storm door hoping to see someone she knows coming up the sidewalk so she can step outside and holler a greeting.
“I run to the door like a puppy,” she said.
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. Brown was a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era, where she worked for 30 years. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board past president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition. She serves on the Hopkinsville History Foundation's board.
