Wow! What a different world we live in now compared to just a few weeks ago. Heidi, Charlie and Breanne are busy fulfilling all of the amazing orders that we have received over the last few days. I had a down moment and I wanted to say hello and share something with all of you:
My name is Kevin Stone, and many of you have seen me around the workshop working with my parents whenever I am lucky enough to visit Southern California, but usually, I stay pretty behind the scenes doing the paperwork and other drab things that keep any small business going. My experience over the last few weeks has been so similar to many of yours; I watched the canned food disappear, I watched the supermarket frozen section empty and then saw what felt like everything come to a complete standstill. I live in San Francisco, and I canceled one flight to Southern California to work with my parents for my spring break at school, and then I canceled another and another. I watched my family’s shop’s calendar go from completely booked with barely any room for another group of excited painters to completely empty. Our hearts sank, and by no means is this experience unique or exclusive to The Sawdust Factory, it has been a humbling moment that we all shared as a community.
Then out of the woodwork, the heroes that have always been there in plain sight shone. There are so many people in our community that have completely redefined what it means to be a real-life superhero. The cashier at the supermarket overnight became a beacon of hope, the parents became teachers, and teachers became tech-wizards to bring education from a group class setting to screens in our homes. The delivery people have tirelessly kept things going, the nurses, doctors and medical staff have worked around the clock to ensure a better tomorrow. There are so many people in the community working so hard to maintain whatever bit of normalcy we can. Then possibly most of all, the biggest hero is you and all of us who are staying home and maintaining social distance to help everyone get through this.
We have been so fortunate over the last few days to be able to bring creativity into your homes and keep our shop open, at least online, and so we wanted to say thank you again from the bottom of our hearts for letting us be such a bit part of your stay-at-home creative time!
And, now, we need your help to find some of these Local Community Heroes. Help us find the grocery store workers, the delivery people, the healthcare workers, and all of those people that have kept our world going so we can give them or their children something special from our workshop. Of course, we don’t have the ability to reward all of them; we so wish we could. So, if you have a moment and would like to nominate a Local Community Hero, please do.
Also, perhaps, you reading this may have a small business in the community and would like to offer something to the local heroes please let us know in the form, and we can work together to reward even more people!
