Back in early January, as I started our Masks for Mayfield project to serve our community that was devastated by the monster tornado of December 10th, I wrote this diary , Masks for Mayfield, which made the Trending List for a day. The encouraging response I got here helped propel the project forward and I especially am grateful for the donations from Kossaks that helped get this project off the ground and rolling. The project is co-sponsored by Four Rivers Indivisible and the Mayfield-Graves Branch of the NAACP. I am a member of both.
Now that we are in the second month of distributing high quality KN95/KF94 masks, I’d like to share some stories about our experiences and some of our photos. So many photos of the faces of Mayfield, all showing resilience and hope—and their genuine joy and appreciation that we brought them masks. They are more than willing to help by letting me take a photo!
The heartfelt appreciation we are met with has made an impression on me. You’d never know there is some kind of culture war going on over masks when you go door-to-door in these vulnerable neighborhoods. It doesn’t matter what the age, race or gender is, they almost all want the masks and are more than pleased someone cared enough to show up at their door to bring better-quality masks to them. I have kept careful data and it has been consistent—on average, 86% of households want masks. Some days we go out and it is 100% of the households. One young man, when asked if he’d like some of our good-quality masks enthusiastically responded “I sure the hell would!”. Sometimes those that decline masks do so because they already have what they need. One woman said “We have a whole stack of N95’s. We are vaccinated and boosted and everything! We ain’t takin’ no chances!”. No one has been rude or has launched into any anti-mask rhetoric, at most they might smile somewhat as they politely say “no, thanks.” Mostly we hear something like “That is so nice that you all are out here doing this for people!” Older people especially appreciate someone bringing masks to them.
Don’t get me wrong, vaccination rates are low here, according to Vaccine Tracker Graves Co. 50.58% have one dose and 44.44% are fully vaccinated. If you go to Wal Mart or public events, you don’t see many masks. But in these neighborhoods, where the most economically vulnerable live, there seems to be a different perspective. Also many, especially those that work at the Pilgrim’s chicken plant, say they need better masks for work, and complain about the ones they are given at work (not comfortable, flimsy, etc). They often comment on how much more comfortable ours are. Since the Biden Administration masks have started showing up, there is also some increased awareness that the KN95/KF94 type masks provide better protection. People continue to say they were looking for these kinds of masks but couldn’t find them. There were reports of a few people getting either 1 or 3 N95’s at Wal Mart last week from the Biden mask distribution, but many have said they never saw them, and Walgreen’s had a sign saying check back later. Many want the children’s masks for school, and I recently was able to get some really cute tie-dye kid masks (but didn’t actually have donations to cover the costs, we are in the hole). This gentleman, below, said he needed better masks for work at the chicken plant, and also was hoping the cute tie-dye would entice his 4 year old to try a mask:
We are also listening to people’s stories. Stories of how terrified they were the night of the tornado, including a young bride from Romania with an 8 month old infant who had just moved here with her American husband she had met on Facebook, hiding with the baby trying to protect themselves with a mattress. Stories of how landlords are selling the house they’ve lived in over a decade without telling them until after it was sold, and the new landlord quadrupling the rent, or evicting them with less than a month’s notice because they plan to “flip” the house. Stories of a woman who cared for an elderly woman in exchange for rent, and now has nowhere to go. She has been staying at the neighbor’s next door but has no job and no money and they aren’t letting her stay much longer. The woman she cared for is now in long term care and the house was damaged in the tornado. You can see the wheelchair in the background on the deck.
Jobs and rentals are tight—the candle factory that was destroyed has laid off the workers, and rental units in town are rare to nonexistent. Stories of a woman who has had trouble with FEMA because a scammer applied before she did using her name. She got that straightened out but now it happened again before she could get her application processed. She is staying in a local motel. Occasionally I’ve had vaccination conversations but not often. I did reach one woman who lived with anti-vaxxers, had no transportation, and wanted vaccines for both herself and her intellectually disabled brother living there (she is guardian). There is free transportation for Mayfield right now that I gave her info about as well as contacting the individual’s day program to let them know of the concern. Many people in town still lack internet access from AT&T on their phones, hampering their ability to access information easily. I don’t know if that has changed as that was a little over a week ago.
Volunteering in these ravaged neighborhoods is sometimes tough—and I can’t imagine what it is like to be constantly surrounded by debris, downed power lines (still!), and just the general disturbing look to the landscape, as I go home to my pristine lovely passive solar home and farm out in the county. One 91 year old woman told us how hard it is after living in her house so many years to go out the front door and see the empty lot across the street where there used to be a home. It’s hard even driving past a certain line in town where suddenly everything looks normal. And of course that line seemed to be right between the low-income neighborhoods and the prosperous stately older homes in central Mayfield that weren’t affected at all. One of my volunteers who lives there told me she has “survivor’s guilt”, being just a few blocks away from so much damage. Sometimes I find a street where there are no habitable homes, then there will be a lone man working on salvaging his house, surrounded by other homes that will surely be razed and removed. And the location was such that I doubt anything will be put there to replace the houses, which were likely mostly low-quality rental homes. Oh, and yeah, the man wanted 4 sets of the masks, “for the people who work with me also”. Another volunteer, who grew up in the county, has been having a hard time dealing with her emotions about everything, but said that doing this work delivering masks has helped her to feel better, and seeing the gratitude and smiles we are greeted with has been healing for her.
In addition to feeling good about doing the kind of door-to-door contact I skipped in 2020 and enjoy so much, I’ve been enjoying improving my pretty inadequate Spanish skills (remnants from high school classes 40+ years ago) and every single Spanish-speaking household has wanted masks—I have used a combination of phrases written down (that I sometimes read to them when it appears they can’t read in any language, I don’t think) and some spoken scripted phrases to figure out how many adults, how many children, how many extra small masks etc. We have cards printed up with instructions for rotating the sets of 4 masks each individual in a household is given, and have both Spanish and English versions. Sometimes I give both if there is an older child/teen who speaks English and a parent who is Spanish-only. Twice I’ve managed to get a volunteer who speaks fluent Spanish, which was a huge help. Here is a retired Mayfield High School Spanish teacher who helped me this week:
I should note that sometimes we give 10 or more sets of masks to one household—40 masks! As of this writing, we have given 714 sets of 4 masks to 213 households—for a total of 2,856 masks, (give or take a few errors I’ve made tracking things—numbers seem to be becoming more challenging to me at age 67. . .).
We also provide information about local resources as needed, and have a flyer with all kinds of phone numbers such as the FEMA line, FEMA legal aid line, FEMA counseling line, Red Cross, etc. There is a project called Homes and Hope for Mayfield that will be building new homes starting in the worst-hit area. I have vouchers for $50 at a thrift shop in Murray. And people still may not know the county hotline number, which we printed on our cards we give with the masks, or that they can get propane for free by calling that number if they are still not connected to gas. They can also have food and supplies delivered from the Fairgrounds if they don’t have transportation. So we are kind of doing some social work as we go also.
One other personal benefit has been for the individual who lives in our home, who you may have seen as “Santa Claus” in the first diary (linked above). His favorite things in the world are getting packages in the mail and giving things to people. He takes pride if he finds a simple task he is capable of. So—lots of deliveries of masks are coming to our house for him to open, he loves especially seeing ones for “the little kids”, and he can put rubber bands around the sets if I count them out in groups of 4 for him. Some of the boxes hold 3 sets, some hold 8, and he can count the rubber bands to make sure they are right (with a little help). He also likes saying numbers, so he calls out random numbers and enjoys listening to me counting as I do inventories, which doesn’t always make it easy for me to concentrate when he is saying “Nine! Two hundred!” but what the heck. He doesn’t go with me as he wouldn’t keep up the walking more than 2 houses probably, but he loves talking to me about going, and always says “Don’t forget your mask!”
I keep working on soliciting donations to pay for the masks, but now only need to cover the costs of the children’s masks. First, someone my daughter had as a couch surfer during the DNC convention in 2016 who works for the New Georgia Project got a relative to send us 600 KN95 adult masks. Then, the president of the Mayfield-Graves NAACP found out that the Fairgrounds point of distribution center in Mayfield actually had “thousands of masks” and we arranged to get most of those—3,000! So-- just as I thought we would be ending the project, I now have 3,000 adult masks to distribute, and now I need enough child masks to go with them (about 10% for the smallest masks, and 10% for the pre-teen size, based on field data). The masks had been sitting out there on a pallet since before Christmas, and honestly they have been overwhelmed with supply and organizational challenges, have had to close a few times to re-organize (or after a shooting at night!)—and the masks just weren’t a priority for them, other than to announce occasionally over the loudspeaker they had masks or to go get them if someone happened to ask. I did learn that I can turn in our volunteer hours to the Fairgrounds president, and that will help Mayfield get some kind of credits to improve FEMA reimbursements.
I have had some limited media coverage. The local paper did a story-- Mayfield Messenger: Indivisible, and last week the Louisville Courier-Journal published an op-ed I wrote, Courier-Journal Masks for Mayfield, but neither generated much feedback nor donations. I did recently get a post into a closed Friends of Mayfield Facebook group. That has resulted in some people contacting me requesting masks for their family, so spreading news of the project at least. One of those requests took me to the Super 8 motel to deliver the masks, where I found people in the lobby also displaced by the tornado.
Just a few more photos before I close:
More cute kids--the little girl loved the pink mask to match her pants and kept calling to us after we left. . .
And a Four Rivers Indivisible volunteer from the county who brought his own kids to help learn about volunteer work for their community:
and of course Henry “I sure the hell would!” (like some of the masks):
I’ll end with what I wrote in the Courier-Journal op-ed—“This is how we should be treating each other—we should be working not only to provide the best quality masks but to meet people where they are. We should demonstrate that their welfare is so important to us that we are willing to pay for the masks and bring them to their doorstep ... and listen when they speak.”
You can help donate for the child masks at Stand With Four Rivers Indivisible. At this time, 100% of donations go to cover the costs of the child-size masks. I hope you can help, even if it’s only a small donation—they add up!
Thank you for reading!
