Joe Amarante: Oh, the places they’ll go in a pandemic year

When March came in like a lion and went out like a nightmare, I moved from writing about big concerts, touring musicals and the

PBS series “Networld”

(which was how social networks evolve and ideas spread) to writing about the spread of a virus through those networks and about a pathogen’s sudden, suffocating effect on a culture and its people.

COVID-19 changed the world, in fact. We tried to roll with it since, as Dr. Seuss put it, “Things may happen and often do to people as brainy and footsy as you.”

So in Hearst Connecticut’s

Go section — where we spotlight fun and footsy things to do — we pivoted in March to safer activities. Here’s a list of topics we covered, in a bit of rhyme and verse:

We wrote about hiking at Sleeping Giant and Rocky Neck, we worried that live show biz was suddenly wrecked.

We urged you to garden, try podcasts and springclean, and a state ranger talked nature on Facebook Live’s stream.

A UNH travel expert foresaw issues with airlines as New Haven Documentary Film Fest went largely online.

Check out the osprey cam, we wrote; or sample some photography,

As restaurants closed across our Northeast geography.

Patio dining blossomed in May on sidewalks and streets and parking lots,

Casinos returned in June with plexiglass and fewer folks hunting jackpots.

A dockside brew patio here, a socially distanced return of comedy there,

Lists of sunflower farms, adventure spots and berry picking; but no fairs.

A do-it-yourself CT Trails Day was held, and virtual sand sculpture contest,

We found river cruises and farm-based ice cream places we judged the best.

The Essex Steam Train’s rail-bike experiment proved a rousing success; wanderlust brought us to Simsbury sculptures, Route 2 breweries and hikes northwest.

After new lists of corn mazes, best whole clams and axe-throwing places, we welcomed cooler weather with a look at scarecrow and light displays.

Yes, it was a wretched stretch of masks, political bile, personal loss and fear but we wrote of a “Zoomsical” and area folks and pivots like no other year.

This news outlet will still present cool things to do, in 2021 and 2022.

My “get up and go” has got up and went, says the song,

but working on Go, the time was well spent.

Joe Amarante / Hearst Connecticut Media The Essex Steam Train’s rail-bike ride proved to be a hit during the pandemic summer.

Christian Abraham / Hearst Connecticut Media Patrons enjoy movies offered on three screens at Mansfield Drive-In Movie Theater in Mansfield on May 26.

Joe Amarante / Hearst Connecticut Media Plexiglass wraps around a blackjack table at Mohegan Sun in a preview of the casino’s return in late spring.