{"id":3417,"date":"2022-01-30T06:00:48","date_gmt":"2022-01-30T06:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/?p=3417"},"modified":"2022-01-30T06:02:37","modified_gmt":"2022-01-30T06:02:37","slug":"twenty-twenty-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/2022\/01\/30\/twenty-twenty-too\/","title":{"rendered":"Twenty-Twenty, Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the outset of 2021, I heard a quip I found as humorous as it was hopeful: that the new year would be pronounced \u201ctwenty-twenty won.\u201d To me, it signaled that, as rotten as the previous year\u2014the start of the pandemic\u2014had been, we\u2019d move forward collectively, maybe even return to relative normalcy. And yet\u2026<\/p>\n

As the calendar turned to 2022, I heard a resigned riff on that old theme: that this would be \u201ctwenty-twenty, too.\u201d Indeed, the year opened with all the well-worn anxiety and uncertainty of 2020. At any moment in January, if you\u2019d have asked me how I thought the month would end, I would\u2019ve given you a different answer.<\/p>\n

You see, NGRA\u2019s Annual Meeting and First-of-Year Board Meeting was planned to be held in person in Sacramento on Monday, January 24, to coincide with the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium<\/a>.<\/strong> With Omicron surging across the country, throughout the first two weeks of January, we debated whether to gather in real life. We surveyed stakeholders about meeting, crunched the numbers on canceling, and privately (e.g., in my head) decided, undecided and decided again. Ultimately, we stayed the course (as did Unified).<\/p>\n

For those who couldn\u2019t or preferred not to join us in person, we offered a robust virtual option and half of attendees tuned in via Zoom. What we found was, the camaraderie and interaction at this Board meeting was much greater, certainly among those of us in the room but for those on Zoom, as well. There seemed to be something magical about having people in the same place that elevated and enlivened the conversation.<\/p>\n

I felt the same about Unified. I\u2019m glad to have been able to attend in person and was grateful to connect with colleagues in more than two dimensions. Kudos to co-organizers the American Society of Enology and Viticulture (ASEV) and California Association of Winegrape Growers for the fortitude to forge ahead.<\/p>\n

The NGRA Mid-Year Meeting will be in July, and there\u2019s no telling what Covid will bring us by then. But hopefully, we can persist in inviting our stakeholders to be present in person if possible. Now that we\u2019ve made one small step toward normalcy, it\u2019s a little easier to envision another.<\/p>\n

In the end, January was terrific\u2014better than I could\u2019ve imagined. In some ways, I suppose it was all the worry that made the positive outcome so remarkable. If there\u2019s any lesson in \u201ctwenty-twenty, too,\u201d maybe it\u2019s just to plan for the worst…<\/p>\n

But dare to hope for the best.<\/p>\n

Donnell Brown
\nPresident<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the outset of 2021, I heard a quip I found as humorous as it was hopeful: that the new year would be pronounced \u201ctwenty-twenty won.\u201d To me, it signaled that, as rotten as the previous year\u2014the start of the pandemic\u2014had been, we\u2019d move forward collectively, maybe even return to relative normalcy. And yet\u2026 As […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ngwi-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3420,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3417\/revisions\/3420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/graperesearch.org\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}