By Richard Weinstein, President & COO
Ocean Reef Community Foundation
The good news is that everyone is now more comfortable traveling again. The bad news is that everyone is comfortable traveling again! This means airports are packed. Fortunately, All Charities Preferred Partners like NetJets can eliminate both the crowds and the impending airline delays that come with them. This is just one of the many reasons our All Charities Preferred Partners are here to make your life better. Another way to deal with the endless delays of commercial airline travel is to suspend your understanding of time.
Aside from Eastern Daylight Time, there is also Airline Time. This is when you generally hope the airline will depart on time but don’t expect them to. It is the only place where low expectations can really pay off. But the airlines don’t have a monopoly on their own time systems. There is also Island Time, where the actual time is mostly a suggestion and is only generally observed in the expression “soon come.”
We also see other versions of these time-bending applications when a “quick question” takes 20 minutes, or “I just need a second” really means half an hour. “This won’t take long” might be an hour or it could be two days; it just requires context to understand.
“Investing time” is also something the Ocean Reef Community Foundation believes in supporting. That is why we have focused on education and the College of the Florida Keys with a recent scholarship grant of $100,000. It is also why we have created a special committee of dedicated member volunteers to spend time reviewing and discussing future impact projects to present to the Foundation Board.
Similar to last year, All Charities is early, very early (wine and bourbon tasting and silent auction showcase start on January 31st!). This leaves us less time to finalize from the start of the coming season. Fortunately, this year’s chairmen for the event, Lori and Brad Young, have already invested their time and are well underway to providing an array of new, exciting, and bid-worthy live auction items. Similarly, the vice chairmen and silent auction chairs, Meg and Pat Shields, have begun assembling fantastic silent auction items, so our event is already taking shape.
We can still use your help. There is always room for one more bottle of wine, one more stay in a private home, or one more collectible item that you just don’t have room for but want to donate to support this wonderful cause. We would love your donation to the auction.
There will still be plenty of time for us to share more specifics on the auction, the event, the Foundation, our impact projects, the College, opening a Donor Advised Fund, and of course, our upcoming 30th Anniversary of the Ocean Reef Community Foundation. But for now, we will wait until everyone returns to Ocean Reef from their travels, as they say… All in good time.
