A Message from Mayor Stimpson - December 8
Dec 8th, 2020
Good evening,
It is 8 p.m. on Tuesday, December 8, and I am writing to give you an update from the City of Mobile.
Today, the Mobile County Health Department reports 21,372 COVID-19 cases, an increase of 105 cases. To review MCHD's detailed report, click here.
On Monday, the recruits of Class 20-02 received their gear for the first time and began training to join the Mobile Fire Rescue Department. The men and women of MFRD are some of the finest in Mobile and they routinely put themselves in harm's way to save others' lives and property. Over the next 20 weeks, these 29 recruits will be learning what it takes to join their ranks.
You can follow their journey by following the Mobile Fire Rescue Training Center's Facebook page which will be posting updates, photographs and videos of their progress over the next few months.
This evening the Innovation Portal, a nonprofit incubator and workspace, held a ceremonial ribbon cutting for its new space in Downtown Mobile. This collaborative environment is tailor-made to help start-up businesses and grow good ideas into something even greater for our community.
While the team behind Innovation Portal has been working here for years, their new space is perfectly suited amongst the growth and excitement we've seen along the St. Louis Street corridor. They have renovated 30,000 square feet of former industrial space and turned it into a location that will help entrepreneurs, innovators and creatives in our City work and connect.
This morning I wanted to share with you a fantastic message I heard in Dr. Kevin Elko's Monday Morning Cup of Inspiration. He told the story about a young lady complaining to her father about how difficult this past year has been. In response, he took her to the kitchen and showed her three pots of boiling water. He placed carrots into one pot, eggs in another and coffee grounds in the third. After a few minutes, the carrots had softened, the eggs had hardened, and the coffee grounds had mixed together.
The moral of the story is that the boiling water, much like the difficulties we all face, can affect different things in different ways. Dr. Elko asks how we'll let 2020 affect us. Will we get soft like the carrots and give in easy? Or will become hardened like the eggs and grow bitter? Instead, he suggests coming together with each other and blending into something even better like the coffee grounds in that third pot.
This year, many of the people around us are struggling in a number of ways. Some may be out of work or facing hard times economically. Others may be missing a loved one. We can come together by being a blessing to those we encounter in our daily lives in whatever way we can.
Tomorrow, let's strive to be a blessing for someone else. Let's be like the coffee.
Sleep tight,
Mayor Sandy Stimpson