Berksilver: Reaching Our Loved Ones & COVID-😷

Part of our Berksilver & COVID series exploring ways we can stay in touch with our loved ones.

Miss your own loved one?

The Silverado engagements crew has been posting pictures to their Facebook page a handy public link is available here:

Silverado — Berkeley

Got ideas for connecting with your loved one? We’d love to share them. A few:

• Send custom postcards of San Francisco without getting off the couch: More at NoodlingaroundPostcards.
• Sending postcards with photos of the family. Touchnote offers printed and mailed postcards with your personal note on them.
• Send a Video Selfie It may feel a little unnatural, but it’s not hard to do either on your phone or video recording software on your computer with the same camera you might use for Zoom. The trick is how to share it with your loved one. I’m experimenting with this a bit. Reach out if this is something you’d like to do.
• Photo books: New “paperback” options as low as $10 books at 7x7 paperback version with $4 for shipping. (Google Photos and others)

Remote calling w/o staff interventions?

I don’t believe this would work for my own mom, but I’ve been looking around for video solutions that essentially solve the connection problem with auto-answer. It turns out the slightly-creepy Alexa has an app for that.

How to Set Up Alexa Calling for a Loved One

I’d love to hear if anyone else has explored this and has feedback for the community. Sounds like a good solution in the room and more friendly to our loved ones than an iPad with FaceTime.

Care for yourself, too!

With many of us remaining at home, it’s easy to go a little stir-crazy or just feel the stress of the moment. Kaiser has a useful page about the virus.