I am terribly delinquent in posting this information, but in case you are
interested in possibly attending, here is the information.
Oops - I see
the registration form was supposed to be submitted by July 31, 2020 - but if
you are interested I would recommend you contact CCI directly about
registration.
Dear CCI Members, Friends and Associates,
As the economy, and indeed, civilization itself, slowly begin to
reopen following the coronavirus pandemic of the past few months, I am
pleased to announce that we will now go ahead with our postponement
date, and hold CCI's 19th Biennial Congress in St. Louis from
September 2 - 6, 2020, as planned.
This has not been an easy decision. Far from it. Nor is it
a final decision. New cases of COVID-19 are beginning to spike
in some of the states that are reopening too quickly. There is
still no vaccine in sight, though treatments have improved somewhat.
And problems with things like PPE and testing have become much
less acute since we were forced to postpone back in March.
The recent civil unrest across the country in response to the tragic
killing of George Floyd and other incidents of police brutality seems
to be calming down. And who knows what other disasters may await
us in the near future?
Our meeting could still be canceled due to circumstances beyond our
control. Rest assured that we will not attempt to hold the
meeting in contravention of any duly authorized public health
directives. If widespread lockdowns and stay-at-home orders
return, particularly to the state of Missouri and the city of St.
Louis, we would surely be forced to cancel the meeting completely,
probably for the duration of this year.
Short of that, however, we will be going forward with the meeting.
There is no real "certainty" to be found, but we simply believe
it is time for someone to strike a note of optimism, and reclaim the
right to make plans about our futures.
St. Louis is reopening in phases. By July 20th, businesses and
restaurants there will not have any capacity limitations, as long as
physical distancing can be maintained. Mask-wearing is strongly
encouraged in the city (and required for most employees in public
areas).
We have already been in contact with many of you about our meeting.
And we've heard every opinion under the sun, ranging from, we
MUST cancel the meeting altogether, to we MUST hold the meeting, if at
all possible. And every opinion in between. It has been
interesting: Some of our older members have said they will not
travel at all this year, period. But just as many of our OLDEST
members have said that if the meeting is delayed until 2021 or 2022
(as many have urged), they fear they just may not live long enough to
see it happen. They say they want to attend a meeting THIS year,
and the virus be damned.
It is for these members that we feel we must proceed with the meeting.
However, you will note many important changes: It will
probably be a much smaller gathering than we had originally planned.
Quite a few of you have said you would not chose to travel so
soon after the pandemic. And many European members may still
have travel bans in place preventing them from attending, even if they
wanted to. At this point, we think a meeting of even 15 - 20
people would be a great success. (Of course, if the meeting
turns out to be larger, we will welcome you all!)
We are getting a lot of help and encouragement from the hotel, the
auction house, and the World Chess Hall of Fame (WCHOF), among others,
that this small, yet historic meeting should take place. But the
pandemic is not exactly over, and it will not simply be business as
usual. There will be, as they say, a "new normal" with which we
must all cooperate.
There will be masks and hand sanitizer provided for all our conference
attendees. We are hoping to create a chess-themed mask, in honor
of this unprecedented meeting, guaranteed to become the most unique
chess collectible to appear in many a year. The wearing of masks
will be encouraged to the extent it is practical, but not required.
There may even be disposable gloves available at certain times.
We will be practicing physical distancing to the extent possible
and practical for the various events.
We will have temperature guns available, which we may use to take
attendees temperatures at registration and various other times.
Feel free to grab one and take OUR temperatures as well, if the
spirit moves you. Temperature-taking will not be required, nor
forced on anyone who objects.
We will NOT ask attendees to sign any sort of liability waiver.
However, we do emphasize that this meeting is being held for the
benefit of persons who voluntarily CHOOSE to attend, and we therefore
do ask that you take some personal responsibility for your own
attendance. CCI is not a deep-pockets organization anyway, and
as a practical matter it would be extremely difficult to recover
damages for an allegation that you contracted COVID-19 by attending
our meeting, given the standard of proof that courts require. (I
am not an attorney, however, and this may not be construed as legal
advice.)
Our common goal is to hold this meeting without ANYONE becoming sick
as a result, and we therefore plan to take any and all reasonable
measures to protect the health and safety of our attendees.
Here's what's still ON about the meeting:
HOTEL: The Chase Park Plaza has said they will work with us, and
not hold us to the room minimums we had previously negotiated.
They understand our meeting is likely to be much smaller than
originally planned. We should still be able to have some sort of
gala dinner there, though it may be a reduced and somewhat muted
affair, with physical distancing measures in place.
NOTE: If you previously made a hotel reservation for the May meeting, it has NOT been cancelled, unless YOU cancelled it. All such reservations have simply been moved to the September dates. The hotel is expecting you. If you have NOT yet made your reservation, please contact Kelly Toal at ChiChi Travel, at telephone 314-678-0500. ChiChi Travel is our exclusive booking agent for the Chase Park Plaza, our official conference hotel. Only they can ensure that you receive our special Chess rate of $159 per night, which applies whether you wish to sleep 1, 2, 3 or even 4 people to a room.
AUCTION: Link Auction Galleries is continuing to hold auctions
this summer as scheduled. They are still planning to hold ours
on Saturday, September 5th. Previews are in-person, but all
bidding is online only. They will make an exception to this for
our group, so if you attend the meeting, you will be able to bid in
person at Link, if desired. They are planning to add a second
online bidding platform for maximum internet exposure. CCI
members who don't attend the meeting will still be able to participate
in the auction, at least, from the comfort of their own homes. Link is
currently holding roughly 300 lots of chess sets and other chess
items, primarily from the Sarisohn collection, with additions from the
Raphaelli and Gallegos collections. They are still able to take
more items, if any of you wish to consign.
WORLD CHESS HALL OF FAME: The WCHOF is currently closed to the
public until further notice, but our latest information is that they
are considering a reopening date sometime in July. Our museum
exhibition, "Dare to Know: Chess in the Age of Reason" is almost
completely set up, but still awaiting several world-class sets from
the Dean collection which were held up due to the pandemic. They
should arrive and be installed in plenty of time for our meeting.
In the unlikely event that the WCHOF does not reopen to the
public by the time of our meeting, they have said they would give our
group a private tour of this historic exhibition.
GATEWAY ARCH MUSEUM: This should be fully reopened, and our
excursion there should not be impacted in any way.
Here is what we DON'T KNOW about the meeting:
WHITHERWARD CONCERT: This was not held on May 27th, as all
events at the WCHOF were cancelled. We doubt this will be
rescheduled for our Labor Day weekend meeting, but we will let you
know if it is.
RIVERBOAT CRUISE: The Gateway Arch riverboat cruises are slowly
beginning to reopen. We have a signed contract with them, and
had already made a deposit when the pandemic hit. However, we
have not yet been able to make contact with them to confirm our
reservation.
CHESS MARKET AND SIMUL: We will hold these events if at all
possible, but at the moment we are still working out the details,
and cannot guarantee that they will occur. Both events would
have to be held in a new, physically distanced format.
SPEAKERS: Several of our scheduled speakers have had to drop
out, and we are currently in the process of scheduling replacements.
There should still be a full slate of talks (probably to be
given from behind a sheet of plexiglass), but they will be on a
somewhat different group of topics. If you agreed to give a talk
and still plan to attend, we still want you on the schedule.
One of the talks we are now planning will be entitled, "How to
Checkmate a Virus: Lessons from the Enlightenment."
Hope to see you all in St. Louis, or as many of you as possible!
Best Wishes,
Tom Gallegos and Luann Woneis, Organizers