This year, Thanksgiving is looking and feeling very different. "There isn’t a piece of our operation that is not stretched really, really thin,” Pine Street Inn’s president and executive director, Lyndia Downie, said. “I keep saying to people, ‘We’ve got to get through the winter.’ And that’s the job right now. We’ve got to get through the winter in one piece. We’ve got to protect as many people as we can. We’ve got to add some capacity statewide. And then we’ve got to stay on top of the COVID testing so it doesn’t get to where it was in the spring.”

Few people know how valuable — how essential — that mission is as Kevin Mount does. Lives really do hang in the balance. He knows because he has been there. He has been one of them. “They saved my life,” he said. “Without exaggeration, they saved my life. ”Thank you, Pine Street.” It’s a prayer of sorts. A message of thanks he will hold in his heart as he bows his head over his holiday meal on Thursday. “I don’t take any day for granted now,” he said. “I have millions of things to be thankful for. But the one thing I’m thankful for is the right now. Now. The here and now.” 

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