Item
The Quiet of a Pandemic
Title (Dublin Core)
The Quiet of a Pandemic
Disclaimer (Dublin Core)
DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.
Description (Dublin Core)
At the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine, I was recently married (about two days) and had to immediately shift to online teaching. My school believed this was only going to last two weeks. We hadn't shifted to a live online class and were still teaching asynchronously with online meetings once a week for anyone who needed help. Since I taught U.S. History rarely did my students feel they needed help (even if they really did). My husband was still working, since his oil job was considered essential, so I found myself with hours of empty quiet time. Of course, I found myself originally spending hours watching tv and streaming countless tv shows. After a couple of days of this, I decided it was time to step outside. I'm from southern Louisiana so every good house has a porch you can sit on, and mine was perfect. My neighborhood was never incredibly loud, but I live only a few blocks from I-10 (the busiest interstate in the U.S.) and there were always traffic noises. For the first couple weeks or so of quarantine, you could hear a pin drop. It was an eerie quiet, and it took some getting used to; however, I would learn to love that quiet. I would spend my days on my porch (thanks to some unseasonably "cooler" days) reading, watching Netflix, and watching my neighborhood. Birds I had never seen or heard before were in my oak trees. I also learned that Robins are very territorial and would watch my cats like a hawk during nesting season. Blue Jays didn’t wait to see what my cats would do if they got too close to a nest the birds were swooping down on them. I learned that my oak trees have a fungus that grows on the branches and can help me learn about the health of my tree. People I had never seen before were walking with a quick hi as they walked by me. I had never heard my neighborhood so quiet before or since. While I dealt with anxiety that my husband would get sick at work, or I would somehow transmit the disease to someone who couldn't fight it I also learned to relax and enjoy the moment. I had very limited responsibilities, my students only had about 3-4 assignments a week and they were assigned on Sundays. I would certainly never wish to return to that time; I would however wish that everyone could learn to relax and enjoy the quiet even if it is from your front porch
Date (Dublin Core)
Creator (Dublin Core)
Contributor (Dublin Core)
Event Identifier (Dublin Core)
HST643
Partner (Dublin Core)
Type (Dublin Core)
text story
Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)
Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)
Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)
sensory history
Linked Data (Dublin Core)
Date Submitted (Dublin Core)
02/03/2022
Date Modified (Dublin Core)
03/15/2022
06/10/2022
Item sets
This item was submitted on February 3, 2022 by Rachel Yoder using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive
Click here to view the collected data.