Collected Item: “June of 2020: a quarantine journal”
Give your story a title.
June of 2020: a quarantine journal
What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?
text story with images
Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.
This past June, for the first time in my life, I began keeping a daily journal—composed in formally identical declarative sentences—as a record, not only the events of the world that were on and affecting my mind, but also my domestic observations of home, of family, the creatures in my yard, the blooms erupting throughout the garden. In a season of isolation and upheaval, it in many ways helped to keep my brain from total dissolution into quaking depression. Once this month-long record was complete, I launched a Kickstarter campaign in support of the limited publication of *June of 2020: a quarantine journal*, with all profits being donated to Black Girl in Maine, a social-justice blog founded by writer, educator, and activist Shay Stewart-Bouley. While my skill has always been the construction of narratives that allow the reader to feel what it’s like to experience the characters’ experiences, Shay’s talent lies in taking the complex abstractions of social justice and explaining them in a way that is not only immediate and concrete, but also grounded in the experiences of both herself and her audience (in other words, she takes the cultural phenomenon at large and makes it directly relevant to you and your life). She has an ability that I lack. So I’m using my abilities to help support her and her work.
Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?
#saco, #maine, #naturewriting, #family, #isolation, #fear, #joy, #survival
Enter a URL associated with this object, if relevant.
https://douglaswmilliken.com/2020/08/07/2363/
Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)
Douglas W. Milliken
Give this story a date.
2020-06