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The contributor of this item did not include verbal or written consent. We attempted to contact contributor (or interviewee if possible) to get consent, but got no response or had incomplete contact information. We can not allow this interview to be listened to without consent but felt the metadata is important. The recording and transcript are retained by the archive and not public. Should you wish to listen to audio file reach out to the archive and we will attempt to get consent.

The contributor of this item did not include verbal or written consent. We attempted to contact contributor (or interviewee if possible) to get consent, but got no response or had incomplete contact information. We can not allow this interview to be listened to without consent but felt the metadata is important. The recording and transcript are retained by the archive and not public. Should you wish to listen to audio file reach out to the archive and we will attempt to get consent.

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In this monologue, Alex Osuji discusses his feelings on the social response to COVID 19. He reflects on the racism he is witnessing and connects it to past viruses.

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Retired nurse, Debbie Woodall reflects on how she felt and handled the COVID 19 virus. She discusses her desire to return to work to help her former colleagues and the moment she realized she just couldn't. She also discusses other ways in which she aided the effort to stop the spread.

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Thomas Backus of Tempe Arizona reflects on what life was like when the COVID 19 hit and how it impacted his life.

Through this oral history, Clare Acosta and I develop a conversation about both the Community Engagement office work and the program of Empower: Ecuador. The conversation was specifically focused on the before and after of COVID-19 and also what was learned from the process. It is a very deep conversation that I really enjoyed and know that Clare also did.

This audio recording describes my grandfather's funeral at the beginning of the pandemic. It was very difficult because my family couldn't grieve together. We had to have separate services ten people each. We could not have any other family come because we were on lockdown. The whole situation was extremely sad because the pandemic kept our family apart during a difficult time.

The contributor of this item did not include verbal or written consent. We attempted to contact contributor (or interviewee if possible) to get consent, but got no response or had incomplete contact information. We can not allow this interview to be listened to without consent but felt the metadata is important. The recording and transcript are retained by the archive and not public. Should you wish to listen to audio file reach out to the archive and we will attempt to get consent.

It was fun to ask my son about his experience during the pandemic. He handled the whole thing really well which comes across in the interview. I've transcribed the text in the attached Word doc.

As her parent, it was interesting to ask my daughter questions about the pandemic and hear her responses. As a family, we were really lucky to stay healthy and be able to spend a lot of extra time together. I've transcribed the interview in the attached Word file.

I was interviewing the life of a lab pack chemist in Massachusetts during the midst of the Pandemic, from daily routine to personal feelings.

Two Northeastern students discuss how the pandemic affected their lives, including the impacts of the pandemic on their communities

Two students interview each other about the pandemic and how it affected their life.

Self-Description: “I am a pansexual and gender fluid artist and artist manager and I work primarily with Black and queer musicians and bands.” Record label: https://www.instagram.com/wolfshieldrecords/

Self Description: “I’m a 21-year-old musician. I just recently graduated from U[niversity] of T[oronto] a week ago, and I graduated with a classical percussion degree. I play for a band called cutsleeve. We’re a group of east Asian, queer sound musicians. I’m a mixed race woman, my father is white, and my mother is Chinese. I’ve lived in Canada, the [United] States, and I lived in Shanghai for a few years. I’m a dog owner.”

Self-description: “I’m an artist, writer, musician, and an off-and-on again activist, lecturer, worshopshop leader. I’m coming out of Philadelphia. My work revolves around concepts relating to Afrofuturism; for lack of a better term: superheroes and the conceptual nature of superheroes and the idea of the vigilante and the people’s champions and heroes can walk among us. I use [aesthetics and the immersive ideas of] from science fiction, cyberpunk, solarpunk, biopunk, and Afrofurturism to empower people of color, queer people and to project us into the future and our ideas and culture into the future as well. I use different mediums to do that, my bands Solarized (a sort of noisy punk rock band) and Rainbow Crimes (indie rock, but a little crazier and noisier than many excursions into that). I have written a short story collection called ARKDUST. And I do collage work and soundscapes and curate events like Laser Life, which was a queer sci-fi reading that me and my friends in a collective that I’m in called Metropolarity put together. That’s my praxis right now: a little bit of everything. I view my work as if I’m creating for 18 or 19 or 20 year old Alex, who probably needed some queer Black sci-fi in his life. So, I’m projecting these aspects of myself back to the past to not just nourish my community, but to nourish myself.” Personal website: alexoteric.com Other biographical details: Vegetarian, experiences depression, Pew Center for the Arts Fellow, during COVID is the first time in his life he’s had Health Insurance. Some of our discussion touched on: Using art to project hope and remaining hopeful during the pandemic. Afrofuturism as a part of the fabric of activism, how it is imbedded in culture and impacts queer and POC culture. How Afrofuturism exceeds an “aesthetic revival” of representation of Black people in the future and the kind of work that needs to be done to ensure those futures. Deciding to cancel a show he was organizing in the early days of the pandemic to protect the presenters and audience members. The everydayness of people dying because they don’t have healthcare access or can’t afford medicine* outside of the times of COVID-19; racism, sexism, and transphobia in the healthcare system.Corporate interests and their influence on policy. The unreasonable imperative that artists take the pandemic as an opportunity for productivity when many are out of work. It is hard to make art without fuel and without food. Witnesses barriers in the healthcare while caring for his partner after a stroke 5 years ago, the importance of medical bureaucratic literacy in a “Kafka-esque system”. Excitement about getting the vaccine. The pandemic in geopolitical context. Isolation in practice: Safety precautions and research prior to traveling for a funeral. Hope for “science married with activism”. Scholars in the humanities and social sciences need to be more visible, speak in lay person’s terms, do advocacy, and get in the streets. “Nothing is safe unless it empowers.” Other cultural references: Netflix, Zombie Movies, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Oprah’s interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, Black Panther, Teenage Bounty Hunter, Elon Musk, GoFundMe. A specific reference is made to the need for his sister’s sickle cell anemia medicine in this interview. She dies a few months later. The GoFundMe to cover funeral expenses can be found here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/memorial-fund-for-elizabeth-graham?utm_campaign=p_cp_url&utm_medium=os&utm_source=customer

[Curator's Note] Two persons interview each other about their experiences during the COVIS-19 pandemic. They both lived in different countries when the pandemic started, as one of them lives in Singapore and the other in India.

This is a casual interview about the effects of COVID on mental health, academics, family life, etc. We discuss the biggest impact COVID had on us, our experience with the pandemic, what we did over quarantine, and much more, from the perspective of college freshmen.

Self description: “My name is Laura, and I am in two bands right now. I am in a band called Scrunchies and a band called Kitten Forever. I play guitar, base, drums, and I sing in those two bands. I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For work, I work at a community cooperative grocery store, in an administrative position, but one that is community outreach based and have a lot to do with meeting and coordinating with our community partners, a lot of the work that I do is about mutual aid, and helping out the community with the resources that we have available to us. Besides that I am a visual artist, I like to paint, I like to draw, I like to read books, and I live in a little duplex with my partner and our cat Sissy.” Some of the things we spoke about included: - In addition to performing in the bands Scrunchies and Kitten Forever, working for a community grocer and its ties to health activism. - Income and racial disparities in Minnesota. - The fear that comes with being uninsured in the United States. - The national confusion around the values of masking and other safety precautions and the burden placed on individuals to make these decisions in the absence of clear and consistent messaging. - The significance of shutting down music events while keeping sporting events going. - Media representation of event cancelations, freezers of bodies, and overwhelmed hospitals. - Living less than a mile from where George Floyd was murdered and movements to defund the police. - How the ongoing destruction of the earth conditioned the pandemic and the enduring importance of climate change. - Grocery store workers being essential workers who still did not receive vaccination prioritization. - Collective trauma and that fear begets fear. - Making and consuming art as a form of self-care. - How new the internet still is as a technology. Cultural references: Save Our Stages, The Atlantic article “Cancel Everything”. See also: https://scrunchies.bandcamp.com/ https://kittenforever.bandcamp.com

Self-Description: “My name is Gyre. I am a multidisciplinary artist based in South Africa with global ambitions. I specialize in music, but I also work as a freelance writer as well as in dance. I’m a dancer learning to choreograph. Political commentator, particularity with regard to the LBGTQA+ community. I identify as queer. I am homoromatic and homosexual at this point in my life. You never know honey, it’s a spectrum. I had my first venture into artistic expression that is rooted in queer rights and queer understanding and queer theory, was my debut album, titled Queernomics, which was a documented audio-visual book about the contemporary experiences of a Black queer South African male, and that has gotten me into the positions that I express myself in, both out of passion and out of profession. Inkosi Yenkonkoni, which means “The Gay King”, in my native language which is Zulu.” Other details available here: Works produced during the pandemic: Kithi, International LGBTQ+ Rights Festival, writing on football. Some of the things we spoke about included: “What happens at the top is just politics, what happens at the bottom is real life.” Thinking about the term “pandemic” Listening to the body The pandemic exposing state corruption Having written a song called “Quarantine” in 2018 The inadequacies and privileges of Medical Aid in South Africa, having aged out of Medical Aid before COVID, the personal impact of worse-health insurance during pandemic, the importance of demonetizing health care Pre-COVID keeping busy: organizing, walking, collaborating Transit during COVID, sub/urban and outskirt disparities Canceling shows and taking dance classes and rethinking what it means to be productive Global Americanization and the impact of Trump’s pandemic denialism on South African health Moving out of disbelief about the severity of COVID after losing a loved one in the first wave Gratitude for the global influence of the Black Lives Matter movement, and sadness that tragedy in the diaspora brings neocolonialism to the fore The importance of social media for queer counter-violence and activist fractures among LGBTQA+ Feeling allyship with the #metoo movement How homophobia intersects with everyday altercations about social distancing The anxieties of hooking up during the pandemic The importance that scientists learn to speak in lay terms about climate change and vaccines Existence as resistance and creating art “Spread love not tolerance” Other cultural references include: Trans Day of Visibility, astrology, and the TV series Pose.

Self-description: “Audio visual artist that lives in Seattle, Washington, specifically in the realm of music and film, and also the intersection of the two. A lot of my work involves amplifying experiences and voices that are often underrepresented, primarily in the Black and LBGTQ+ community. And that’s something that overtime my work has been diving deeper and deeper into over the years, which is something that I think as an artist, I’ve only really come to terms with in the last few years. But it’s been definitely both empowering for me and illuminating to see it reflected back in the ways that people have responded to the work.” Other biographical details: late 20s, from Los Angeles. Some of the things we discussed include: The dysphoric experience of Black artists filtered through white talking points. Unstable work and income as an artist--audio and visual--pre- and mid-pandemic. 2019 was the first year that work as an artist and in performance communities was stable. Releasing the album Fuck Danny Denial in 2020 (https://dannydenial.bandcamp.com/album/fuck-danny-denial). Pandemic specific economic penalties of musicians in the case of live streams for Seattle Pride and Folsom Street Fair. The burden on artists to make ethical calls about canceling performances in the early stages of the pandemic, and needing to wear “new hats”, like health safety inspector. The pandemic as a shared experience of stoppage, and the need for adaptation. Aging and changing awareness about one’s needs for health care. Working to build equitable opportunities for artists. Since 2015-2019 doing gigs and video projects on contracts. Media outlets’ poor representations of the summer protests, acts of civil disobedience, and the autonomous zone in Seattle. Funding the serial project Bazooka (http://web.archive.org/web/20210622155802/https://ca.gofundme.com/f/dannydenialbazzooka) The ethical decisions associated with wanting to participate in amplifying and uplifting the BLM movement without exploitation for personal gain, engaging as a citizen. Witnessing a friend’s experience of hospitalization due to COVID-19. The value in studying patterns of human friendships and how the pandemic disrupted the conditioning of existence and the importance of local histories of resistance in Seattle. Cultural references: Pan’s Labyrinth, Smash Mouth’s super spreader event, Portland International Film Festival, The Tape Deck Podcast, Punk Black, Darksmith, Taco Cat, Alice and Chains, Duff McKagan, Pearl Jam, MoPOP, Shaina Shepherd, and TheBlackTones.

Self description: “I am sitting in my bed right now as I’ve done for a lot of this quarantine. In regular times and I guess still now, I’m in three bands and I also work at the library, the public library. So I’ve been working there in person since we came back to work in May. I was contacted for this interview through Bussy Kween Power Trip, which is a Black queer punk band with three people, no guitars, so my close friends. I’m in two other bands. One band is called Je’raf and one is called Cordoba. And one person each from Bussy Kween is in each of those bands. Haven’t played a show in forever. I can give a little about what I look like or am like. I’m a woman. I’m 26, almost 27 I guess. I’m Black and Asian. I’m kinda short. And during this pandemic I’ve been in general super lucky to have a job still and a great living situation. And I met my partner right before the pandemic, so we’ve been chilling a lot and that’s been amazing. She is so great. Yeah, just going to work and working on all kinds of things in my home. And sometimes having the energy to do a bunch of music and crafts and other art things, and sometimes laying in bed for a full day.”

This audio file shares two perspectives and personal stories about the pandemic.

Two college students recall how their final years of high school were changed by COVID-19, discussing how sports were cancelled and classes went online.

This podcast tells the story of two individuals experiences through COVID-19.

How one Hispanic female dealt with the cooking challenges that took place in the early months of the pandemic. In particular, one meal she prepared on September 26, 2020.

While working from home I started snacking a lot as I frequently missed breaks and lunches due to the increased workload I also tended to work later than before so while I had no commute I stopped working around the same time I would have gotten home if I had been in the office most of June and July. I found snacking was a way to stay present in the physical world while living almost exclusively online during work hours and frequently replaced or at least supplemented some very hurried lunches. My favorite snack I had never tried before but it was suggested to me by someone who later passed from Covid and so now reminds me not only to be grounded but of them. My favorite snack is really simple but was new to me: wheat thins with light veggie cream cheese. It tasted like what the summer should have been instead of what it was. It was also a shift for me since I didn't eat a lot of convenience foods before COVID I took the time to make food so the idea of creating little snacks to replace generally more nutritious and regulated food was new to me.

Homemade recipe of Carbonara for my son's tenth birthday, with all the restaurants closed, we improvised.

When the Pandemic first broke out, I was concerned that I would catch the virus since I was working in an elementary school at the time. I thought of various ways to boost my immune system and I thought making healthy soups sounded like the best idea. I looked through the internet and I found this healthy quinoa soup recipe. I tried it and absolutely loved it. It was savory, hearty, and contained a rich blend of rustic flavors. This dish became one of my favorites throughout 2020 and I still cook it from time to time. For anyone looking for a healthy way to fight the virus, I recommend this recipe.

Brian Harvey, a Managing Director at Deloitte and Touche, discusses the changes the pandemic has caused to his job as an auditor. He provides insights into the various industries he has interacted with over the past year.