Items

• 
  2021-01-24

  Coffee Shops and a Sense of Normalcy During COVID-19

  When COVID-19 started affecting Kansas City, little changed at first. We wore masks, used hand sanitizer, etc., but life went on as normal otherwise. As the virus progressed, we closed our offices and I started working from home. One of my pre-COVID rituals was a trip to Broadway Cafe close to my house for a great latte or macchiato. At least this ritual was still intact. Then, the coffee shops all closed. It sounds silly to say this affected me even more than going into the office. It was my normal routine for so many years though...that a trip to the coffee shop served as an anchor for feeling life would go on, regardless of how far the virus progressed. The audio file attached is my espresso machine at home. I now buy coffee beans for the house, grind them, and pour shots of espresso to drink straight or craft into a macchiato or latte. The sound of my machine grinding beans, pressing the grounds into a puck, and then pouring into shot glasses still did not replace the coffee shop, but it did become an anchor to help me adjust when I needed it most. Today, our coffee shops are open for pickup service. Between that and still pouring my own at home, using their beans, life is good. I look forward to a post-COVID world where the local roasters and coffee shops continue to play an important role in my personal sense of normalcy and the social health of our collective neighborhoods.
• 
  2020-05-20

  Gia's Soft Fur

  I will always remember the feeling of my dog Gia's soft fur and the tickle and wetness of her silky tongue licking my hand during this pandemic. These sensory experiences soothed me during a stressful and anxiety-ridden time during the COVID pandemic. When the pandemic worsened in March 2020 and the state of Utah went into a full lockdown, my family's life changed suddenly. My son's birthday party was canceled. My children began school online. My husband no longer found himself flying to New York or Los Angeles, and I found myself filled with worry and anxiety. How will my elderly parents weather this pandemic? Will I get them sick? Will I be responsible for their deaths? Will my 9-year-old son become depressed because he can no longer play hockey or football? How will my 13-year-old handle feeling emotionally isolated because she can no longer hang out with her friends? All of these worries plagued my mind and made my body stiff, my neck sore, my mood heavy with stress. My family soon found ourselves in a new routine. We spent more quality time together since we were no longer rushing to get to activities. There was more time for dinner and meaningful conversation. However, there was still a heaviness, and everything seemed to be wrapped in a layer of anxiety. An unexpected text from my sister-in-law (who is an animal control officer) changed our lives. A darling 3-year-old black and white miniature poodle had just been dropped off at the shelter. Her elderly owner had died of COVID-19, and this sweet dog needed a home. After a quick family meeting, it was unanimous; we wanted the dog! Gia immediately became more than a pet; she became a source of comfort and calm to me. With a sweet temperament, she always seemed to know when I was full of anxiety. Each night I would sit on the couch watching the nightly news, my body tight and sore, the rigidness seeping into my muscles that comes with prolonged stress. Unaware at first that I was even doing it, I would reach for Gia, who would lay close to me, and begin stroking her fur. Often, her silky pink tongue would lick my hand, and the combination soothed and relaxed my body. Even as worry began to swirl in my mind, the questions continuing: when will it be our turn to catch this virus? Will I have lasting effects from it? Gia was there, her warm body lying beside mine, her soft fur between my fingers relaxing my body and easing my mind. During this COVID-19 pandemic, I had read that almost all the rescue dogs had been adopted across the nation. I guess I was not the only person in need of emotional comfort during this isolating time. This pandemic has taken an emotional toll on everyone I know. I feel so grateful that Gia came into our lives during this pandemic. This sweet dog has become more than a pet. She has become an emotional support dog for my daughter when she is lonely and a physical companion for my son when he needs to run crazy through the house. Gia is there when my nerves are frazzled from worry about the pandemic. She gently lays her warm body next to mine, as if knowing I need her near me to ease my anxiety. I stroke her soft fur, close my eyes, and remind myself to BREATHE.
• 2020-03-01

  Daily life at an Air Force Major Command

  Daily life at Head Quarters (HQ) Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC) before COVID-19 and its restrictions was full of sounds and constant movement. It was customary to walk the halls and hear keypads beeping, and door locks clicking or overhear conversations as you pass people in the halls. Meetings were full of people, and the subtle roar of conversation was only stopped by the entrance of a General officer or other meeting chairpeople. As the restrictions for COVID-19 began to roll across the country, AFGSC was quick to implement them. First came a stop movement for personnel and a restriction of movements. There would be no or severely limited Permeant Change of Stations, and all temporary duty (TDY) was canceled for the foreseeable future. All personnel was to limit their office spaces to allow for six feet of distances and, if not capable of initiating telework procedures (which was an accomplishment in itself). This was the moment that life changed at HQ AFGSC. There would be fewer beeps and clicks. There would be no hallway conversations overheard because the hallways were nearly empty on a day-to-day basis. There were no more in-person meetings resulting in the muting of the subtle roars of conversations and the sudden silences created as meetings started. However, there was a new element created from COVID-19, a smell everywhere you went. Cleaning and self-sanitization ramped up at AFGSC. Every office you entered now had a hand sanitization station on a post or a wall. The restrooms and common areas cleaning increased, resulting in a lasting scent of bleach and other strong cleaners. But still, the most surprising thing was the silence that COVID-19 created in an ordinarily bustling Command.
• 2021-01

  An Old Gray Piece of Cloth

  Gabriel Rheaume’s Sensory history contribution to COVID-19 Archive I would like to submit my gray, cotton face mask to the COVID-19 Archive. It is perhaps not as the most important item, but certainly it is the most present item for me throughout this pandemic. At almost a full year into this adventure, everyone has a keen familiarity with and opinion of face masks. I got this one as a gift. It feels about the same as getting socks on Christmas, except more useful. I have used this thing every single day unless I forget it—which sends me into a chaotic panic. I am a teacher in a suburb of Nashville, TN. Our school district insists on teaching in person, despite having alarmingly high infection rates in our community. This mask is now part of my daily uniform, a non-negotiable. It serves as a role model for students. A sign that their health is of paramount concern to us. It is part of everything I do. I have dozens of paper replacements in my desk. Those aren’t as good. They straps hurt your ears. The cloth ones are better, more comfortable. I thought about getting one with my favorite band’s logo, but I am going to stick with this old reliable gray, cotton mask. The smell of this mask will haunt me the rest of my life. I wash it multiple times per week. It often smells like laundry detergent. That is a good thing. However, by the end of the day it often smells like whatever I had for lunch. The masks gets hot. It is blasted with my carbon dioxide for eight hours straight. It gets really bad when I have to lecture during the day. When you inhale sharply to talk, it sucks in the material. I’ve learned how to breathe differently when I have the mask on. Sometimes I just pinch the end and hold it with my fingers while I talk. I can rarely take it off. I panic if I forget to put it on when I leave my classroom to go anywhere. Who would have ever thought this little cloth mask would be so important? I often doubt that it is effective at preventing the spread or contraction of infection. I am certainly NOT an anti-masker. But it’s a piece of cloth. I guess that it’s better than nothing. This gray cotton face mask, sometimes imbued with the glorious smell of fresh linen in the breeze or Last night’s roast and mashed potatoes has become a source of loathing and resentment, but simultaneously an anti-viral security blanket (if only in my imagination). Yet, I can’t wait to get rid of this vile thing.
• 2021-01-09

  Lionel Trains & Billy Joel

  Last Saturday night, my folks came to visit, bringing beef stew and, yet another birthday gift for our now 3 year daughter Lennon (her birthday was a week before and they’d already showered her with gifts at that time). Of course, we’ve kept a very close circle since March last year, and that has become increasingly more important since, now my wife is 8 months pregnant, son on the way. Our reality being quite different from the norm this past year is of course, not unique to us, but had Covid not been a thing, last Saturday night, it can be counted on, that we would have been at a boisterous gathering, hosted by family members of one side or the other. My wife’s family and my own; they’re strong in numbers and lack modesty, but not volume. We miss that, but the small, quieter gatherings that the necessity of the moment has brought moments that might have been missed. That’s too much of a lead in, so I’ll make the point more brief, When my parents came, the oven cleaner was burning off. My wife and mother brought attention to it. But the smell brought me back to my childhood. That’s exactly what I said, and I looked at my dad, because I knew that he’d be the one that knew what I was talking about, though I wasn’t necessarily sure what I was talking about. This briefly interrupted our trying to construct a Troll castle (with way too many tiny parts!) or something, that my parents had just gotten for their granddaughter. But then, dad said, “Lionel Trains” That was it! The toy trains on the track that my father, brother and I used to do when we were kids. It brought us back, that was the smell. It’s probably not healthy, but it was a really nice moment. Ok, that made me think of a time that my brother recognized a smell from childhood. I was like 12, my brother 14, I think it was my first concert. My father had taken us to see Billy Joel at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, we had fun. After the show, walking through the parking lot to the car, my brother said, “What’s that smell? I remember it from when we were little.” My dad said, “That’s pot.”
• 2021-01-14

  The Silencing of Industry

  The sensory experience that overwhelmed me the most as the United States, and the world, came to an abrupt halt when it was realized that we were in a pandemic virus outbreak was an aural experience—it was the overwhelming silence that came with the world stopping. I live in a heavy industrial town on the Pacific coast Of Washington. While I live about fifty miles from the cities and one hundred miles from Seattle the economy of this area is based around heavy industry and there is constant noise that comes with this. There is a port a mile from my house that is said to be the busiest deep-water port on the northwest coast. At this port soybeans, wheat, oil and lumber are shipped out and German cars built in Mexico are brought in, among other commodities. In my neighborhood there are four train tracks. The closest one is about five hundred feet from my house, the next three are another three hundred feet further. Those train tracks bring goods into the port like soybeans and wheat from the farm fields west of the Cascade mountains and fuel and oil for the ships and for the operations at the port. The train tracks also ship out the cars that come in from Mexico to car dealerships throughout the Northwest. Across from the four train tracks there are lumber mills. The lumber mills load up chip trucks (trucks that carry sawdust from the sawmills to paper mills) and the chip trucks roll in and out of town on a constant basis. The log trucks also roll through town on a constant basis and the log truck drivers as well as chip truck drivers live in the area and park their trucks at their houses. All of this leads to a very noisy area for such a small population. This has never bothered me as the only thing that I really miss about living in cities is the noise. This is the reason why the first thing I noticed as the Covid-19 shut down occurred was how much silence there was. No longer were there log trucks and chip trucks rolling through town. No longer was the rumbling and squelch of the train heard in the early morning and the late afternoon throughout the town. No longer were the airhorns and warning sirens heard from the port. It was just pure silence.
• 
  2021-01-16

  Fewer people are crossing back to the United States, and less noise.

  The story I uploaded is about people crossing the United States Calexico CA port of entry before and after the pandemic.
• 
  2020-01-14

  A Peppermint December

  December was the most stressful month of the year. My entire family got Covid-19 right before Christmas and I was struggling with anxiety for most of the month, which has been compounded by the pandemic. One of the ways I've sought to alleviate stress when going to bed at night is by putting peppermint essential oil in an oil diffuser as I fall asleep. Peppermint smells and feels naturally calming to me. The strong and comforting scent has at times made me feel that I can breathe better and easier. A small and perhaps cliché remedy has at times made a world of difference.
• 
  2021-06-14

  Embracing the Plants

  Once the pandemic was in full swing, food became rather scarce out in the county where I live. Frozen meals? Gone. Frozen vegetables? Gone. Meat? Gone. Dairy products? Sparse. What I could find in abundance were fresh fruit and vegetables. Largely because these do not store long term and people were stocking up on everything that they could hoard for the long haul. Could I really sustain my meat-loving family of 4 on fresh fruits and vegetables to help stretch our very thin stock of meats and dairy products? I have included some basic recipes that I used to help get through the pandemic. This massive change in diet left a lasting impact on my experience of the pandemic through my sense of smell, taste, and hearing. Meals no longer smelled like warm cooked meat with roasting potatoes. Meals became light and fresh. My house began smelling more like a garden every time I prepared a meal. I also no longer smelled the warmth of the stove or the smell of a pan heating up, since we chose to eat a lot of the plants and fruits in a more raw style to get the maximum nutritional value. The taste of meals and snacks changed from processed foods to natural snacks like nuts, dates, and dried fruit. I could taste the change from the pandemic. Everyday noises that would occur in my pre-pandemic household were no longer present in my pandemic household. No longer was there the sound of the oven turning on, the microwave running, or oil popping in the pan on the stove top. Instead, the new normal sounds were that of the food processor to make hummus, the sound of the blender making smoothies, and the sharp tap of the knife colliding with the cutting board. The recipes I chose to include are ones that we started with that have changed the way we eat. These were the easiest to sustain with readily available produce in my rural area.
• 
  2020-11-02

  Cold in the Classroom

  If you have ever been in a middle school classroom, feeling cold is probably not the first thing that you think of. One might think of rowdy kids, perhaps non-inviting smells, stuffy air, but not necessarily the feeling of cold. After going home on March 13, 2020, I was forced to work remotely for the remainder of the 2019-20 school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is still crazy to think how quickly everything changed from normal life to the furthest thing from it—just two days before the end of in-person schooling, I was still planning on going on the eighth grade Washington, DC trip! Anyway, going into the 2020-21 school year, because teachers were allowed to return to their classrooms (even though school would remain in distance for the foreseeable future), I decided that I would go into my classroom and work from there. I figured that it would help create a sense of normalcy in my own life while offering a familiar background to my students. After a few days of working from school without any students, I noticed how cold it was in my classroom. On a normal school day, I would turn on the air conditioning fairly early in the morning, being that the room would become warm and stuffy shortly after the students arrived. Even with it warm outside, I was noticing myself running the heater well into the afternoon. Without the heater, my classroom would quickly become unbearably cold! With brick walls and only a thin layer of carpet over a concrete floor, it is clear why it was so cold. I was just one person in a room that would normally have around 30—my body heat alone wasn't going to heat up the room! It is amazing to think that a silly little thing like the temperature of my classroom kind of got me down. No matter what I did to try and simulate normal life, it was just impossible for life to be normal, and that nagging cold was there to remind me of that fact. Just writing this down, I can feel the cold on my arms and legs, and I have an urge to go and get a blanket, put on a sweatshirt, or turn on the heater. Come to think about it, I can also feel the pain in my lower back from sitting in front of a computer all day! In addition to the sense of touch/feeling being noticeably different, I have to say, the absence of, shall we say, interesting smells has also been out of the ordinary for my middle school classroom. I really cannot complain all too much when it comes to my experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic; I am lucky enough to still be employed, I can work at home if I wanted to, and no one all too close to me has had the disease. A great many people around the globe have had their lives shattered in the past year, so I really should be counting my blessings. With that said, I feel as if the coldness of my classroom somewhat symbolizes the isolation that I (and many others) are feeling during this trying time. The simple fact that there are not 30+ individuals in the room is causing the cold and, again, it is a nagging reminder that the world is simply not the same as it was a year ago, no matter how much we wish it were.
• 2020-04-13

  School Bells and Silence

  In late March, families in Portland, OR were told to prepare themselves for children to finish their school year from home. While my husband and I don’t have kids, we live across the street from an elementary school and enjoy hearing the children play as we go about our life at home. I loved hearing their laughter and giggles as they lined up outside of their classroom doors or the screeches that filled the air as they tore out of the doors for some much needed recess time on the playground. Then, on April 13, 2020, the laughter, the hollering, the clangs of playground equipment stopped. Up until that point, I could set my personal schedule by the sounds of that playground and now those sounds were gone. The quietness that remained behind was made even more eerie by the daily bells that rang from the school’s outdoor intercom system to signify the start of the day, end of recess, etc.. The tones that were barely audible on a normal day due to all of the commotion on the playground were suddenly a very loud, and real reminder that the world was different. It took the school nearly two months to turn off those alarms and every single day for those two months, at 8:25, 11:45, 12:15, and 2:25, those bells echoed throughout the neighborhood reminding everyone how much our world had truly changed. The alarm bells are now off and have been for nearly 6 months. It’s very quiet at the school. While we’ve all gotten used to the silence, every so often a family will head to the playground and, for a minute as the sounds of a child’s laughter drifts through the windows of my house, I remember what it was like before COVID and am suddenly slammed back into the reality of what our day to day lives have become. I can’t wait to hear those happy voices again - it will mean our lives are back to whatever new normal is on the other side of this pandemic.
• 2021-01-15

  The old gray mask

  I would like to submit my gray, cotton face mask to the COVID-19 Archive. It is perhaps not as the most important item, but certainly it is the most present item for me throughout this pandemic. At almost a full year into this adventure, everyone has a keen familiarity with and opinion of face masks. I got this one as a gift. It feels about the same as getting socks on Christmas, except more useful. I have used this thing every single day unless I forget it—which sends me into a chaotic panic. I am a teacher in a suburb of Nashville, TN. Our school district insists on teaching in person, despite having alarmingly high infection rates in our community. This mask is now part of my daily uniform, a non-negotiable. It serves as a role model for students. A sign that their health is of paramount concern to us. It is part of everything I do. I have dozens of paper replacements in my desk. Those aren’t as good. They straps hurt your ears. The cloth ones are better, more comfortable. I thought about getting one with my favorite band’s logo, but I am going to stick with this old reliable gray, cotton mask. The smell of this mask will haunt me the rest of my life. I wash it multiple times per week. It often smells like laundry detergent. That is a good thing. However, by the end of the day it often smells like whatever I had for lunch. The masks gets hot. It is blasted with my carbon dioxide for eight hours straight. It gets really bad when I have to lecture during the day. When you inhale sharply to talk, it sucks in the material. I’ve learned how to breathe differently when I have the mask on. Sometimes I just pinch the end and hold it with my fingers while I talk. I can rarely take it off. I panic if I forget to put it on when I leave my classroom to go anywhere. Who would have ever thought this little cloth mask would be so important? I often doubt that it is effective at preventing the spread or contraction of infection. I am certainly NOT an anti-masker. But it’s a piece of cloth. I guess that it’s better than nothing. This gray cotton face mask, sometimes imbued with the glorious smell of fresh linen in the breeze or Last night’s roast and mashed potatoes has become a source of loathing and resentment, but simultaneously an anti-viral security blanket (if only in my imagination). Yet, I can’t wait to get rid of this vile thing.
• 
  2020-05

  The Sound of Silence

  The experience I am sharing focuses on my sense of hearing. Work has shifted away from office buildings and into our homes and, as a result, downtown urban areas emptied. This was especially true in mid-May of 2020. The one time I was in my city's downtown, it was uncomfortably quiet, and the negative reaction I had in the moment caught me off guard. Covid19 put me in a constant state of anxiety, and this is one more example of how seemingly small differences in a familiar environment can turn us upside down.
• 2021-01-14

  Sensory History: What Does The Plague Year Smell Like?

  If someone asked me ten years from now the defining smell that I remember from the plague year, I would quickly respond with hand-sanitizer. Before the start of the pandemic, it was the smell of bleach and Pine-sol that reminded me of those bygone days when my mom would wake up early on a Saturday to open all the windows and scrub the house from top to bottom because “cleanliness was next to godliness” as she would say. In the past, the smell of bleach and Pine-sol had come to mean a sense of cleanliness and the simpler days of childhood, where my biggest fear was missing the latest Power Rangers episode. However, hand-sanitizer mixed with its scent of alcohol and strong perfume has now become the smell that I relate to cleanliness. Hand-sanitizer has become that essential item in my purse that I cannot leave the house without first checking to see if I have more than one bottle. When I leave a public space, the first thing I reach for is not my car keys or my cellphone; instead, it is my Bath & Body Works Pocketbac Sanitizer. It has become an accessory that matches my outfits, masks, and even daily perfume choices. This past fall, when I celebrated my birthday, one of my most exciting gifts was not my seasonal favorite body spray, Sweet Cinnamon Pumpkin, but the hand-sanitizer that shared its name. Hand sanitizer has become a safety net and tool to make venturing in public spaces with high touch areas a bit easier. While handwashing, social-distancing, and proper face coverings are the most effective way to prevent the spread of Covid-19, hand sanitizers can hold one over until they can wash their hands properly. Anyone with children can agree that hand-sanitizer is a necessary tool because kids touch everything.
• 
  2021-01-15

  Out of the Woodwork: Innovation of Sanitation in 2020

  A self-account of the exploding market of hand sanitizer and the smell thereof
• 
  2020-04

  Banana Muffins

  When the pandemic began, the company I work for sent us all to work from home. While I did some baking and cooking before, I took it upon myself to grow and learn more. Plus, in the office we usually had some sort of food available, and now I had to provide that for myself. I began looking up recipes to make at home that were fast and easy, yet really good. I stumbled on this recipe and now it is my go to recipe. The smell from them baking and after they come out of the oven is great, and they don't take too much time. The smell lingers in the house the rest of the day as well, and the I love the flavor of these muffins.
• 
  2020-10-11

  Limited capacity

  I want to a Dallas Cowboys in October at AT&T Stadium were they were allowing in-person audiences with “limited capacity” and with masks. When I want to the stadium that has a capacity of over hundred thousand only twenty percent was allowed. As I sat in the stadium to watch the game, a roaring crowd took on a different meaning to audible sensory experiences. That is to say, because of the lack of fans crowd noises were piped in to emulate a hundred thousand people cheering. This was done to give fans a game feeling although we knew this noise was manufactured. Although this noise was piped in, yet it never felt like a real game. The COVID-19 pandemic and my trip to the Dallas game had many effects on my senses as it relates to “limited capacity.” One, it caused my audible senses to now have to distinguish real from manufactured. Second, it made me further appreciate sounds of cheering and the silence of disappointment. Lastly, it made me realize that although visual sensory and memory plays a major part in our life experiences, audible sensory is just as important to us especially because the pandemic circumstance causes disruption in our lives.
• 
  2020-01-11

  Silent Bells & Quiet Halls: An Auditory Experience of the COVID-19 Pandemic

  In almost every aspect of life, COVID-19 has put the world on mute. From canceled weddings and downsized gatherings to remote workspaces and quiet homes left behind by those we have lost, the overwhelming soundtrack of the pandemic is silence. When K-12 students in the United States transitioned to distance learning nearly 10 months ago, elementary, middle, and high school campuses were abandoned, leaving bells silenced and hallways quiet. From March to November, this silence came to define my work at Princeton Joint Unified School District in the rural town of Princeton, California. No longer did bells ring to mark the end of one period and the beginning of another, lockers no longer slammed shut as students rushed to gather their belongings, and students could no longer be heard gossiping, laughing, and playing during morning break. While this silence initially felt like summer vacation had merely arrived a few months early, the lack of auditory stimulation began to diminish morale and decrease productivity as work felt further removed from the students themselves, transforming human beings into pieces of data and names on a paper. I could often go an entire eight-hour shift without speaking to another person, frequently finding my voice raspy when I would pick up the phone for the first time in hours. Even among coworkers, passing conversations vanished and became simple one-line emails dealing only with the business at hand. As Zoom calls replaced in-person staff meetings and participants remained on mute, the noisy world in which I once worked fell even further away. When in-person learning became optional in November, the sound slowly began to return, but it had changed from what it once was. Growing accustomed to the silence over the long summer, I often found myself jolted in surprise at each unexpected bell or sound of students on the playground. The number of students has drastically lowered since we first closed in March, as many opt to remain home to avoid possible exposure, while lunchtimes are now staggered, and breaks are shortened to prevent spread, creating ominously quiet and often uncomfortable atmospheres. The unease and discomfort heard in students' softened voices displays that widespread uncertainty that has permeated every corner of society. It is my greatest hope that schools will return to "normal" for the 2021-2022 school year and that the sounds of carefree students once more fill the hallways and classrooms of Princeton Joint Unified School District. Silence has become an all-too-painful reality of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I look forward to the day that bells ring on their regular schedule, coworkers are free to converse with one another, and every student returns to campus. In images and articles documenting the pandemic, the overwhelming auditory silence that many of us are experiencing is often lost and forgotten.
• 
  2020-04-03

  The Game of COVID Life

  During the quarantine, my wife and I were having a hard time trying to adjust to our jobs being remote. We were not used to staring at computer screens for 8+ hours. The feeling of stress was overwhelming. I’m sure everyone in the world can relate to this experience. We really needed something to raise our spirits after time passed by and the world was still shut down. When my wife and I first got married in 2019, we had a problem of spending money on board games of all kinds. We ended up with a collection of 47 board games by the time COVID started (we began our marriage with about 12 board games). The thing is, with our jobs (my wife being a Public Library Administrator and I being a teacher and coach), we hardly had time to play some except a few. Who would have thought that we were unknowingly preparing for a quarantine. Our collection helped us escape reality for a bit each time we played. Game nights became a regular occurrence and we still hold them to this day. We were able to connect more as a couple and strengthen our relationship. The sounds of dice being rolled, cards being shuffled, and game pieces being moved remind me how board games helped us cope with the unexpected changes in our lives and recharge our batteries to keep going forward.
• 2020-11-26

  Thanksgiving Dressing Connection

  My family Thanksgiving's have featured a wide variety of fare throughout the years. The one constant, the one dish that has always made an appearance is dressing. The recipe is a family one that originated with my great-grandmother, a wonderful woman who lived to the ripe old age of 102. Known across the extended family as the Queen of the Kitchen, her legacy lives on through the recipes she left behind. This Thanksgiving was more difficult than any I can remember. Out of the twenty-four Thanksgiving's I have been alive to see, I have never spent one without my sister. Now, she lives a state away and health concerns surrounding my 93-year old grandmother kept my sister away. COVID-19 drastically changed the mood of the holiday, but one dish still had to be cooked. You guessed it, dressing. Ingredients: 10 baked biscuits 2-3 cups of baked yellow cornbread 1 loaf of toasted bread 1 1/2 cup chopped onion 2 cup chopped celery 1 cup celery tops 1 tablespoon sage 1 tablespoon poultry seasoning 2 cups water 1 cup chicken boullion 2 eggs Salt and pepper to taste Original Directions: Break bread into small pieces. Set aside. Put all remaining ingredients except eggs in a saucepan. Boil till celery and onions are tender. Pour over bread mixture and toss. (Add more liquid if it needs to have more water. Cool. Add eggs. Mix lightly. Put in greased pan - Bake 300 degrees for 30 minutes.
• 2020-04-27

  COVID-19 and Daycare

  I worked at a daycare in Hoover, Alabama for 5 years that provided care to over 200 children. When the state went on lockdown, our numbers dwindled down to 60 as we were only allowing children of first responders to stay. All other children were either left to their parents, babysitters, family, friends, etc. I was a lead infant teacher for babies 6-12 months. I normally have about 10 but on my first day of work after lockdown was initiated, I only had 2 and that instantly meant less noise. I have a schedule I keep but each activity lasted half the time it normally does. It gave the babies more time to play and explore but for me, I had to begin the process of deep cleaning. We were issued new cleaning products and if there was a time when you weren't busy with children, you had to clean. We kept our masks on all day for the children's sake but it limited my breathing since I wasn't used to wearing one. Add that to new, stronger cleaning products and it makes for a difficult day. I experienced the normal smells of infant care that I have for the last 5 years but the new, stronger cleaning smells altered my olfactory system. I was worried how the babies and I would react to it after we've been exposed to the chemicals for a long period of time. We weren't allowed to open our doors or windows so the smell stayed with us all day. It gave me headaches and made my babies cranky. It was a learning process with the new sanitizing methods and we all finally got a rhythm down and requested that we be allowed to open our windows and doors while cleaning. It helped us keep our kids and ourselves healthier and more conscientious about our cleaning habits. With less children around, we were able to clean thoroughly and get everything in order but it felt less like a daycare without all the noise. We worked diligently so that when lockdown was over, we could welcome back our loud and crazy kids to a new, sanitized environment.
• 2020-12-24

  COVID Smells

  My family had been fortunate to avoid COVID 19 for ten months. However, in December 2020, that changed. My symptoms began with a minor headache which, on day two, morphed into a minor cough. I was fortunate to never be hospitalized, but on day three, my experience underwent a strange and unexpected change. I began to smell the strong smell, of what could only be described as ammonia. I was once a cat person, and remember the smell of cat urine on a carpet or furniture if left untreated. This smelled exactly like that. My first reaction was to inquire of my family, and no one could smell it but I, which only served to make the experience all the more strange. When everyone can smell the same smell, it’s one thing but when only you can smell it you begin to questions your sanity. The smell of ammonia was strongest outside and somewhat subdued when indoors. It lasted for one day and was gone the next but it was strong to the point of discomfort.
• 
  2021-01-13

  The Scent of a Deli

  If you've ever set foot in a deli - a real life, New York style deli or in my case a real life Texas deli, then you know about the powerful and delightful smells that can attack your senses upon entry. In my restaurant, the traditional odors of hot corned beef and pastrami mixed with sauerkraut, bacon and horseradish combine with the popular fragrance of Texas brisket layered in a spicy bar-b-que sauce and the undeniable fragrance of apple and pecan pie. Homemade beef stew, French Onion soup and Texas chili are reducing in the kitchen while the entire restaurant fills with the aroma of good food. There is nothing quite like a deli kitchen prepping, baking, grilling and cooking in the morning. These are the distinctive smells of my life before COVID-19. Shortly after March of last year, the city of San Antonio shut down all dine-in operations throughout the city and instantly took away our morning routines and systems, forcing our restaurant to evolve just to survive. Overnight, we became a grocery store with a curbside service selling raw products like eggs, tomatoes, cold cuts and sliced cheeses. The great morning aromas of the deli were replaced with the stale, cold odors of bleach and sanitizer. Sales dipped by seventy percent and even when dine-in was reopened to fifty percent capacity, we were forced to cut our menu by half. Now, as we keep paying for our holiday gatherings, the business has come back by half but it just doesn't seem the same or at least the smells do not. We are more of a to-go business now with items packaged and tagged in sugar cane boxes and biodegradable containers. The sweet mixture of multiple savory recipes and meats cooking side by side has been replaced by vacuum sealed soups and cold cuts prepared in a sanitized and disinfected central kitchen.
• 
  2020-01-13

  Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

  I am teaching HST 643 Global History at Arizona State University during the Spring A semester of 2021. For the second time, I am asking enrolled students to submit a sensory history story related to the pandemic. The students were instructed to read at least the introduction of Melanie Kiechle's Smell Detectives before posting their story. This way, they would have a better understanding of what sensory history is and why it matters. I revised the instructions this time to push students toward non-visual stories.
• 
  2020-09-08

  Clinton Kelly's 3H Lemon Sauce

  Upon news of COVID-19 spreading in the United States, my parents and I made the decision that we were going shelter in place at home. While a lot of things remained the same, my parents began watching Clinton Kelly's 3H show that he did over his Instagram story. During one of Kelly's 3H shows my mom watched him make a lemon sauce. Since I am a huge fan of anything lemon, my mom decided to make it for my family one day and I fell in love with it. The sauce can be described as creamy, lemony, and cheese-y with a lemony smell. Since making the recipe for the first time, it has become my new favorite sauce. This story is specific to the pandemic since my mom would not have watched Clinton Kelly's 3H show otherwise.
• 
  2021-01-11

  Pizza and The Old Stone Church

  Lockdown restrictions to indoor dining at restaurants, which prevents friends from gathering and socializing in familiar locations.
• 
  2019-03-17

  The Smell of Bread

  I have uploaded a story of scent. During the first part of the stay-at-home order in Washington state, March 2019, I baked fresh bread daily to help my family during the food shortages. The amazing aroma of bread filled my home and brought hope to my family that everything would be well.
• 
  2021-01-11

  The Changing Sounds of Public Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic

  My wife and I are both public educators at Hamburg Area High School, a rural school district in Berks County, Pennsylvania. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused our district to fluctuate between in-person and virtual instruction. During virtual days teachers have been encouraged to teach from home to mitigate the risk of exposure to the virus. I conduct my American History classes from the office in our home, while my wife, a music teacher, performs virtual music lessons with her students in our dining room. This shift to virtual teaching from home has caused my classroom, which is usually quite traditional, to sound much different. While I attempt to educate my students on the finer points of American History, the sounds of young (and often struggling) musicians fill the air. Meanwhile, my two dogs also interject into class as they battle over toys and pillows. The Covid-19 pandemic has not only moved the location of public education, but also changed the way that education sounds. I recorded the following audio clip while my 3rd period AP US History class was studying primary source documents on the post-Civil War Reconstruction time-period (1865-1876) on Monday, January 11th.
• 2020-08-08

  Sensory Limitations While Job Seeking in a COVID Environment

  In March of 2020 I made the decision to leave Active Duty Army and pursue a new career in the civilian world. I submitted my resignation and began a six month process to transition out. It was immediately after this drastic step that the effects of COVID-19 on our daily lives began. My state (Maryland) shut down, and my mission essential job that I was in the process of leaving required me to pick up the extra work from at-risk employees. The applications to different government agencies that I had submitted were placed on hold due to the inability of those agencies to conduct in-person events. With less time available, my ability to apply for more jobs was also limited. After a delay of four months, and with only a few more to go before inevitable unemployment, agencies slowly began reinstating their hiring processes. It was at this time that the sensory impacts of a COVID-19 hiring market began to show. Most smaller agencies resorted to telephonic interviews or at the most, video conference calls. Those that did ask for an in-person interview were still heavily controlled with COVID-19 risk mitigation practices. Regardless of the medium enacted, the effects on the senses were the same. Visual senses not withstanding (the inability to see my interviewer was disconcerting, but at least I got to wear jeans), the tactile and auditory senses were also greatly impacted. In every interview conducted pre-COVID, the procedures consisted of shaking hands at the beginning of an interview (i.e. establishing trust through that time-worn gesture), sitting in close proximity to an interviewer with whom you are able to hear clearly, and who can hear you clearly, and in whom you can read facial expressions indicating when you may have said too much or not enough. The interview would then be over and you would seal that act through a final handshake and a smile. None of these basic tenants of interviews occur during a COVID-19 mitigated interview. In my first interview with a federal law enforcement agency, my interview panel and myself were required to wear masks, I was welcomed into the room without any of the standard greetings (handshakes and smiles) and seated behind a plexiglass barrier 8-10 feet from any of the interviewers. Not only did the interview lack the physical interaction that ceremonially marks the beginning and end of the interview, but due to masks, the conduct of the interview was also strained. Questions from interviewers were difficult to hear and understand due to the distance, glass, and masks, therefore requiring awkward repetitions which cast doubt on my competence and confidence. My responses were likewise muffled, which led to doubts as to whether my answers were fully understood by the interviewers. Both assaults on the auditory ability and tactile senses taken for granted in a pre-COVID world lead to an autocatalytic attack on my nerves. The lack of hearing and the absence of a reassuring touch eroded any confidence I may have had going into the interview that would have otherwise remained until I left. COVID-19 mitigation measures reduced what is normally a very personal interaction between human beings to a robotic and numbing experience lacking in all the sensory elements that enables the humanity of an interview. I conducted six more interviews in similar limited sensory manners, eventually evolving my expectations and re-learning a process before finally securing a position.
• 2020-12-29

  Happy Birthday to Me

  For my 25th birthday I found myself sitting in the passenger seat of my girlfriend's car. As we entered hour two of waiting in line at the Orlando Convention Center for free COVID-19 testing, I kept myself busy playing Animal Crossing on my Nintendo Switch. A week earlier I had thought I was getting a cold. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary since coronavirus had already passed through my house and I made it out safe. Then, on Christmas day, I took a bit of pizza and realized there was just nothingness. I could feel the sensation of what I knew the taste was supposed to be, but there was only texture. I didn’t immediately panic, thinking it was probably due to the congestion of my cold. It wasn’t until my girlfriend mentioned that loss of taste is definitely a COVID-19 symptom that the realization dawned on me. The soonest I could get tested was on my birthday, which also happened to be the day I noticed my sense of smell had completely disappeared. Even though I still had two fully functioning eyes, I felt like I was operating completely blind. It never occurred to me how much the taste and the smell of food was so essential to my enjoyment of eating. It was a humbling experience, and I’m incredibly grateful that the loss of senses was my only real symptom. I tried to use my tasteless time wisely and eat all the undesirable food that has long since been shoved to the back of the pantry. Though, I would be lying if I didn’t say the day I got my tasting back, I ordered all my favorite foods for contactless delivery. It was my little 2021 belated new years celebration.
• 
  2020-05-28

  Trail Runs

  A close-knit family can mean a lot of noise, a lot of home cooking, and a lot of downright work. Care in a large family doesn’t understand the word pandemic or isolation; it only understands that you’re there or you’re not. COVID meant to my family the opposite of what it meant to everyone else on the planet, we would need to be physically closer to help care for those who need it. Instead of focusing on the smells and noises caring for others, I choose to remember the feel of damp earth under my feet and the smell of new ferns in the forest. I remember the whisper of water in the creek signaling the halfway point on Thursdays or the smell of the rainwater pond at the end of Tuesday. I can laugh at the smell of a wet dog; who got into both and had to be bathed twice a week for the entire summer. We took turns going for morning runs or hikes so that one person would always be home with my grandparents. My grandfather was needing more and more supervision daily that my grandmother couldn’t handle on her own. Ironically enough without COVID, we wouldn’t have been able to do the things we did. Now, instead of remembering the smell of hand sanitizer; I remember the clean air in my lungs and the smell of the trail on those morning runs in northern Arizona. I have downloaded a sound effect from https://www.freesoundslibrary.com/mountain-river-sounds/ that reminds me of one of the places I went to get away from the chaos of COVID.
• 
  2021-05

  Smelly Hands Are Clean Hands

  I welcomed my first child into the world at the very beginning of the COVID-19 crisis in the United States, leaving my fiancé and me isolated at home with a newborn. After three months, we desperately needed a night away from our precious bundle of joy. The only restaurant open was a sketchy looking German beer garden blasting accordion music, but we were just thrilled to be spending some adult time together while our son was with my mother for the evening. Upon walking into the restaurant, I readily pumped some off-brand hand sanitizer into my hand, and nudged my fiancé to do the same. I rubbed my hands together as we were seated, and breathed a sigh of relief that we were free from the colicky cries of our beloved child for the night. Suddenly my nostrils filled with the stench of bottom shelf tequila. The hand sanitizer wasn’t simply off-brand, it had been homemade by the restaurant. It was as if whomever had concocted the sanitizer was convinced that the best way to ward off the COVID-19 virus (and the fear attributed to it), was to completely bombard the olfactory system with the smell of alcohol. My fiancé remarked that because the sanitizer smelled so horribly, it must be killing all of the germs; unknowingly, he became a perfect example of how individuals have come to associate certain scents, like alcohol, with the illusion of cleanliness. Thinking back on that experience, I find myself pondering just how effective their homemade hand sanitizer really was. Or, more than likely, was it a last ditch effort (forced into action by society’s panic buying of cleansers), to provide their customers a sense of security through unconscious sensory associations.
• 
  2021-01-11

  The Smell of the Pandemic, Face Coverings in 2020

  One of the longest lasting memories for me of the Pandemic will be the olfactory association I will forever have between the smell of musty, soiled fabric and this period of time. The combination of coffee, toothpaste, sweat and laundry detergent was a defining one for me this year. As a high school teacher and coach, my days were long and required extensive periods of lecture based discussion and non negotiable face coverings. While the requirement was understandable from a safety perspective, the result was a facemask that always either smelled like it needed washing or had just been washed. For that reason, these scents will always remind me of this period
• 2021-01-09

  Visiting Home

  I live relatively close to the home where I grew up in Belmont, Massachusetts which is about 10 minutes outside of Boston. It’s a simple home where six of us shared a bathroom and thought nothing of it! My parents, one of whom just hit ninety years old, still reside in our home and never plan to leave with my mother asserting that she will only leave on a gurney. My parents now feel essentially locked in due to the pandemic which makes visiting, which I did this weekend, both more important but unnatural in some ways. We are Italian, for the most part, and Italians are a touchy group, always hugging, which in my family is our non-verbal communication of love. With the risks involved with close contact there is no more hugging, and it’s hard to even want to express ourselves to these 90 year old's with a tacky elbow tap or fist bump. Verbal expression has been temporarily substituted but it is an inadequate alternative and will never replace the connection one feels from a sincere and long held hug.
• 2020-01-20

  My kidney transplant story, during the era of COVID-19

  The first laboratory-confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was January 20th, 2020, and it was officially reported to the CDC two days later, on January 22nd. Meanwhile, January 20th was a Monday, and the 22nd was a Wednesday. These two days marked my last two of the weekly Monday, Wednesday, and Friday five-hour hemodialysis sessions I had been undergoing for a few months. Days later, I would receive my long-awaited life-saving kidney transplant. The transplant was to take place at the University of Minnesota’s Fairview hospital in Minneapolis. The hospital is located on Harvard Street on the outskirts of the University of Minnesota’s sprawling campus. It is situated just blocks away from the University proper, where eight years before, I was an archaeology major in my second year of college. It was also the year that I began to experience the first symptoms of the disease, which would ultimately kill my two kidneys, put me on dialysis, and come extremely close to taking my life. I should say here that my kidneys died because of an extremely rare genetic disease that I inherited. It is a disease that can only be transmitted to someone if both of the person’s parents carry it in their genes. It is a rare occurrence that a couple will both carry the disease in their genes since the disease is so rare. Even then, there is only a 50% chance that one out of four of the children that the parents have will inherit the genes for this disease have will inherit this disease. I am the oldest of three children, so statistically speaking, I should not have inherited it. The nature of my disease means that the kidneys will die, slowly at first, then rapidly. From there, the body is attacked in multiple ways. The heart is the first to be attacked, resulting in heart failure and/or a stroke if there is no quick intervention. The nervous system is also damaged, and the first signs of this are episodes of trembling in the hands similar to that experienced by a person who has a stroke or has Parkinson's disease. Eventually, the nervous system is so severely affected that the patient suffers a loss of control in their legs and arms. The neurological system is also assaulted, which causes some permanent memory damage and seizure-like symptoms. I experienced all of these except for total cardiovascular failure. While for me, these symptoms happened slowly at first with only occasional blackouts, some memory problems, and heart arrhythmias caused by extreme hypokalemia, or severely low blood potassium, the final few months saw a rapid acceleration of the effects of my disease on my body. Within four months, I went from a kidney function of 30% to 0%, a process that usually takes many years in a typical Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patient. I was hospitalized no less than seven times in the final four months before my kidney failure, and in the last fifty days of that timeline, I lost the ability to use my arms or legs entirely and was confined to a wheelchair. The only way to halt and generally reverse this process is for patients like me is through a successful kidney transplant. The first cases of nontravel–related COVID-19 in the United States were confirmed on February 26th and 28th, 2020. On the night of the 26th, I was fasting in preparation for the transplant scheduled to occur the following morning when I would need to report to the hospital’s surgery center at 4:30 AM for surgery prep. My brother stayed the night at my house on the 26th, as he had been living and attending college in Boseman, Montana. He and I were best friends as children, and now he would donate one of his kidneys to save my life. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to wait for a deceased donor kidney for transplant because I would not have survived long enough. So my little brother, age 28 at the time, was and still is the bravest and most wonderful little brother that anyone could ask for. The following morning, on the 27th, my brother and I, along with my parents and spouse, arrived at the hospital as scheduled. I was brought to a small room where I changed into my surgical gown and was prepped for the surgery at about 6:00 am. My brother was brought to a separate location. I stayed there in that room for a while until I received word at around 8:00 am that my brother had been prepped and brought back to extract one of his kidneys to be transplanted. That was the last thing I remembered before I went into my medically induced sleep for surgery. I slept most of the day after the operation and was not fully conscious until the early morning of the 28th. The weeks and months that followed would strike fear into many people, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread from state to state as the numbers of people who had died from the illness started to skyrocket. For those who may not be familiar with the nature of an organ transplant, the recipients of an organ transplant must take immunosuppressive medications for the rest of their lives to prevent their bodies from rejecting it. This means that I now have an extremely weak immune system, and I would not survive many common illnesses, let alone one that is as fatal as COVID-19. While the ever-present threat of COVID-19 was and remains terrifying to me, my spouse, and my family, it has been far from my only concern. Another threat has been the side effects of the medications I now take. I mentioned the suppressed immune system, but that is only one of many possible side effects. Another is neuro-toxicity. This means that I frequently have memory lapses and periods throughout the day where I can’t recall simple things like what I had for breakfast yesterday or what I read in a book last week. Fortunately, the longer I am on the medication, the less these symptoms become, and my memory has now, nearly one year since my transplant, finally begun to normalize. While the memory issues have become more manageable, one additional side effect of my medication is that it makes a person susceptible to diseases like cancer. Another side effect that has only worsened over the months since my transplant is a condition called olfactory hallucinations, or sometimes referred to as “phantosmia.” This means that a person smells a scent that is not present in their environment. For me, it has been an overwhelming smell of smoke. The hallucinated odor has been so intense and nauseating at times that I have felt sick from it. It also changes one’s ability to taste, rendering nearly everything tasteless. One of the primary sources for this condition is a cancerous tumor in the brain's frontal lobe. While I do not know for sure yet if this is the source of my olfactory hallucinations, it is currently being medically investigated by my caring healthcare team at the hospital, who has been helping me throughout my recovery from the transplant. One way or another, while the memory issues and the olfactory hallucinations have lessened my quality of life to some extent, compared to where I was one year ago today, it is a small price to pay.
• 
  2020-10-18

  Smoke During Covid-19

  For me much of the pandemic has been an abstract concept. Our senses cannot really alert us to the presence of Covi-19. The exception I suppose would be the presence of masks but that is not a constant reminder. I have only worn masks when going in and out of stores. My sensory memory of the pandemic is four months of the smell of smoke. I noticed the smoke yesterday and again this morning. Since the California wildfires started in June there has been an almost constant smell of smoke in the air. We also get large grass fires in this area as well so there is usually some type of fire burning. I believe that the sense of smell can at times be a much more powerful sense than sight. I will remember the smoke long after Covid-19 is gone.
• 
  2020-10-16T23:30

  Friday night out during Covid

  I am a server at a Chili's in Tempe Arizona. Covid has changed many things about my day to day life and work. The restaurant scene has changed a lot as well. This recording was from the restaurant on a Friday night about 30 minutes before closing at midnight. Pre-Covid I would be cleaning tables and finishing up some cleaning to get out of there but as you can hear, the place was still buzzing. Since Covid began numerous bars and late night establishments have closed and thus Chili's a relatively safe chain restaurant that was able to withstand closure has taken some of that business in Tempe. Peoples normal dining cycles seem to have also changed a bit and becoming more random. Normal lunch and dinner times matter less when everyone is working from home and night outs with friends are more rare.
• 
  2020-10-15

  Mask Life

  In late January, most people around me considered Covid-19 to be the next "avian flu". It was not taken as a serious threat at the time and I even remember my colleagues having a "corona" party on the roof of our building where we all drank corona and made jokes, as we unknowingly awaited the worst pandemic in a century. As the months went on and things seemed to escalate daily, I tried as hard as I could to resist going anywhere that required a mask. I couldn't fully accept all of this and really only left my house to run or take walks, I was working from home and could order groceries or food at any time of day or night so it was an easy thing for me to reject at the time. Eventually I had to give in because I needed to occasionally stop by the office so I ordered some nice black cloth masks that could house HEPA filters. It took much getting use to but wasn't terrible wearing the masks and as I began to venture out more and more, it started to become routine. I'm on my way out, grab my sunglasses, keys and now mask, all which are kept in the same decorative bin on a table next to my front door. Come home, throw keys and mask into bin, place sunglasses on the table. Leave, grab keys and mask and sunglasses, come home, put keys and mask into the bin, sunglasses folded neatly alongside. Every day same thing, until it is something that I no longer thought about or consciously did. One day, on my quarter mile walk to the office, I smelled cinnamon. I looked around but in that part of the city there wasn't a bakery or coffee shop within a few feet, didn't see anyone walk by me and couldn't even understand how I was smelling such a strong aroma through a cloth mask with a filter. I started to realize that I couldn't even remember the last thing that I had smelled while wearing this mask, so this was definitely unusual. But like many of our fleeting daily thoughts it was just that, and by the time that I was in the elevator my mind was busy on other things. I come home, keys and mask in the bin, sunglasses on the table. Leave the next day, grab mask, keys, sunglasses and walk to work. I stop at a coffee shop on the way and again...cinnamon. Instantly I’m taken back to the previous day and asking myself, “was this what you smelled yesterday?”, but quickly realizing that I didn’t go this direction, so I hadn’t walked by this place. I get to work and again its forgotten quickly. Come home, wake up, leave for work, come home, every day the same routine and many of those days, not all though, I had at some point smelled cinnamon. Finally, one day I came home and entered the house extremely distracted, having a work conversation on my phone while fumbling with my keys and trying to take off my sunglasses off at the same time. The phone started to slip as I was approaching the “drop off table” and in my haste to catch the phone I dropped everything else onto the floor. Sometimes life forces you to slow down and this was one of those times because this was probably the first time in weeks that I was just standing next to this table and focusing. In the bin, where the masks and keys go is a stick like, brown bundle of something that first appeared to be a dehydrated plant. I picked it up and immediately could smell that thick, rich cinnamon flavor and connected dozens of fleeting, scattered thoughts to their final conclusion. My girlfriend had bought some decorative, fall scented potpourri, placed it into this bin and every day the inside of my cloth mask slept on that cinnamon bundle. My brain will never again associate the rich smell of cinnamon with fall or desserts, but now will think of masks and a global pandemic. It seems like it could be a long time before my brain can break this association and have return this spice to its proper neural connection, but sadly wearing masks is now the thing that feels normal to me. If there is any positive take away to all of this for me, its that I often realize that we are probably living through notable history right now, something that will be remembered and written about for a long time. Being that I love history and in much of what I read I usually stop and think “what was that really like in XXX place at XXX time? I wish that I could have seen it…”, I try to keep perspective and realize that one day in 100 years someone will be wondering the same thing about right now.
• 
  2020-07-15

  Food Creations During Quarantine

  Pre-Quarantine, there was the opportunity maybe once a week to cook something extravagant for dinner; it was always a treat coming home from work and having the house already filled with some aroma that made instantly remember just how hungry I was. As quarantine limited both other responsibilities and the opportunity to go out to eat, the chances to experiment became more frequent. My grandmother had previously run a restaurant years ago, so this became my opportunity to sous chef and learn some of the tricks of the trade. The infrequent aromas of 2019 were replaced by the almost daily culinary adventures that we went on, be it cooking, baking, or anything in between. For myself, and so many others, baking definitely become a type of release to combat the mood swings and general boredom that quarantine offered up on a daily basis. For my cooking escapades, I would usually stray towards the foods that offered comfort, either through their taste or through their smell. Not being restricted by a mask indoors made the simple act of inhaling that much more enjoyable. There was something that was comforting about having those smells wafting through the house, almost a sense of nostalgia not so much for pre-quarantine but for childhood maybe?
• 
  2020-10-14

  Driving to Apartment

  The audio recording are the sounds of my car and the cars around me as I drive home after another day at work on Dover AFB. I could explain and explore all the things that COVID impacted on the base as well as in regards to deployments, missions, and military/civilian personnel, but that will have to be a separate COVID story for another time. As for my car ride, the audio highlights one of the most confusing things about human behavior for me during the pandemic. Where was everyone going? Majority of businesses were closed. Visitation to family and friends were greatly discouraged. The beaches were closed. All the states around us were closing their borders. Yet, people were driving all about the roads like the COVID wasn’t going to stop them from being somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, the base was still open and I was still going to work. Also, a good portion of the people living in or around Dover were military or military families. Still, traffic around me didn’t ever seem to really slow down or make sense connection to the pandemic. In fact, the closer you got to the base, the worse the traffic became because the base had closed all their gates but one. This meant that everyone who needed to be on base to work or go to medical (not much was open at the start of COVID and things are slowly working their ways back to somewhat “normal” hours) had to go through a singular gate. I would sit in my car for almost an hour, listening to my music and the music of the cars around me as I waited impatiently for my wheels to a spin a few more inches forward. In some ways, this audio clip reveals something special about the history of the pandemic. The audio and my story attached to it showcases not only the human nature to adapt, but also humanity’s resiliency to sustain a way of life. At the same time, pandemic unveils our values and driving force. For instance, were those driving around the pandemic going to work for monetary value? Were they driving to see loved ones through a window? Maybe they were driving just to have a purpose? Or they just trying to escape the confines of the sanctuary of their home? Was it about politics? This also brings about the question of fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of confinement. Fear of death. Fear of boredom. Fear of lost freedom.
• 0020-10-16

  Revitalizing Cultural Gardening

  When the stay at home order hit, I was in a tailspin wondering what to do at home. I couldn’t imagine working from home and teaching my children might last from March to September. Something amazing happened. For over ten years, I talked and dreamed of gardening. I recalled my grandmother gardening when I was a child. She taught all of her grandchildren her indigenous knowledge of growing food from the land. Working from home and homeschooling during the day, allowed us to take breaks and walk to our yard for gardening. The location of our garden in relation to home, work, and school was very convenient. Gardening allowed me to learn the different smells of dirt. The clay and muddy kind of dirt needed to be mixed with finer sand, manure and topsoil. The soil on my land was not sufficient for growing the plants I wanted. We worked early in the morning until the heat became too much to bear. Then we returned in the evening as the sun disappeared from the horizon. Our work included turning the soil, hauling in bags of manure and topsoil, and transporting finer dirt from areas around our home. Once the dirt and seeds were ready, the watering began. I never believed water smells different at different times of the day and months. In the morning, the cool crisp water smells light and pure. During the hotter times of the day, the water smells musky and not as refreshing. It led me to wake up early in the morning and come out late in the evening to water my plants. The smell of the damp earth will forever remind me of the journey of revitalizing cultural gardening techniques taught by my grandmother.
• 
  2020-03-13

  Lackluster ambience

  I have been a fan of professional wrestling for years. It is a bit like watching a soap opera with elite athletes doing the occasional insane acrobatic stunt. While it may not technically be a sport, it can be very entertaining. Part of that entertainment is a raucous crowd cheering for their favorite wrestler or booing the antagonist. It is also when someone pulls off an Olympic level move and the crowd explodes. Now, there is no crowd. Due to COVID-19 the wrestlers no longer play to a live audience. To bring back some of the ambience missing from their absence, WWE (and some other forms of live entertainment) have instituted workarounds like digital fans on screens and fake crowd noise. Before that though, there was nothing. Just a complete absence of fans. Their silence was deafening and the events awkward. This is a recording of one such event, Smackdown, March 13, 2020. Two wrestlers, a referee, and three announcers all performing a play to no audience. There is a marked difference. WWE announcers are known for being loquacious, but in this their banter has an almost desperate edge to cover up the missing element of the fans. And not just the announcers. The referee and the wrestlers seem to be talking both more and louder. Even with all that there is still a very noticeable missing element of ambience. It is interesting to me how much they have to try to cover up the sound of silence.
• 
  2020-07-01

  Juniper Berries Grant Volunteering at the Santa Monica College Food Pantry

  Before the pandemic, my dog, Juniper Berries Grant aka Juni, was on track to becoming a therapy dog and helping stressed out students at Santa Monica College, where I work. But we closed campus and moved all classes online, so Juni was out of a job. After the pandemic happened, I started volunteering at the Santa Monica College Food Pantry. Every Wednesday, we give produce, dairy, eggs, meat, and dry goods to our students in need. It’s all amazing and fresh, if we have extras, we donate it to local resources and staff. It has been great to see the community support students with food insecurities. Anyways, one Wednesday, Juni was able to come up and volunteer. And while students couldn’t give her pets, her cuteness put them at ease from a safe distance.
• 2020-03-16

  Silence at School, March 2020

  This is a true anecdote about my experience as teacher during the pandemic, and the sensory experience by which I recall these events. I am a teacher at a middle school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In winter of 2019, I was aware of the coronavirus, which was something my students often joked about. For instance, if a child was out sick one day, the students would say the he or she had coronavirus, and everyone would laugh about it. It was funny to them at this time, because the virus was something that was mostly contained to places outside of the United States, and everyone thought it was preposterous that there was so much speculation about it on the news. My students engaged in speculation as well, and many of them concluded that it was actually a big cover-up for a zombie plague, and they would try to determine if I or their peers were also zombies in disguise. I recall hearing them laugh about it in the class, and I especially recall the return of one of our students to class after she had been out from the flu. I remember them asking her if she was a zombie, or if she had eaten bats before she got sick (remember, these are middle-school kids). Winter passed pretty much as usual, and cases began to occur in the US early in 2020. It was still seen as no big deal, generally. In March, we started to hear news stories about the virus in Winston-Salem. Some people claimed to know people who knew people who were related to someone with the disease in Greensboro. More and more cases began to appear, but it still seemed like something distant to us. Gradually, the sickness moved from Greensboro to Winston-Salem. I caught a cold in March, and by the end of the day on a Wednesday, I was feeling pretty bad. I told my many bosses that I would be out of work on Thursday, and on Thursday evening, I called out again. The first day that I was out sick, the school district had decided to close down the schools until further notice, starting the next day. I never got the chance to tell my kids goodbye, which was very painful, as we were all close and we had such a good experience in my class. Today, in October of 2020, I still haven’t seen any of them, as my school district is currently closed for in-person school. I wish very badly that I had the opportunity to say goodbye to them. Those are the events as they occurred chronologically. I will now recall the sounds that constitute my memory of the time. To begin with, my school is loud—our students are beyond unruly. I can recall the sounds of the end of a regular school day: raucous laughter, shouting, cursing, threats, insults, loud rap music, and the sound of me flipping the switch to cut off the overhead lights as we prepared to exit the classroom and make our way to the school buses. Then comes the sound of the announcements overhead, which no one can hear over the students, then the prolonged loud and dull tone of the "bell" which signals the beginning of the stampede to the buses. A chorus of shouts raises immediately—a proclamation of victory and freedom. It is exuberant. What follows is hundreds of footsteps on linoleum tiles, backpacks shuffling as kids adjust them on their backs, more yelling, screaming, and swearing, the sounds of an occasional "runner," who knocks the other students down to get to the buses, a teacher shrilly, piercingly yelling at him to go back and "try again", and reminding him that "you will not go up these stairs unless you can walk up them!," a muttered "f---you, b----," from a male voice that is just about to begin deepening as he turns around to try again, and so on until we get to the buses, load those kids up, and ship them out. Going to my car every day after work is over, my ears ring as I sit in the silence of my car with the doors shut before starting the engine and making my way home. I often sit for just a minute or two and enjoy the silence before departing, but the ringing in my ears gets uncomfortably loud, and I finally turn the car on and leave. When I go back to school on the Monday following my sick leave, the difference is remarkable. The school district has instructed us to come in safely, get whatever we need from our classroom that we require to work at home, and leave as soon as possible. Teachers are strictly instructed to only walk directly to and from their classrooms to their vehicles, not to visit with their friends, etc. Everyone is in their classroom, working quietly. The only sounds I hear as I walk down the halls to my room are the hum of overhead fluorescent lighting and my heels striking the linoleum tiles, echoing off the walls and rows of lockers. I hear my key turn in the lock of my classroom door, the flick of the switch to on, more humming fluorescent lights. Shuffling papers and sliding metal desk drawers and file cabinets come next. With a handful of papers in my arms (I travel light), I cut off the lights—the humming stops—and my heels strike the linoleum tiles until I open the exit door, walk across the parking lot, and leave. This time, the silence of my car is nothing extraordinary. Gone are the shouts, the yelled jokes, the subsequent laughter, the retaliatory swearing. Also gone are the kids coming up to me to just say "hey," do one of the complex handshake rituals we have worked out, and to ask me if they can have a dollar for a cookie in the cafeteria, which is a request that I have obliged so often that I will count it as a charitable donation on this year's tax return. On that last day in the school building, there was no sound of a kid coming up to me to tell me how well he did in last night's basketball game, and how poorly his best friend did by comparison, or a girl walking up to tell me that an unpopular teacher has once again worn ugly clothes to work, and that her shoes don't match either—middle school students pay a lot of attention to these things. Put simply, those are all happy sounds. They are the sounds of kids doing what kids do in 2020, saying the things that they say, and teachers managing the best they can. The sound of kids coming up to me to talk are the sounds of acceptance—acceptance of a teacher into their lives, who is usually the categorical enemy of the student. I'm glad to be an exception. These are the pre-Covid sounds. What follows conveys emptiness. The sound of echoing footsteps rebounding from the walls demonstrates how vacant the hallways are. The fact that I can hear the overhead lights hum is amazing in its novelty. The chatter of students is all gone, the desks, empty. For a teacher who loves his students, the sounds that follow the March arrival of the pandemic are the sounds of loneliness.
• 
  2020-03-20

  A Sight to Be Seen

  The photograph that is attached is a picture that I took while in the grocery store on March 20, 2020, and I remember the sight and the moment vividly. Much like the rest of the nation, I wasn't really sure how to make meaning of the recent events that were taking place across the world and, beginning in March, starting to take place in our very nation. COVID-19 was still something I didn't quite understand, but what I did know is that it was coming, whatever that meant. My apartment is roughly three blocks from this grocery store, so naturally I went there often to buy things that I needed. On this day, earlier in the morning, I remember showing up to the front door and there were massive crowds of people not only outside, but in the aisles as well, and especially in one specific aisle. I began to ask myself "why is everyone cramming into that specific aisle? There isn't even food over there on that side of the grocery store." Come to find out, these people, much like people across the nation, were mobbing the stores and buying massive amounts of...toilet paper? Yes, exactly - toilet paper. I decided that I wasn't going to get what I needed in these crowds, so I left, aiming to come back later that evening. The attached picture is on my return trip on the night of March 20, when I walked down the aisle that everyone was clustered into in an attempt to see the aftermath. Every shelf that had toilet paper that morning was completely empty, which was a sight that I can't say that I have ever seen before. I was left not only amazed, but confused as to what prompted these people to collect toilet paper in the face of a global pandemic. If the nation were shutting down for a period of time and a national quarantine was on the brink, wouldn't canned foods, water bottles, and various other items take precedent over toilet paper? Just a thought. This event made my mind up that the year 2020 was going to be a year that would not be forgotten, and this picture, to me, stands as a picture of the very moment I had that realization.
• 
  2020-10-15

  Patients without voices

  COVID-19 has changed many aspects of our lives, one that I would have never thought was using a mask in public. I began my Air Force career as a surgical technician in 1992. Wearing a mask was part of the job. The mask was worn to protect the patients, we did not want to breathe germs onto the surgical site. It had secondary a secondary purpose as well, to protect us from the patients' bodily fluids. Though talking was allowed in the surgical suite it was limited and the distance between the team was usually less than a few feet. We also learned to use hand gestures to communicate with each other, for instance if a surgeon was suturing and wanted us to cut the suture she or she would use the index and middle fingers to mimic scissors cutting. In 2008 found myself in Iraq, this time I had to shield my face not because I was in an operating room but because the sand storms. The mask allowed me to venture outside the facilities for limited periods of time during the storms. As medical professionals, depending on where you work, the use of masks is not something new. What is new is that now the patients are wearing masks. At first glance this might not seem like much of an issue, occasionally patients would have to wear masks as well. As most of us have noticed, communication has been hampered with the use of masks. It is harder to here, muffled voices, it is harder to differentiate between similar words/sounds, and we cannot use the use or other senses to assist us such as sight. In addition patients whom might have difficulty breathing have a harder times breathing by wearing masks. It is imperative the communication between the patient and a clinician is flawless. If hearing is impaired or words are mistaken the consequences can be deadly. COVID-19 Has caused us to slow things down even further, we must double check and sometimes triple check to make sure we collected the correct information. We need to listen to what they are saying without the aid of their faces. Deaths caused by medical errors are a major concern for all, now add a barrier that is foreign to most patients and those errors can become even more common. Now I find myself in Biloxi, MS and in some strange way everyone became an OR Tech, we are all wearing masks. On a serious note, may we all learn and grow from this experience and not let it go to waste.
• 
  2020-10-14

  Time to Cook

  Before the onset of the corona virus and the lockdowns and quarantines that followed, I had a pretty routine schedule. I would wake up around 7:15am and I would not get home again until about 7pm. Normally I would make something easy for dinner that I could have at least another night in a row. Usually it would just be a meat and a vegetable with fruit for dessert. I would cook the vegetables and the meat in the same pan to save myself the clean up time later as I would normally go to bed around 11pm and not want to waste any more time cleaning than I had to. I also would not stray too far from recipes that I was comfortable with. I would be very upset if I made something terrible after a ling day at work. However now with quarantine, I work from home and my schedule has become quite different. I am able to sleep in a little longer as I do not have to commute anymore. As soon as I am finished work I am already home and can start making dinner as soon as I want. This extra time gives me more flexibility to try new recipes and take chances on foods I may not have tried otherwise. On my lunch break I am able to go food shopping so I am not limited by what ingredients I have on hand. For this meal that I made and posted pictures of, it would be a rare treat to get this on a worknight before COVID-19. This meal took longer, used more ingredients, involved more pots and pans, and took longer to clean up than any pre-quarantine meal that I would make. Yet the payoff was absolutely delicious. To have pan seared scallops in a creamy garlic sauce over wheat spaghetti on a random Wednesday night is one of the few bright sides of quarantine. I am looking forward to the day when all restrictions are lifted and life returns to normal but I will surely miss all the extra time I have to try new recipes, to have my kitchen filled with new and unique scents and for my taste buds to experience diverse ranges of cuisines that my normal schedule precluded.
• 
  2020-10-15

  Sounds of Chronic Lung Disease

  In January 2015, my mom got very sick and was in the hospital for 2 weeks, 3 days of which were in the ICU with a breathing tube. She was diagnosed with severe COPD and has required at-home oxygen ever since. Her disease has now progressed to end-stage. Last year, she received a non-invasive ventilator to use at night. A lot of people with COVID-19 have breathing problems even after recovering from the disease. Some of these people might have permanent lung damage and require at-home oxygen therapy and possibly non-invasive ventilators. The first recording is the sound of an oxygen machine. The second is the sound of the ventilator. At the end of the ventilator recording is the alarm that sounds when it does not detect any breathing. These sounds demonstrate the impact of COVID-19 has on its victims and the legacy it will leave behind long after the disease itself has gone away.
• 2020-10-14

  An Empty Theater

  Every year for the last 20 years, our community has planned, practiced, and performed a tribute to Broadway in a production called "Best of Broadway". We have a cast of over 100 local community members that sing and dance to 20 or so different Broadway songs. Our rehearsals are in an old Veterans Memorial building that comes to life during January to March with our songs, lights, and energy. The chants in the hall echos against the old walls, the stomping of feet on the stage threatens those downstairs, and the beat of the music pumps your heart. When one is in the hall, they are guaranteed to hear laughter in the back corner, a director shouting at the sound guy, and a piercing squeal in the speakers. The sounds in the hall define the busy enthusiasm of the cast and crew. However, this year, our production was shut down the day before our opening night due to Covid-19. The heartbreak of working for months on a show that was cancelled was devastating. After our annual production, we always have a day to clean and put our props and costumes away and clean the hall. But, this year, we just...left. The hall remains filled with our Broadway stuff. And when someone walks into the building, the silence of a show that was never performed is deafening.
• 2020-10-14

  Slimy, Uncomfortable, and Antibacterial

  I work at a bar in north-east Wisconsin. The stereotypes regarding the people of Wisconsin and their love for drinking and the bars are pretty accurate. There isn't much to do in the small town I live in besides that. When Covid began, people were most concerned with the bars being open. We were closed for a while as many devoted patrons, and the Tavern League of Wisconsin tried to fight the orders. We've been open now for several months and still most people that come into the bar do not take the virus or safety measures seriously. There's been times where customers tell me I don't have to wear my mask, or I don't need to wipe down their table, or use hand sanitizer as much. I am constantly around people at my job and risk a lot of contact with the public. I take the safety measures seriously and constantly use hand sanitizer. Since Covid, we have bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere, and now, because of the demand of sanitizer, we have strange brands made out of different products than I am used too. Every time I put on hand sanitizer it comes out all slimy all of my hands. It's incredibly uncomfortable and it feels like you almost need to wash your hands after to get rid of the gross feeling. But eventually it rubs in, and I go on with my job, only to follow up the uncomfortable sensation of slimy hand sanitizer with the complaints of customers who think the virus is fake and there shouldn't be any regulations in place that may hinder the bar experience.