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Silence
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2020-05-17
Bells, Breezes, and Sirens
The warmest April on record, yet we were all stuck inside. The streets usually congested with the honks of angry black cabbies, the loud hum of overused mufflers on double decker buses and the low rumble of the tube running underfoot were silent. The metropolis of over nine million people had come to a standstill. Windows usually closed to protect against the sleet or smog, were opened to quiet clean breezes. London felt serene, almost idyllic, until the piercing siren of an ambulance run would cut through that fairytale. Before COVID I never paid attention to the St. John’s Ambulance First Aid Training facility on my street, only occasionally seeing the paramedics pop in the Arabic supermarket next door during lunch. As the news was counting the number of days we were in lockdown, I started counting the number of ambulances lining my street; popping my head out the open windows, looking up and down the road. However, sitting in my favorite chair in my flat, back to the window, I could avoid the grim sight, a constant reminder of the reality of the pandemic. I would take my tea in that purple chair, alternating between endless Netflix shows and books, the church bells across the street the only thing to remind me of time. The warm sun and smog less breeze would join the bells drifting through the open windows. Through the books and shows, I not only escaped COVID but my small London flat. The silence of the city amplifying my imagination, only to be shattered by that first initial scream of the sirens, jolting me back to reality. Willing to sacrifice the warm breeze at my back, I closed my windows to protect my ears and the fantasies I had created. However, the double paned windows, sturdy enough to block out the honks of angry black cabbies, were no match for the sirens. Unable to even slightly defend against the shock of the sirens when surrounded by the new silence of the city, I learned to live with it. I reopened my windows to let in bells, breezes, and sirens, instead tuning my ear to notice the ambulance’s first turn of the engine to brace for the piercing scream that would soon follow. As the days continued, my ears started to acclimate to this new normal, with each ambulance run making me jump a little less off my chair. Though my body and mind would never accept the sound enough to not to jolt me even from the deepest sleep, as if to remind me that this was anything but normal. -
2021-04-08
Did COVID doubters' perspective get lumped in with deniers?
I believe we all know someone during the worst days of the pandemic who doubted that it was as serious as it really was. Perhaps they willingly discussed their perspective, reluctantly talked about it if pressed, or just did not even want to talk about it. I am not talking about the people seen in the attached article that were out protesting masks or vaccines, pushing conspiracy theories on 5G and Bill Gates' love of vaccines. I am thinking of the people we work with, are friends with, or very likely are in our families that just really just wanted life back to normal and did not think the global reaction was justified. A casual search of the internet for the perspectives of COVID doubters, or those who thought that the reaction to the pandemic was over-the-top, immediately sends you to articles and stories about the horrors and idiocy of the COVID deniers who pushed crazy theories about world dominance. Wouldn't it be nice to understand how the middle ground of the pandemic felt, lived, and reacted to the reality of the pandemic, if at all? We owe it to future generations to not only highlight the worst in the deniers, as seen in the attached article, but to also illustrate the everyday people who just were not sure who to believe, fake news or science. One thing is for sure, it is not fair to lump everyone in the middle into the far right. I would like to hear the stories of people who doubtfully lived in the pandemic, their trials, frustrations, and tribulations and if they had any change of heart or ideals. Their perspective will give a further understanding of the sociological impact of the pandemic. -
2020-05
Silence in the Morning
At the beginning of the pandemic, I was working at a hotel on a US Military base in Stuttgart Germany where I typically worked the overnight shift. As such, my commute home in the mornings was usually the noisiest part of my day. I would often pass by the local bakery on my way home, one of the busiest places in town in the morning. I would hear the sounds of the shuffling of feet of the people in line, the clink of coins on the counter, the crinkle of paper bags filled with the daily bread the Germans would buy or the pastries they would eat for lunch, and the whine of the coffee machine for their morning coffee. In the background was the constant droning of the morning rush hour traffic. After the lockdown, when the German government shut down businesses, I had to continue working as the military converted the hotel I worked at into a quarantine facility. I continued with my overnight shifts and my commute home in the mornings while everyone else stayed home. What struck me the most about my new commute home was the silence. The utter lack of noise was practically oppressive. I could close my eyes and the only difference with the dead of night was the warmth of the sun beating on my skin. What was once the noisiest part of my day was now the quietest. -
2020-03-16
From Unheard of to Unheard
This excerpt outlines how the start of the pandemic affected the noise level of an undergraduate college campus. -
2021-10-14
When Silence took over Las Vegas
I live in a city bursting with lights, music, wonder, excitement, tourists, and opportunity – Las Vegas, known throughout the world for its casinos and world-class entertainment. Two of its most popular attractions are the Las Vegas Strip and the Fremont Street Experience. The Las Vegas Strip, an almost 5-mile section of Las Vegas Boulevard, is filled with an array of sparkling and neon lights showcasing casinos, hotels with thousands of rooms, restaurants, and entertainment venues -- always bustling with people. My absolute favorite sight and sound along this part of the drive is the spectacular Bellagio Fountains. As you continue on a couple of miles past The Strat, you are introduced to the sights, sounds, and smells of the Fremont Street Experience in historic downtown Las Vegas. Whether I am driving by or enjoying a night out, I love to hear the sounds of the Fremont Street Experience, where crowds of locals and tourists enjoy music along with its famous unique experiences. The Slotzilla Zipline zips laughing and screaming people above the noisy crowds looking up to see them glide under the world's largest digital display while presenting light and sound shows. It is a carnival-like atmosphere within a 6-block street party. Free bands play simultaneously on several stages along the street, while people sing and dance in the streets and have a good time. All ages find it perfect for date nights, parties, or hanging out. Then along came the dark shadow of COVID, shutting down Las Vegas, and the music stopped. The Fremont Street Experience became quiet. It was no longer a place where you could hear different kinds of music coming from multiple areas. No bands were playing your favorite dance songs or rock and roll. Fremont just became a regular street with noiseless empty hotels and restaurants. The stages were silent and bare, and the crowds' shouting, laughter, and singing disappeared. Fremont was quiet for the first time in its history. The excitement and joy were gone. It was no longer a fun place to go, and the silence felt eerie and hauntingly incongruent. Fremont, like much of Las Vegas, felt, looked, and sounded like a ghost town. Now, as we open back up to the public and the crowds return, I once again hear the laughter, the bustle of people, and live music when I drive past or show up. Fremont is back, and now there is only a memory of when the sound of silence was all that filled the air. -
2020-03-20
The Signal of Approaching Silence
On Friday, March 20, 2020, I was grocery shopping at Hy-Vee in Canton, Illinois when my mobile phone pinged with an alert from a local news app: the Illinois governor had officially issued a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Rumors of the impending order had been circulating for the past few days. I teach English at Canton High School, and we were scheduled to start a week of Spring Break that Friday. That morning the principal had cautioned us to take home our computers and any teaching materials that we might need, just in case we did not return to school after Break. So, the text message confirmed a stark reality. Talk of the stay-at-home order overtook the conversations of shoppers around me. People were speculating about what would come next, now that schools and businesses would be closed. I remember passing the meat counter where I overheard the department manager taking a phone call from a gentleman who wanted to place an apocalypse-sized order of beef. This is it, I thought to myself, trying to figure out what kind of groceries to buy that would sustain my family over for an indefinite period of time, because even though the stay-at-home order was for just two weeks, I had a sinking suspicion we were not going to best Covid-19 in two weeks’ time. I began pushing my cart up and down the aisles faster, a little more frantically, in response to a burgeoning awareness that the virus could already be circulating within our community. Looking back now, I see that we were somewhat cocooned in Fulton County, Illinois, a mostly rural county. The health department announced the first positive case on April 10; the first death occurred on October 21. The virus was slow to take a foothold, but eventually it did. In late July, our school district’s board unanimously voted to start the school year fully remote. Each school day, teachers reported to ghost-town school buildings and holed up in their empty classrooms, with admonitions from administrators not to co-mingle with each other. During that time, I dutifully logged onto Google Meets for each class period, where various avatars greeted me because students were not required to turn on their cameras, so none did. Sometimes I got to hear tinny student voices, which sounded a lot further away than across town, and I wondered if each voice matched the person I pictured in my mind’s eye. I had never met the majority of my students in person, and the photographs on our school’s student management system had not been updated since the fall of 2019. I remember the frustration I struggled to keep capped when I would call on students and be met with silence. Were they even sitting by the computer? Were they afraid to say something in front of their classmates, lest they look stupid? Were they just willfully ignoring me? Were they okay, physically and mentally? I pulled more words out of students through written assignments and chat boxes than through Google Meets. Although part of the student body returned to in-person school in January of 2021 while the rest remained remote by choice (we taught both groups concurrently), it was still difficult to get students to speak, even to each other. Sadly, many of our students had become so accustomed to the idea of school as a radio broadcast—one from which they could easily disengage if they so wished—that they no longer felt it necessary to contribute their voices. In Illinois, we’ve been told that all students will return to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, with few exceptions, but I fear the virus has done irrevocable damage to our students’ speech. -
2021-07-02T12:30:00
The Life of a University Campus During the Pandemic
How quiet can a campus of normally 21,000 students get? I will let you in, you can hear a pin drop. When the pandemic began, the school shut down the school Union. On top of that, I was placed on furlough from my job from March until August last year because my job is located in that Union! When I was able to come back to campus, masks and hand sanitizer were required (still are) and the other thing that was noticed was...the silence. Normally, the Union has about 1,000-2,000 students and staff in it at a time, but due to the pandemic, it was completely dead inside. Not only that, the hours that we were open cut in half until some of our workers were let go based on the amount of time that they had spent in their position. In the midst of the pandemic, it would become extremely eerie because there would be times we would not see a single customer for over an hour when normally, it would be steady (and during peak hours extremely busy). Due to the pandemic, our manager left the business and that left me and another co-worker (now the manager) in charge of a store that normally has 8 eight employees. Normally during this time of year, even though it is summer, the Union is completely full due to Freshman Orientation, camps, and campus tours. Currently, as my photo suggests, the Union is a ghost yard....there are no students during the lunch hours, no restaurants open other than the convenience store, and no staff walking around. Ever since last March, this is not only how the Union has been, but also the campus itself. I chose to take a picture of the Student Union Courtyard because this is normally where events are held during open hours in the Union. This is not to show that there are no individuals in the building, what I specifically want to bring attention to is because of no people in the building, it is completely silent 95% of the time. In addition, this is where the Freshman Orientation stations would be where they go to get information about classes and other events on campus. It is very weird to have no one in the building when two years ago they had roughly 2,000 people in the building during the lunch hour period when I worked for Follett's convenience store. It would be extremely loud, at all times and the shifts would go by quickly. Now...there is nothing but silence about 95% of the time on a public campus of 21,000 students! -
2020-09-30
The Sounds of What is Lost
This story speaks to the ever-changing sounds of the pandemic. Sensory history allows us to engage with the past in ways the invite the senses of the past back into the story. As my partner and I were navigating all the trials and tribulations conjured into existence by the events of the past year and a half, we noticed how silent our home full of sadness and confusion had been. Gone were the overhead aerial shows, the chatty neighbors, the rattling railway tracks... Now there was nothing. Our sense of sound changed dramatically and began to represent how fractured our connection to the world was. We had to be plugged in to tune each other out. We had to stare at a screen to see a familiar face. While most things felt, looked, and smelled different, there was nothing that sounded the same. -
2021-01-03
Teachers Not Heard
Parents of the high school I worked at for twenty-five years and where my husband and many friends are still working purchased this billboard to display the message of discontent for one month about how unhappy they are that their students are being subjected to online schooling. The school district named on the billboard has chosen to keep kids physically out of the district's high schools after the winter break due to the immense surge of Covid cases in Arizona. The billboard is disturbing to see since it implies that online learning and the teachers' efforts instructing the students online are not working, and students are failing. A few parents think that the teachers are not doing enough to teach their children and that their children are better off being physically in a classroom environment regardless of the exposure risks to Covid. The parents who posted the billboard do not realize that the teachers teaching online want to be back in their classrooms as much as students but that they want to be safe from unnecessary and potential exposure to Covid. Many teachers have health issues that could become fatal if they were to contract Covid; many teachers live in blended households where they take care of older family members at high risk of exposure to Covid. Many teachers and school employees have children at home learning online while they are teaching, and those teachers have to juggle being a professional and parent at the same time. All of the school district teachers are doing the best job that they can teaching online, juggling family issues for those with their own families sequestered at home. The teachers remain silent towards the public outbursts, such as the one posted on the billboard. Teachers are trying their best to be professional online and personally during this pandemic and refrain from lashing out at the cruelty of those who appear to be a privileged minority posting discontentment on a public billboard. -
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. -
2020-09-24
The subordination of Native Americans through underreporting Covid data
The article reports that Native Americans have been historically unacknowledged in census data and other demographic studies. The author claims there has been a long suppression of Native American mortality rates and medical reports to systematically deprive them of medical access. According to the author, “American Indians and Alaska Natives are 3.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19." This shows us that some of the communities hit hardest by the pandemic are some that are receiving the least amount of support. -
2020-03-26
Emptiness & Unknown By Alexandria Bucy
I created this powem after a video I took during the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. The Las Vegas Strip was desolate of travelers from all over the country. This was something our city hasn't seen in years- possibly since September 11, 2001? Even then, I am not sure it was as silent as it was that night. I based a couple of the lines on the soft breeze in the background of the video I shot. *Poem, and I created it myself -
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. -
2020-03-16
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. -
2020-07-18
A Trip to a Silent Hospital
On July 18th 2020 in the late afternoon, I started experiencing some concerning not Covid-related symptoms and I made the decision to go to the Emergency Room. I’ve had chronic health issues all my life, so this wasn’t an unfamiliar experience. However, I’d been isolating since March and I was terrified of having to potentially go into a situation that was unknown in the middle of the pandemic. The things I remember most about the visit are how utterly desolate the places in the hospital felt, and how silent it was. I’m used to packed waiting rooms and constant noise. This visit was very different. After a brief screening in a large, mostly empty lobby with large barriers and protective measures in place, they assessed that I was not a potential COVID patient and sent me to a waiting room that I was alone in for most of my visit. There was no real chatter, mostly just silence, broken by the TV. The silence continued even back into the ER, where it seemed that the staff was spread thin. The most notable sounds were occasional low conversations and the sounds of medical equipment being moved around and the beeps and pulses. Even when evaluating me, while warm, the conversations sounded more terse and to the point. Everything moved more quickly. In some ways, it felt like being in an abandoned building. Everything was dark, silent, and empty in the areas where I was. -
2020-04
The Silence of Moab
Moab Utah is a lively tourist town normally filled with visitors from around the world. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made it a ghost town. -
2020-04-21
my Lockdown
what happens in my studio in Paris during the lockdown