Items

2021-09-22

Mask trash near the bike rack

A disposable mask was discarded/lost by the bike rack near the COOR building on campus.

2021-09-23

Disposable mask on campus

A disposable mask on the ground early in the morning before 9AM classes begin.

2021-08-08

Cooking with Canned and Frozen Foods

The file that I have included is a description of how My wife and I were essentially forced to resort mostly on canned and frozen foods for our meals rather than using fresh ingredients.

2021

Home Brewing Beer During The COVID-19 Pandemic

I think my story in the attached document details how someone coped with the monotony of restricted activities from COVID-19, as well as the shutdown of social drinking.

2020-04-14

Sweetness At Home During the 2020 Covid Pandemic

I had just quit my job on February 28, 2020 since my military spouse and I were about to PCS (Permanent Change of Station) from Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, to New Orleans, Louisiana in late March. Mid-March the DOD issued a Stop Movement order for all troops so we ended up not moving until it was lifted on July 1. During the wait, we were in limbo not knowing what would happen with our moving situation, but fortunately we still had our house and stuff. My spouse picked up Covid on our house-hunting trip to New Orleans the first week of March before the Stop Movement was issued, but was never diagnosed since there were not enough tests to go around in North Carolina. For about two months we stayed home together, enjoyed each other's company, and made the best of it. I spent a lot more time in the kitchen than was previously normal, and loved every minute of it. Two years previously, my spouse gave me an ice cream maker for Christmas, but I never took it out of the box and it ended up in one of my difficult-to-reach upper cabinets. When I was organizing my pantry and kitchen cabinets one day to prepare for the time we would actually get to pack up and move, I spied it and thought I would finally give it a try. I have wonderful childhood memories of sitting around with my family and grandparents outdoors while the homemade ice cream my mom and grandmother made, churned in the electric ice cream maker on a hot summers day. I called my mom for her recipe and found a similar one online to reference (published by the Taste of Home test kitchen). The military commissary was out of a lot of groceries, so I made an online order at Sams since they had still had milk and heavy cream, and picked it up. I already had plenty of sugar and vanilla in my pantry. Before Covid, I rarely had time (because of work and school) to make desserts, so this dish was a real treat, a simple recipe, and was super fun to make. The taste of homemade ice cream was so lovely and smooth, with texture velvety, eating it right from the churn. It brought back all the wonderful memories eating homemade ice cream with my family as a childhood, to comfort me during a time I could not travel to see them. Food memories like this can transport one to a time when the world was full of closeness with one's family, when forced to separate due to a world-wide pandemic.

2020-03

Baking: Impossible

Back in December of 2019, my wife and I were visiting my parents and grandparents in Mesa, Arizona. It was Christmas time, so we were enjoying a bit of leisure time that we typically didn't have. I had just graduated from Brigham Young University-Idaho with a degree in History Education, and my wife just finished a rigorous semester in her study of English at the same school. We were ready for a break. Before meeting up with the family, my grandmother brought up the idea to teach my wife and I how to make homemade bread. It was her grandmothers recipe, and I loved it, as she would occasionally make the dough to make scones or kraut biscuits. This particular recipe made a lot of dough and needed to rise three times. Because of this, making bread was an all day event. Just a few short months after learning to make bread in my grandmother's kitchen, COVID-19 shut down the world. We were living in Rexburg, Idaho at the time-a small town of around 28,000 people located in south-east Idaho. Given that we were in a rural location, we didn't feel the immediate effects of the virus like Seattle, New York City, and Los Angeles. However, around early March, schools shut down and we were told to stay indoors whenever possible. Given that I was a teacher, I was suddenly learning how to run applications like Google Classroom to teach from home. The school district wasn't sure how long I would be working from home for. Initially, they only wanted to close for two weeks to deep clean the school. However, this ended up lasting through the end of the school year. My wife was now also at home. Her studies switched from in-person courses to online courses. Professors who had spent their life in the classroom were suddenly figuring out how to teach via a new medium. It was challenging for all, but everyone seemed to be more patient with each other. Given that my wife and I were home, and given that we had more time, we decided that we would make the bread recipe that my grandmother had taught us over Christmas break. Everyone was encouraged to only shop when absolutely necessary, so we added the flour and yeast to our shopping list. However, when we went shopping only a few days later, the baking isle had been decimated. The only types of flour that were left were expensive bags of specialty flour that came in much smaller portions. Yeast was nowhere to be found. Even things like baking soda were gone. When I think back to the early days of the pandemic, I think of panic. While my wife and I were able to remain calm, many people worried they would not be able to find basic necessities. Grocery stores ran short on many items-toilet paper, canned food, flour, sugar, paper towels, cleaning supplies, amongst other things. Many things that were taken for granted were now an uncertainty. So while we did have more time on our hands, baking bread wasn't an option.

2020-03-14

One Last Family Gathering

The world changed as we Alabamians knew it on Friday, March 13th, 2020, as that was the last day that our school systems remained physically open before our governor mandated forced early system closures ahead of the approaching COVID pandemic. As a high school teacher, I uneasily said goodbye to my students and promised to see them on ZOOM the following Monday. When I arrived home, I found that my wife had contacted each of her family members to invite them to a seafood feast planned in our home for the next day, Saturday the 14th. We had recently purchased a tremendous variety and quantity of seafood for a planned early summer river gathering, including shrimp, crawfish, and fish; however, the pandemic was likely not going to allow for such a future gathering, and we knew of no way in which we could consume so much seafood ourselves, and were equally incognizant when we might gather as a family again, so this was essentially planned as a “McRight family last supper” (pardon the blasphemy, but that’s how we coined it). We had prepared each of the dishes before, save for Tamsie’s new experiment, her crawfish cheesecake. We had enjoyed crawfish and shrimp cheesecake at a wonderful restaurant, Roux 66, while traveling through Natchez, Mississippi several months previous; that culinary experience informed our desire to recreate the recipe at home! Thus, our sensory memory of better times and a delicious meal beckoned us to return to that sensory experience and give the recipe a try. We researched online recipes to combine basic ingredients, including shrimp, crawfish, cream cheese, onions, eggs, and bell peppers, with two cheeses, minced garlic, Creole seasoning, salt and pepper, heavy cream, and a shrimp boil mix. The cheesecake was delicious, and the combination of garlic, crawfish, and shrimp contrasted with the sweet richness of the cream and eggs to make for a delightful dish. To this day, the smell of shrimp makes me think of those early days of the pandemic because our kitchen was filled with the aroma of that decadent crawfish cheesecake, shrimp scampi, a shrimp boil, fried fish, boiled shrimp, and fried shrimp. We hosted approximately twenty-five family members, we laughed, we talked about the future, and we expressed concern over what the coming days might bring. Afterward, we dismissed pandemic talk to release our concerns for the shank of the evening, as we were living for the moment and celebrating our being together. I remember thinking but it might be a long time before we could get fresh seafood again, because we did not know if the opportunity to find fresh seafood would avail itself again in the near future, nor did we know if grocery stores would remain open. That was a time of complete uncertainty. I will likely never again enjoy a shrimp meal without thinking about March 14th, 2020, as the world in which we had lived mere days before somehow now seemed different, foreign, and unsettling.

2020-03

How to lighten the mood? Homemade brunch!

Before the pandemic, one of my favorite ways to celebrate a special occasion was by going to brunch in New York City. Understandably, once the pandemic began, I knew that it would be a long, long time before I would see those city lights again. Rather than get down in the dumps, I decided to improvise and bring the brunch experience to my family home as a way to lighten the rather grim mood. A few weeks into the lockdown mandate in March 2020 I told my family to stay away from the kitchen. I organized a brunch with avocado toast, bacon, fried potatoes, and the centerpiece, a meal I had never made on my own, and a brunch staple, eggs benedict. I learned how to poach an egg for the first time with a few failed attempts. I then decorated the plates with the hollondaise sauce as if it were at a 5 star city restaurant. I made menus with drink options ranging from mimosas to bloody Mary’s and served my family, pretending I was out in the city for a celebratory brunch, despite the lack of celebrating going on in the world at the moment. Even if for an hour, this experience eating brunch lightened our moods and reminded us that despite what was going on outside our home, we at least had each other.

2020-02-09

Drop-off COVID testing

ASU just announced a drop-off COVID-19 saliva testing program. Testing at ASU and in the community, thanks to the ASU Biodesign Institute, has been more accessible and efficient compared to other states. Now, ASU is letting people pick up kits, fill them, and drop them off at a collection box. Results are speedy, returned within about 48 hours. It's reassuring to work in an enivornment that takes the public health crisis seriously and is actively taking measures to reduce risk and exposure.

2021-02-07

2021 ASU Graduation?

This story tells of my experience of hoping for a spring 2021 graduation. It is important because it captures my feelings about it and shows how closures are still happening in 2021 like they did in 2020.

2020-07-31

School Re-opening Video from Now This News

This video is from Now This News and uses footage from the School District of Manatee County in Florida. The footage was for promotional material the school district released in July 20202 for what it would look like in August to have their schools be re-opened. The video mentions the controversy between parents and schools and professionals that want to wait for in-person teaching to resume.

2020-10-30

Keeping Constant Connection

Museums have suffered in a very unique way during the Covid-19 pandemic. Without the primary form of interaction with society, in-person, museums are forced to translate their material online where chances are high they become just another online source or library. The Institute of Museum Ethics goes beyond its name in its content. Almost like a social media website for museums, the IME posts the latest stories and news regarding all things artifacts, donations, and media coverage on museum developments; a really great tool for any researcher and a pleasant read for anyone who takes an interest in preserving the present and appreciating the old.

2020-08-24

Golden Opportunity

I created this sweet (as in cool) poster to promote the JOTPY Internship and recruit more participants for the fall semester. I love the imagery of hand sanitizer as liquid gold. The fact that it a public mural makes it even more compelling. I started off with 9 students enrolled in the fall internship. This internship is open to ASU history graduate students. Yet, slowly that number dropped down to four. I’m not sure why. I don’t think that there’s a better opportunity out there right now. Nowhere else can you complete a remote internship on the scale of the COVID-19 archive. This archive is magnanimous, it’s important now, but it will be remembered as a watershed moment in public history projects. I do recognize that people are busy, and the fact that the internship goes beyond the normal 7.5 week session is an extra piece to juggle, but in my mind anyone who wants to do public history or gain a serious skill set needs to be part of this project. I hope I can convince more people to join.

2020-07-17

#MaskUpASU

This is a screenshot from the Sparky Sun Devil mascot account. If ASU is so worried about students, staff, and faculty wearing masks, I’m not sure why campus is open and we’re set to return to face-to-face instruction in two weeks?

2020-05-20

Building A Student Organization During A Pandemic

I have always searched for ways to make clubs, activities, and events more accessible to online students. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted a lot of students into an online format, it also posed a unique opportunity to organize students, irrespective of their geography. LGBTQIA students face unique challenges and it's important that we are able to connect with our peers and community even as we must maintain social distancing. I created the LGBTQIA Sun Devils and Allies organization which is in the process of being registered as an official club with ASU. The idea is to connect students from all of ASU's campuses in a safe and inclusive environment that serves as peer and academic support. #ASU #HST580

2020-04-02

ASU cancels May commencement due to coronavirus, joining NAU, UArizona

#cshsecon

People and cars crowded on a street in front of buildings.

2020-03-06

Social Nights in Las Vegas, Nevada

The image was taken nearside the busy streets of late-night Las Vegas, the Friday when ASU’s spring break initially started. However, to describe this image would be to pinpoint a moment in time where a large group of people have gathered together to enjoy a night in Vegas with no fear of keeping their distance. When I took this photo the majority of people and community seemed to flourish both economically and socially. This image reflects a distinct contrast of how people are socializing under the current circumstances as of now. Nevertheless, this picture was taken because a few friends and I planned on going to Vegas as a spring break trip, as a result this image embodies a typical social and eventful night in Las Vegas, where many people gathered in their own activities while still at a close distance. Thus, what this image tells us about the pandemic is how quickly social and societal norms could abruptly change in a few months of time. What this image also says about the pandemic is how even though social fear is heavily sensed, there were and will be more moments when we will all come together and enjoy each other’s company once again. As a result, this image serves as a reminder that we will all overcome this predicament together and come back as a collective community to not only live, but thrive. Essentially, what this image tells us about this pandemic as well is that even though under strict social distancing we should all still take part in the views and activities that make us happy, even if we have to be a little more creative in how we take part in such functions. *This item is a self-taken photograph that was enhanced with camera settings to make the image appear lighter and the colors to stand out more vibrantly.

2020-04-03

Reminder: Grab & Go Meals Location & Hour Changes

Thank you for your unwavering support of our FREE Grab-and-Go Meals Program during school closures. So far, we have served more than 50,000 student meals across all locations to children 18 and under in our communities. We thank all our amazing nutrition services employees and volunteers for feeding those children/teens in our community! Due to health and safety guidelines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Tempe Elementary School District leadership, we would like to share this important update regarding changes in the distribution of meals and changes in time to our grab-and-go schedule. Beginning Monday, April 6, we will no longer be serving meals at Thew and Wood. Our five remaining feeding locations will still be serving meals between the hours of 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. only. You will be able to pick up both breakfast and lunch during this time.

2020-03-15

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