Items

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  2020-02

  Sights and Sounds of a Maine Island

  In February 2020, I moved to Vinalhaven, an island off the coast of Maine, for a job that promised to advance my career and provide time for personal introspection and growth. The island community was vibrant, and as a newcomer, I was invited to dinner parties, game nights, and book club meetings – I hardly had time to miss the family and friends I left behind in Colorado. Three weeks later, the COVID-19 pandemic required me to exchange my introduction to the community for long solitary hours. Handshakes and warm hugs from new acquaintances were replaced by cold winter days and a lack of human contact. The seclusion drove me to explore the island’s shoreline and conservation trails and intermingle with nature that was unimpeded by humans who had retreated behind the walls of their homes. Without the distraction of a companion, I noticed the wind rushing through trees, saltwater crashing against the rocks at the ocean’s edge, bald eagles screeching, chickadees singing, and small animals scurrying through tall natural grasses near the basin. I sat so still one morning that a curious, gray mink approached me and stared for a few seconds. One November evening, while I walked along the rocky shoreline at State Beach, an estrous scent from a whitetail doe in heat wafted from the nearby woods. While the pungent odor attracted bucks, the smell assaulted my nose and distracted me from the fresh scents of saltwater, pine, and balsam. The overpowering smell suggested that the doe was close; her presence comforted me in my isolation. I expected to integrate into my new island home through people. Instead, I became grounded in the environment, surrounded by the sounds and scents that I may have otherwise missed.
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  2021-01-25

  Vaccine Localism Defines Who Belongs

  This article says the NH state government has changed its policy to define NH residents for vaccine purposes as NOT including second home owners, non-resident landlords, and other non-full-time residents. This matches policy in Vermont and Maine, both of which have cited vaccine scarcity as a reason to prioritize their own full-time residents (and presumably voters). Who "belongs" has been a hot question in New Hampshire since long before the Coronavirus emerged, but Covid-19 has emphasized existing fault lines. Lots of people with second homes moved more full-time to New Hampshire starting in March 2020, escaping areas with higher infection rates but being perceived as virus vectors by locals, particularly in areas that usually only see tourists in the summer. Vaccine scarcity has created an us against them mentality. NH is prioritizing those most at risk of death - which means those in nursing homes and congregate care facilities (did anyone know that word prior to coronavirus?) and first responders, but in the state with the 4th largest elderly population, that leaves a lot of people over 65 and living at home as second in line. The Governor had already put ski patrol in the list of first responders (so ski areas could open), so letting second home owners get vaccinated seemed to again prioritize those with more money over those more at risk. Little of any of this affects me directly - I'm already in a lower vaccine category due to being younger and healthier than the state average. But in a state where 21 years residence still marks you as an outsider since your family is not from NH, the increased "localism" feels potentially dangerous. While prioritizing full-time residents make sense to me, what will be the next line drawn and will I be okay with that one? How do existing biases in NH affect our vision of "who belongs"?
• 
  2020-06

  June of 2020: a quarantine journal

  This past June, for the first time in my life, I began keeping a daily journal—composed in formally identical declarative sentences—as a record, not only the events of the world that were on and affecting my mind, but also my domestic observations of home, of family, the creatures in my yard, the blooms erupting throughout the garden. In a season of isolation and upheaval, it in many ways helped to keep my brain from total dissolution into quaking depression. Once this month-long record was complete, I launched a Kickstarter campaign in support of the limited publication of *June of 2020: a quarantine journal*, with all profits being donated to Black Girl in Maine, a social-justice blog founded by writer, educator, and activist Shay Stewart-Bouley. While my skill has always been the construction of narratives that allow the reader to feel what it’s like to experience the characters’ experiences, Shay’s talent lies in taking the complex abstractions of social justice and explaining them in a way that is not only immediate and concrete, but also grounded in the experiences of both herself and her audience (in other words, she takes the cultural phenomenon at large and makes it directly relevant to you and your life). She has an ability that I lack. So I’m using my abilities to help support her and her work.
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  2020-06-28

  Camping During a Pandemic

  Before COVID-19 had hit the US as hard it did, a couple of friends and I had talked about going camping in Saco River once the semester was over. However, once we all went into quarantine this plan felt far from reality and we all forgot about it. It was the beginning of July and things had calmed down a little bit. I remember being out of quarantine and businesses had started to open up. The topic of camping came up again when we were thinking of ways to see each other in an open land where we can have a good time considering social distancing. Once we thought through the logistics, a couple of friends and I decided to hit the road and drive up to Saco, Maine, and spend two nights by the river in our tent. This ended up being the experience of a lifetime and just what we needed to get away from the pandemic for just a little while. We were restricted from using our phones and all sorts of social media because there was no service. We cooked, swam, played games, and tanned by the water with no worries of what was to come. We also went tubing down the river one of those days and breathed in the fresh air. We truly lived in moment and cherished the beauty of nature which allowed us to escape the reality of the world and take some time to clear our minds.
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  09/20/2020

  Andrew Small Oral History, 2020/09/20

  This interview shares the early-on Covid-19 quarantine experience of Andrew Small, a second-year Asian studies major at Northeastern University. Andrew talks about where he was in the middle of March when universities started to shut down and send their students home, where he went, how quarantine and at-home learning affected his first year at Northeastern and touches upon what his reaction to how the state of Maine and how America responded to the pandemic. He also speaks briefly on how he thinks this will affect the future actions of Americans and what the pandemic has revealed about America. This interview was conducted as an assignment for HIST 1215: Origins of Today, instructed by Molly Nebiolo.
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  09/18/2020

  Lauren Murray Oral History, 2020/09/18

  Lauren discusses how the pandemic has affected her university studies
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  09/20/2020

  Erika Knox Oral History, 2020/09/20

  Erika offered the story of her personal experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and her thoughts on the broader situation affecting the world.
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  2020-06-14

  A Distanced Graduation

  The image above shows the window of the Peaks Island Library, where the town celebrated their graduating seniors with a “Congrats class of 2020” sign. Surrounding the banner are the names of the high schools the students attended. Since the shutdown began just months before my class was set to graduate people all over the state have been putting up signs and decorations to give us a celebration. We had virtual commencement speeches, videos, lawn signs, balloons, and free pizzas that in a way made the year more special than a normal walk across the stage.
• 2020-05-04

  A Life in Coronavirus Isolation: The Importance of Human Interaction

  I am currently a rising junior studying at Bates College. This semester has been extremely tough for me, as our school switched to remote learning about halfway through due to the Coronavirus, forcing myself and the entirety of the student body to go home and continue classes online. When the administration announced that we would be required to leave campus on Friday, March 13th, the student body had the opposite reaction of what the faculty had hoped would happen. As opposed to packing up and getting away from campus immediately, the vast majority of the student body, including myself, partied like there was no plague that could kill us all. I began to appreciate how important genuine human interactions were- sober or not- and knew that this switch to strict isolation in my home would certainly act as a stressor for the mental health issues I had been dealing with for most of my life. The move to online learning was particularly tough for me, as whereas some of my peers still had set lecture times with their professors and classmates on Zoom, all of my course's professors made the choice to either just post powerpoints and video lectures, or, in one case have us continue to work through the class material, teaching ourselves the ideas in small groups (which turned out to be particularly ineffective, as the groups were mostly focused on dividing up work amongst ourselves). This setup not only completely threw my sleep schedule off, where I was falling asleep around 4 or 5 in the morning, and sleeping till 2 or 3 in the afternoon, but the lack of human interaction and the inability to put myself in a working environment led the time I had dedicated to getting my assignments done extremely unproductive. As the end of the semester neared, the considerably lighter workload that had been given to us became much heavier, as I planned out a schedule for me to finish all my course assignments in 2 weeks, then 1 week, then 5 days, and then 48 hours. When mapping out that last plan, I knew that I had to follow it to a T, and it will be one of the hardest things I ever had to do. However, much like the first 2 months in isolation, I continued to be extremely unproductive, despite staying up however long it would take for me to finally get to work. The stress had finally got to me, and I hit rock bottom the morning after I had successfully carried out the most important parts of my 48-hour plan. COVID-19 was the stressor for my mental health issues to impact my life like they never had before.
• 
  2020-04-22

  Chief of Penobscot Nation Offers Condolences for the Loss of Three Tribal Citizens

  “I understand the frustration; we are all feeling it, but it is important that we stay focused and continue to follow the community restrictions to protect the health and safety of our community, especially our most vulnerable elders and those with health issues. It is only through our own combined efforts that we will succeed in protecting our community. Although no one knows when this pandemic will end, we know it will end; and we are already making plans about what safety practices we will continue to follow when we lift the Tribal workplace and community restrictions.” #IndigenousStories
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  04/29/2020

  Oliver Kaplan Oral History, 2020/04/29

  Oliver Kaplan begins this recording by stating how the monologue is for a college assignment in their “China in the world” class. They then speak about how they were aware of the virus well before its spread across the world, due to the class they were taking. Initially Oliver thought the virus would be contained in China, but realized that it was going to become a larger issue when he noticed anti-Chinese sentiments at his college in Maine. Oliver then describes how shortly after that his school shut down and he returned to his home in California. Oliver concludes this recording by talking about local political policies in Los Angeles and hopes the lockdown will end soon.
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  03/14/2020

  Orland (Maine) Fire Department Covid-19 Policy

  This policy was created and distributed to the Orland Fire Department, an all-volunteer, non-EMS department in Hancock County, Maine, to address the protection of members during the pandemic.
• 
  03/29/2019

  Maine residents try to force quarantine of out-of-towners by cutting down tree, police say

  A humorous yet sad headline about the fears people are feeling during the Covid-19 pandemic. It can feel hard to find something to laugh about amid everything that's happening.