Items

• 
  2021-03-05

  First State Mass Vaccination Clinic

  A screenshot of when my college announced that our basketball arena would house the first mass vaccination center in our state. I sent this to my family because I thought it was so cold my college got this opportunity. Most of my family got vaccinated here and it was so well run and easy!
• 
  2021-07-02

  No kids in the hallways

  I work as a director of a Boys & Girls Club in Cleveland, Tennessee. For anyone unfamiliar with the Boys & Girls Club, we are a Department of Education-certified after-school and summer program. Our organization is comprised of fourteen Clubs across four counties and, prior to COVID-19, we served over 1,000 Club members every day. Immediately following the outbreak of COVID-19, the hallways of our Clubs were empty. In a matter of hours, an invaluable local resource became inaccessible to hundreds of families who depended on our support. This was an extremely difficult time. Fortunately, our organization has an exceptional leadership team. From the moment our doors closed in March 2020, our administration began working around the clock to adapt our program into one that was both virtual and accessible. Clubs began having daily ZOOM calls with their members, calling families to just check in, making silly YouTube videos and connecting with teen members on safe and secure social media platforms. Even further, our administration ensured that no one was laid off and employees still had plenty of work to do. With our hallways emptied, we were divided into small teams that could easily work in a socially-distanced manner and were assigned to a number of facility maintenance projects. We knew that one day our Club members would return, and when they did, we wanted their Clubs to be fresh, clean, and updated. I was assigned to the floors team. This team was charged with stripping and waxing all of the floors in each of the fourteen Clubs. For about eight weeks straight, I became overly familiar with the burning, sterile scent of Zep Heavy Duty Floor Products. Even with an industrial mask, the sharp and bitter aroma of the cleaner was pungent. Now, anytime the floors need to be done in my own building, I am taken back to those 14 weeks there were no kids in the hallways. Fortunately, we re-opened our doors to our Club members on June 1st, 2020 with strict health and safety protocols, and only at half capacity. We remained at half capacity until June 1st, 2021 when we were finally able to fully re-open our sites. Our numbers have still not returned to what they were, but we are slowly getting there. The important thing to us is that we are able to safely provide much-needed services to our community.
• 
  2020-11-21

  Romance Despite the Pandemic

  Despite the pandemic and all it entailed, I was able to meet my current boyfriend and fall in love. He has made this uncertain time, incredibly better.
• 2021

  The year that was, pandemic and my mental journey

  I live in Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up an hour away in Ashtabula, Oh. My fiancé and I went to a concert they day before everything else closed down. We had no clue it would be the lass mass gathering we would go to in over a year. We moved during the summer and that kept us going. However, after being in lock down and not being able to see our friends and family began to make things harder. We all know the tole that covid has played on physical health but mental health is something the news hardly covers. We have young nephews that we couldn't see. My dad turned 60 this summer and we couldn't have a big party. Summer passed and fall came we thought maybe we can get together for Thanksgiving. Then well if we skip Thanksgiving we can have a family Christmas. That would not be the case. My sister and brother in law had a big family Thanksgiving with his family and they all ended up getting covid. They were around my dad and he got sick. Christmas was a no go. I was worried about my grandma who was 84. It is now March 2021 and we are "remembering" the last year. People without anxiety are feeling the mental affects of a year were we were not able to have parties, gatherings, weddings, and even funerals to remember the lives lived and lost. It is hard not seeing the friends and families that we took for granted before covid. We all need to take a moment, and take a deep breath. Check in with our mental wellbeing. It has been a long year.
• 
  2020-05

  Sick, Broke and Stuck at Home

  This Is a story about my being at home during covid-19 endemic May 2020. By this point, we were 2 months into lice living with a pandemic in America. Things were not progressing as people thought it should have been. And on top of going through the pandemic, there was a racial war going on. So, Not only was I dealing with being a human being and trying not to get sick Or get my mom, my little brother who is only 5 years old sick, but I was also struggling with being a black woman in America. A black woman with black parents, two black fathers, and a black mother and brother. I was scared to death every day. I hope they're dying because of the pandemic or dying because of my skin. It's still a story is still a feeling that I go through every day. It is December now, but I have a little more hope because of higher beings that I'm hoping and putting a little faith in doing what we need them to do to better our country. Now the name of my story is sick broken at home because, during May 2020, I was all of those things. I was not because of the pandemic, but because I had crazy allergy attacks, I was allergic to something I didn't know I was allergic to, and I think I was just mentally sick. My anxiety was at an all-time high. I was depressed, and on top of the fact I was home with a younger brother who is also autistic, and although he is high-functioning, there are times where he just doesn't understand like most kids don't know what they're going through and why the world is now changing so fast. And having to deal with adult anxiety while also dealing with child anxiety and having to pinch pennies because the government hadn't given me the money I had applied for and been approved for. It was all depressing, and while I am blessed to say that none of my family members who got covid died, it was so scary to know how drastic you could be. Now I know I don't know for a fact if I had to live in there was a point in February where I had gotten very sick and my stepdad had gotten very ill as well to the where we self-quarantine to not get my mother and my brother sick. I had never felt so bad in my life, and I've been very ill for four to the point where I couldn't get out of bed, and whatever flu I had was worse than that. And not three, four weeks later that our country goes through basically a state of emergency with everyone shutting down on March 13th. It was my last day of work, it was my last paycheck, it was my last everything until late May, and I still have the bills to pay. I got claimed as a dependent the year before, so I was one of the millions of college students who didn't get the stimulus check and whose parents didn't get anything for them because they were between 17 and 25. Everything in the country was being held handled during that time did nothing for me; it did nothing to help my family or me. Every day was a struggle, and every day I felt stranded like I was just a number, and nobody recognized the pain everyone was coming through on more than one level. And then you also have people who we're refusing to do what is so simple to do and call minor things like wearing a mask, slavery. How damaging that was to a fair few amount of people, and I'm talking millions of people. This pandemic is not something I'm going to look on with anger or pain because, for one, I met good people after the fact. I had many things that happened to me for the better, but the month of March through May had to be the worst months I'd had in a very long time. And as someone who's been through a lot, that's not something I say lightly. My only hope is that a lot more good will come out of this unfortunate and heartbreaking situation than bad.
• 
  2020-08-15

  Jess with Covid

  It shows that COVID is real and that it is serious. My roommate was infected with the virus and she got really sick. In the picture she was on the bathroom floor and this is because she was very nauseous and if she wasn't in the bathroom, the whole apartment would've been a mess. We checked up on her constantly to ensure she was okay and we would cook for her. She had to quarantine in her room for 2 weeks since she moved in before us so we didn't have to quarantine as long as her but it was still not a fun time. She is seen smiling in the picture but that is just because we tried to lift up her spirits so she wasn't miserable the entire illness.
• 
  2020-04-17

  Tree Limb Arch, Cumberland Park, Cleveland Heights, OH

  Within a few days after Gov. DeWine started Ohio's "shelter in place" order, a small arch made of tree limbs appeared in Cumberland Park along Cumberland Road. On a more recent walk, I found that someone had rebuilt the arch on a larger scale. It's interesting to watch for signs of how people do various things to fight boredom.
• 
  2020-04-07

  Cleveland Rocks

  On a neighborhood walk, our family counted sixteen rocks along two blocks of Edgehill Road painted with positive messages related to the pandemic. Similar rocks have appeared in other communities around the nation, a result of a desire to find new ways to occupy time spent sheltering at home. They offer opportunities either for scavenger hunts and certainly brighten the spirits of passersby. Like the rock pictured here, most of the rocks we saw were propped against tree trunks in what Clevelanders call "tree lawns" (sidewalk strips). After seeing the rocks, our daughter felt inspired, so when we got home we found some rocks, gathered her art supplies, and sat on our front porch to paint some rocks of our own.