Items

• 2020-06-19

  What Do You Do When the World Is Ending?

  If you were around on May 30, 2020, you would know that it really did feel like the world was ending. Cities across the country were ablaze with rebellious fire, police and military covered the streets, bridges were lifted. All this during a global pandemic. To be there to be a part of it all, it felt like the world was ending. So, what do you do when the world is ending? There are many answers to this question and while I chose to answer it in multiple ways, one of the primary answers was this: documentation. I documented what felt like the end of the world. Through words, videos, photographs, tweets. Any way I could. But through documenting the end of the world, I encountered some of the most beautiful moments. Moments of peace, of beauty, of love, of collective and mutual care. One of those moments is pictured here.
• 
  2021-03-17

  Vaccine card

  The vaccine card is now a flex to have and is something that makes you cool. Not having the vaccine is frowned upon and makes you not cool if you refuse to get it. In the past flu vaccines aren't something you would flex or show off but with covid we do show off the vaccine.
• 2020-11-13

  Who would of ever thought I would be writing this lesson.

  Today, I sit at my desk and I write a lesson to share with my students. The lesson is about Covid 19. I am asking them to become historians for this very web site and archive their own experiences for future generations. I am sad that my students must do this but so very happy that their perspective will be part of history. So often in history, only the perspectives of a few have been recorded. And there is a danger in that. So the fact that my 8th grade students can be part of history and shape the perspective of future generations is powerful.
• 
  2020-04-20

  Libya: Historic discrimination threatens right to health of minorities in the south amid COVID-19

  "Fears of the spread of COVID-19 in southern Libya expose the vulnerable circumstances of minority communities who have long struggled to enjoy equal access to health care."
• 
  2020-04-15

  NYT Story on the COVID 19 Archive

  Sherri Denney was in the fourth day of quarantine in her home in Springboro, Ohio, when she thought about the toll the coronavirus was taking. She sat in her recliner chair and cried as the state’s governor checked off the number of dead and sickened, knowing there would be more the next day. Overwhelmed, Ms. Denney, 55, tried to put her feelings into words. “Wow,” she began writing on an old sketch pad, quickly realizing the precise words would not come easy. “That’s all I can say. My emotions are ranging from sadness to fear to anger.” The week before, a woman in Nevada turned to her own version of journaling. Mimi J. Premo recorded a video on her cellphone, giving voice to a kind of stunned weariness so many Americans are feeling. And in Indianapolis, in an interview recorded by two university research assistants, a man who is diabetic and H.I.V. positive talked about how the speed and unclear ways of transmission “freaks me out.” The three accounts, snapshots of intimate moments during the pandemic, are a response to a call from historians and archivists across the country to document this extraordinary moment in history. Universities, archives and historical societies, ranging from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to a tiny college radio station in Pennsylvania, are rushing to collect and curate the personal accounts of how people are experiencing this sprawling public health crisis as told in letters and journals, audio and video oral histories, and on social media. They are inviting people such as Ms. Denney and Ms. Premo to share stories and material from the 2020 coronavirus and its aftermath in real time. The idea is to bridge communal history and offer a fully realized look at the outbreak that can help the public, researchers and policymakers better understand how the pandemic permeated our lives. ImageA journal entry by Sherri Denney. It was one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University. A journal entry by Sherri Denney. It was one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University.Credit...Wright State University Whether a somber handwritten journal or an endearing Instagram post, the contributions will offer a look at a nation attacked by a virus coast to coast. The stories document sickness and death. The profound disruption of American rhythms and rituals, evidenced by empty shelves and streets. The gnawing restlessness of sheltering in place. The ways people showed resilience and managed to still find joy. “What we as contributors record is what the future generations will remember,” said Mark Tebeau, one of the project directors of a virtual archive founded at Arizona State University. The team of historians and artists started A Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid-19 on March 13, two days after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic. The name was inspired by Daniel Defoe’s novel “A Journal of the Plague Year,” which chronicles the bubonic plague in 1665 London through the lens of one man. Latest Updates: Coronavirus Outbreak in the U.S. The California State University system will not hold classes on campuses this fall. Top health experts testify that the U.S. is not ‘out of the woods’ and warn against reopening too fast. Testing becomes a flash point in the Senate hearing. See more updates Updated 9m ago More live coverage: Global Markets New York With the help of graduate students and scholars from about 20 universities, the archive has amassed more than 1,400 entries from 500 contributors across the world, including Australia, Peru and China. Mr. Tebeau, a public and digital historian who heads the university’s public history program, said they are also reaching out to marginalized communities to ensure the project is inclusive. One of the first entries came from Ms. Premo, 36, a customer service representative who lives near Las Vegas. She had not left her home for nearly a week in mid-March when she submitted the video. In the clip, just over two minutes, she wonders who might be stricken with Covid-19 next. A neighbor? A friend? A family member? “No matter how many Skype meetings I have, no matter how much I am on Facebook, no matter how much I write in my journal and try to laugh through the tears, it feels so different,” Ms. Premo said. “Living with this uncertainty is,” she added, pausing in the video, “it’s unsettling but I feel that no matter what happens, I guess it’s hope that keeps my spirits up.” Video Mimi J. Premo shared her thoughts in a video diary to Arizona State University. Last week, the Library of Congress received its first Covid-19 collection: street scenes from New York, New Jersey and California by the photographer Camilo Jose Vergara. In addition to documenting stay-at-home life, mask styles, health care workers, the economic impact and how people are helping one another. The Library of Congress is also collecting web content, data and maps. The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History deployed a Rapid Response Collecting Task Force to chronicle the pandemic. “Museum staff is working to formulate a plan that achieves a balance between the urgency to document the ephemeral aspects of the historic turning points as they happen,” the museum said in a statement, “and the need to provide a long-term historical perspective.” In response to the pandemic shutdown, StoryCorps, the story-sharing nonprofit, moved its platform online for the first time. Interviews that used to be recorded in a physical studio can now be done using video conference technology. The audio and a photo from each interview will be preserved in the StoryCorps Archive and with the Library of Congress. And students at Neumann University in Pennsylvania set up a series called the Coronavirus Diaries on the school’s radio station, WNUW-FM. Listeners record themselves sharing pandemic stories using a voice memo app or by leaving a phone message at the station. The diaries air hourly. Local archives are also calling for oral histories and materials. The Atlanta History Center, for example, is asking the city’s residents for digital files and physical artifacts (the latter would be collected once the center reopens). The project, called Corona Collective, lays out how seemingly mundane items — a no-frills furlough notice, a handmade banner thanking emergency medical workers — help tell the story of how daily life in Atlanta changed. Image “Goodbye,” a drawing submitted to “A Journal of the Plague Year,” an archive of the coronavirus pandemic created by Arizona State University. “Goodbye,” a drawing submitted to “A Journal of the Plague Year,” an archive of the coronavirus pandemic created by Arizona State University.Credit...Jeffrey M. Davis Similar efforts are cropping up in big cities and small towns. Sometime during spring break in March, Jason Kelly, a professor at the Indianapolis campus of Indiana University, realized the coronavirus was likely to be the defining event for generations. For a professor who teaches digital public history, it meant something else, too: How people experienced the outbreak needed to be captured and organized in a searchable database. That was the seed of what is now the Covid-19 Oral History Project, based at the Arts and Humanities Institute on the Indianapolis campus. Mr. Kelly turned to the 19 graduate students in his digital public history class and asked if they would put other coursework on hold to focus on the project, which uses “rapid response collecting” for Covid-19 lived experiences. Eventually the project will merge with the larger Plague archive Such efforts to collect memories in real time was also used by groups after the Sept. 11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and the Pulse nightclub massacre. The page from Ms. Denney’s diary became one of the first submissions to the coronavirus public memory project set up by Wright State University. “All of a sudden the pandemic was right here and personal,” said Dawne Dewey, head of special collections and archives at the university. “We put the call out because we need stories to help future generations understand this moment in history.” The archive, partly housed on the fourth floor of the school library, includes the journals of survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic. One was written by Donald McKinney Wallace, a farmer who served in the Army. Mr. McKinney was sickened with the flu in the fall of 1918. He was quarantined in barracks, separated from others by blankets hung from a wire. He wrote about the daily meal of soft boiled eggs and cold toast, feeling weak, a stubborn fever, isolation and the deaths of fellow soldiers — an account that could have been written today. “A century ago, people told their stories in written journals,” said Ms. Dewey. “Now, we are capturing people’s thoughts and experiences through social media posts, email, audio and photographs.”
• 
  2020-05-08

  What Is Going On?

  Listen…I don’t know who else can agree on this with me, but doesn’t it just feel like a light switch went on and suddenly the world knew what the Corona virus was? When I sit down and reflect on the first time I remember hearing of it, my mind draws a blank. It’s like this huge conspiracy within my own mind, that one day I just woke up and all of a sudden was in the loop. There is talk that it started in December, and there is talk of people first hearing in January, for me personally, I have no clue. This is not something any of us prepared for…parents are out of jobs, businesses are declining rapidly being forced to shut down, schools closing and children losing proper education tools. It feels like a horror story, I truly think it is, and I already know down the road in the future my kids will ask about my experience in it and how it impacted me. That is why I am trying to document everything, write journal entries, take videos, to truly remember what I felt at a time like this. I don’t ever want to forget it. But I want it to end. For the first time in my mother’s 35+ years of working, she’s had to file for unemployment. Never did I think that my mom would be unemployed. Things happen though, and since humans are so adaptable it’s been wild to see everyone adjust and learn this new normal. If you would have told me a month ago that my world would be turned upside down, I would have such a hard time believing you. I am a senior in college. I go to Marymount University, and this semester was supposed to be the time of my life. My friends and I took a history course that went abroad to Paris for spring break. That was supposed to be in early March. You’d think it was a joke that 2 hours before boarding the bus to head to the airport and we get an email that our trip had just officially been cancelled. This was so early on with the virus, no talk of quarantine, I didn’t even know what that term was at the time. It wasn’t until middle of the following week that people began discussing the possibility of it taking place. Fast forward to now, nearly 2 months later and over half of my spring semester became online, my graduation was cancelled, and almost all of my friends moved home. My internship got cancelled, and my last day as a senior just disintegrated in front of my eyes. Despite anything, I’ve been trying to find the positives in this situation and grow more so that once this is all over, I can reflect and be proud of what I did. I think it is important that everyone just does what they can to be safe and take precautions, but that they do what they need to fulfill their daily needs to stay happy. Though this has single-handedly been the worst thing to happen in my lifetime, there is a lot to be learned and improved on. But seriously…I still wonder .. what is going on..?!
• 
  2020-03-31

  Essential Employee Letters Tweet

  A woman was given a letter by her HR Department to carry around in case she was stopped. The letter declared her an essential employee. The woman compared this letter to freedom papers from the early 1800s.