Items

• 
  03/18/2020

  I can only hope

  The image makes fun of how many some Americans overreacted to the news of toilet paper shortages and that they were stupid for doing so. It also shows that not all important events will make good movies.
• 
  March-May 2020

  Pandemic Oral Histories: Busan, Delhi, Kaohsiung, Nanjing http://moderncity.georgetown.domains/oral-history-project/

  These are four extended interviews with residents in Asian cities about their experience of the pandemic. *Students in the Georgetown University course, "Approaches to the Modern City," taught by Jordan Sand. *Interviews with residents in four Asian cities.
• 
  2020-04-08

  How will this moment be seen in the Future?

  This is a tweet reflecting on what it may be like explaining to people in the future what it was like living through Covid-19. The tweet also wonders what impacts this event will have on us. #HUM402
• 
  2020-04-10

  Face the Future

  It is a collage of what our future fashion may look like.
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  2020-05-08

  ‘It’s Teaching Time’: Children of Survivors of Past Pandemics Say There Are Things To Be Learned

  “The resiliency has been passed down to further generations, so we are able to survive these times of struggle.”
• 
  2020-04-01

  Alaskan Natives Ask for Solidarity by Staying Home

  "Stay Home. For our elders, for our tribes, for our culture, for our future...in solidarity we stand together." #IndigenousStories
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  2020-04-18

  Diary in the Time of Corona

  I woke up this morning and decided to write. Why today? What’s different about today than yesterday, or the day before? I have no answers to these questions. It’s Day 25 of the quarantine. The sky is dull gray and it’s raining, my windows streaked with wet wavy lines that make them look like etched glass. Today is not so different from yesterday, except yesterday it wasn’t raining. And yesterday we went to the supermarket. That place fills me with terror. The aisles are not wide enough to keep the required six feet social distance. In the produce section it’s inevitable that two or more people will end up inspecting the bananas or the lettuce at the same time. When that happens we move apart as far as we can but we don’t walk away, as if the lettuce or the bananas or whatever are a territory we refuse to surrender. We do avert our eyes, ashamed to look our adversaries in the face. Upstairs in my bedroom I hear the rain against the roof, a soft, steady patter. The marsh is enveloped in a fine mist with ochre and green grasses and a few trees yielding small mauve flowers. I’m waiting for phone calls from the dead: my father, who passed away nineteen years ago and my mother, who passed away three years ago. Why do we want what we cannot have? Or is this the nature of grief, that after the sharp stabbing pains of loss a knot of slow sadness begins to form and 2 wind itself around our hearts, once in a while tugging so hard we’re reminded sharply once again of those who are gone? Maybe that’s what writing is for: not the documentation of what we have but the recovery of what we’ve lost. I’m reading a book by Lydia Davis called The End of the Story. It’s a novel about a woman writing a novel about a brief but intense love affair that ended thirteen years earlier. She can’t finish the novel because she can’t find the right way to end it, or so she says. But we know she can’t finish the novel because finishing it will end her connection to her lost lover, and she doesn’t want to experience such pain and grief all over again. The rain has stopped and the sky has shifted to a softer gray. The yellow and dark greens of the leaves are startling and bright in the thin light. Lydia Davis is a descriptive writer. She paints vivid pictures of the natural world: sound of ocean waves, piquant scent of eucalyptus, aggressive jade plants. But in her obsessions and delusions and isolation from friends she is not the best companion for me right now. ** Day 26. I am a witness to the pandemic. Everyone is a witness. But I’m not risking my life like the nurses and doctors and other workers on the front lines. I feel like a coward. 3 Today is sunny, with a cloudless sky of soft, washed blue. When you are quarantined weather becomes very important, like a prophecy or a sign of progress, or stagnation. On fine days I could go outside for a walk but usually I don’t want to. On the days I’ve gone for walks there’s an unspoken tug-of-war on the sidewalk when others approach: who will be first to step out of the way. My husband and I are always first to move. We agree we tend to give a wide berth earlier than necessary. Still, each time we veer into the street so walkers can pass I feel we’ve offered a consideration that was not reciprocated. This gives me a feeling of victimization that makes me even more irritable than I already am. On a recent walk I couldn’t help noticing that everything in my neighborhood reminded me of the virus. Small shrubs with crimson buds. A mask in the middle of the asphalt, awaiting asphyxiation. Street signs that say Dead End. I never realized there were so many dead ends where I live. When I’m overcome with anxiousness I prepare a meal. Before the time of corona I was a reluctant cook, and we often ate dinners at the local trattoria. But of course that’s no longer possible. I don’t have the patience or creativity to be a decent home cook. But now I find comfort in assembling a dish or two. I experience a sense of accomplishment in completing what feels like a meaningful activity. Food is no longer readily or easily available. If I’m missing an ingredient I won’t run to the supermarket wearing with my mask and disposable gloves. With every trip to the market comes the risk of 4 additional exposure. Grocery shopping demands enormous amounts of energy. So I try to plan ahead, which isn’t easy when you’re anxious all the time. Today’s side dish is quinoa tabbouleh with scallions, tomatoes, feta, and fresh lemon. Even writing the word “fresh” refreshes my depleted spirits. Before preparing the tabbouleh I looked out the window, my gateway, my connection to the world outside my home. My attention was drawn to a single orange-breasted robin stepping across the grass. I watched for a while, since now I have time for such contemplative activity. The robin began to peck at the ground, circling and wandering, circling and pecking. I had the idea he was searching for food and not finding any. I turned away. Things I never noticed before. The whiskered tips on the scallions, like a man’s white-gray beard. The amount of plastic and paper towels I waste even though I claim to be pro-environment. I think of my mother growing up during the Great Depression with barely enough food and not enough money. I have coats in the closet, sweaters in the drawers, a stocked refrigerator. Was I really so clueless and ungrateful? ** Day 27. Be mindful, stay in the present. I am trying to be present but the news on the morning radio announced 40,000 Americans are dead from the virus. How is this possible? The future has become our dystopian present. 5 Last night we visited with our kids on Zoom. Such interactions are one of the challenges of this particular moment, the physical separation from loved ones. These meetings in cyberspace reinforce the sense of enforced isolation: my adult children isolated in their homes within an hour or so of mine. I miss them. They might as well be living on the moon. I’ve heard stories of doctors and nurses sleeping in their garages so as not expose their families. This is worse than my experience, much worse, because their lives are in imminent danger. Nonetheless, their experience does not erase the pain I feel as a mother and new grandmother who can’t touch or hug my children. In my home state of New Jersey, 40 percent of more than 4,200 coronavirus deaths have been linked to long-term care facilities. My mother was a dementia patient in one such facility for six years. I thank heaven I do not have to worry about the virus killing my mother in a nursing home. The past seeps into the present. The present is the future, for the time-being. I’m reminded of the words of T.S. Eliot: “Time present and time past/ are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past.” Perhaps our sense of separation between past, present, and future was always illusory. My brother contracted the virus a few weeks ago and was ill with a fever that spiked as high as 102.8. Mercifully he is recovering well. Past, present, and future, they are merged into the nightmare of the virus. I just read about a 25-year-old woman, a Latino grad student studying marriage and family therapy, who died of complications from the virus which she 6 likely contracted while working at a clinic for Latinos in one of the corona hotspots in Queens. I am overcome. I can’t write anymore.
• 
  2020-04-20

  Etymology & Solving Problems the Pandemic Has Brought to Light

  Etymology and the way words have changed over time has always fascinated me, and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly has contributed and will contribute to how many words are interpreted in society. An example of this that has crossed my mind numerous times in the past few weeks is the word ‘quarantine’. Before the pandemic, I always envisioned ‘quarantine’ as being locked in a bright, spacious room in a hospital after getting off an airplane because I had some infectious disease. It always felt lonely, frightening, and uncertain to me. Who would’ve known that quarantine could also mean feeling those same emotions in our own homes? The word itself has become so commonplace and normal to hear because of what is currently happening. I’ve heard some people call quarantine “the q” and many other casual names as an attempt to nickname and accept the situation we are all in, which is only normal. After this pandemic is over, our perspective of the word ‘quarantine’ will be much less serious, as I was describing earlier with the dying of an infectious disease alone in a scary hospital room, and this may not be a good thing. There are already people not taking social distancing measures seriously at all, i.e. those who are currently protesting them, those who are leaving their houses to spend time with others without leaving six feet between them, and many more. If the novel coronavirus returns in the years to come or another disease that requires quarantine measures, especially stricter measures, spreads, then I fear that many won’t take these future quarantines as seriously. However, it is completely possible that the exact opposite will happen, but in order for people to learn from this pandemic, factual information, not disease, needs to be spread. Just like many other global issues, a solution to the course this pandemic has taken not being repeated again in the years to come is education, factual information, and learning from the mistakes we’ve made. Personally, this pandemic has further solidified my dream of becoming a biomedical engineer. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how hard I’d be working if I were only a few years older, but I don’t really have the tools at my disposal right now to do what I’d want to do, which makes me sad. I am coming up with a lot of my own ideas about devices, inventions, and improvements I’d like to make in the future, though. I was talking to my mentor and biggest inspiration on Friday about how this pandemic will change the future of the medical field, including the biomedical engineering field, and how I am going to be able to experience it firsthand. My biggest dream in life has always been to open my own research and development laboratory that is ideally nonprofit and would focus on helping those in third world countries and those who are usually underrepresented in the medical field like minorities. I’ve always been inspired by the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the mistreatment people in the LGBTQ+ community received by medical professionals. It is sickening to me to watch something similar happen before my own eyes, as Black people and Latino people are dying at disproportionately higher rates than other races, and the treatment they receive in medical situations is known to be equal to that of their White counterparts. Again, the only way to solve this problem is through education and awareness, but I hope my future lab will be able to contribute.
• 
  2020-04-03

  1 Year

  This is a response to "A 20 Second Project" (started by Noa Street-Sachs) where she asked people from Minneapolis to Amman Jordan to answer the following question in 20 seconds: 1) Think about 1 year from now. What is a custom/practice/way of interacting that you think may change as a result of this crisis?