Items

2020-05-20

Alex Osuji Oral History, 2020/05/05

In this monologue, Alex Osuji discusses his feelings on the social response to COVID 19. He reflects on the racism he is witnessing and connects it to past viruses.

05/20/2020

Michael Chow Oral History, 2020/08/21

C19OH

2020-03-19

This is the executive order from California Governor Gavin Newsom that introduced California's shelter-in-place on March 19, 2020. The executive order orders Californians to stay at home and only leave home for necessities (buying food, health care, etc.) or for working in certain industries.

2020-03-20

The Signal of Approaching Silence

On Friday, March 20, 2020, I was grocery shopping at Hy-Vee in Canton, Illinois when my mobile phone pinged with an alert from a local news app: the Illinois governor had officially issued a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Rumors of the impending order had been circulating for the past few days. I teach English at Canton High School, and we were scheduled to start a week of Spring Break that Friday. That morning the principal had cautioned us to take home our computers and any teaching materials that we might need, just in case we did not return to school after Break. So, the text message confirmed a stark reality. Talk of the stay-at-home order overtook the conversations of shoppers around me. People were speculating about what would come next, now that schools and businesses would be closed. I remember passing the meat counter where I overheard the department manager taking a phone call from a gentleman who wanted to place an apocalypse-sized order of beef. This is it, I thought to myself, trying to figure out what kind of groceries to buy that would sustain my family over for an indefinite period of time, because even though the stay-at-home order was for just two weeks, I had a sinking suspicion we were not going to best Covid-19 in two weeks’ time. I began pushing my cart up and down the aisles faster, a little more frantically, in response to a burgeoning awareness that the virus could already be circulating within our community. Looking back now, I see that we were somewhat cocooned in Fulton County, Illinois, a mostly rural county. The health department announced the first positive case on April 10; the first death occurred on October 21. The virus was slow to take a foothold, but eventually it did. In late July, our school district’s board unanimously voted to start the school year fully remote. Each school day, teachers reported to ghost-town school buildings and holed up in their empty classrooms, with admonitions from administrators not to co-mingle with each other. During that time, I dutifully logged onto Google Meets for each class period, where various avatars greeted me because students were not required to turn on their cameras, so none did. Sometimes I got to hear tinny student voices, which sounded a lot further away than across town, and I wondered if each voice matched the person I pictured in my mind’s eye. I had never met the majority of my students in person, and the photographs on our school’s student management system had not been updated since the fall of 2019. I remember the frustration I struggled to keep capped when I would call on students and be met with silence. Were they even sitting by the computer? Were they afraid to say something in front of their classmates, lest they look stupid? Were they just willfully ignoring me? Were they okay, physically and mentally? I pulled more words out of students through written assignments and chat boxes than through Google Meets. Although part of the student body returned to in-person school in January of 2021 while the rest remained remote by choice (we taught both groups concurrently), it was still difficult to get students to speak, even to each other. Sadly, many of our students had become so accustomed to the idea of school as a radio broadcast—one from which they could easily disengage if they so wished—that they no longer felt it necessary to contribute their voices. In Illinois, we’ve been told that all students will return to in-person learning in the fall of 2021, with few exceptions, but I fear the virus has done irrevocable damage to our students’ speech.

2021-04-15

Covid Chaos

This picture represents motivation to not do anything because of Covid. When covid first started out, I was in 8th grade. I didn’t have any motivation to complete any of my schoolwork because of covid, and that led to me getting all Fs. After my parents checked my online gradebook, I felt ashamed of dropping down so low.

2021-01-01

Summer Reflection

In March of 2020 the state of Idaho enacted a stay at home order. As a teacher I began teaching from home and my husband (a second year medical student) began attending all of his lectures from his office. In my mind I thought, "wow, we're going to get to slow down for a moment." I was so wrong. As a teacher I felt well prepared to move my students online. We already had the tools and platforms in place to make the transition go well. However, I wasn't ready for the overwhelming anxiety that came with the idea of walking away from my computer at the end of the day. Needless to say we continued on with our busy life from the confines of our 3rd story apartment. I continued my grad school class and teaching online while my husband continued studying and preparing for his first board exam. Over the summer I interned with JOTPY. The 12 hour / week commitment to the internship seemed doable and I was ready to be working on something. I'm not entirely sure what happened over the summer but I seem to have been so busy that it quickly turned into a whirlwind. The pandemic was supposed to have this major impact on what I was doing but I found ways to stay exceptionally busy. All of this to say I didn't have time to really reflect on my summer and internship experience. Looking back all I can say is wow. I was cleaning out my desk area last week in preparation for the return to work and grad school and as I was flipping through my notebook I found this page. This page represents a night from this summer that is hard to forget. I was busy working through my curation assignments in preparation to take the weekend off. However, about halfway through my assignment my curation group (shoutout to group 4!) starting chatting via Slack. We we just 4 students who were assigned to a group and we hadn't really chatted before. Suddenly we were talking about everything under the sun while all working through our curation assignments. I don't know that I have more to say on it except that it was fun and joyful. As 2020 turned to 2021 I started to reflect on the year that turned life upside down and I realized that it brought so much joy. While my husband and I have been blessed with our continued health throughout the year we acknowledge those who have not.

2020-10-27

The smells, sounds, and flavors of my house.

On march 19 california issued the stay at home order. That was 222 days ago exactly and over that time me and my family have spent the majority of it in our homes. We have spent this time doing many things, I have spent quite a good amount on my guitar, which I have just recently been able to pluck out the right notes that don't sound too bad, my brother and I have filled our house with the constant aroma of tea through making it so much, and my dad has made some of the best food I've ever tasted in those last 200+ days, just recently he made a cauliflower soup that took 6 hours of work, However everyone including him agreed it was well worth the effort! Both my mom and dad have been fortunate enough to spent the quarantine working and during the days you can be sure to hear either of them on an important call.

2020-09-13

My Corona Experience

An essay I have written that describes my experience during the pandemic.

04/13/2020

Laura Spindler Lempke Oral History, 2020/04/13

Oral history interview with Laura Spindler who lives and works in Indianapolis, Indiana. She shares she just got married, bought a house, and a puppy. She works as a biologist at Eli Lilly and while she hasn't worked on the virus, she has assembled test kits. As an extrovert she is really missing time with family and friends but between walks with her new puppy and time spent playing games via Zoom she is managing. She also credits virtual therapy appointments with maintaining her mental health. She also discusses her mother who is alone and her grandparents who were wintering in Texas but drove back to Indiana anyway.

05/12/2020

Auri Rahimzadeh Oral History, 2020/05/12

This is the second interview in a collection by Glennda McGann

2020-06-09

City Officials Scramble to Prepare as Mass Protests Threaten a Resurgence of COVID-19

Excerpt from Article: State and local public health officials are in a tough spot. After months of imposing restrictions to protect their residents from the highly infectious coronavirus—at great cost to families’ livelihoods and the broader economy—they now must balance those efforts with another, equally vital imperative: protecting Americans’ right to gather en masse to protest police brutality and systemic racism.

2020-06-15

U.S. Excellent Response to Covid

At the beginning of quarantine, I and many people hoped that with quarantine and a sound government plan we would all collectively be able to beat coronavirus and get back to living our lives. As we pass day 94 in California since the Governor mandated a stay at home order, it really feels as though we haven't given our best go of things. Although individual states and locals have had varying success, the Federal response seems to amount to just hoping that it will go away and won't have to be dealt with anymore.

2020-05-25

Friday the 13th

On Friday the 13th of March 2020, Garden Grove High School's Orchestra program was set for their 2nd festival of the season. We were supposed to leave school at 1:30pm and bus all the way to Beckman High School in Irvine, California, 30 minutes away. But of course, Friday the 13th was a bad omen, and it was no exception this time. The festival was cancelled the morning of, at 8am. Once we were told so, anyone in our classroom would tell you that a gust of sadness engulfed the room. We had worked endlessly since August for our short performance but it was all gone to waste. 8 hours later, at 4pm while I was at Track practice, everyone got the news that school would be cancelled for a month. By then, our concert season would only be halfway through so we were hopeful. Unfortunately, school had been cancelled until the end of the school year and our performing arts program will, no doubt, be suffering in the aftermath of this pandemic. Friday the 13th really is a bad sign.

04/22/2020

Moments at Home

This short video, created using the app One Second Everday (1SE), is a collection of photographs each day taken during the initial weeks of the stay at home order in Boston. The images demonstrate the ways that life shifted during this time. For example, many people spent more time than ever inside, took up baking bread or cooking more elaborate meals, and began to wear homemade masks anytime they would leave the house. *A short video, created using the app One Second Everday (1SE), is a collection of photographs

two office workers talking in their cubical

2020-03-12

Last Day at the Office

Two coworkers discuss the coronavirus oubreak, unaware that it will be the last day at the office for everyone before the Stay At Home order, in some cases permanently because 10% of the staff was laid off a month later. It illustrates the rapidity in which conditions can change.

05/06/2020

Joslyn Barragan Oral History, 2020/05/06

This recording is the life changes I have had to go through due to COVID 19. Not only has my life changed but American society as well. This health crisis has brought lots of fear to lose in high risk of being affected. So staying at home has become the new normal for me and most Americans. #CSUS #HIST15H

A social media post from Westwego Police Department.

03/23/2020

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