Items
Subject is exactly
Food & Drink
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04/29/2021
Aisha Kaylor Oral History, 2021/04/29
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05/19/2020
Trent Jansen Oral History, 2020/05/19
An oral history interview with Trent Jansen. Trent discusses how family and friends have been impacted by the COVID pandemic. He also talks about how his day-to-day work life has evolved during the pandemic. Trent additionally discusses his views that it is time to reopen businesses and get people back to work. He theorizes that mental health issues caused by shutdowns will result in worse long-term issues than the virus itself. -
05/18/2020
Stanton Webster Oral History, 2020/05/18
An oral history interview with Stanton Webster who discusses his background opening a distillery in Knoxville, Tennessee before the pandemic. He discusses how his business reacted to the COVID-19 Pandemic and his efforts to keep employees paid while finding new revenue streams. In this business-focused interview he also illustrated how a small group of local business banded together to navigate the pandemic and government funding pitfalls. He also discusses family life and changing roles in the home. -
2020
Cooking During Quarantine
As a 14 year old kid during quarantine, I had not much to do. I was separated from my friends and longing for ways to feel free. At times, I even found myself begging to go into school, wanting to go back to the old world. Now, everyday would be the same routine. I would wake up and get on my zoom class, eat, and repeat. Yet soon, I began cooking. I found a way to connect and find myself through the foods I baked with my family. Now, I cook whenever I can. -
2020-03-13
March 2020
After our weekly grocery run, our pantry was packed. -
2021-12-17
Cooking During Covid
These photos are a couple of many foods I have created during the Covid-19 pandemic. Although these times were depressing and lonely in ways it was a gift for me to be given the time to find my passion as a chef. Homemade pasta takes 2+ hours, and homemade bread takes 4+ I never would have had the time to do this before Covid. I think that during this time it is very important to find a little bit of light in a time of darkness, and that's what I did. -
2020-04-10
Cookies Over Covid
When we were all in quarantine, I decided that I would perfect one of my favorite desserts, chocolate chip cookies. These cookies had some trial and error to be able to get to the right consistency and I worked on them all of the months we were inside. -
2020-06-01
Retail in Covid
As someone who works at a grocery store I was considered an “essential” worker during the height of the beginning of the pandemic I witnessed quite a bit. First off when it first started and people weren’t aware of what was going on people were confused and didn’t have any guidelines to follow. And thus unknowingly were spreading to the general public within the walls of my work place. Later when the safety measures were instilled there was a lot of push back from ignorant people not wanting to conform and wanted to be difficult causing workers to feel unsafe. Eventually most people followed the safety guidelines. But weren’t pleasant about it. There were many complaints of customers arguing with each other in an attempt to police each other. Not to mention the mask mandate was another issue. As employees we had to wear a mask for 8-10 straight while working. And while customers were in and out they refused to wear a mask properly and weren’t understanding to the fact that is as employees had to wear one all day so there’s no reason they can’t for the quick 30 minutes they are in the store. Then there were the out of stocks. Due to manufacturing/supply chain issues we were unable to keep shelves full. We would regularly have customers not understand what was going on and argue with employees that we weren’t doing our job because we couldn’t keep the store stocked. All in all the pandemic has shown me that the general public is mean and inconsiderate. We were already dealing with the fears of being forced to work in hazardous conditions and to top it off most customer interactions resulted in the employe being unnecessarily harassed in some manor or the other. -
2020-03-29
Cauliflower Fried Rice
This cauliflower fried rice was the first of many recipes that my family cooked together during covid. It reminds me of the uncertainty we felt, cooking a new recipe during such a weird, unpredictable time. I still value the time that my family and I spent together during quarantine, and I sometimes wish that we could still cook together every night like we did during spring of 2020. -
2021-12-13
meme
This meme shows how physically distant we stayed away from people during the beginning of the pandemic, and now the effects are seen now. Us humans are meant to interact with others always, and when we were stuck in our houses for months, it affected us a lot. We see high amounts now of depression, anxiety, suicides, etc. This is important to me because I believe that mental illnesses are just as serious of a problem that we should focus on. -
05/02/2021
Brenda Sawyer Oral History, 2021/05/02
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09/25/2020
Mat Davis Oral History, 2020/09/25
C19OH -
03/19/2021
Jeff Litsey Oral History, 2021/03/19
Jeff Litsey is a resident of the Fountain Square Neighborhood in Indianapolis with his wife and two children. Jeff discusses how the pandemic has affected his family life and schedule while also discussing how the neighborhood dynamics have evolved during the pandemic. Jeff talks about the challenges of running a small, locally owned, coffee shop during the pandemic in the Fletcher Place neighborhood of Indianapolis. This includes revenue, business plan evolution, government assistance, adjusting employee’s hours and pay, and helping employees and customers feel safe during the pandemic. He also illustrates how the neighborhood community helped his employees through tips that rolled into a community employee assistance plan. Additionally, Jeff discusses his anxiety that increased during the pandemic from running a business and worrying about how his shop could affect others and himself. This extended to worrying about his family. He discusses how the hobbies of art, hiking, and birdwatching helped him feel better. The interview ends with his hopes for all people to have healthcare and a home. -
05/20/2020
Smoron_Naomi_
C19OH -
04/10/2020
Thomas Backus Oral History, 2020/04/10
Thomas Backus of Tempe Arizona reflects on what life was like when the COVID 19 hit and how it impacted his life. -
2020-08-12
Lunch Time
With the closing of schools, many students no longer had access to a warm and healthy lunch provided by the federal government. Kids from lower income families often rely on school to provide them with at least two meals a day, but because of COVID-19 they no longer could eat certain breakfast like oatmeal and lunch such as, carne guisada, that they have been used to consuming. In order to address this problem, schools began setting up times for parents to come and collect food for their kids three times a day. Ultimately, due to lack of personal time, parents were picking up breakfast, lunch and snacks for three days on Friday. -
2021-08-05
New Beginnings - Meal Vouchers for International Students
The meal voucher was made for international students coming during the first weekend of August and did not have food, nor was the cafe open for them to eat. During the summer of 2021, communication between the University Cafeteria and the Center for International Programs was complex due to changes inside the Center for International Programs. No plans were made for the incoming students coming that weekend. For that reason, the Center for International Programs had to create a meal voucher to eat at Starbucks or Chick-fil-a inside the campus. Twenty students were coming in the weekend, and the CIP team had to check them in, bring food supplies, and pick them up from the airport. -
2021-10-09
HIST30060 Small business ownership during lockdown
My parents own a small restaurant, and as such, were largely impacted by Melbourne’s various lockdowns. The restaurant is located on the outskirts of the Yarra Valley, in a peri-urban region known for tourism. As such, the location of the restaurant is isolated from major townships and shopping complexes. We were open for takeaway at the start of the pandemic, however when the 5km rule was introduced (in metropolitan Melbourne residents were only allowed to travel a maximum of 5km from home) it meant that only our very near neighbours were permitted to pick up takeaway; remaining open was thus unviable. As we transition into a post-COVID world, my Mum – the manager – in consultation with other local restaurant owners has reflected on common anxieties about the spread of COVID-19 and the process of verifying/mandating that each customer is double vaccinated (as per state government legislation). Will we receive resistance from anti-vaxxers? Will these rules impact how many customers we receive? There are many unknowns. Pictured is the interior of the restaurant – which has been packed up for nearly a year now – and our check-in QR code which customers must scan before entering. -
2021-11-02
Bunnings Sausage on Cup Day
Melbourne Cup Day, 2021. My family has always made time for good food and good drink during the races. Today, though, started with a barbecued sausage in white bread from Bunnings. The return of the community fundraiser sausage sizzle at Bunnings hardware stores has been the subject of memes and jokes throughout yet another long winter lockdown: it is, so the joke goes, the best symbol of freedom we have. The sausage sizzle has a peculiar cultural import in Australia. In recent years, the election day tradition of fundraising has been called the “democracy sausage”, a signifier of the national democratic culture. The “freedom sausage” seems to be in the same category. After months at home, it is the simple things like browsing pot plants and lumber that are most appealing. Only select Bunnings, apparently, were approved to resume sizzles this weekend, so I was glad to take advantage of it. Submitted for University of Melbourne HIST30060, Semester 2 2021. -
2021-10-10
HIST30060: Frustrated Bar Manager
This is a text message I received from the manager of the bar that I work at. It shows the frustration of beleaguered hospitality workers with the difficulties of enforcing government rules such as mask mandates and vaccination certificates as a condition of entry. -
2021-04-22
HIST30060: Anti-Lockdown Pub Menu
This screenshot of a pub's 'freedom menu' captures the way that people's opinions lockdown measures have been expressed in strange ways. It also highlights the unusual propensity for anti-lockdown opinions to elevate their struggle to that of great civil rights movements of history with their persistent use of terminology like segregation. -
2021-10-13
Evolving Traditions at Ormond College
Pictured here is the 2021 Ormond College Scholar’s Dinner. This event has a long history at the College as a celebration of academic excellence. Yet in 2021 it looked a little different than in previous years. In this image you can see the hallmarks of the COVID-19 pandemic – mask wearing, seated social distancing and individual, single serve drinks. Nevertheless, many of the rich traditions of the College can still be seen – a formal hall, the use of the original dining hall and the wearing of academic gowns. There is both continuity and change within this image. In this, it gives insight into a tension felt by many during the pandemic – the desire to hold onto the past, but the need to be adaptive. HIST30060 -
2020-03-21
Bakery queue March 2020 HIST30060
In March 2020 during the first covid-19 lockdown, we heard a lot about toilet paper shortages, queues and fights for it at supermarkets. What surprised me to see on a walk around Brunswick was a substantial queue at a local bakery. It was also one of the first social distanced queues I had seen and certainly the first I had taken a photo of. It summed up the new state of affairs to me, while reminding me of the importance that bread holds in our diets. In some ways I was relieved to see a queue for it rather than something more trivial such as toilet paper. The fact it was a local bakery highlighted to me the importance that people in Brunswick place on locally made produce. This also reminded me of the historical importance of bread, for instance the riots that occurred when bread and flour prices increased in France in the late 1780s or Lenin's promise to the Russian people of 'Peace, Bread, Land' in 1917. To me this photo captured how despite circumstances changing immensely, the importance of accessing staple foods remains more or less constant. -
2021
HIST30060 Reflections on working in a supermarket during a pandemic
Some reflections on the pandemic from my experience working in a suburban supermarket in Melbourne. I share some general feelings about how COVID changed the environment within supermarkets, as well as several pandemic-related interactions with customers. -
2021-08-24
Every story matters – Burgers with the Brothers 2021
Burgers with the Brothers is a tradition at St. Mary’s University. Once a year the students and the Marianist brothers get together to build community and enjoy some delicious burgers made by the brothers and students. For 2021 authorities made it possible after a year without it and made students and brothers able to make memories once again. The Marianist Leadership Program made also a contribution to Burgers with the Brothers. MLP is an organization of servant leaders that are willing to help wherever help is needed. As a student doing service with the Marianist Leadership Program, I am happy with how the event took place. As students, we were able to connect with the brothers and other students while using facemasks and gloves to serve the burgers, give out chips and water bottles. I am thankful to live experiences like this one because even if it is not like it used to be, it helps St. Mary’s Spirit be alive and be in continuous connection with the university. Burgers with the Brothers is a very special event for students and brothers to connect and have a little bit of fun on campus. Because it is a tradition is very important for older generations and younger generations to feel the community and experience the Marianist environment. -
2021-09-07
Rolling with the pandemic
This year, I completed an intensive subject called Wines of the World at university. It was postponed many times due to restrictions, and the subject coordinators eventually decided that they would have to host the course entirely online. A key component of the subject was wine tasting, and this photo shows how this was made possible at home. Wine tastings in sous vide bags were posted to each student's house, a quite exciting and novel experience. This photo thus reflects how educators have had to be flexible around restrictions, and come up with new ways to facilitate learning. -
2021-10-27
Economic Student Support
The Student Emergency Fund at St. Mary's was part of an economic relief through the CARES act; where students got financial support via the university. I personally used this fund to help pay for school and basic necessities, like food and bills. It was a relief that students, like myself, were able to obtain this financial support throughout the pandemic and it's still available for all students. -
2021-04-13
HIST30060: Pandemic cookbook
I bought this cookbook earlier this year from a local Melbourne lady. During the 2020 lockdowns, she decided to write a cookbook celebrating cooking and sharing food with friends during eased restrictions. Whenever I cook from this cookbook, I am reminded of how the pandemic was also an opportunity for many people to pursue new hobbies and interests, often creative ones, that they previously wouldn't have. -
2021-10-17
A taste of my motherland with a new twist - Rose Tteokbokki
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, my favorite pastime was watching various cooking and food story-time videos on YouTube. Yet, there was one video in particular that caught my full wide attention. I remember on May 6th, 2021, at around 10:45 pm PST, this video appeared on my YouTube recommendations. The video thumbnail showed one of my favorite Korean street foods, Tteokbokki (Korean spicy stir-fried rice cakes), but with a new twist! Growing up, I associated Tteokbokki with flavor notes such as the spiciness of the Gochujang and Gochugaru (Korean chili paste and chili powder), the sweetness of the Mulyeot (Korean corn syrup) in which also helps give the rice cakes its glossy shine, as well as using Sogogi dashida (Korean beef stock powder) to further enhance the umami tangy flavor. Of course, there are other variations of Tteokbokki such as Jjajang Tteokbokki (made with Black bean paste) and Gungjung Tteokbokki (made with both Soy sauce and beef) but the modern recipe with the Gochujang never failed to hit all my tastebuds. Well, that was until I discovered the video. The video used the modern Tteokbokki recipe, but also adding in a new twist with ingredients such as heavy cream and milk to give the Tteokbokki a pink color. Because the Tteokbokki resembled the pink colors of a Rose pasta sauce, it became “Rose Tteokbokki.” After watching the video and doing some research on Rose Tteokbokki (I ended up staying up till 3 am) I became convinced and made some for brunch. Making Rose Tteokbokki for brunch was the best decision I ever made because it still kept the delicious flavor notes of the modern recipe but with the extra creaminess and cheesiness thanks to the heavy cream and milk. Also, adding in meats such as sausages and bacon along with Korean wide glass noodles gave the Rose Tteokbokki a unique chewy texture combo. Once I finished up the Rose Tteokbokki, I posted a picture of the Rose Tteokbokki on my social media accounts, and one of my friends who live in Seoul replied with, “Jungeun! You’re also joining the Rose Tteokbokki bandwagon?! Everyone in Korea is rushing to make their own and/or ordering from the delivery apps because of Covid! Once Covid ends, come visit me and let’s eat Rose Tteokbokki together!” Reading my friend’s response left me with a big smile on my face, and it felt great to connect with the motherland even without physically being there through Rose Tteokbokki. -
2021-09
The comforting smell of cardamom and cinnamon on a Sunday morning
One of the most defining characteristics of my quarantine has been learning how to bake. After a year and a half, I am finally comfortable kneading, proofing, and baking. I have learned the tell-tale signs of under-proofed and over-proofed bread by touch (slightly indent the bread with the end of your finger and how the dough springs-back will tell you all you need). I have learned to listen for the hollow sound of fully cooked bread. However, one of the greatest joys I have found with baking is filling the house with the smell of cinnamon, sugar, and cardamom on a Sunday morning with my slightly adjusted cinnamon roll recipe from our well-used Betty Crocker’s 1961 New Picture Cookbook (it was my mum’s before me). My family is Scandinavian, and the smell and taste of cardamom is ever-present in Scandinavian baking. Kanalsnegl, klejner, and fødselsdagboller are all delicious Danish and Norwegian cardamom classics. But Betty Crocker’s cinnamon rolls are also highly popular in my house. From this, a fusion roll was born. On Sunday mornings, the house is filled with cinnamon and cardamon of these classic buns. The Betty Crocker recipe calls for two teaspoons of cinnamon filling, but I sub one teaspoon with cardamom. I also add a pinch of cardamom to the butterscotch topping. In a time of stressful uncertainty, the smell of freshly baked rolls with cinnamon and cardamom is like wrapping up in a comfortable blanket. I have attached the recipe if you want to try this sensory smell experience, too. -
2020-11-26
A New Sense of Taste
The memory I related is about the difference in taste and smell before I had covid versus after. It is still altered in some ways and did not return as it was before. I still find it jarring eat something that I used to love only to find that it tastes different and I no longer like it. -
2021-10-14
Smell of Covid in Carolina
This story of the pandemic deals with the sense of smell and how it relates to my experiences while working as a security guard at a local college. -
2021-10-14
Smell of Covid in South Carolina
Until recently I worked for Campus Security at a small college in the upstate of South Carolina. Before Covid, my job mainly consisted of patrolling the campus on foot and by vehicle. I would let students into their dorm rooms when they were locked out, perform traffic duty, write parking tickets, and occasionally perform searches if we thought a student had a weapon or some other kind of contraband. When the virus began to make itself known on campus, our job descriptions changed. Oddly enough, we were expected to deliver meals, three times a day to students who either had the virus or were in quarantine due to exposure. At first, we only had a small handful of students to feed but by the Fall of 2020, we were delivering meals to nearly one hundred students. Keep in mind, there were at the most, only four officers delivering these meals at any given time and the student to be fed were spread all over campus. The one thing that really stands out in my mind during this time is the smell. I have never been a huge fan of breakfast but the smell of scrambled eggs that never seemed to go away, almost ruined the first meal of the day for me. No matter how quickly you delivered the meals, by the time you finished, the patrol vehicle smelled like scrambled eggs. If it was a warm day, which it usually was in South Carolina, the smell was particularly heavy. House Keeping had to sanitize the dorms daily. One particular dorm building had a smell of its own due to the fact that a large trash bag burst in the elevator and spilled its contents all over the ground floor lobby. Many of the quarantined students lived in this dorm and I can still remember the rancid smell when walking through the front door. No matter how much they cleaned, house keeping never could quite get the smell out. While working at the college, I was like most, worried that I would contract the virus. To help prevent this, I sanitized my hands on a regular basis. The smell of alcohol wipes and Lysol will always remind me of this time. I also wore a mask wherever I went and would sometimes spray different scents on the mask to make it smell nice. Smell, above all other senses, will remind me of Covid and my time as a Campus Safety Officer. -
2020-04-07
Rediscovering the tastes of my childhood
Some of my earliest memories are of the sights, sounds, and tastes of my grandmother’s kitchen. She passed away almost exactly one year before the stay-at-home order was put in place in Washington State. At that time, I was already an online student working from home and my partner was driving across the state every weekend to work and come back home. When lockdown started, I didn’t realize how cooped up I would feel. I decided I needed to revisit the feelings of my grandmother’s kitchen. Around the same time, my family got a trailer full of boxes of my grandmother’s things. In this box was a handwritten cookbook filled with the recipes and stories from my childhood. There were handwritten letters from my great-grandfather to my grandmother, recipes she had clipped out of newspapers in the 1970s and 1980s, and family recipes I thought were lost when she passed. One of which was a Spiced tea, also known as friendship tea, recipe. For me, this tea is the epitome of Christmas time spent with my grandma. This recipe exists on the internet, but it was never as good as the one my grandmother made. When I found these recipes, I set out on cooking my way through them to pass my time during lockdown. My partner was working remotely so he was home to try them with me. It was an emotional experience for me after the loss of my grandmother and it reminded me how much food can bring people together. This recipe no longer represents Christmas and my grandmother, it now is something that makes me think of lockdown with my own family and how it brought us together. If it wasn’t for the stay-at-home order, I probably wouldn’t have connected to these recipes again and I definitely would never have had to buy tang. The pandemic has brought a greater connection to history and sensory history. The pandemic has also changed the way we experience our senses and even changed those senses for some people. Sensory history shows how people experienced the world around them during the pandemic. If you try this recipe, don’t be afraid of adding more or less of what you like. I don’t know what measurement a scoop is, but as my grandmother always told me, we don’t measure to be perfect we measure with our hearts. My best guess is that there are about 2 tablespoons in a “scoop”. Ginther’s Spice Tea 1 ½ cup Tang 6 scoops lemonade ½ cup instant tea ½ cup sugar ½ teaspoon cloves (or fresh whole cloves) 1 tablespoon cinnamon (or fresh sticks) Combine the above ingredients. Add 2 Tablespoons of mix per cup of hot water. -
2020-05-26
Resisting the Urge to Stress Eat During COVID-19
A blog post from Banner Health on managing the urge to emotionally eat. -
2021-10-07
Exposing Systemic Racism in all Areas
While some believed the pandemic aid solved food insecurity, that couldn't be further from the truth in black neighborhoods. -
2021
POV of a Cattle Rancher
This is important to me because this is my partner speaking. At the beginning of the pandemic we were living in Montana on a working cattle ranch, so our experience was a lot different than what we were seeing on social media. We experienced extreme food shortages and ironically had an even harder time selling cattle to processors and feed lots. -
2020
Social Media Interactions
I thought this interaction represented a common argument nowadays between people who are not as sympathetic to how the world has changed, and someone else who is trying to counter those negative ideas. -
2021
Essential Workers
While the pandemic is still going strong, this type of post reflects some of the aftermath of the pandemic. Restrictions have loosened in enough places that people are able to return to restaurants, but there are still so many challenges and obstacles these essential workers are having to face. This picture left an impression on me because it is enforcing that sense of community and having to stick together to make it through these strange times. -
2020
Going Out of Business
This was one of my favorite places to go in college, and they were unfortunately unable to make it through the closures. It was especially upsetting because they were always busy every night and the continued restrictions in California were too much for them to afford to hold out until people could return. -
2021-10-08
Just monkeying around with Covid
This meme provides much needed comic relief while also pointing out the dangers to physical health and well-being due to Covid social distancing procedures. Being creative about maintaining a healthy diet and exercise regimen is an important response to the evolving pandemic. Has Covid changed the way you eat? If so, how? -
2021-10-08
My Pandemic Life
My name is Ella Bowman and I’m 12 years old, I currently reside in Nampa, Idaho. I like to ride horses, be adventurous, read, and I like cooking and baking with my grandma. I currently go to Lone Star middle school, my elementary school I went to when Covid hit was Willow Creek Elementary. And I’ve lived through history. I like to think that my experience with Covid was a lot better than most people but like everyone, I had challenges. When Covid hit, I was in the fifth grade. I was sick before my school went to online completely. However, I just had the cold, not coronavirus. I believe it was a Friday, everyone was given the option to return to school. I went to school and half the school wasn’t there. To this day, I remember that day. The day before that Friday I never saw my childhood best friend, Shelby, again. She moved schools and wasn’t there on Friday. I had class at the kitchen table, on the floor of my room, on my bed, at my desk, or outside. I didn’t begin middle school like a normal year. My first day was online, and I didn’t get to do any of the fun things my brother would talk about. Last year, we had 5 first days of school: back and forth: online, in-person, half days, and 4 days a week. We had to wear masks all day, and they were strict about it. We had one-way hallways, which made sure we got our steps in. Everyone living through this pandemic always knows that whenever someone is gone for two weeks, they either have Covid or something related like that. Something that we also know very clearly is that we all must keep 6 feet distance. The beginning of this school year is a lot better, Covid wise. Masks are optional, we get lockers, and we’re less strict with rules like last year. We don’t have one-way hallways, and we get 10 to a table. Last year it was only 3 to a table. This year is truly like my first year of middle school but altered. I would agree that from 4th grade to 7th grade, things have changed. When I was in fourth grade, I had no caring concern in the world. I had so many fun memories in elementary school and when the pandemic struck, I was worried all that would go away. I had a “Fortnite” phase in the 5th grade, so during the mandatory two-week quarantine, I played video games. Then again, I’m sure every kid played Fortnite at one point. I remember when my family was stocking up for food, I kid you not, the shelves were empty. Some would totally believe me and others it would be harder for people to wrap their heads around. A lot of perishables were stripped off the shelves. My parents like to playthings safe. They wouldn’t let me touch anything in the stores, and I couldn’t hang out with my friends, unless if we wear masks. My friends came over with masks and we hung out outside. In the rain. Yes, it was raining that day, but we wanted to hang out outside. We had a campfire, we put an umbrella over it but stopped because the umbrella was getting hot. So, my friends and I went to great lengths to have fun during the pandemic. Also, I was pen pals with one of my friends, and our group of friends held Zoom meetings so we could chat. My grandpa also took this situation very seriously. For a whole year, I couldn’t get more within 6 feet of them and couldn’t go into their house. When they finally got the vaccine, I was able to see them. However, just because I didn’t have a super hard time doesn’t mean other people didn’t. The suicide rates came up, more people were dying than being born, and people legitimately became animals. I had a friend who wanted to commit suicide, myself. The world has changed: some in good, some in bad. Something that truly did help me process a lot of this was just simply writing it down. Journaling helps a lot, and I tried to document a lot of the experience. My dad likes to make sure that his family has a good experience and life, so he took us on drives and fishing. Things that you can do without being in a crowd. I had it a lot better than most people, but I still had an experience with the pandemic. All in all, I’m glad I had this experience. I’m glad I lived through history and I’m glad that I have a story to tell. -
2021-07-06
Covid Testing the Potatoes
Humor with temperature testing during Covid-19 pandemic. -
2020-05
The Year That Never Felt Real
When COVID-19 first started spreading in the United States I remember the hysteria that spread so quickly. Not very long ago the aisles in every grocery store in America were empty of non-perishable goods, water bottles, and toilet paper. In the first Fam Bam group chat messages we were making fun of the people buying up all the water bottles, and toilet paper but when we couldn't find toilet paper literally anywhere a little bit of fear struck our household. Just as everyone else did, we began to realize the reality of the new world we were living in and the differences it would make in our lives. In the initial isolation stages I am not going to lie, there was some enjoyment. No work, mandatory social expectations, I was isolated playing my video games, reading my books, ignorant to what was going on in the rest of the world around me almost. It is unhealthy to spend days on end in your room without much social interaction outside of family, sunlight, exercise, just normal day to day life. The walls of my room felt as though they started to shrink day by day, finally when I was called back to work everything was just... different. We were wearing masks, which in my opinion was not really a big deal at all at this point I had begun to understand the reality of COVID. What I experienced from here on was not enjoyable to say the least, when we began doing things in public again everybody felt sort of tense all the time, the energy in places felt dystopic. As a Starbucks Barista we had to mandate masks to every person that came into our store, as a 24 year old working as the manager on the floor I had to deal with some brutal harassment during this time. Every time a customer came in maskless it was my job to ask them "is it okay if I get a mask for you?" if they said no, I had to ask them to take their order outside or refuse them service. Whether I agreed with the policy or not was irrelevant, I had a job to do if I wished to maintain an income so I did my job. Sometimes I would get cursed at, called communist, and just dealt with genuine harassment on a regular basis. When the governor relieved the state of their state wide mask mandate but Starbucks maintained there's it was even worse for us we were the scape goats for a mask mandate and political arguments between two sides we had no part of, the community treated us like political punching bags. To be quite honest, the transition back into society was emotionally exhausting for everyone, but I will never forget how people treated me as an employee just doing there job. At the end of it, I didn't even realize the year had past it just didn't even feel like it really happened. -
2021-10-06
Covid-19 REL 101
I am going to start off by saying that, during the pandemic, I didn’t experience any major changes. Now this is not to belittle those whose life’s have significantly changed, but as far as my life goes, it stayed the same. Of course, I continued to follow the health regulations such as wearing a mask, staying six feet apart, maintaining cleanliness, you know the drill. Other than that, I was one of the lucky ones that could still continue to work. I am a barista at Starbucks who used to work in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but I just recently moved to Houston, Texas. During those times, even though I was just a barista, I was able to connect with people and people were able to connect with me. As little as that might sound, when we are trapped in our homes, completely separated from friends and family for a year and a half within a matter of a week, any social interaction was a blessing. I would have so many customers who would go through the drive thru, and all I can say is, I am glad I can an open ear. I am glad I can listen to people share their stories, even if it’s just about their day. There’s more to my job than to offer lattes and caramel macchiatos, we are a community of people who enjoy coffee, and enjoy each other’s company. With that being said, my contribution to the pandemic was connecting with customers in the toughest times of most of our lives. The object I used to represent my story is a green apron. It’s the apron I wear five days out of the week. It’s the apron I use to show that even at work and through all the chaos, I do my best to put a smile on someone’s face. It is my contribution to COVID-19. -
2021-10-05
Life During a Pandemic
This is a brief look into life during the pandemic and how society has changed as well as what I have learned about the world and myself throughout the last two years. This is important to me because history is a great way to learn more about where we are today, if I am able to contribute to giving an insight to future generations about how our lives were affected by the global pandemic, I would be happy to do so. -
2021-09-30
HERMIT HERALD, ISSUE 129
"My party, right or wrong" -
2020-05-22
Lining up to Shop
This image shows a line outside of a Walmart in Katy, Texas. During the spring and summer of 2020, I would make it part of my routine to visit the grocery store at 7:00am every Friday morning. People would line up outside of the doors waiting for them to open. It was too early for anyone to talk. I'm sure people rather not talk to one another because we were to remain 6 feet apart-- with duct tape lines suggested on the sidewalk. Plus, standing in the southeast Texas humidity made us all melt under the masks. Once the doors opened, people would grab a cart and rush in. From there, it would be a race to the back of the store where the water, toilet paper, milk, and paper towels were stored. However, my prize was disinfectant wipes. The cleaning aisle was my first stop every Friday morning. Very rarely would I get lucky and any Clorox or Lysol wipes would be on the shelves. Today, I have about a dozen containers on a shelf in my garage... and I continue to buy more. -
2021-10-04
Restaurant Employees' Experience during COVID-19
Restaurant Employees’ Experience during COVID-19 The norms of life pre-COVID are not the norms we are experiencing now. We all get accustomed to our ways of living, and then our lives have changed in a blink of an eye. I am a server in a restaurant and walk out each shift with cash in my hands. March 19, 2020, my life changed. I was a college student that lived day today when it came to my income, and for six weeks, I did not have an income to help with the bare necessities of living. However, I was very fortunate that my parents were the lucky ones that still had jobs, and they were able to help me until the restaurants opened back up. I have learned the importance of saving money. The experience of working in a restaurant during COVID-19 was unlike any experience I had in the past. Everyone was required to wear a mask, and the interaction with the guests was unnatural. The guests not being able to see our expressions and not hearing us clearly, I felt we lost the customer service our guests expected. It was challenging to breathe with the masks as the restaurant industry is fast-paced, and at times we would get overheated, nauseous, and did not feel well. I was always ready to go home so I could take off my mask. To-go sales now are a much more significant part of the restaurant business. The challenge with the increase in to-go orders is the design of the kitchens. They are designed to handle the projected sales based on experience, and when to-go sales became unlimited, the time to prepare meals doubled in time, and guests were unhappy. Many did not understand that the kitchen can only produce some much product per hour. It eventually got to the point that the restaurant would have to turn off their phones because the kitchen was at the maximum number of orders that they could produce. Trying to keep the guests happy was a challenge. If we took unlimited to-go orders, then the cook times were doubled. However, if we limited the number of to-go orders, the guests would also be unhappy. It will be interesting to see if the restaurant industry gets back to the norms of pre-COVID. -
2021-10-04
Before & After
This is a quick reflection on some aspects of how life is different now due to covid-19.