Items

• 
  2021-10-22

  "Freedom Day"

  This photo was taken just after midnight on October 22 2021, after the end of Melbourne's final lockdown. With the curfew lifted and fewer restrictions on leaving home we took the opportunity to come out at midnight and celebrate. This photo captures the excitement of the moment, which finally felt like we coming to the end of the most difficult period of the pandemic.
• 
  2020-03-29

  Homemade Food Tasted Different During the Breakout of COVID-19.

  I have a love for baking and cooking which takes up lots of my time when I'm not doing schoolwork. I love trying new and exciting recipes because food from different parts of the world is like a new historical experience. I was a sophomore in college when the pandemic caused us to go into lockdown. We had just come back from spring break, and I remember getting an email saying that we would be moved to online instruction for the remainder of the semester. I was scared because it really hit me that school would not be the same ever again. Luckily, I did not get COVID, but my dad almost died from it. Everyone in my house was separated which meant I had no social life due to not being able to talk to anyone. I turned to baking as a way for me to not think about my sick dad. I basically lived upstairs from my parents. Whatever I made, I would leave for them on the steps to take. Even though my food was delicious, I lost a sense of taste because I wasn't enjoying it with anyone. Food is about culture and people; they go hand in hand. When you don't have that sense it changes how you feel on a social level. When you cook, you want people to enjoy what you're making.
• 
  2020

  Daily Entries

  The three index card entries represent our emotions and actions at the start of the pandemic. I came back home from school to live with my mom so we relied on one another for emotional support. The shared journal helped us record our daily activities, take note of our current state of minds, and allowed us to 'take it one day at a time.' The act of writing down our movements (or lack thereof) and accomplishments (ranging from submitting my thesis to making sweet potato fries) helped us recognize that time was passing and that good days were approaching. We continued to write in our shared spiral journal for about 6 months. The entries are important to me because they reflect how my mom and I were feeling at a very uncertain and unique time in history. While I don't feel comfortable reading through them all just yet, I'm excited for the day when enough time has passed and I can reflect on the months in isolation in an objective manner.
• 
  2020-05-29

  The Spiritual Enlightenment of the Quarantine

  Whilst in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic we as people had lots of time to spend, let alone kids and teens. Because Covid swept the globe so quickly the Educational system was not prepared whatsoever which resulted in the student not even having zoom classes. With this gained a lot of time that I did not know to manage, and so I started my Spiritual Enlightenment. This Enlightenment was basically me starting to read books, paint and improve my ties with my family. Painting stayed with me for a large time of that year but sadly I had to let it go when we started school once more. I entered High School as a different but better version of myself
• 
  2020-04-10

  Warmth of the sun and the feel of the grass beneath my feet.

  The memories that stick in my head the most durning the pandemic are of the time I spent in my backyard with my partner and our dogs. I couldn't go to work and there was not much to do with my job virtually. I spent my days outside playing with my dogs; and sitting or laying on the grass next to my partner. I would sit in the backyard and feel the warmth of the sun cascading over my body; as I inhaled deeply the warm rush of the marijuana smoke into my lungs. I would walk on the ground barefoot feeling the earth beneath my feet and the grass between my toes. Listening to the birds chirp and the bees buzz by on their way to pollinate the many wild flowers and vegetables we have in our back garden. It was such a peaceful time for my partner and I. We had only bought our house a year or so earlier, and during this time we really started to feel like we settled into this space. Our backyard was our shelter from the world. To juxtapose that with what was happening outside of our sun drenched backyard is the most striking thing about these memory for me. Here we were enjoying a freedom that is seldom experienced in this hyper-capitalist world we live in (the freedom of not working). We were fortunate enough that we could spend our days in the sun with our dogs while the world passed us by. There was a brief moment during this pandemic where we hoped that others would see how capitalism ruins our lives and how much better things could be. It seemed in many ways the earth was healing, we had a brief glimpse into what a ecologically sustainable future could look like, but not only that, we had an opening to see what a life that emphasizes people over profit and leisure over work could be. Unfortunately, that was not going to last and was never meant to. The powers that be needed their profits, and their workers to exploit; and slowly but surely they demanded we risk our lives for their economy. The warmth of the sun and the feel of grass beneath my feet was lost to the grinding gears of the capitalist machine and I'm not sure I'll ever get it back.
• 
  2020-03

  Good With My Hands

  I've always used my hands to shape the world around me. Working with my hands both soothes and stimulates, and it feels good to be productive. I've long been known at work for crocheting or cross stitching (my hands can work at those with little help from my eyes) during boring meetings, as a way to keep myself awake and render fruitful an otherwise pointless meeting. I have some very talented hands, if I do say so myself. I make jewelry, I quilt, I cosplay (itself honestly probably 10 or so different skillsets), I etch glass, embroider, play deftly with resin, string art, and perler beads. You name it, these very talented hands of mine can probably do it. If they can't, someone on Youtube will show me and I will figure it out. My hands are always busy. At least they used to be. COVID took that from me. When quarantine hit, that is what was left to me. So that is what I did. Fortunately, crafters are notorious hoarders, so that was one thing I struggled little to find when the shelves at all the stores were bare. Whatever it was, it was already in my craft room. When you couldn't find masks anywhere, me and my loved ones never had to worry. I sewed probably 100 from the leftovers I had from a few of my quilts, fun masks with swirling DNA strands, dinosaurs, and Bat-signals. When we couldn't get toilet paper and mom my had to mail me some from out of state, I sent her a giant cross-stitch of her favorite character (Snoopy) as a thank you for being my toilet paper hero. I didn't stop there though. I had to make videos daily for the kids in my (now) virtual classes. So I went from being the women who crocheted in meetings, to the one who painted herself to look like different characters during meetings. (The first student to comment with who I was dresses as that day only had to do half the day's assignment.) The other meeting participants would periodically make me turn my camera on to check on the progress of my transformation. Crafting was really the only thing left to me, what with lockdowns, my school going virtual, the inability to access basic necessities, and the persistent taboo on leaving the house. Crafting got me through it. I made so many things, simply because I needed to be doing something. I sewed, mod podged, and wire wrapped, papier mached, and glass painted, until every wall and surface in my home (and some in my classroom) were covered. Often I'd have the TV on in the background so I'd have noise for company. I'd craft into the wee hours, because it's not like I could go anywhere in the morning. It got so bad that my housemate (a dear friend and fellow transplant with no family in Arizona, we moved in together a week before COVID struck because neither of us wanted to live alone) Kristen had to stage a crafting intervention of the "No really, we are out of space. For the love of God, knock it off or get an Etsy store" variety. (I then switched to baking because I don't know how to be if my hands are still. I was accused instead of trying to make her fat.) I crafted until I ran out of things to craft. Thanks to COVID, I squished a lifetimes worth of crafting into a year. Now I'm out of projects. If I wanted it, I made it already. If anyone compliments something I made it is given immediately as a gift to them, so I can then go make myself a new one and my talented hands can be busy again for a minute. I've taken to cross-stitching random things my friends say, just to have something tactile to do. My hands remain as sharp as ever, poised for the next project, but the brain that fired them has run out of steam. And I still don't know how to be if my hands are still.
• 
  2020-04

  Sudden Change to the Nature of Library Work

  This story shows how pandemic radically changed workplace experience, including sensory memories, for my occupation as a library worker in Washington County Utah in April 2020.
• 
  2020-05

  A Touch of Retirement: Dice, Clubs, and Power Tools

  Covid-19 had more of a positive effect than negative on my life in the spring/summer of 2020. I am a teacher in the small community of Anson, Texas, population 1,884; we are social distanced by default. Following the spring break of that school year, Anson ISD shut down and went wholly online. It was already a time of great transition for me, I was leaving the world of coaching in favor of becoming a regular classroom teacher and I had just been given five months to reflect on my new role. That time was spent with family and friends in an almost semi-retirement doing the things I never had time for because of my demanding schedule. As a teacher and coach, 60-hour work weeks were a norm, and during football seasons you could expect those hours to creep to the upper 90’s. There were also no “real” summers like other teachers. A coach’s summer is spent in morning workouts and summer camps with the occasional week off to visit family and decompress. That is why the “covid summer,” as I remember it, had such a profound impact on my life. Those five months were spent with family and friends playing dungeons and dragons, golfing, and remodeling a good friend’s house. My younger brother is an avid dungeons and dragons player, a hobby that I never found myself with enough time to delve into. The collaborative story-based tabletop role playing game known as dnd requires several people, a few hours, and a lot of reading to play. My covid summer left me with ample free time to do just that. The sound of dice on hard tabletops rang throughout our houses as we held a regular weekly gaming session for five months. One unique thing about dungeons and dragons is the diversity of dice required to play the game, from four sided up to twenty sided and almost every even number in between, were required to effectively play the game. Most sets came with every dice, but the variety of color, size, and material quickly made collection a side hobby. Before long, I had a large bag full of dice and special black and gold metal set saved for only the most special of encounters. That is what I remember most, the cool touch of those dice as I contemplated the best course of action for my character to take against the hordes of enemies by brother could conjure up. While the hottest days were spent in the air conditioning playing games, the pleasant ones were spent golfing. At the time, state health officials had mentioned golf as an almost perfect sport to play during covid because it was easy to social distance and the vitamin D from the sun helped to boost the immune system. I played a lot of golf with much of the same friends I played dnd with. Many of the golf courses we played at threw their doors open and welcomed golfers with open arms to try and keep the business afloat through the troubling times; we never once were denied a t-time. We played golf at least twice a week for five months and I don’t think my hands have recovered yet. The feel of those club handles wore out two gloves and countless blisters across both hand and I wouldn’t change it for the world. While my other two hobbies offered little in the form of vocational skills, my third allowed me to learn the most. My good friend purchased his first home in May of 2020. A quaint 3 bed 2 bath home on a third of an acre just outside of Abilene, a larger town about 20 minutes south of Anson. The home was a product of the 60’s and while it had been well maintained by its previous owners, it needed quite a bit of updating. My friend had some experience in construction from a previous job, but we were all learning on the fly as we decided to remodel his home. Roughly a dozen power tools across four friends, we tore out walls, updated electrical, redid flooring, framed, drywalled, painted, and wired his 1500 square foot house for the better part of three months. There were a lot of late nights, beverages had, and good laughs shared. We all had some know how, but YouTube and google became our best friends. I had always heard the saying that rough hands meant hard work, but the feeling of my hands covered in drywall dust gave a much more visceral connection to it. I think all these feelings for me were so profound during this time because the pandemic had placed a warning label on touch. My mom is a thirty-year veteran nurse, directed an ER during swine flu and bird flu, and still received Christmas cards from high-ranking officials of the CDC; I was well informed on the virus. In the early days, we didn’t know how long it lasted on surfaces, the severity of the virus, or its communicability. Touch was one thing that had to be eliminated. A six-foot bubble was placed on the world and people feared handshakes, hugs, and human embraces foundational to the species. One knows the dangers of the everyday world, but rarely to we expect a loving hug to potentially carry death to a dear loved one. This notion changed how we, as a species, saw each other. Some embraced the struggle to soldier on with courage and others gave into fear as new information came out hourly. Two years later, after mask mandates have been lifted across most of the country, people are still trying to heal. Fist bumps taken over handshakes, hands free pay at most supermarkets, automatic doors becoming a priority are all examples of how Covid-19 changed our perception of touch as a human race. With all the activity I had during my covid summer, I did eventually contract the novel virus on my birthday in June. My only symptom was a loss of smell, one of the weirdest sensations I’ve ever had. I count myself extremely lucky that that was the only symptom I had. Aside from my ten days of self-quarantine, my life was affected in very much a positive way. I cherish the memories of my covid summer and count myself incredibly lucky to have experienced the pandemic the way I did.
• 
  2022-05-20

  How covid didn't really effect me.

  My name is Kasper, I live in the U.S. and I was 24 at the time the novel corona virus first started to cause shutdowns nation wide and world wide. I did not have the luxury of staying sheltered in place as I worked for a company that was deemed necessary to operate no matter what. My co-workers and I were basically told that our company will close when the federal government completely shuts down. That never happened. All throughout the pandemic I did not notice many changes to my life other than lack of major social events. I still hung out with friends and didn't really take the whole shut down seriously. I never had anything major happen to anyone I knew until the second year. That being said I never felt that hiding was going to solve the whole pandemic issue as many people believed it would. I spent a lot of time riding motorcycles with my wife and friends living my life to the best of my ability. One thing that did change was the whole mask dilemma. I wasn't someone against masks but I do wish the whole situation would have been handled differently. I feel that the picture above can illustrate that I did not nor will I ever let anything stop me from living and enjoying my life
• 
  2022-05-12

  COVID sign outside LEGO store Arequipa, Peru

  This is a sign listing COVID precautions on the door of the LEGO store at Mall Aventura. The instructions ask people to make a line to come inside, social distance, not touch products, and that a maximum of two people per family enter the store. I like the image at the bottom of the LEGO characters wearing masks.
• 
  2022-05-01

  Fresh juice at the market

  This photograph shows my son drinking fresh orange and pineapple juice at a market in Arequipa, Peru. The juice vendor works behind a plastic sneeze guard, wears a face mask, and disinfects change before returning it to you.
• 
  2022-05-01

  Disposable mask on soccer field, urb 15 de enero

  After a game of soccer, that ended when the ball was kicked out of bounds and landed on cactus (rendering the ball flat), I took this picture of a disposable mask left behind on the soccer field.
• 
  2022-05-01

  Mask trash soccer field in Parque de la Independencia

  This is a mask left behind on a cement soccer field in Parque de la Independencia, Urbanización 15 de enero in Arequipa, Peru.
• 
  2022-05-01

  Mask trash parque de la independencia

  Mask trash on the football field at parque de la Independencia urb. 15 de enero
• 2022-04-29

  It's The Little Things

  The pandemic was full of many things that turned the world upside down: the loss of jobs, death, and the decline in mental health for many students. I remember when the semester was transferred to fully online, many students like myself celebrated for the extended Spring Break and the ability to attend Zoom classes in pajamas. However, months passed and the daily lack of contact with acquaintances and friends, isolation, and lack of activities turned the days quite mundane quickly. The drastic change in an active lifestyle to such a slow paced one definitely had a negative impact on conditions such as depressive symptoms, health anxiety, and an overall learning curve of the lifestyle. Digging deeper, I know many families whose breadwinner of the family lost their job because many places were letting their staff go due to the lack of demand of labor. When dealing with a global pandemic, death was also a central topic to deal with. Many countries did not have access to medical equipment such as ventilators and thousands of people were dying in my motherland. I personally lost some family members and many people I know have as well. While the pandemic introduced our lives to a dark state, there was a slight silver lining, and that was spending time with the loved ones. Over the years before the pandemic, I feel like the world moved at an unbearably fast pace. My days consisted of going to class and work, possibly spending some time with friends, doing homework, and sleeping for the most part. As the world started to slow down because of the COVID pandemic, my father was finally able to work from home, my sister had online classes, and my mother didn’t have to rush to pick my sister up from school. Often, our meals during dinner would be inconsistent and spent near the TV as everyone had their own schedules. However, when the pandemic hit, it was advised to not eat at restaurants and take out fast food. Such restrictions led to trying out new recipes and laughing in the kitchen. Little moments such as conversations at the dinner table are still some of my favorite memories. In addition to cherished time with my family, I was able to finally rediscovered some hobbies that I used to enjoy years ago. Before the pandemic, my life had begun to revolve only around academics and I had forgotten what it felt like to spend the evening painting or trying out a new dance. However, spending months at a time at home forced me to redirect myself to other forms of entertainment when there was no use of travelling to other places. This really helped me define myself as someone who has so many other interests rather than just a student who studied 24/7. I still try to carry these hobbies into my schedule now that the world is slowly coming back to its fast pace.
• 
  2020-11

  Group Homes and the Pandemic

  To understand my story, I will give some context as to the nature of my work. I worked at a group home made for 14–17-year-olds unaccompanied minors coming from Central America. When they entered the program, they are put into one of the many houses that we currently have and given a room, education, structure, all the things that make for a normal life. These many houses would interact with each other quite frequently, many times, the best friends of one house were in a different house. Many of the kids were in soccer and other sports, they would go to church, and different places in town on a regular basis. Once the lockdowns began, our program proceeded in a similar fashion to prevent anyone from getting infected. One of those things included stopping the normal interacting between the houses and confine everyone to their own homes. Besides the obvious social loss, school provided them with access to English almost the entire day; to make friends here, they would learn on their own, to meet a boyfriend or girlfriend, they would work at it every single day. You can’t measure what the pandemic took away from these kids. Each one of them is no doubt less fluent in English unless they had actively worked at it, they missed out on getting to know the culture and embracing it for their future, so many things that we can not measure, but without a doubt were lost. For some though, the pandemic turned into a very good time for learning and becoming better than they were before. Hours would pass very slowly in the house, and you can only watch and play video games so long before getting bored, so one youth found something that they were very good at. This youth would spend his time crafting all sorts of different things. Eventually, his walls were filled with rosaries, charms, bracelets, animals made of beads, and all sorts of other random crafts I could not name. He had a zest for life even during the pandemic and worked hard to keep learning more and more. The necklace in the picture is one that he had made for me that I hang on my shrine at home. He was a very religious, and it was that religion that helped him get from his home country and make it to the United States. This is a common story for many of the youths in my program, they take religion seriously and try to continue the traditions they had in their home countries. They could not go to Church during most of the lockdown and found other ways to express their religiosity, this is how the youth in my story expressed his.
• 
  2020-04-03

  My Neighbors and I

  My neighbors and I have known each other for multiple years, and are good friends. They came from India as immigrants back in 2000 and started a family, eventually moving in right next to us about two years before the pandemic. Once COVID hit, our usual Saturday night bonfires together came to a halt as we wanted to be safe and not spread the potential infection. Instead, they bought an entire fire pit off Amazon, and through the trees each Saturday night we continued our Saturday night bonfires together, just not next to each other. This was honestly a beautiful experience because no matter what we found a way to continue to connect with each other in a safe and timely manner! We still keep in contact to this day and reminisce on our old memories as neighbors.
• 
  2022-04-29

  An ~Interesting~ Time to Say the Least

  After living through it for the past two years, there is SO much to say about the COVID-19 pandemic, and I don’t even know where to begin. I guess the main takeaway is that it really forced everyone’s true colors to show. At the beginning in March of 2020, everyone was so uncertain of what was to come, and that alone made it so scary, that most people had no choice but to make light of the situation. I remember not only the grocery store shelves being empty because of everyone over-stocking their pantries and shortages in general, but also the hobby sections of Walmart and Target being empty, which was truly a really beautiful thing to witness. People were taking the time in quarantine to learn more about themselves whether that meant learning new skills or trying out new hobbies and spending time with their families doing puzzles and playing games as well. For me personally, I taught myself how to sew, which is depicted in the attached photo, as I needed to make face masks for my boyfriend and me (out of an old t-shirt) so we could safely go to the grocery store, before masks were widely available. I also learned how to bake really delicious treats, got back into reading, and even painted a few pictures here and there. Aside from these positives, it also brought out a lot of negatives as well including built up anxiety and anger that came out in the form of a new equal rights movement: Black Lives Matter after George Floyd's murder. It was scary at the time because protests and riots got very violent, but any movement for equal rights is a good movement, so it was a positive in the long run. I would say COVID-19 also played a role in the insurrection at the capitol on January 6th of 2021, and more division between political parties regarding vaccines and mandates. One could go on for hours listing all the positive and negative aspects that came about from the pandemic, but it's most important to recognize how resilient we as humans are. I'm proud of how far we've come.
• 
  2022-04-27

  Vaccine checks at mall entrance

  Before entering the mall, all shoppers must show a security guard their ID and a vaccine card. This photo shows the people coming in and getting checked at the Mall de Porongoche.
• 
  2022-04-26

  Most magical place on earth becomes a lot less magical

  This is a photo of me at Downtown Disney in February of 2021. At this point the pandemic had been going on for almost a year. I had been going to Disneyland once a year for several years up until the pandemic. This photo is from when the Disney parks were not yet open, but we could go to Downtown Disney and basically only go to stores and eat food. Luckily we were able to eat food at a table, but before we went it was only take-out. We went for an afternoon and evening to walk around the shops and listen to the Disney music playing on the speakers - and as you can see, I wore my Mickey ears to get in the spirit of Disney - but it obviously was just not the same. I went home and told all my friends and family that it’s just not worth it until the parks are actually open. This seems like probably a minor inconvenience to some, and it’s definitely a first-world problem, but it did really affect me. This was an experience that I always looked forward to each year and saved up for and took time off work for. This is just one aspect of life that changed because of Covid-19. I think many people experienced different things like this. One might say that I was religiously making sure I would go to Disneyland for years in a row, to the point where I was not stopped by a pandemic. I think many people had to make sacrifices for the things they are passionate about during the pandemic, more than we probably realize.
• 
  2020-04-25

  Reagans Experience

  The pandemic was a crazy time but I believed it brought many people together. For example my whole family was home during quarantine, no one was away at school or work. This allowed us a whole summer to sit back and relax with one another. Particular things we did a lot was spend time outside by walking the neighborhood and spending time by the pool. We also enjoyed ordering to go food from local restaurants to help support them through the difficult time.
• 
  2022-04-25

  A Wild Ride

  In a world wide pandemic, it is important to get first hand accounts and feelings to be able to look into later.
• 
  2022-04-19

  Disney World drops mask mandate for guests at Florida resort

  This is a news story from The New York Post by Mark Lungariello. This is about Disneyworld lifting the mask mandate for the parks. It says that vaccinated guests have the option of wearing a mask or not. However, public transportation, like the monorail and buses, will still require masks. This change comes not long after a federal judge ruled against the mask mandates in Florida.
• 2022-04-20

  Oklahoma Outbreak: an okie boys experience with COVID-19

  Looking back at the beginning of the pandemic seems surreal. I remember hearing in December 2019 or January 2020 about some sickness in China. However, I had lived through the Ebola scare and multiple different flu outbreaks and my life had not changed day to day. People would get scared and then it would pass after a couple months with little effect. This would turn out to be different and unlike anything seen in the developed 21st century world. I left my school for Spring Break and though I would return to my final days at Mustang HS and the fun events that came with graduating. My family and some friends traveled a few hours from our house to the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge and stayed nearby in Medicine Park, Oklahoma. It was a sleepy turn of the century resort town that had seen better days when the rich and powerful of Oklahoma had made it a vacation spot. Although not as popular as it once was, it is being rediscovered by local people for its natural beauty and relatively cheap costs. It seemed like a normal vacation, and we did not see very many people as it wasn’t yet summer and there are not that many locals. We hiked trails at the wildlife refuge and went into town for food and trinkets. It was a nice quiet start to the week. Then all of the sudden everything began to change. We watched the news and saw on social media that the virus that was a world away had now made its way to America. We still were not very worried because we were pretty isolated, and either were hiking outside on trails with little activity or tucked away in our cabin playing games and hanging out. Then cases started to explode, the economy started collapsing, people were getting sick everywhere and no one knew what to do. We went into a restaurant in town and did not know how to act; we were all rubbing germ-x all over ourselves and keeping our distance as best we could. At this point we still figured it would all blow over after a few weeks. As our spring break drew to a close, our school let out a statement that we were not going back the next week. This was exciting news and I figured it was all just a precaution and I would be back in class the week after with all of this just a big laugh and some extra time off. Boy was I wrong. On the drive home my dad, who is a semi-prepper, was coming up with all sorts of scenarios and making plans for if the world collapsed but it honestly still felt like we were only entertaining ourselves. As we rolled back into my town, it looked like a beehive had exploded. People were driving crazy, every gas pump was full, and the Walmart was almost wiped out. That is when it started to sink in that things might be worse than I first thought. Then the first deaths started getting reported and it really seemed serious. I never went back to a high school classroom. My whole life changed from that point on. My first 2 years of college seemed almost fake and as of right now I have had COVID 3 times; the original, delta, and omicron. My family has also had it multiple times. We were some of the lucky ones to make it through with no lingering problems and for my older family members, with their lives. It is now April 2022 and things have finally started to go back to somewhat normal, but another wave could happen at any time. Corona Virus has changed our world and is going to be with us forever.
• 
  2020-12-28

  First Time Swimming Shirtless During The Pandemic

  This is a picture of me swimming for the first time after top surgery! I can't even begin to explain how free I felt. One of the things I was worried about was the fact that my fiancé and I not being able to swim because there was people there, but it was completely empty! It was almost like it was meant to be. After being confined about something for so long and being able to take off my shirt in public was so weird! Before this picture, the last time I went swimming was in 2015. And now, I'm able to enjoy the water and the beach with my fiancé.
• 2021-04-01

  My Awakening

  For me, the start of covid began in the middle of my freshman year of college. Just like everyone else, I took my precautions and even got the vaccine. Around April of 2021, being isolated and forced to accompany myself. I had felt like I was in a transitioning stage of life, I felt the need to grow and do more things for myself. I have completely changed my life around, a full 360. I broke up with my ex-boyfriend because I could see our differences in emotional intelligence and maturity. That was my final straw that made me break out of my cocoon. I had deleted some social media that I felt was a major distraction and a road block for me to grow more confidently. I began focusing more on my school work and connecting with new people. I even got a new serving job and was making good money for being a college kid. I learned to enjoy the things I had forgotten about, such as painting and singing. I learned to connect to myself. This pandemic has opened me up to new opportunities and has provided me with a few life lessons. Life is more than simply succeeding to be at the top. Don’t forget to take a breather and surrender to what the moment is teaching you or blessing you with.
• 
  2022-01-14

  My First Pandemic Concert

  Since the pandemic has commence, I haven't done many public outings or attended big events. This January, I had finally got enough of the courage to go to a concert for the first time in three years. Overall, I would argue that the outing was fun and safe, but I could not help but still feel anxious and scared of what was yet to come despite it being a good time. Part of this was because the concert did not require anyone to wear a mask, nor did that enforce social distancing with the seats like I thought they would. Most of this was because COVID-19 cases had started to climb down despite the onset of the new variant OMICRON at the time. I wore my mask regardless since we were sitting so close to people and still enjoyed myself despite these bypasses. I feel that this concert represents how I and other people felt confident enough to do big social outings again despite the pandemic still going on. I also feel like this concert illuminates how people still seek entertainment and enjoyment in their lives and how the pandemic impacted the way people use to be able to go out and enjoy themselves. Now that things are starting to slow down with the pandemic, people like myself are starting to use this opportunity to go enjoy ourselves, which honestly brings me much hope and optimism about the future now.
• 
  2020-10-03

  Tsushima Island, my escape

  This is a picture of the platinum I received for beating the game Ghost of Tsushima on October 3rd, 2020. This game came out on July 17th, 2020 and it became my Game of the Year. This was also the year of COVID-19, so I had a lot more free time to play the game and beat it in several months. The pandemic was a difficult time and I just wanted something fun to play. I wanted to forget everything happening in the real world with the pandemic and other problems by jumping back to 13th Century Japan. The game is set on Tsushima Island as the Mongol Empire took its first step toward invading Japan. Ghost of Tsushima is a beautiful, but a brutal game that I had so much fun with. The soundtrack is beautiful and there were foxes to pet! My main character shifted from a samurai who followed the strict Bushido code into a brutal assassin in desperate times. I can relate to this idea of shifting between jobs because I had to shift my job around to adjust to the desperate times I was experiencing. I had to shift from working in person to working online. I wanted to add this to the collection because I want to show how I could escape the reality of COVID-19 and have some fun.
• 
  2020-05-10

  Where's Covid?

  A comic strip about Covid-19
• 
  2022-03-20

  Cooking During the Pandemic

  This is one recipe I learned to make during the pandemic. It is a chicken pot pie with a biscuit topping (that I luckily did't have to make myself). I've made many things over the course of this pandemic. Restaurants became too much of a hassle for a while in 2020, and many weren't even open. I used to go out to eat more often before the pandemic, but with me starting school again in the fall of 2020, in addition to masks being very annoying for me to want to wear, I would either order takeout, or make food myself. Between school and the pandemic, cooking has become one of my favorite hobbies, as I need to eat anyway, and I have been able to try types of food I didn't know I'd like. Prior to the pandemic, I would not eat pickled things as often, but now I seek it out with recipes to try. I also learned some new skills, like discovering I can make the non freezer variety of jam, and how to use cast iron the right way. I maybe would have learned these skills later on anyway because I enjoy cooking, but being at home more has made me want to try more recipes. Contrary to the stereotype, I did not learn how to make sourdough from scratch during the pandemic, but my dad did, and now he's on a kick with making sourdough bread weekly when he is home. Cooking has been one constant I have had, and I did it before the pandemic, but currently, I am doing it more often to save money and learn more skills. I intend to teach my kids in the future on how to cook things. It's more than a hobby for me though, as the better I can cook, the less likely I am to want to spend money on takeout. With rising prices of food in 2022, knowing how to cook has been a blessing.
• 
  2020-03-22

  reverse life

  Since the quarantine, my life has been completely turned upside down. I wake up later, eat irregularly, and am also much lazier. At that time, I was really lonely. I don't communicate with anyone and I don't want to do anything, I just lie in bed scrolling through my phone and playing games. I study superficially and have no interest in it at all. After a while, my sleep was completely reversed. I sleep during the day and stay awake at night. Every time I wake up I sit at the table and play games until morning, forgetting to eat and study. I have lost a lot of weight since then. Only when I play games do I feel happy because I get to meet my friends online. I got to know a lot of new people, even though we don't talk much now, but the time we spent together was really meaningful to me. Although I really enjoyed the quarantine, it also made me feel very weak. My lazy life ended when I went back to school but it took me a lot of time to get back to my normal life. I feel more positive and my life becomes more meaningful when the quarantine is over.
• 
  2021-08-30

  2021 Traveling

  I uploaded a photograph of a stadium taken Athens, Greece while performers & staff were setting up the equipment during our visit.
• 
  2022-02-06

  Nozomi park mask trash

  Mask trash by the parking lot at Nozomi Park.
• 
  2020-03-20

  Improvised workout during quarantine

  When the quarantine lockdown mandate was first instated, and all gyms were closed, I quickly became nervous figuring out how I would be able to work out every day efficiently. As a child, I was always overweight until one summer when I obtained a gym membership and trainer to help me lose 45 pounds. However, when all gyms closed, I feared that not going consistently would lead me to gain weight again as I sat stagnant at home. Fortunately, I was able to make the most out of my situation at home and create an at-home workout routine to stay healthy. Daily, I would wake up and run 2 miles outside, followed by 100 pushups, 50 situps, and 5 one-minute planks. Although this workout was not as strenuous as if I was able to go to the gym, it was still very effective in keeping me in shape and helped me stay active. Most importantly, these at-home workouts kept me occupied during quarantine and helped relieve my stress of not seeing or hanging out with my friends and other family members.
• 
  2020-03-16

  Focusing on Physical Health During the Pandemic

  The COVID pandemic of 2020 affected many lives including my own. For me, it greatly affected my ability to focus on my physical health. When we were all sent home from school to finish our semester online, the gyms closed. This drove a wedge between me and where I wanted to be physically. While I could still do calisthenics at my house, I was unable to do the heavy weight training that I had grown so accustomed to. This caused me to lose some of the muscle mass I had spent so much time trying to gain. Not only that, I also lost the one place I could go to be alone with my thoughts. While I’m at the gym, I can focus on problems inside my mind while also making myself stronger. I don’t have to deal with any unnecessary external interactions with others while I’m at the gym. While I was at home, I would sometimes find myself being irritated by my family with nowhere to go. During these times, I would end up going outside or locking myself away in my room. Since I had nowhere to blow off the steam, I could only sit there and let the irritation manifest into anger. While calisthenics were good for my physical shape, they did not help me the same way heavy weights did. To fix that issue, I took up boxing with two gloves and a small yoga mat. I put the mat up against the wall and began teaching myself how to box. This was helping. While I had to deal with the occasional interruption by my family, I finally found an activity that helped me effectively blow off steam. Still, I always knew that none of this was going to last. I knew I needed to get back into the gym in order to feel like myself again. Much like many others, I waited until the day when mine reopened again. When my gym reopened, I considered the pandemic to finally be over in my eyes.
• 
  2020-05-07

  Finally Seeing My Best Friend

  The pandemic has been a rough time for me. I decided to take a gap year in the middle of my college experience in order to work. Online learning isn't the easiest, and it was the best decision I could've made. However, it was very isolating living in my parents basement for 18 months. Humans are supposed to be social creatures. My father is immunocompromised, which means that I have to be as careful as possible to keep him healthy. For the first few months of the pandemic, I didn't see anyone besides my mom and dad. I couldn't even see my grandmother, who I missed so much. Finally, things started to feel a little bit safer, so I was finally able to see my childhood friend. I sat in her backseat with a mask on, while she drove us to a hiking trail, where we were able to have a socially distanced picnic. Being able to spend that time with her was crucial. I needed this time with her to keep myself sane. We decided to take a picture of us wearing our masks, posing like the characters in The Fault In Our Stars movie poster. We talked for hours, grateful to be in each other’s presence. We made it a routine to try to do something outside together every couple of weeks. She lives in my neighborhood, so it was easy to meet at a corner and walk our dogs together. Being able to see someone that was outside of my immediate family was like a breath of fresh air, both metaphorically and literally. As time went on, she became part of my “COVID bubble” as my family called it. It was hard not seeing other friends, but I’m glad that at least I had her from the very beginning.
• 
  2021-02-04

  New tastes during lockdown

  During lockdown, like many others I came in need of something to pass the time, and also like many I turned to cooking. It was something I already enjoyed doing pre-Covid, but had much less time for it. But during lockdown, there was substantially more time to put into trying new things. Trying all these new recipes became a part of my everyday life, ranging from fresh pasta, to chicken parmesan, to birria tacos. Almost all of these were new recipes to me, and the experiences and sensations that came with making them became a core part of what got me through lockdown. The smells of braising meat and stock simmering became something to look forward to each week. The new tastes and smells were something that brought the family together as we were all home, and cooking in our house is not a solitary affair. And each new dish only pushed me further down the rabbit hole of what most would consider way too much effort for a weeknight dinner. The photos attached are final dishes of Chicken Noodle Soup, Chicken Parmesan, and Birria Tacos, along with an in progress photo of the birria taco meat after braising. For recipes, refer to Binging with Babish on YouTube.
• 
  2020-03-31

  Banana Bread Madness

  Like a lot of people when the pandemic hit, there was a great deal of uncertainty. I didn't know how to function really, not teaching school, so like a lot of people, while thinking about my kids shortened year, I turned to baking. I tried Banoffee Pie and that was a huge faliure, but then , I stumbled on this Banana Bread recipe. I made upwards of 25 loafs in the months that follow. Every time I taste that sweet banana goodness, I think of how much I both enjoyed having that time (I mean, daily naps, what is there not to love) and how much uncertainty there was.
• 
  2020-04

  Sounds of a Spring Lockdown

  On March 25, 2020 Governor Polis ordered a state-wide stay at home order for Colorado. By this time, my family was already limiting our time outside the house to work or errands. My daughter, Kat, has severe asthma, so we knew we had to limit our exposure as much as possible. Previous midnight trips to the emergency room were full of her wheezing out tiny gulps of air, the beeps and blips of the machine keeping track of her heart rate, and the guttural growl of the blood pressure cuff as it tightened around her arm. These were the sounds I first heard when the stories of a new, novel virus came out, the sounds that stayed most in my mind the more I heard about rising cases. The first week in April the movie theater where Kat worked closed down. My son, Gabe, left his job a few days later. I cried that day, not from sadness but relief. And not a quick cry, but the loud sobs that make your shoulders shake. The next day was a major shift for us. Instead of leaving the house to work, they came to work for me instead. My cross stitch shop was already a full-time business. Now that many people were staying home, the US saw a return to basics (baking and crafting), and my shop exploded with more orders than I could fathom. There is something that satisfies most of us in having that tactile experience, whether it be the feel of flour (soft and powdery) as you knead your bread or the stabstab of your needle piercing your fabric. Though there was the stress of craft stores closing and supply chain delays, long work hours, and boxes of hoops stacked in the living room, there was mostly the sound of the Beatles and loads of laughter. Kat has a high-pitched giggle (she snorts when she really gets going), Gabe a deep laugh rich in tone. Someone came up with the adage that laughter is the best medicine. I couldn’t say who created the saying, but the sound of laughter in my house during the April 2020 lockdown in Colorado kept myself and my children in positive spirits. In fact, our lives have been forever changed by that April. They are back to their old jobs, but we still keep mostly at home and with each other. We have family game nights and cook together and keep the laughter going strong.
• 
  2020-03-15

  The Quiet of a Pandemic

  At the beginning of the COVID-19 quarantine, I was recently married (about two days) and had to immediately shift to online teaching. My school believed this was only going to last two weeks. We hadn't shifted to a live online class and were still teaching asynchronously with online meetings once a week for anyone who needed help. Since I taught U.S. History rarely did my students feel they needed help (even if they really did). My husband was still working, since his oil job was considered essential, so I found myself with hours of empty quiet time. Of course, I found myself originally spending hours watching tv and streaming countless tv shows. After a couple of days of this, I decided it was time to step outside. I'm from southern Louisiana so every good house has a porch you can sit on, and mine was perfect. My neighborhood was never incredibly loud, but I live only a few blocks from I-10 (the busiest interstate in the U.S.) and there were always traffic noises. For the first couple weeks or so of quarantine, you could hear a pin drop. It was an eerie quiet, and it took some getting used to; however, I would learn to love that quiet. I would spend my days on my porch (thanks to some unseasonably "cooler" days) reading, watching Netflix, and watching my neighborhood. Birds I had never seen or heard before were in my oak trees. I also learned that Robins are very territorial and would watch my cats like a hawk during nesting season. Blue Jays didn’t wait to see what my cats would do if they got too close to a nest the birds were swooping down on them. I learned that my oak trees have a fungus that grows on the branches and can help me learn about the health of my tree. People I had never seen before were walking with a quick hi as they walked by me. I had never heard my neighborhood so quiet before or since. While I dealt with anxiety that my husband would get sick at work, or I would somehow transmit the disease to someone who couldn't fight it I also learned to relax and enjoy the moment. I had very limited responsibilities, my students only had about 3-4 assignments a week and they were assigned on Sundays. I would certainly never wish to return to that time; I would however wish that everyone could learn to relax and enjoy the quiet even if it is from your front porch
• 
  2020-09-27

  My First Pie and Other Sensory Snapshots

  I gave birth to my first child two months into the COVID-19 pandemic, and so to me, memories of this time are centered around life as a new parent. Because we live in a different state than most of our family, and because we had a newborn (whose immune systems are not well-developed the first several weeks of life) in a global pandemic, we did not go anywhere. I had a few months off of work and school to care for my son, so my experience of COVID-19 to that point was time spent just with my son. As any parent knows, those first few weeks are an exhausting blur consisting of the never-ending cycle of feeding your baby, changing them, and helping them sleep. But the sensory memories from this time of my life that have stuck with me the most involve the feeling of holding my baby; feeling his head on my shoulder, hearing his tiny little breaths and occasional squeaky coos in my ear, noticing the sweet smell of his baby shampoo on his head, feeling him stretch and reposition from time to time. Though it seemed like the days when he would sleep independently would never come, little did I know how quickly they would, and how much I would miss these quiet moments. When he started getting the hang of napping, I suddenly had these open stretches of time in my day, which I was not used to. What to do to fill this time, especially in the midst of a pandemic and with a baby to boot? Like many people, I developed a baking hobby while my little one napped. Now I associated his nap time with the sticky feel of flour and butter on my hands as I kneaded dough for soda bread, the smell of buttery, sugary deliciousness coming from the oven as scones were baking. On my husband’s birthday, I produced my most time-consuming bake so far: a strawberry rhubarb pie. This one required some cooperation on the part of my little guy, whose giggles I heard as he batted at toys in his baby swing while I chopped and prepped the filling and made the pie crust. The finished product wasn’t necessarily perfect, but I was proud of it, and the memory of making it will always stick with me since it is a representative snapshot of that moment in time, a few months into a global pandemic with my young son.
• 
  2020-08-02

  Sensory Overload in Brussels

  I was living in Germany when the COVID lockdown began in 2020. One of the big perks of living in Europe is the ease of travel and close proximity of many cultures to experience. Germany, and Europe as a whole, were strictly locked down from March to August 2020, they were not allowing border crossing and all tourist locations were shut down. In August of 2020, Europe opened back up for tourism. Three of my friends and I jumped in our car and drove six hours to Brussels, Belgium. Our goal for the trip was to do a city walking tour that included chocolate and beer tasting, the chocolate was in the early afternoon and the beer was in the evening. After being stuck in our homes in Germany for five months, experiencing the taste of fresh Belgian chocolate was almost a sensory overload. We walked up and down the main “candy shop” road, sampling every kind of chocolate and even world-famous macaroons. The smells of chocolate and bakeries almost punching our noses. Later in the evening we went to the Delirium Brewery and sampled seasonal beers that were only available on site. We all enjoyed the experience of fresh crisp taste of Belgian beer right from the keg that you cannot get from drinking out of a bottle or can. I never thought that the COVID lockdown would numb my taste and smell in a way that wasn't a symptom of the virus. Being stuck in one place eating and drinking the same things day in and day out really makes you long for something different. We were very lucky to be able to have the opportunity to venture out to such a historic and important city of Europe to experience fresh tastes and smells.
• 
  2020-03-20

  The Perspective of a Drunk Teenager on COVID-19: Snapchat Memory

  This was a Snapchat Memory I found from the end of the 1st week of the initial Covid lockdown. I was bored, so I got drunk in my closet by myself to have a good time. I found this video to be insightful to my perspective of how I felt about Covid at the time.
• 
  12/08/2020

  Anonymous Oral History, 2020/12/08

  C19OH
• 
  2020-12-10

  Locked Up

  Playing basketball at Virginia Park was one of my favorite things to do before the pandemic hit; I have been playing there weekly for years, until Covid broke out. While I totally understand the reasoning behind locking up the rims (and I'm still not playing even though they are now open because I don't feel comfortable doing so), it still makes me sad to see a court and not be able to use it.
• 
  2020-03-22

  What Covid-19? I can do anything!

  Covid and Yossarian Episode 1, A comic strip about Covid-19
• 
  11/27/2020

  Cristiano Favazza Oral History, 2020/11/27

  C19OH
• 
  12/07/2020

  Anonymous Oral History, 2020/12/07

  The contributor of this item did not include verbal or written consent. We attempted to contact contributor (or interviewee if possible) to get consent, but got no response or had incomplete contact information. We can not allow this interview to be listened to without consent but felt the metadata is important. The recording and transcript are retained by the archive and not public. Should you wish to listen to audio file reach out to the archive and we will attempt to get consent.
• 2020-07-13

  Running to Have a Feeling of Escaping Pandemic

  With no long commute time to and from school, running became something I did often. I would go to the park and look at the lake after my run to see the sunset. I got to appreciate being outside more and getting fresh air. To feel the breeze by my sides as I ran. was relieving.
• 2020-06-19

  The bracelet my mother made

  During the peak of the pandemic, my mother learned to make intricate bracelets. She made me one, and I have not taken it off since. In a way, it symbolizes my relationships with my family during this hard time.