Items

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  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 This recipe no longer represents Christmas and my grandmother, it now is something that makes me think of lockdown with my own family and how it brought us together.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.
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  2021-09-30

  Mobile Morgue

  Eastern Washington and other small towns in Washington are having so many extra deaths from Covid, they are having to bring in refrigerator trucks to store the bodies before they can be buried. This information is still not enough for some people to get vaccinated and try to stop the spread of Covid. Many areas, like in Wenatchee where this article originated, are struggling to keep up with the influx of unvaccinated sick people and are having an even harder time trying to find a place to put their bodies.
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  2021-10-07

  Covid Vaccine Reminiscence

  This is a recording I did of myself where I reminisce on my Covid Vaccine experience and the feelings it brought
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  2021-08-13

  Covid Safe Activities

  My dog, Via, was born the year before the Pandemic began. Almost two-thirds of her life has been spent with both her people home all the time and she enjoys it. One of our favorite Covid safe activities is driving out to the beach early on a Friday or rainy weekend when we know nobody will be out on the beach. Via can run for hours and the beach is her favorite place to do it. She loves to dig and find crabs or look for birds on the horizon. I don't feel comfortable taking her out in public because of Covid and I don't want strangers coming up and asking to pet her so she mainly lives a solitary life now with her family. I don't know if that is good for her or not, but I constantly worry that Covid is messing up her life and her socialization.
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  2021-08-11

  Hobbies and Quarantine

  I have been lucky in this pandemic. My partner was able to keep his job and with the pause on student loan payments, we were able to save enough money to put a downpayment on a house. Quarantine and working from home have allowed the both of us to explore hobbies we have always wanted to have but couldn't because of the time spent commuting or lack of space because we were renting. I was able to start my own herb garden and it flourished. I have learned a lot about myself during the pandemic, and one of those things is that I love gardening and working with plants. I know we have been so much luckier than so many people and that often creates feelings of guilt in me. I don't like sharing my happy stories because so many people are having a hard time right now. I do think the good stories are just as important as the stories of hardship. I don't take what I have for granted and my partner and I still try to donate and help out where we can, but nothing has brought me happiness like my herb garden.
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  2021-10-08

  Idaho and the Overrun Hospitals

  Idaho hospitals are so overrun with Covid patients and so understaffed that they are drowning. Idaho has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation and many people are getting sick. Many hospitals on the border Idaho shares with Washington are choosing to send their sick patients to Washington. This in turn is adding to the burden carried in Eastern Washington. Many healthcare workers in Idaho are burnt out and they are helpless because of the divisiveness caused by politics and Covid.
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  2021-08-17

  Vaccine Rates and Covid in Gray's Harbor County

  Grays Harbor County is having a Covid spike that is mainly affecting the unvaccinated population. This is adding stress to the testing facilities in the county and causing issues with hospitalizations.
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  2021-10-03

  The First Game Back and the Last Game of the Season

  This was a photo from my seat at my first mariners game back since the beginning of Covid and the last game of a great season. IT was an emotional game because they lost their wildcard spot, it was probably Kyle Seager's last game as a mariner after 10 years, and it was my first time in the ballpark since 2019. It feels like we are getting back to normal even though I am still hesitant to jumping back in.
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  2021-05

  Reopening too Soon

  In many states, the government seemingly ended mask mandates and opened back up in one day. Washington State lifted mask mandates and reopened everything at 100% only to reinstate mask mandates and reduce compacity a few weeks later. This has lead to the meme of everything is on fire but let's just reopen anyways.
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  2021-10-06

  The Fifth Wave and it's Strain on a Small Costal Town

  The coastal town of Elma, Washington has been hit hard by Covid. The smaller-sized hospitals are overrun with Covid patients and the burden being put on healthcare infrastructure in the area is massive. People are having to wait hours for care at local hospitals and chances are if you call an ambulance, it will not be able to take you to a local hospital. The extra driving is eating up the EMS system's time and causing issues with getting care from emergency services.
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  0017-01-17

  A new idea of delicates

  Finding humor during the pandemic has been hard, but we still find our way. Washing delicates turned into washing masks during the pandemic.
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  2020-03-13

  The great costco chicken shortage

  My partner and I went to Costco to do regular grocery shopping for the week when we stumbled on the emptiest isles we have ever seen at any Costco. I remember turning to my partner and saying “This feels unreal. I have never seen a store this empty and I don’t think that I ever will again”. It was still March, and my partner was just told by his job to stay home and that the office would be closed for a while until Covid was under control. We didn’t know at that time seven months later he would still be working from home. It was eerie being in a store that was so empty and it is hard to explain what it felt like to see that. It was at a time of high panic for others but I hadn’t felt that same panic until that moment. I was very worried we wouldn't be able to get chicken for the foreseeable future and I didn’t know what we were going to do. I panic purchased a five pound bag of dry pinto beans that are still living in the back of a cupboard in my kitchen, unopened, on that trip. I think of my quarantine experience in multiple stages, the first to being before Costco, and after the great Costco chicken shortage. I think other people felt the same way I did; After they saw people panic buying, they started panic buying or fretting more than they may have been in the months before quarantine. The beginning feelings of panic did do good for me though, they made me more conscious of what we are eating and how much food we actually buy. I feel like the changes have benefited me for the better. Arizona State University HST485