Item

A Sight to Be Seen

Title (Dublin Core)

A Sight to Be Seen

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment prompt. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

The photograph that is attached is a picture that I took while in the grocery store on March 20, 2020, and I remember the sight and the moment vividly. Much like the rest of the nation, I wasn't really sure how to make meaning of the recent events that were taking place across the world and, beginning in March, starting to take place in our very nation. COVID-19 was still something I didn't quite understand, but what I did know is that it was coming, whatever that meant. My apartment is roughly three blocks from this grocery store, so naturally I went there often to buy things that I needed. On this day, earlier in the morning, I remember showing up to the front door and there were massive crowds of people not only outside, but in the aisles as well, and especially in one specific aisle. I began to ask myself "why is everyone cramming into that specific aisle? There isn't even food over there on that side of the grocery store." Come to find out, these people, much like people across the nation, were mobbing the stores and buying massive amounts of...toilet paper? Yes, exactly - toilet paper. I decided that I wasn't going to get what I needed in these crowds, so I left, aiming to come back later that evening. The attached picture is on my return trip on the night of March 20, when I walked down the aisle that everyone was clustered into in an attempt to see the aftermath. Every shelf that had toilet paper that morning was completely empty, which was a sight that I can't say that I have ever seen before. I was left not only amazed, but confused as to what prompted these people to collect toilet paper in the face of a global pandemic. If the nation were shutting down for a period of time and a national quarantine was on the brink, wouldn't canned foods, water bottles, and various other items take precedent over toilet paper? Just a thought. This event made my mind up that the year 2020 was going to be a year that would not be forgotten, and this picture, to me, stands as a picture of the very moment I had that realization.

Date (Dublin Core)

March 20, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Brandon Casper

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Brandon Casper

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

Photograph

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Business & Industry

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

grocery store
Utah
toilet paper
panic buying

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

Cache Valley
Utah
Sensory History
Toilet Paper
Grocery Store

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history submissions and the COVID-19 Pandemic

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

10/16/2020

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

10/16/2020
04/02/2021
06/27/2023
10/16/2023

Date Created (Dublin Core)

03/20/2020

Item sets

Covid 19
Arizona State University

This item was submitted on October 16, 2020 by Brandon Casper using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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