This is based on my personal experiences. I started off 2020 by having just separated from my wife, such that we were both looking for divorce. This can lead to many difficulties even in a normal setting, but it took the normal difficulty of the things I was going through and turned it up a few notches. I started the year off without a job, car, or place to live. I was able to move in with my mom and take care of the housing situation temporarily by living in her front room. I then had to start looking for jobs. I found a job through a temp agency to get me back on my feet. Eventually, it became time for my to find a more permanent job better suited to the path forward I wanted in life. My last day of work at the temp job was right before spring break. I had planned on taking care of life things during spring break, before looking for another job shortly thereafter. There were no jobs. So many businesses closed during and after spring break, that the number of people desperate to get money for rent and necessities, took all available jobs almost instantly. I spent nearly 2 months looking for another job. Eventually I was forced to cave, simply because what should have been adequate amounts of money while looking for a job, was used up in the wait. I not only had to take another temp job, but the only ones available were jobs with a high rate of people leaving them. So I worked at one of the worst jobs I have had the displeasure of working. In that process, there was an instance of covid starting to spread through the factory. So this factory with over 1000 workers, made a mandatory covid test for it's workers, and sent us all home for a week. Anyone who's test came back positive, had their id rejected at the turnstyle when we resumed work. Unfortunately my body couldn't take the hours required for this job. And so I was forced to leave it also. And in doing so, I was no longer able to stay with my mother. So for the second time in a year, I was jobless and homeless. And this time, the root cause was covid. I went to stay with my aunt. But my grandmother and grandfather are particularly elderly and vulnerable, so everyone there was on high alert and wary about covid. So I was quarantined for an entire week to one room so that I would be able to be monitored for any symptoms. Shortly thereafter I was back on the hunt for a job that would help me progress forward in life. But yet again, even in a completely different area of Oklahoma, there weren't any jobs to be had. I was only able to push myself like that for a month before I looked for another solution. I had a friend, who would lend me his couch even on a permanent basis if needed. So I took him up on that offer. And I moved from Oklahoma to California. That drive was more or less the most impactful part of covid to me. I had seen the roads get empty on my way to/from work as people had stopped non-essential travel. But Oklahoma didn't have an enforced mask mandate. We could still go to the store, or pay for gas for our car, without being required to wear a mask. Many businesses still had indoor dining even. But in that trip, the realization of the impact of covid, hit me. It was at the only gas station for 20 miles in either direction in the mojave. I walked up to the door to go in and pay for gas. And for the first time that year, I saw a sign saying masks were required to enter. After that, every other location I stopped at was the same. There were no more places I could go without a mask. Covid, was having a real and significant impact on other things in the world than just jobs, and people's financial struggles. After having made it to California, in a particularly populated area with plenty of jobs, I was still unable to find a job for two months, simply because of how the rest of the year had gone for me. Simply by requiring a stable work history, I was no longer able to apply for most jobs. Finally I did get a job. I got one in the food industry. And the impact of covid hit hard there too. After having finished my training, and worked for about a week, the state mandate came that closed both our indoor dining. A month later, outdoor dining followed suit. We weren't allowed to take drinks back to add things we may have forgotten, and instead had to remake them entirely, because of covid safety precautions. I've had my temperature taken every single work day since I started, which was unheard of in times before covid. Twice, we've shut down the store because a partner tested positive for covid, and everyone that worked with them was placed in a mandatory two week quarantine. The impact is so strong, that the company is even providing 2 hours paid time for both doses of the vaccine, as incentive to get vaccinated. It's clear to see, covid has had an incredibly strong impact on life, and turned the difficulty level of many peoples lives up beyond manageable levels.

This past year has brought many challenges with it for almost everybody. For me, and my family, this past year has brought equal challenges and blessings (although they usually appeared as blessings in disguise initially). Throughout the pandemic, I achieved great things at work, ended up quitting that job, started helping my family's business, experienced deep trauma after my wife was assaulted by a friend, navigated the legal system amid Covid-19 to seek justice, experienced justice being denied first-hand, worked through the grief caused by the denial, and then came out the other side of the trauma with an even stronger relationship, and I experienced a continued strain on all of my relationships caused by the distance required by quarantine. For me, this pandemic didn't greatly affect my work-life - I still had to physically work the entire time - but it changed the way all of the people around me lived. This was difficult, of course, because change is scary, but the change also became a catalyst for myself and others to change ourselves for the better. Personally, work got harder as tensions rose throughout the pandemic, and while dealing with the backlash of these tensions was difficult, this opened my eyes to the fact that I truly wasn't happy at work. I enjoyed the people I worked with, but I didn't enjoy the work or the product of my work. So, while I was grateful for the opportunity, the stress brought on by the quarantine woke me up to the realization that it was time for me to move on. There are many things that this pandemic brought, and while I wish I could elaborate on all of them, the short version of the long story, is that it was a traumatic event for everyone, but after working through the trauma, many of us found blessings in disguise or used the stress to give us the courage to change.

The global pandemic that started in 2020 has been extremely hard on a lot of people, especially extroverted people that need social interaction to feel normal. I feel I am incredibly lucky in this regard as I enjoy my solitude without the hustle and bustle of social activities. When the pandemic started back in March 2020 and we all were advised to stay inside to help combat the virus it was the easiest task in the world for me. I personally practice social distancing in general since I don’t enjoy people being in my personal bubble and I also dislike being around large groups due to personal anxiety. So overall when this all started, I honestly did not notice a big change in my life. One thing I did notice was that people in my phone and on my friends lists through various platforms were suddenly super active in their messages being sent to me. I can empathize with others in this regard because even introverted people like to engage in social activities every now and then. Another big thing I noticed was all my favorite software got major updates and were revamped due to so many people now working from home many companies actually saw their productivity explode in 2020 while wonderful it is very sad to see companies not giving their workers more options to work from home now in 2021 despite seeing boosted productivity. I was also able to go shopping for groceries with less crowds which to me was a nice thing to not be surrounded by so many people as I would be in any other situation. I also really like wearing masks when its cold out because it keeps your face from being hit by harsh cold winds and you kind of feel like a Mortal Kombat character. Now that things are getting a bit more under control with more vaccines out in the public space and people going back to work, I hope people who need to socialize get the chance to do so. I will also remember 2020 because so many people globally did not live to see 2021, I feel fortunate that my family and I made it through 2020 in one piece.

In the beginning of 2020, fear and uncertainty resonated within everyone’s mind. Face masks and social distancing became the norm. Shops, restaurants, and bars closed their doors. Social events were either postponed or cancelled. People fought loneliness and depression. I gave birth to my first child in March of 2020, a week after stay at home orders were announced. I was allowed one visitor the entire hospital stay due to strict COVID precautions. To this day, my child has never met his extended family in person. The pandemic taught many of us that life is precious and should never be taken for granted. It has been an eye opener for many and a reminder that we have a lot of work ahead of us. As the COVID-19 cases rapidly increased, more evidence of police brutality and racism surfaced on the internet. The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and many others made most Americans question authority. Political controversy divided our nation. Asian Americans were blamed for the spread of COVID-19 and Asian elders were attacked in broad daylight. Although there were many instances of hate crimes, many also stood in solidarity amid a global pandemic. The pictures I’ve shared were taken by a family friend during the Black Lives Matter protests in San Diego on June 2020.

Mini oral history with La Verne Ford Wimberly from Tulsa, Oklahoma

The numbers increase as time goes on. Every month more people catch COVID-19 and more pass away each second that ticks away on the clock. Allah calls out to me. He calls for me to pray. And yet I have never prayed before. Mosques closed for teaching. COVID-19 restrictions on how many people may enter the sacred place to pray. Yet I feel a deeper connection to Allah than I have in all my life. Months of distracting myself from the world around; I turn off the news and look away when I hear the numbers. I bury myself in books and my studies to try and numb the pain. How horrible it is to feel that any time I leave my house I could have just risked someone’s life. The coffee shop stays open and selling more than before because we are “essential.” And to Allah I cry out: “Why now? What have we done to deserve this pain?” But He stays patient and continues to guide me. “Come to me my child. Come pray. You will see.” The aching in my chest does not go away. How? How can I pray there is nobody to teach me, nobody to lend a hand? Countless hours searching and researching trying to find the path that He has set out for me. I make mistakes and try again. I fail and fall but I always get pushed back up to try once more. We are divided and far apart from one another. Ramadan and Eid spent alone. Praying alone. Learning alone. Always isolated and alone. However, not once did I feel lonely. Like the warmth and weight of a blanket wrapped around me He guides me. I pray and pray for those around me like millions do around the globe. I pray for myself, for my family, for those I will never get the chance to meet. I pray and I hope for this to go away. For the pain to heal and for us to come together once more. A community rebuilt in the ashes and from sorrow we get stronger. Allah please accept our prayers.

We were crazy careful. In a bubble of two, for months. We went inside a grocery store maybe three times over the course of a year and not for the first six months. We always wore a mask. We honestly believed given given our personal situation, the best thing we could do was to remain isolated. We worked really hard at this. In the beginning, our mail sat in quarantine. Any groceries that came into the house, we we wiped them down. Some people, described my personal efforts as over the top neurotic. My parents older we’re careful as well. If you haven’t figured it out, this article was written with voice recognition software and the nuances that come with that. However they were older and this meant that they did require assistance. Fortunately they were not in a facility where it swept through. Instead they had caregivers who came from a reasonably fortunate demographic sample in terms of access to healthcare. In other words they probably had better than average odds then someone in an old age home. They always had masks, they have a supply of sanitizer in the car at all times. I’m at the beginning that is not in the beginning, they began to have their personal support workers do grocery shopping, thanking I know banking, pharmacy and pretty much anything that required them to occupy a shared space with others. In December, almost 10 months into the pandemic, my mom did not get Covid. However she required hospitalization. She had been sick for a long time and it appeared to be another infection. Well that was it. Just before Christmas, she began to make a recovery, which included physical therapy. My dad will go to the hospital every day. And during the other visiting hours, my brother would go. Unfortunately over the Christmas holidays, and due to hospital staff being overly per cautious, they had a shortage of staff and we’re not able to conduct the physical therapy. This certainly helped in terms of limiting their contact with others. However, My mom really needed physical therapy. So the progress that had been hard earned, prior to the holidays was Dowsett back and look like it was going to resume in January. My mom spent Christmas and New Year’s in the hospital, with my dad at her side. Then, the hospital restricted visiting. It wasn’t eliminated it was just more restrictive. In the end including my mom go to 13 patients four died of Covid. My dad who what is elderly and heard degenerative bone issues he’s not a patient had not been there obviously the entire time he passed five days before my mom. Once it was determined he had Covid and required hospitalization, they took him from his home to a different hospital than my mom. Each of them passed without any knowledge of the other passing. My dad had remark to me when I was expressing doubt over my overly per cautious approach did he didn’t think it was crazy, I actually thought it was wise. We held a virtual service, it was the first 100% virtual service the funeral home I had done. Again the grammar here is all messed up because of the voice recognition. We begin to settle back in our routine. And March I didn’t feel well, that was on a Thursday. I got tested on Saturday and by that time my wife is symptomatic yeah and we both had Covid. Fortunately, we didn’t require hospitalization, but it did hit us hard and we were never sure if we were going to end up going to the hospital. Our son, who took little to no precautions, lived at our house in a separate section. Where a wall had been constructed. Heating occurred through different systems. He was tested, he never got sick. Recently, I had my second shot, Moderna. The next day, I was as sick, same symptoms as during the Covid infection. It was a severe as the worst two days my Covid infection. Fact in fact, I had managed to work straight through by infection, however I did finish work early on a Friday and got out of bed maybe three hours until starting late on Monday. I’ve always heard that it was the second shot that hit people hard. I was discussing this with a friend of mine, who is generally pretty insightful and has a reputation for solving things others don’t. I don’t know if he was just trying to make me feel better or this was another one of his really good insights. Anyways he had suggested that this was like my body‘s second shot. I thought that was interesting and perhaps someone who reads this may also I’ve had a similar experience or comment on. That is my Covid story And my wife after patiently listening to me dictate this through voice recognition whispered as I was done and I’m sticking to it

For me, the pandemic has been the exhaustingly consistent cherry on top of everything that’s gone sideways in my life over the past year. Now, this isn’t meant to be a pessimistic rant about the past 12 months, but just a sequence of events that kept things spiraling out of control while I tried my best to stay on top of the chaos and maintain an energetic passion for life and hope for the future. These traits used to come super naturally, as I had been following my ten year plan pretty successfully as of last March, until the rest of the year, which I thought to be set in stone, was pulled out from under my feet. I was having the time of my life in Rocky Point over spring break when Covid started hitting the fan. ASU announced a ‘temporary’ switch to online classes while I was on the road coming back home, and I drove straight into midst of a sudden global pandemic. Luckily, I had gotten out of Mexico in time before the borders were closed down. I was working at Harkins Theaters at the time, and my last shift was one with a whole bunch of disposable gloves and excessive new sanitization rules in concessions. I left that night not realizing that that would be my last shift there. I was at least planning on being there for another few months, before I would start a summer job I was recently contracted for. I was going to go on tour as a videographer with the Cavaliers drum and bugle corps, filming professional marching band videos and cutting together rad highlight reels all while traveling the country and getting paid for it. That was canceled soon after I was furloughed from Harkins. I went back home to visit my dad and brother in the midst of it all, but I don’t think my brother was ready for that kind of personal contact. He wound up giving me a black eye after I ended up getting too close to him and intentions were misconstrued. Shortly after, while already recovering from a destroyed face, I came down with a long, rough sickness that was aligned with the known symptoms and assumed by everyone to be Coronavirus. Unfortunately Covid tests were far from accessible at that point, and I was never able to confirm if that was the case. Trying to get away from the bleak outlook of everything, I took a few of my friends up to my grandparent’s empty house in Sedona. My roommate proceeded to secretly bring alcohol, drank too much and fall off a ladder, leaving a large-man-sized hole in the wall of my grandparents’ expensive house. While staying in Sedona the following week on one of my trips to head up and fix the wall, I got a call from my dad that my mom had passed away. She had been suffering for the past twelve years from a stroke and aneurism she had when I was eight, and on April 6th she finally let go. So that was a lot of emotion to throw on top of everything. After spreading my mom’s ashes with my dad and brother, I came back to find a baby monitor camera had been hidden on a shelf in my bedroom. I didn’t know who put this camera there, hidden in a sock, but it had been filming my girlfriend and I for the past three days and had gotten some pretty personal stuff on camera. It wasn’t hard to put together that that was the whole point of the monitor. My roommate felt violated as well, as he said he thought it was one of his friends who had put it there, and was on board with the whole police investigation we launched after the fact. I trusted my roommate, and while he had gone through a bit of an alcoholic phase the month before, I thought he was doing better. He had been one of my best friends for over five years at this point, and I didn’t want the worst case to be possible. But a few weeks later, my girlfriend’s phone mysteriously went missing in my apartment for a night. The next day she found a monitoring app downloaded onto it. My roommate had taken her phone, copied off all of all her private, ‘personal’ images of herself, and installed a program to track her and check in on her camera and microphone without her knowledge. Luckily we found this evidence soon enough, but it wasn’t an enjoyable experience kicking my best friend out of our apartment. The police found evidence that he put up the camera soon after and he was arrested. Two counts of voyeurism, one count of lying to the police, and everything he had taken off my girlfriend’s phone. I haven’t talked to him since last May, I can’t legally, it’s currently April of ’21 and his trial has yet to reach sentencing. After all that had happened, Summer was not what I had initially thought it would be. But it wasn’t all that bad. People started wearing masks, I got a temporary job making dough at Little Caesars, I was able to hang with my actual friends and the worst of it looked to be over. And while that much was true, the pandemic itself was far from over and slowly the months of lost experiences and thoughts of unfulfillment and wasted potential began to sit in. I got a different apartment in August, but it was an older and more run-down first floor unit with unexplainably loud upstairs neighbors. I’ve spent the entire lease of that unit trapped inside and longing for a normal college experience. These were supposed to be the craziest years of my life, and I felt like I had missed out on countless memories. I was working as a video editor from home on top of online school, and the days blended together into hopeless rituals of helpless procrastination. The motivation to thrive while held up in the new apartment was hard to find. But I still made it. I didn’t give up on pushing forwards. I’d put things off and the passing of time ultimately became an illusion, but I kept making sure I stayed productive. I edited together a vlog series through the beginnings of the pandemic, worked on other personal projects, and was able to get a pretty sweet internship doing remote editing work for a television studio in LA that I ordinarily wouldn’t have been eligible for as in person work. I made it through the 2020-2021 school year, my junior year, with good grades and came out on the other side more hopeful than ever. I got fully vaccinated a few weeks ago, I’m beginning to live again, and the bright outlook of a fresh start in a soon to be newly reintegrated world gives me an unparalleled excitement. I am looking insanely forward to all the new people I’ll meet, memories I’ll make, and experience I’ll gain through my senior year being back in person. Everything’s coming back together, and as long as everyone can make an effort to get vaccinated and keep each other safe, calm, and hopeful, I’m more than prepared to cram 13 months of missed experiences into the best, jam-packed, fulfilling, productive and exciting year of my life. …Yet.

The pandemic created a rift among people. Everyone’s lives were up hauled and not many people found themselves living the life they didn’t think they were going to live. People have been getting sick, people have been dying, and the negativity this plague has brought has only multiplied in society. I believe one of the main issues for the negativity, hate, and chaos we’ve seen in the country this past year is because people are bored. Not just bored and wondering what to do this afternoon during the plague, but the kind of bored that results when that thought repeats itself every day for months on end. And with nothing better to do, and no hope to be found, people start to look for something believe in. Everyone has become more hard-set on their beliefs, and voices have gotten exponentially louder. Left-leaning people find community in the fight for justice and equality. The protests and rallies have been bigger. Without much else in life going on to care about, people can care more about the overall issues they believe matter. Right-wingers found themselves deep in the fan club of President Trump. Their voices got louder, more arguments and fights began to break out among people. The election was a bigger deal with a bigger turn out than the nation has ever seen. The country felt very divided, yet at the same time, people were coming together more than we’ve ever seen. With the pandemic came a wave of loneliness among many people, attributing to why so many have so comfortable found their place in the political group they believe in. It’s a community in public life when there’s no public life to really find a community in during a pandemic. The issues of gender, race and power have all been largely argued over as a result of this newfound divide. Overall, I believe the country can be better off now that the pandemic has focused people on such societal issues, as getting people to care and getting people to make a stand is the way to make change happen. And then on the religious side of things, many religions have found a deeper sense of community as people come together in hopes of connecting and caring throughout the plague. These voices prove to be heard, too, usually coming from the right-wing side of the divide, complicating the progressive movements that left-wingers campaign for, movements which ordinarily would be understood as in accordance with the faith and ideals of many religions. 
 This results in a lot of complicatedness, arguments among people, and chaos in the country. It’s a difficult time, but it’s a time of growth for everyone. For everyone in the public sphere to figure out what they believe in, and hear the voices of others. After the pandemic is over, and many people have gone back to caring about other things in life, maybe people will evolve their ideals with an open mind and open the nation to more active discourse and change going forward.

What has life been like for me during COVID-19? Well this photo pretty much sums it all. For this past year, I have spent the majority of my time on my computer which mainly consisted of it being completing work for my classes and watching TV shows during my spare time. The gyms were closed. I couldn’t eat at the restaurant my family and I go to every Thursday anymore. And seeing other family and friends became very limited as well, so I was alone by myself most of the time. The beginning of this pandemic was very difficult for me as my lifestyle changed drastically. I am a little bit of a procrastinator and when you have a nice comfy bed next to you 24/7, it makes it really hard to do things. But I understood that life goes on, so it is up to me to keep on moving forward. And that is exactly what I did. During this pandemic, I felt I was really able to focus and improve myself. I have become a more productive person and it has really helped me in finishing my classwork and doing other daily tasks. It has relieved some of that unnecessary stress that was on me that I had put on myself before this pandemic. At home, I didn’t have any weights to work out, so I decided to work on my flexibility/mobility. With the gyms beginning to open back up and going there just recently, I noticed the benefits of it in both my weight lifting and martial arts. In addition, I was able to gain new hobbies and one of them is cooking. Life during this pandemic has greatly helped me improve myself on many aspects. Life is unpredictable at times, so sometimes you just have to make the best out of it.

It has been a tough year for everyone, the impact of COVID 19 changed our lives forever. As people across the world practice social distancing to help slow the spread of COVID-19, many things have changed. In one way or another, we have all been touched by this pandemic, whether that means working from home or transitioning to online classes. Personally, I felt like the pandemic was going to be my downfall when it came to school. I have always struggled to stay focused and concentrate on different tasks. Having to transition from in person classes to complete remote learning scared me. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to continue with my education. As weeks went by, having to be isolated from the world and it just being me and my computer was very difficult. I suffered from depression and anxiety but I didn't want to give up. Education has always been important to me but it was really affecting my health. With pandemic getting worse and having more restrictions it felt like I was trapped. Usually when I feel that way the only thing that would give me peace was going to church. That wasn't an option anymore. Due to everything being closed I couldn't even go to the one place where I would feel safe and at peace. This pandemic taught me to be strong, and even in the hardest moment have faith. Have faith that everything gets better, and that we are capable of more than we think. Even though I had some tough times in school now I'm doing a lot better and I'm proud of myself for overcoming those obstacles. I'm now more appreciative of things that I took for granted before the pandemic. Even the little things, like being able to go to church. Overall, the pandemic taught me many things about myself. I am stronger and happier than I was before.

When covid-19 first arrived, I was a senior in high school getting ready to graduate. At the moment, I'm writing this; I am currently in college, finishing my freshman year. When I first heard about covid 19, i did not think it was going to affect me because, at the time, the government was telling us that it wasn't a big deal. But that later turned out to not be true when everything shut down on March 13th. Even after the virus proved to be much deadlier than previously thought the most of the government still pushed that covid 19 was not a risk or that it would just simply go away. At the time, I can remember being confused because people were clearly dying. Yet, the government was urging people to act like everything was normal. After that day, the world changed forever. Nothing was the same, not even school. After March 13th, my high school went entirely virtual, with the plan being to come back after two weeks. Still, eventually, those plans like prom or even a regular graduation were canceled. I remember this time of my life being kind of hard because everything was shut down, and the world seemed to fall into chaos. Around may is when I would say things reached the height of the chaos of 2020. In May of 2020, George Floyd died when it seemed like the world went up in smoke. There were protests and riots, a lot of which I think stemmed from both the death of George Floyd and tension resulting from decades of racial tensions. As a black person myself, at this time, I felt anger but seeing as though there was still a virus and violence on the streets, I did not go to any of the protests.

I remember when covid-19 was a far away danger, some natural calamity removed from my normal routine: waking up, doing yoga, meditating, working, and so on. Every day just like the others. China was in lock-down and we mindlessly scrolled past news stories from there of inventive ways people were relieving their boredom. But just like other tragedies that were affecting the unfortunate of other lands, the stories faded into the background of repetition. I remember when the first case was found in Washington, the surreal fear that hung like a thick cloud over my city, first forming as a gentle mist then accumulating into heavy dread. Once that first case was identified, things multiplied very quickly. Within a week, we were in lockdown with cases rising in an incredibly frightening exponential manner. I remember the last time I was in the room with someone without a mask on... that was.. 13 months or so ago. I was going into an interview for a funeral service assistant's position. It was raining. I was asked to accompany her to an home funeral the next morning, assist her in transporting the body of a family's child who had recently died. This frightened me, I didn't know if I could do it. And even then, the threat of a global pandemic seemed far off, even the lady blew it off, saying that the solution lie in an healthy immune system. "Healthy people don't need to worry about it." I drove home in the rain and picked up tacos for lunch. Everything was normal. But by the morning we were in a national lockdown as a result of the discovery of how widespread the virus was and just how deadly it could be. I never went to that child's funeral and I haven't talked to that lady since. Every day in those few long weeks in March of 2020 built on the growing panic and grief that was building in the depths of my heart, radiating out into my limbs, making it hard to think, or write, or sing. Every moment was spent obsessing over the potentialities of each moment. "What was going to happen? What were we going to do? How many people were going to die? How many of my friends and family members were going to do? " Going on and on and on. My mind revolved around the fear as a maypole where my body and emotions danced wildly around. Even in the bath, while taking long morning walks, while eating meals, everything centered around the pandemic. Doom-scrolling terrifying news articles telling of the devastation that would likely occur in the next months, criticizing the narcissistic, science-fearing president, who only increased the velocity of widespread horror, watching the rising death count with enrapt panicked attention. All of these things contributed to the slowing of time, which passed by moment by moment in a long exhale of a nation struggling to catch its breath after being engulfed by a wave that came on too fast and hard. Going into the grocery stores to find that most food and toilet paper were gone... that the supply chain might be limited, the reality of my city home's lack of food security becoming too real. I never thought I'd face this kind of global disaster in my lifetime. It was hard to accept. Even now, it is hard to fully accept. Approximately 3,000,000 people have died from this disease to this day, and many more will. Even though vaccinations are underway, the death rate now is at 42,847 on this day (April 4, 2021) as compared to the meager 5,989 on April 15th of last year. Then, we were horrified at that number. But now, we have grown so accustomed to daily deaths that were a numb from feeling any grief. It is hard to say what kind of effect this will have in the future years. All I know is, those first weeks have been burned into memory. I have been changed, for better or worse, by the year 2020.

The Klamath Tribes stopped administering the J&J vaccine on April 9, 2021 after concerns of major side effects, a few days before the FDA and CDC paused administering of the vaccine.

From the start of Covid-19 schools begin to get cancelled and change their way of teaching the students. Children, teens, adults, and seniors had to change everything involving their lifestyle. What we knew as a normal life could no longer be the same. Everyone had to be cautious of their surroundings and use protection gear. Before everything changed our lives my family and I would always get together every sunday. After the CDC recommended that there should be an approximate of 8 people per house in gatherings we decided to not get together as often since a family member worked in a senior home and we had learned that at that time seniors were more likely to get the virus. As the number of cases grew in Arizona and the border closed we didn't get time to see some family. It has been over a year since I haven't seen my grandparents. We call each other to see how we are doing. In my household it is only my mom and I along with my 3 dogs. What we took out of this was better bonding time, school ended early and jobs started to lay off employees because there weren't enough jobs. I had time to train my dogs and learn more commands, which was fun. I learned to do new things. My mom is a cosmetologist so she taught me how to cut hair, and how to apply gel polish. As things started to calm down families around my neighborhood would come out their front yard together and play with their kids and pets more. Families would eat outside and have a good time. But now everything is going back to normal. Sporting events are getting open to the public, and schools are going back to in person. I had learned that many families around my neighborhood shared the same experience.

"The Coquille Indian Tribe has suspended use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. This action is taken in response to a federal recommendation involving six reported U.S. cases of a “rare and severe” type of blood clot."

"Avenue S" a new addition to "Ghost City," 1998-2020. It is a ongoing creation of new web pages begin in March 2020 containing fragmented images and texts that are a poetic meditation on isolation. Because it felt like a ghost town everywhere at the beginning of the pandemic: the streets were empty; the beaches and parks were closed people stayed at home or walked alone wearing masks, I wanted to provide an alternative experience. Avenue S, in retrospect has become a visual journal of the year of Covid-19.

"Native American tribes in north-central Montana are responding to today's CDC and FDA recommendations that the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine temporarily stop being used. The reason for the "pause" is because it has been linked to blood clots in at least six people out of the more than 6.8 million who have received that version of the vaccine." Tribes including Little Shell Tribe, Rocky Boy Reservation, and The Blackfeet Tribe are coordinating with providers and pausing use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine.

IHS, Shoshone-Bannock Community Health Center (HRSA), and Tribal Health and Human Services (THHS) will halt the Johnson and Johnson vaccination until we have official confirmation of the vaccine safety and guidance.

During quarantine, I spent quite some time walking trails and exploring the great outdoors. The first trail I started out on was located on the Red Mountain campus of Mesa Community College. It was here that I noticed the large amount of trash scattered along the dirt trails. While on these quiet walks, I would have a lot of time to look inwards to heal myself, and yet look outwards at the trash building up. I then decided that I wanted to try and clean up as much trash as I could during my quarantine walks. I thus spent large amounts of my quarantine time cleaning up the desert alongside my loving fiance. We even turned cleaning up trash into a game; the person who collected the least amount would have to cook dinner when we got home. We had wonders spending time outside cleaning up miscellaneous trash scattered everywhere. This made me realize that we depend heavily on the earth, however, we sometimes forget to take care of our planet. My REL101 class helped me see that we can use our resources to help out, no matter how small the contribution. So please, spread the love and have fun while cleaning up our earth!

This story tells my experience of having Covid-19 along with being the mother of a brown child during the pandemic and BLM movement. I also share how this year drew the line in the sand for our family's faith and how my partner and I finally found the courage to come out.

Although the meme is meant to be comedic, I feel that it reflects the reality of the stressors many people faced during the pandemic. To begin, the anxiety that the coronavirus disease brought into the public severely affected the mental health of many individuals across the globe. During the mandated lockdowns, I , like many others around me, began experiencing a decline in my happy hormones. At the time the pandemic restrictions were being put into place, I was living on campus with three other roommates. With the fear of spreading the disease unintentionally, the three moved out of the dorm right away and I was left to be on my own due to personal housing issues taking place at the time. The lack of interaction with anyone took a toll on my mental health. I missed my friends and my mom, I just wanted to be around someone, but we could only have visitors if they were helping us move out. On top of personal mental health struggles, events taking place across the country were also scarring. Protests in response to racial injustice under an administration that made it hard to feel safe unless you were a white male in America only added to the helpless state of being. Watching cases upon cases of unjustifiable abuse made the environment only more threatening than it initially seemed when the pandemic was first reported. The election of November 2020 was suspenseful in terms of who would be elected could potentially determine vital living situations for people all across the United States, whether it be immigrant status, being a person of color, or not being able to afford paying for housing in general. Financial troubles took over the country and the stimulus checks were not enough to cover housing, food, home essentials, especially when some dependents and entire families were not able to receive help because of their citizenship or dependent status. Many tried to turn towards their faith, the keyword being “tried.” Although not all religions focus on gatherings or physical objects, many people were unable to get access to these common preferred forms of practice and felt that virtual gatherings seemed ingenuine or illegitimate. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic had many more severe effects on a global scale in all aspects of life. From concerns of the health of others, oneself, finances, practice of faith, and fear of safety in your own home, the negative effects are consistent as it seems that everything continues to pose a threat to daily living. I hope that everything eventually falls back into place and that justice is put in place so that people do not have to fear their own existence.

Religious Expression vs. Freedom My faith had been deconstructed long before COVID-19 hit United States soil and the first (of many) lockdowns began. Where as many decided to lean heavily on their beliefs during a time of fear, confusion, and loneliness, I had ample time to reflect upon my own moral code, belief system, and lofty open-ended ideas regarding human origins, the afterlife, and my mortality. And while I am certain many of these concepts will never be answered, the pandemic has certainly shed a light onto the beliefs, values, and behavior of the religious USA. Certainly not all, but a large portion of Evangelical Americans and the non-religious have collided on freedom as a concept as well as how to exercise it. The arguments were especially heated in terms of gathering, which was banned in most areas for months in order to protect general wellbeing. As someone who found comfort and solace in my Sunday morning worship sessions, I understand the importance of such community gatherings. When faced with an unknown time without the habit and release of worship, there is bound to be friction. While friction was certainly there, most Americans followed CDC regulations and recommendations at the start. However it took very little time for discourse, blatant disregard, and conspiracy to settle into communities across not only the USA, but the world. Was the government really able to tell people how to exercise their freedom of religion, even if it meant health was at risk? It seems many Americans value their freedom over health choices. While I found it difficult to wrap my mind around, as I have followed CDC guidelines from the start and since received the Pfizer vaccine, I also understand the individualistic spirit of America as a whole. Patriotism seems to be synonymous with the religious right of America- and our country’s political polarization is nothing new under the sun. Most churches I am aware of meet weekly or more, masks are scoffed at, and doctors are seen as agents of the state keen on stripping freedoms away from every man, woman, and child. Freedom is clearly more important than both individual health and the health of others around them. I have heard that god will protect those who he chooses to (not the millions who have died, just those he sees fit to protect), that COVID is simply a conspiracy, and that I am a sheep for listening to recommendations of specialists. As COVID regulations and vaccine rollouts continue, there are more questions that will occur. For example, what is the legality of vaccine regulations to enter places of business? There are already areas in which vaccines are nearly mandated (save for certain religious stated opt-outs) such as schools and universities. I feel only more questions regarding freedom and government-orientated safety will continue to occur as this discussion regarding covid gathering has just scratched the surface.

This picture was taken in my hometown of Elko, Nevada. My girlfriend and I decided to take some days off and go visit as her parents live in this small mining town. This small town had some pretty lenient restrictions, or they were being poorly enforced. One specific place or I guess monument when looking at the context of the town, the catholic church, was keen on maintaining social distancing protocols and doing what they could to protect those who decided to attend mass. I myself am not much of a religious individual and to be fair my girlfriend isn’t either, but her parents are. Due to this we decided to attend a bright and early 8 am mass. This is a selfie that she took as we are walking into the sermon, masks on of course as we were both wanting to follow the recommendations for our safety as well as the safety of others. This picture only shows half of the changes that were made to the normal sermons, every other pew was closed off and they made sure that people kept the masks on and made sure that each family was at the appropriate distance. This picture means a lot to me because it is the last time, I saw her family and it is mostly due to COVID reasons. Travel is harder and more expensive it seems, and this makes it all the more difficult to plan a trip. The past year has been difficult on every individual and everyone has gone through their own battles and experiences with COVID. This is a memory that brings a little bit of light to an otherwise very dark situation. Personally, speaking this may be one of my favorite memories of the past year and although I am not a religious person I would relive this moment again because of how much it meant to me.

My story is very similar to all my fellow military members.

My personal experience with COVID-19, My active involvement in my religious community and my public life reflection during times of a pandemic and political/ social unrest.

This story is a personal one. i hope it encourages others to love their loved ones and hold them close.

In March 2020, I learned about a graduate fellowship for a project called The Journal of the Plague Year. I was intrigued because of my undergraduate work with collecting oral histories of Vietnamese refugees. I really missed doing research in my life as a classroom teacher. This Fellowship seemed to be a way of fulfilling that undefinable project I’d been looking for. When I received an invitation after applying to join the project, it was like a public history baptism by fire. I knew nothing about public history, and I learned a great deal during those five months. However, with so much uncertainty with how my school district was going to respond to COVID, and the eleventh hour decision that we would not be starting the school year in person and all the changes that went along with that, I made the difficult decision to step away from JOTPY when the summer ended. During the fall, I greatly missed the collaborative community, the curating, the debates about metadata, and the entire building of this rapid response, digital archive. This led me to join the Spring 2021 internship. I am so incredibly thankful to have been part of this internship because I learned so much additional information about public history. One of the aspects that I didn’t learn over the summer was the humanities portion of public history. The archive was so new that we really specialized in different areas, mine was building the teaching site. We did have weekly meetings that I greatly enjoyed, but they were more logistical as we tried to figure out how to best build the archive. Many of our meetings dealt with curation and the best process for that. I absolutely loved my summer team, but it was difficult for me to articulate exactly what I did when the summer was over. Going through the internship step by step, I feel far more equipped now to explain exactly what JOTPY is and the process behind it. I also was able to experience many different aspects of the archive, including curating and collecting oral histories, building a collection, writing a call for submissions, and writing public history. The two parts of this internship, aside from curation which I genuinely love doing, that I feel were most beneficial were oral histories and writing the blog post. These are both areas I would like to continue to pursue in some way, even if it not related to this particular project. I did not begin the MA program with any inkling of being part of an internship team or being part of any sort of public history project. However, JOTPY has been the single best part of my graduate program. My work with JOTPY has been a perfect marriage of my two passions, teaching and history. I love being part of a project that is accessible to the students I teach. Not only does it demonstrate to them that history transcends the walls of the classroom, it was a space they were able to be part of by sharing their own stories. I also was able to fulfill a personal desire to be part of project outside my teaching world. I love history. I am incredibly passionate about it, and I am grateful every day of my life that I get to spend my days sharing that passion with teenagers. Yet, I have been wistful for some sort of research to be part of. I love writing, and as a teacher, my writing isn’t really seen beyond the realm of the classroom. I didn’t know public history is where I could fulfill this sort of void. Overall, I am incredibly grateful to have had this experience.

During this first year of Covid-19 has taken place, I can sum it up in a single word "wearisome". When this pandemic started in the year 2020, the southern part of Texas seemed to be unyielding in the hustle and bustle of everyday life down here. The attitude and lack of being a courteous person continued until about the middle of July. This was the starting point of the pandemic begging to affect people enough to begin to take notice of this "uncertain time" as if a miracle the everyday average Joe wasn't hassling me for being wearing a mask. This tale of endless misery starts at the beginning of Covid-19 and stretches until the middle of June 2020. Some background information about the antagonist of this tale is a religious youth group of about twenty would come to every Thursday and order an obnoxious amount of items all very rudely. This instance in particular struck a chord with me. This one religious group of younger children (probably about eleven to fourteen) and an older gentleman named Moshi. This group I loathed, just for the sole reason that these children would run about with no mask and caring not for social distancing, and this gentleman was pushing these children to not follow CDC protocol. Well about after a good eight months these children and a new gentleman came in all wearing masks and seemingly decent and well-mannered. This new individual had replaced Moshi and lectured this devil-children about the importance of wearing a mask and being just at least a decent human. This religious youth group had come in and sat on our patio every Thursday and seemingly never once did these children follow protocol until Joel the new instructor stressed the importance of being not a walking health hazard. I and all of my co-workers appreciate that man greatly.

On November 11, 2020, my middle child and I went for an art walk in midtown Sacramento to celebrate her birthday. Amongst the murals, many of which were put up during Wide Open Walls events of the past few years, we came across a new collection on the WEAVE building. The mural collection commemorates 100 years of the 19th amendment. WEAVE (Women Escaping a Violent Environment) is "the primary provider of crisis intervention services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Sacramento County." The artist of these murals is Maren Conrad, a Sacramento artist. She put these up during the pandemic, in October 2020.

Numerous times in the past couple of months, we’ve been wondering if CA colleges would require the vaccine. Today it’s official - the answer is yes. To be transparent, this Californian who has friends and family employed by the UC system is extremely happy. I realize there is vaccine hesitation but I am relieved for the safety of students and staff that the universities are taking this step. And it’s not just the UC system, the Cal State system and Stanford are also instituting the same requirement (actually Stanford announced first). The UC system is often a trend setter - if it does something, other universities follow. I’m hoping this will begin a trend, not only in higher education but at the K-12 level. I know, super controversial, but schools already require other immunizations, why not this one? Public health, people!

I am submitting this for my Rel 101: Religion, Culture, and Public Life course.

The pandemic has showed me the importance of religion in many people's lives including my family's.

When the coronavirus pandemic caused severe lock downs to be put in place in March and April of 2020 throughout Queensland, local councils and other entities were quick to put up signs of warning about the virus and what actions had been banned as a consequence of it. These photos were taken between the 1st and the 11th of April 2020, generally while participating in the allowed activity of exercising outdoors, once per day. In those early days, the prevailing advice that was shared, and reflected in these photographs, was that the virus could be easily spread through touching shared surfaces (as opposed to airborne transmission). Therefore there was a focus on warning people not to touch or use certain objects in public places, and many previously bustling public spaces such as dog off leash parks were closed to the public. Now, as of April 2021, the advice is quite different, and the "don't push the button: pedestrian crossing now automated" stickers have been removed from many crossings. I took these photos at the time because I felt it was important to document some of the things I saw during the pandemic (that were a direct consequence of the pandemic). This is because it is easy to forget things that occurred or to have flawed memories of events that decay further over time. At the time I found (and still find) the photos to be eerie and unsettling, the familiar world around me changed in a way that I had not experienced before.

My name is Erica Ruhland and I was a senior online during the Covid-19 Pandemic. I live with my two grandparents. Both are in their late 70’s, and because of them, I have been taking the pandemic extremely seriously. This year has been a constant battle of inner turmoil. My moral compass has been spinning for over a year now. The following has been some of the struggles and sacrifices I have made over the course of the year: Quarantining from my grandparents for 12 days in my room, multiple times Cutting my work hours to limit possible exposure Quarantining from my boyfriend for 4 months. I had several close calls where I had worked with someone who then tested positive for Covid-19. Each time it would send me into an emotional spiral of guilt. Guilt for working in a customer service job. But it was this job that was paying for my school and gave me health insurance. I couldn’t be without health insurance during a pandemic. But I felt a great deal of shame and guilt over my minimum wage job. I had already cut my hours down, but I was stuck between making a living and staying alive. The constant battles with customers, begging with them to put on a mask, or just simply having to nod when they denied Covid’s existence began to take its toll on my soul. This pandemic has turned me bitter. I have seen too many cruel humans refuse to help their fellow neighbors. A simple mask has the potential to destroy or save my grandpa’s life. HandsOn Greater Phoenix is a volunteer program that helps find volunteers for several campaigns across the state. They were in charge of organizing the volunteer program for the “Vaccinate State 48” initiative. This is how I got the vaccine. The rule was, you had to volunteer at the State Farm Arena vaccination site for 8 hours and then you could receive the vaccine shot afterwards. After battling out for a volunteer spot online, I had secured a spot for me to help out on March 9th, 2021. From 6am to 2pm, I stood outside and directed traffic. I was one of the last volunteers people would see. After they received their shot, I would direct their cars out of the massive parking lot. I saw so many older citizens that day. Each time I couldn’t help but think of my own grandparents. As I waited in line, sitting in my car after volunteering, I felt a huge wave of emotion. It was a mixture of exhaustion, relief, fear, and joy. I started talking to the nurse and I told her that I was nervous for the shot but also really happy. This is when I began to tear up and cry. After the shot, I felt a huge weight lifted from me. All the sacrifices I had made to keep myself and my family safe, they were worth it. I had done my part to help not just myself or my loved ones, but my community, strangers that I may never meet again. My moral compass aligned North once more. I felt validated. I used the small power I have to effect a big change in my community. My bitterness began to fade. Even now, a month later, I still think about the other volunteers, they all believed we were helping effect great change and saving people. It was like a religion. I had been baptized with the vaccine. On that day I felt like I belonged to a church, preaching to the community. Our sermons were us showing the elders where to drive, and how to schedule their next dose. Our gospel was Phfizer and we sent missionaries out to spread the good news. My sign of piety was the sunburn on my neck where I had forgotten sunscreen and my vaccine papers. This sense of purpose and passion is I’m sure the driving force behind every religion. This pandemic has shown me the worst of people. I will not forget it. This pandemic has shown me the great lengths I and others will go to, to protect their community. I will never forget that. There is strength in a common goal. Vaccinate Sate 48.

The rise in Asian hate crimes has gone hand in hand with COVID. This certainly was not helped by the previous administration continually referring to COVID as “China Flu” or “Kung Flu.” One of the more horrifying things is how close to home these incidents are happening. Just this month, there were two attacks at a local park on Asian Americans. One was on a Japanese-American Olympian, who was in training. The other was on an elderly Korean-American couple. I live in Southern CA, which has the third highest proportion of the population identifying as Asian, yet even here, racism and racially motivated violent crimes are happening. If there is any positive that is coming out of this, it is the honest conversations we’re having with our children about race. In light of George Floyd and similar situations, the immigrant population at the border, and anti-Asian crimes, our kids are engaged in an active dialogue about equity, prejudice, racism and our response to it. My children are proud to be Asian-American and seeing that pride and them use their voices, even in a small way, makes me hopeful for positive change. Like their signs say, they are proud to be Asian AND American, and to love them like people love Asian food! Oh yeah, and in this pandemic year, a reminder that they are not a virus.

I submitted a story of my life during the pandemic and the positives that I have decided to focus on when looking back on this past year.

I foolishly thought that it would be easy to write this post. I didn’t anticipate struggling so much with finding the right words to explain the impact the last year of pandemic life has had on me, but I’ve deleted about a hundred paragraphs of rambling, existential stream of consciousness nonsense about cherishing the small moments and growing in the face of adversity because it is surprisingly hard to be concise about your feelings on an event you’re still living through. I’m starting to think that maybe doing so is impossible, so instead of falling into cliche and flowery prose, I want to just be blunt. I haven’t seen my family in two years. My grandmother has dementia and in that time it has worsened exponentially. On a weekly basis, I have a call with my mom that starts with a debrief on whatever the newest updates in her condition are and ends with a plea to visit as soon as I feel comfortable traveling. Every day, I go into my retail job and tell them no, I don’t have symptoms or live with anyone with symptoms while waiting for the beep of a thermometer meant to ensure I don’t have a fever. I breathe through two layers of fabric, disinfect my work area between transactions, and field rants about restrictive mask mandates for six hours a day, then come home and begin the process of undressing, banishing my clothes to the washer, and trying to relax before I have to do it all again. Everything in that paragraph is, to put it nicely, so bleak it hurts. It’s easy to get caught in the feelings of overwhelm that came along with this pandemic and it would be a farce to say that there aren’t days where everything feels like way too much for one person to handle. Surprisingly, though, the thing that has blissfully not survived the most turbulent year of my life is the apathetic, empty cynicism I used to feel. Instead, I feel weirdly hopeful that this is the beginning of massive change both in myself and on a global level. Maybe it’s naive to think that way and maybe it’s just a coping mechanism to help me through the pandemic, but there’s a part of me that thinks that may not even matter because the changes are coming regardless. In the last year, I’ve moved out of Nevada and into a pink house in California with the love of my life. Despite a fraught, stressful prior experience in college, I’ve finally come back to higher education in a way that feels both healthy and exciting. The field of religious studies has reawakened my passion for learning and my ability to grow in academia. I’ve abandoned my skeptical, agnostic views and traded them out for a brand of religiosity that combines self-improvement, magic, and trust in something bigger than myself. I know how that all sounds and if the last sentence has you rolling your eyes reading this, I get it. The last year has been weird, don’t get me wrong. If I told a 20-year-old version of myself that one day we’d be living through the plague of a lifetime, studying religion with hopes of examining cultism, and practicing a version of witchcraft grounded in our ex-Catholic roots, I doubt she would believe me. It admittedly sounds pretty wacky all laid out in plain English like that. Part of what I’ve learned throughout the pandemic, though, is that suspending cynicism, skepticism, and disbelief can sometimes lead you to unexpectedly lovely places. Whether I saw it coming or not, Covid has changed my life in countless ways, just as I’m sure it’s changed the lives of everyone reading these entries. Some changes have been for the worse, certainly, but the things that have changed for the better are what I’m choosing to focus on. I’ve read articles about a reemergence of spirituality amongst young people that make me think others have been having similar ideas and something about that feels good. We’ve spent a lot of time isolated, lonely, and missing a sense of belonging we took for granted before, but there’s reassurance for me in knowing that my experiences aren’t all that different from anyone else’s. That type of community, however it manifests, is (and I hope you’ll forgive this admitted slip into flowery prose) something that the pandemic has taught us we must cherish above everything else because it’s what makes our little human lives worth living. More than anything, whenever this pandemic reaches the time where we split our lives into not just before, but after, I hope we don’t forget that.

This story just tells what the world looked like during the Covid pandemic through my eyes.

Throughout the pandemic I have found myself with a lot more time for introspection than usual. I had thought at the start of this pandemic I had felt rather self-assured. I thought I knew what I wanted as a career, for my future, and mostly what kind of person I wanted to become. However, the more time I spent alone the more I realized how much of myself had been a performance for others. For once, the pandemic encouraged me to slow down enough to evaluate what my own personal wants and needs are. I also grew spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually. I was especially surprised to find myself changing my opinions on religion. For years, I have subscribed to rather devout atheism, to the point it nears becoming a religion in my attempts to cut it out. However now I have found myself accepting the mystic much more, and allowing myself to stop explaining everything. Though all these added experiences I was able not to find something new in my queerness per say, but a new way to relate to my world. I was able to find peace with myself as a queer person in the world, not in spite of it. I think the time alone allowed me a lot of space to appreciate the community and its place. To finally start feeling like the bonds and friendships and joy of myself and other queer people is worth even more than just surviving. I think one of the most important things that happened was coming to terms with myself as a nonbinary person. For years I was confident I was a binary trans man due to my physical transition goals and personal fears of being delegitimized in public. I finally realized and accepted that myself is no one else’s business. I have found a new peace with living authentically, even when other people react poorly. Finally, I honestly love being queer.

Staying inside all day has given me the want to greatly improve my entertainment center. This includes getting a nicer TV that was on sale and dusting off old video game consoles from long ago.

The unpredictable horrors of pandemic “Corona Virus” the most lethal being on the earth that swept a mass population since its spread in December 2019. The Corona Virus had already started its attack and only a few cases had been reported in Wuhan, China until 2020, where it spread like a wildfire taking down millions of people. I belong to Nepal which is a neighboring country to China, so it surely was at higher risk which led to a countrywide lockdown in March 2020. It was then, people started to realize the seriousness of the situation. I would like to share my part of the pandemic experience in the first person “We” because I believe in this time I was with my family and we went through this experience- some bitter and some sweet but we were always together as a single unit. When the lockdown was imposed in Nepal, people were not aware of why it was being done. Why a mere viral disease was threatening nations? People took it as an excuse to vacation from work and school. We were told to stay inside the house, wear a mask and avoid gatherings by the national authorities. We could only go out for buying essentials (food, medicine) in the evening between 6-7 PM. Other times we were enjoying with our family because it is very rare to have this much free time in this busy life. We would cook new dishes, we also started gardening, growing vegetables in our backyard, and sometimes there was even “Movie Time” with the family. So, for the first few weeks, this lockdown was a perfect family time. Then the economy slowly started to tremble. People were left jobless, savings started to dry out. We were getting conscious and calculative on the grocery shopping. We own a garment factory (textiles and embroidery) so with no shops open during the time, we were also struggling with the money. My sister was currently stuck in Bangladesh because she had gone there for her educational studies and was stuck since both the countries were on lockdown. She finally arrived back home in June 2020 in an evacuation flight. She was then on self-isolation for 14 days. In these days of self-isolation, she showed no signs of COVID. Finally, on her last day of isolation, she went for a test and the horrors began. The reports came POSITIVE. This came as a shock to all of us because she had followed all the health protocols both in Bangladesh, during the flight, and after arriving in Nepal. We all were in disbelief and were taken aback. Unfortunately, the same day when the reports came out, there a news report regarding the lab where the reports were tested had cross-contamination, leading to inaccurate results in the hospital that day (the same day as my sister was tested). All of the samples were tested positive. Health authorities had to investigate that matter. But since she had no symptoms whatsoever, we wanted to re-check. Before we could even go to the other hospital, the members from the localities hurdled outside our house. They had been informed that an infected person was there in the area. My mom and dad went out to calm the crowd, trying to convince us that the results were doubtful and we were going for a re-check. The crowd was more like an angry mob and was dismissing all our claims, maybe also because this was the first case in our locality. They didn’t want to hear what we had to say. They forcefully started sealing the gates and the areas of our house, ordering all our neighbors to stay away from the area. They were told not to cross the gate and come in contact with us. Since the coronavirus is truly a big deal, though we had some doubts, we accepted that all our family members should go into isolation. But this was easier said than done. For those 14 days, we had no one around us to help. We couldn’t go out to get groceries or even other essentials. Our neighbors were threatened by the local authorities to not help us. They couldn’t send us the groceries or anything else. We were cast away from the whole society around that time. Luckily, we had an aunt living nearby. She used to leave us grocery items in our backdoors before the sunrise…. before anyone could even see. And we would run outside abiding by proper protocols, get those items and be back inside, panting, hoping no one saw us. At that time we had no money, limited food supply, and many mouths to feed. It was like we were living in an apocalyptic world. Baseless rumors had started to spread around the society stating we were seen partying and having gatherings a few days back. People would ring us up just to blame us as if we were the rotten ones. The most heartbreaking incident was when we were called by the local authority asking us to not come out on the balcony because according to them, somehow, we were exposing the virus in our area. Those 2 weeks became hell for our family. Finally, on the 14th day, all the members of our family members took a PCR test, and luckily, we were all tested negative. So in simple terms, we had recovered BUT society still didn’t accept us. Whenever we used to go to the shop, we were stared at and could hear whispers behind our back. People used to stay away from us and we were regarded (sort of) untouchables even after we had medical reports to prove them otherwise. Then a month later, even my maternal grandmother was infected with the virus. We could not go visit her as the hospital didn’t permit and she was under strict surveillance. She soon developed pneumonia as a complication of the COVID attack. Almost half of her lungs had been severely damaged and on 29th November 2020 she passed away. This pandemic left a great impact on us. We suffered great loss both emotionally and financially. From sneaking in groceries like smugglers to bidding goodbye to someone who loved us the most, it will always be an inerasable memory for us. Even as I write my experience, my words are not enough to emphasize the pain this pandemic has caused. But all I can say is we fought this as a FAMILY. One for All and All for One.

It tells of a time of a senior in college who is unable to live his final year of college because of the restrictions associated with COVID-19. Life experiences associated with being a senior at ASU have been lost in this lost year of COVID-19.

I want to share a beautiful story about hope, healing and creativity during the pandemic that originated here in Charleston, South Carolina. It is about how 20 artists from 8 different states got together from afar while physically separated to spread joy and happiness through a large art collaboration. There was no other goal than simply wanting to heal our world.   The Together While Apart Art Project grew from a desire to combat the sadness and isolation that was prevalent during the pandemic. Twenty artists from over 8 states got together from afar to use their creative gifts to collaborate on one large work of art. What is significant about this group project is that each artist channeled the emotions they were experiencing during the height of the global pandemic in hopes of healing themselves as well as providing comfort to a broader audience.   The 20 artists were from many diverse backgrounds and from 8 different states. I was able to locate them through an open call on social media, as well as using contacts generated by a wide range of friends and family. At the onset of this project, the only art supplies I had to send each participant were an abundant supply of recycled shipping boxes. Because much of my art is built from repurposed items, keeping this theme of repurposing for the Together While Apart Art Project was very fitting.  I sent each artist several 6” x 6” square pieces of cut cardboard from these recycled boxes with one simple instruction: think outside of the box! My goal was that through the creative process, each artist would find an outlet for his or her feelings and eventually these emotions would transform into joy. Ultimately, our collective joys would be multiplied and shared with many others through our artwork.  I knew the world needed this dynamic group’s creative gifts. I also knew these amazing participants needed to share their gifts in order to process the current situation the world was in. I can say with certainty, that I am amazed at the outcome. This collaborative piece tells an inspirational story of resiliency, connections and hope during a pandemic that none of us could have imagined a few years ago.  And now, it is time to find this amazing piece a home. If you have a suggestion for an appropriate place that we might donate and/or exhibit this piece, please let me know. I would consider doing a rotation cycle so that several organizations may each enjoy this amazing artwork. Wherever this piece is displayed, I hope it inspires love, warmth, optimism, strength and happiness-the emotions we all felt while creating our individual squares. When people view this beautiful collaboration, they will be reassured that our collective strength grows when we come together by showing love and support for one another. When we connect with one another, we can use our strengths to work towards a greater good. Together, even while apart, we can do great things. And despite the utter chaos and sadness in the world, there are always kind hearted people working to find ways to bring hope and healing to others. Here is a very short video celebrating this project. https://youtu.be/9eGsOCIqESY Fondly,  Deane Bowers  Charleston, SC  804-874-2929

Racism is a virus, a sickness we need to fight and eradicate together! ✊🏿✊🏾✊🏽✊🏼✊🏻 I will never understand, but I stand with you. This portrait is based on a powerful photo by @futurehackney taken during the Black Lives Matter protests in London. This mural will definitely stay for a while – a reminder that inequalities and injustices happen every day, tearing countless lives and families apart, and that the fight against racism and discriminations can never stop.⁣ ⁣⁣

As I’m writing this, it is March 2021 and it’s been a year since I’ve updated this blog. Although I don’t only write about travel here, it’s been depressing to look back on my past trips and have to wonder when I could be in the world again. But I’ve been far from silent during this time. You can read many of my reflections on the pandemic and other topics over at The Mighty, where I have been an editor for the past five years. One year ago, when the pandemic was just beginning in the United States, one of my good friends posted a social media message about supporting each other during what most people thought would be a strange, scary, but ultimately short period of our lives. Part of it went something like this: My mask protects you. Your mask protects me. It’s a nice sentiment. Wearing a few layers of cloth over your face may not help you much, but it helps to prevent other people from getting sick. It’s a kind, visible act we can all do to show we care during a difficult time, to protect others who are at risk even if we may think we would not become seriously ill. It seems so simple, right? How could people not do this? But we all know what happened. “My mask protects you. Your mask protects me,” only works if the other person values your life enough to consider it worth protecting. I’ve been horrified by the number of government officials and online commenters who have viewed the deaths of elderly and disabled people as “acceptable losses” in exchange for keeping non-essential gathering spaces open. My life, and the lives of people with high-risk conditions, are more important than your trip to Disneyland. Don’t you think we want to go to Disneyland too? I’ve also noticed that able-bodied people often assume disabled people will be provided for in emergencies, and in general. They believe there are a lot of government programs and charities to help us, and that such programs are run well and meet our needs. This widespread — but utterly false — belief in a functioning safety net for “the vulnerable” gives people an excuse to behave selfishly while convincing themselves they’re not doing anything wrong. “Of course, there will be a plan to protect nursing home residents, and immune-suppressed people can stay home, so we can throw parties and go without masks if we don’t like them.” In reality, the needs of people with disabilities are often disregarded, misunderstood, ignored, and even actively opposed. We have to fight for access to everything, and sometimes end up on multi-year waiting lists for housing assistance, in-home care, and other essential programs and services. We must battle with government and private insurance to get the mobility equipment we need. We are GPS tracked like criminals if we need personal care assistants, with “fraud prevention” used as an excuse. We often depend on programs with ridiculously complicated requirements, and one missed deadline, one paperwork error, one month where we made “too much money” can cost us everything.

Posted in a Banksy fan page on Facebook. Not a Banksy but artist unknown at this point. The OP titled their post "Reality".

After 400 days to the day, my daughter walked back into her gym. A competitive gymnast who has been training with the same gym since the week before she turned 3, this has been a long year. We are privileged in the sense that the hardest decision we had to make during the pandemic was not related to jobs security, hunger, or even health (beyond keeping ourselves from COVID). Our hardest choice was not allowing our daughter to return to her gym to train when they reopened in June. My husband and I knew COVID was just beginning. We knew the spike would come and the health of our family wasn’t something we were willing to risk, especially because our jobs allowed us the luxury to work from home and distance. At first, we made case rates dropping our marker of when she’d go back. Then, with the announcement of the vaccine, we decided to wait until our household was vaccinated. By the end of March, the adults of our household were vaccinated and our local case count had dropped considerably, to an infection rate percentage of 1.4%. Still, we wondered “should we just wait until she’s vaccinated?” But she’s 10, there is no vaccine being publicized for her age. How long can we keep her from her life? It’s not just the training. It’s about mental health. We’ve kept her physically safe, but she’s 10 years old and hasn’t seen a single friend in person for almost 14 months. She hasn’t shown any signs of a mental health crisis, but even if she isn’t showing anything, this has to have taken a toll on her. It was a difficult and scary choice, but my husband and I decided her mental health and emotional health are worth the risk. She is so happy. She’s had two one on one sessions with her coach and we are all shocked (and relieved) that her daily solo workouts EVERY SINGLE DAY for 400+ days now paid off. She not only kept all her skills but learned enough her skills to advance to the next level. I know her coach is shocked. I don’t think she really believed that a kid would work hard enough on her own to keep in shape. I know my daughter is very proud and very relieved to know she can compete again. And the timing is perfect - the new season starts in May, so she’ll begin in a new level with other girls she knows who also leveled up. She never acted unhappy during quarantine, but since going back, she’s seemed lighter and happier. Still, the two times she went were one on one. The beginning of May will see her going back full time, three practices a week for ten hours a week of practice. I’m happy they’re letting her keep her mask on and that the coaches are wearing masks but I’m still nervous. It’s so hard to send your kid into a situation that may lead them to contract a deadly illness. But it’s also so hard to keep your kid in a bubble. I never in a million years imagined I’d have kept my child home for 400 days. I’m a public school teacher, I’m the first person to tell you the importance of socialization. But in a pandemic, I guess my mothering deep instinct to my child overpowered anything else. I hope and pray with everything in me that we don’t regret allowing her to go back. I hope we are turning a corner in CA and that a vaccine for kids arrives soon so I can feel slightly more relaxed.

As of yesterday, my two weeks was up and I am now "fully vaccinated" per the CDC guidelines. My wife got there Friday, and my mother has been fully vaccinated since February. Per the CDC, since we are all fully vaccinated, we can visit each other and not have to wear masks. We had Mom over for dinner for the first time since before the pandemic. After dinner we played a few rounds of hearts. I had to reacquaint myself with something that used to be "normal" before COVID-19. I was a bit rusty at playing cards, but I soon got back into it. It does not seem like that big a deal, but it was good for Mom to get out of her house for a while. It was good for all of us, and I am looking forward to more such evenings.

The time to defend trans kids is NOW. If we don't, HB 1570 will set a dangerous precedent nationwide. Tell Arkansas Governor Hutchinson to veto this bill: 501-682-2345