Stunned: A Pandemic Time Capsule
Until five days ago, when the brutal death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police set American cities on fire, our streets were eerily quiet and empty from COVID-19. If we weren’t stunned then, we surely are now—by a deadly virus that has been spreading in America for two centuries: racism.
Just last week, my five-year-old African-American grandson who lives in Brooklyn said, “I want to be a policeman when I grow up and save lives.” His Ethiopian mother, who knew little about racism until she moved from Ethiopia to New York City, sobbed as she told me this yesterday.
For the two months previous, I’d been dragging and dropping articles, videos, photos and poems into a folder on my desktop named “COVID Time Capsule.” I opened it every day to savor one or another of its contents, some uplifting, some sharp.
When I began this blog post a week ago, I thought I’d share artifacts from my folder—some of which may be in your coronavirus time capsule, too. They included a spectacular rendition of Bolero by Julliard students; video footage of Ohio Health Department’s remarkable Dr. Amy Acton; and an inspiring short film by an Irish communication team that looks beyond where we are now. There was a recent photo essay from the New York Times of the same empty Parisian streets one hundred years ago and now; a piece about migrant farm workers receiving essential worker status; and an amazing Rube Goldberg treatment of toilet paper.
And there was a 25-second video shot by my young Tanzanian best friend, Romana, which shows her five-year-old daughter teaching her three-year-old her letters in English. She titled it “Homeschooling.”
Yesterday, my heart was in Minneapolis and communities of color across the country. It still is. However, against the backdrop of an America on fire, these artifacts seem life-affirming.
[Note: Please click on each blue link to see the actual video/article/images and more.]
A Humble Opinion on a Successful Post Pandemic World | PBS Newshour
Of all the links in my COVID file, this may be my favorite. (If you are a fan of PBS Newshour, you may have seen this.) The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us the value of recalibrating our expectations and retraining our minds. Here, author Kelly Corrigan shares her humble opinion on imagining a world after the pandemic—and how the experience might change us.
This short video (3:30 min) by the Irish filmmaking team The Tenth Man is as beautiful and inspiring as it is heart-rending. Offering a extensive collage of video footage and photos of COVID affecting daily lives, it asks: “When will this end? and When this ends…” One viewer commented: “Best things I have ever seen: 1. Births of my sons. 2. My wife. 3. THIS.”
Maurice Ravel’s Boléro is a collaborative composition that passes the melodic theme through a series of solos. It highlights the distinct tones and sounds of each instrument, whether it be a flute, violin, or saxophone. In this spectacular project, dozens of Juilliard students—musicians and dancers—quarantined in their respective homes, demonstrate the possibilities of creative connection in an uncertain world. (Watch, too, for famous Julliard alumni like Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman.)
The coronavirus has turned several public health officials and local leaders into bona fide celebrities, and perhaps no one is more compelling than the Ohio Health Department’s Dr. Amy Acton. She wasn’t just the brains behind the state’s early, aggressive coronavirus response; she was also its most effective messenger.
As the coronavirus continued to spread and confine people to their homes, many began filling pages with their experiences of living through a pandemic, told in words and pictures: pantry inventories, window views, questions about the future, concerns about the present. Taken together, the pages tell the story of a claustrophobic and anxious world on pause.
Kids’ Video Diaries about Life During COVID-19
Lockdowns, school closures and social confinement are taking a toll on children as much as the adults around them. UNICEF asked children from around the world to document their lives at home. From Egypt to Italy to India, these videos provide a glimpse into how they are coping.
Photos: In Rural Towns and on Remote Farms, The Virus Creeps In
In rural southeast Oregon, “social distancing” isn’t lifesaving advice during a pandemic. It’s a way of life. Still, COVID is reshaping rural communities, too. Rancher Eli Maley says he understand why people are “hopping mad” at restrictions on business, “but absolutely nobody knows what it would have been like if we had done nothing.”
Farmworkers, Mostly Undocumented, Become ‘Essential’ During Pandemic
Immigrant field workers have been told to keep working despite stay-at-home directives, and given letters attesting to their “critical” role in feeding the country. “It’s like they suddenly realized we are here contributing,” said Ms. Silva, a 43-year-old immigrant from Mexico who works in California’s clementine groves.
“As toilet paper has become a meme in this quarantine, I thought it would be fun to make a chain reaction with it to spend time,” writes Rube Goldberg fan Kaplamino. The machine he built and filmed over ten days is a knockout. “It is difficult to make a chain reaction with toilet paper because they roll unpredictably due to imperfections, and they’re all different,” he says.
Atget’s Paris, 100 Years Later
A hundred years ago, the French photographer Eugene Atget sought out the empty streets of Paris. Getting up early each morning and lugging his primitive equipment throughout the city, he took thousands of photographs that reduced Paris to its architectural essence. At the height of Paris’s coronavirus lockdown, photographer Mauricio Lima followed Atget’s footsteps, shooting images of the same scenes.
Fifteen years ago, I spent several weeks in a remote village near Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, working with a group secondary students to create a photo essay book about daily life there. The book became a best seller of sorts, and the proceeds supported two dozen students in Kambi ya Simba as they pursued higher education, a first for the village’s youth. Romana, now 31, was one of the book’s co-authors, and we’ve been close ever since. She teaches secondary school in a town in northern Tanzania—separated from her husband who must work 750 miles away—and has three young daughters. The pandemic has closed schools in Tanzania, too. She recently sent me this 25-second video of her five-year-old teaching her three-year-old her letters, in English.
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