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250
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https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/efc421244a67befc31b9826c971ff520.mp3
85e684b6b3285c7f9dcb9da03a29f7a7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
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Sound recordings
Duration
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00:19:13
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-044<br />Narrator Name: Danny Atwater<br />Interviewer Name: Tyler Furo<br />Date of interview: 4/22/2020<br /><br />Index<br />[00:00:03] The narrator will introduce himself and his connection to Madison<br />[00:01:20] What was your experience with work at the library when everything started happening in terms of the coronavirus?<br />[00:05:48] What happened with the choir you’re a part of, and the concert you had in March 2020?<br />[00:16:25] Is there anything else you’d like to share?<br /><br />[START OF RECORDING]<br /><br />[00:00:03]<br />Interviewer: Hi everyone. My name is Tyler Furo. I work for Madison Public Library, and this is part of the Living History Project’s Stories from a Distance. I’m here today with Danny Atwater, who is also an employee of Madison Public Library. Danny, welcome. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself and maybe just say something about what your connection is to Madison.<br /><br />Danny Atwater: Thank you, Tyler. Again, my name is Danny Atwater, and I am a Library Assistant for Madison Public Library. Specifically, I’m a Multisite Library Assistant, which means that I move around to the different Madison library locations on an as-needed basis. My connection to Madison is that—I actually grew up in Middleton till I was ten, moved away for a little bit, and then I’ve been living back in Madison since I graduated Whitewater; that would have been 2006. I work for the City of Madison as a library employee, and then I’m also part of a large community organization which is actually a men’s chorus called Perfect Harmony Men’s Choir.<br /><br />[00:01:20]<br />Interviewer: Great! Danny, I was wondering if, first, you would tell us a little bit about your experience with work at the library when everything started happening in terms of the coronavirus—information coming out, and the potential closure of the library that did go through. If you could just tell us what your experience was with that.<br /><br />Danny Atwater: Yeah, I was trying to think back, sort of a timeline, as to when coronavirus started to get onto our collective radar. I feel like that was in February, late February. I think then is when a lot of library staff started doing really general things, like increasing the number of times that we either wash our hands or use hand sanitizer. I know for me, I tried to do that pretty regularly. Also, any time I went to a different computer station—which is often, because we don’t have our own desks—anytime I touched a new keyboard or mouse, I cleaned it off first. The same thing with the phone. We had Clorox-type wipes, and I would just wipe off the keyboard and the mouse and the phone. That practice just continued. Then, I want to say early March, the library started getting on board with some sanitary practices like distributing a public hand sanitizer station to each location, and also making sure that staff had enough wipes to wipe things down. It just kind of generally continued to increase. <br /><br />I can remember the last day that I worked was Friday, March 13th, and I was working at Sequoya Library. I was scheduled for a half shift that day because that night I had a choir program scheduled, and we can talk about that in a little bit. I remember working that morning and early afternoon, and emails were kind of flying back and forth related to the coronavirus, and what best practices should be—if we should start wiping down public computer keyboards and mice. And the public telephones—whether we should allow the public to continue to use those, or if that was unsafe, and if we would be taking that away. It was lots of communications that kept flying around during that time.<br /><br />Friday I had a half day, and then I was off that weekend, and—I’m trying to recall if I stayed home sick on Monday, I want to say. I can’t quite recall. By Tuesday, the order came down that we would be closing down the library. That weekend, I was very much in touch with my coworkers, just to see what the general feeling was like at the library, and what was going on. The new Pinney Library had just had its grand opening, and so they were seeing such increased traffic there. I was in communication with people who were working there and what it was like.<br /><br />Saturday night, I want to say, I wrote a letter to the library board indicating I felt it was unhealthy for the library to remain open. I laid out my perspective on that. I know that a number of other staff were writing to our management and the library board, and some people to the Mayor as well, to try to get things shut down. <br /><br />[00:05:48]<br />Interviewer: Great, yeah, thank you for sharing that, Danny. You had mentioned having a concert that Friday night for your choir, Perfect Harmony Chorus. Can you tell us a little bit more about what happened with that and what happened with your choir you’re a part of?<br /><br />Danny Atwater: Yeah, I’ve been a member of Perfect Harmony Men’s Chorus. This is my ninth season with the chorus—so a very long time. I sing second tenor with the chorus and I’m also involved in various leadership capacities in terms of different committees, things like that. Perhaps my biggest recurring role is to be the overall leader for our cabaret fundraiser event. So what that means is I’m coordinating the work of many other people to help make sure this event takes place. Our cabaret fundraiser is our biggest annual fundraiser so it’s very important to us. What it is is a cabaret-style show that we put on, and we also have a silent auction and a raffle. There’s hors d'oeuvres and desserts. So it’s a really large event and it takes dozens of people to put it together. To pull this show off, it usually means that we’ve been planning for about a year to make sure that the event can take place.<br /><br />On Thursday, March 12th, my partner called me after I got off from work. I was working at Hawthorne that day—it’s funny how these memories kind of sit with you, because on a regular day I wouldn’t be able to tell you where I had worked the previous day, just because it all mushes together, but these memories lock in there. So I had just gotten off of work at Hawthorne and he called me right after my shift, and I was sitting in the Hawthorne parking lot and we were just talking on the phone for a long time. He was saying how he had been hearing more about coronavirus concerns and that he had just listened to a news conference with a well-known doctor that his friend had sent to him. My partner was saying that he was really beginning to think this thing could blow at any time, so he was encouraging me as the leader of this event to consider closing it down. This was something that my leadership team and I had been in discussions about all week. Obviously coronavirus was on our radar at the time, and certain events were starting to get canceled here and there, but it wasn’t that wide-spread at the time. On Wednesday night, we had even sent out an email to our audience who had bought tickets saying, “We’re keeping an eye on the CDC and health practices. At this time we’re going to continue with the event for Friday and Saturday.” It was a two-night event. That went out Wednesday, and so our plan was full steam ahead.<br /><br />After talking to my partner about it and him really relaying his concerns to me, it helped solidify my position on it. I had mixed feelings about it, in terms of what it could mean, and that helped solidify my position. So I got home and I began contacting various leaders within the chorus, just via text, taking their temperature to see where they were at with everything. It wasn’t my sole decision to make; it’s really the decision of the organization. So I wanted to see where people were at with it, and it allowed people to express their concerns as well. Most people had been in agreement with the full steam ahead, we’re going to do the show. But when I reached out to them individually, they were saying, “Yeah, I’m having concerns about this too, and I don’t know what that means, but I’m concerned.”<br />I was starting to get enough information from individuals that I sent an email to our leadership committee, which is all the committee chairs, and then to our board of directors. I just laid out the fact that this seems to be getting more serious. After asking individuals, it sounds like they are concerned as well, and I think we might need to reconsider our position as an organization and perhaps not go forward with this event for this weekend. I spent probably from 7pm till about midnight totally connected to my phone, either texting, emailing, or having phone calls with various people within the organization, and by about midnight, we had made the very difficult decision to pull the plug on this. And it was difficult because, again, this is our largest annual fundraiser, not only the monetary aspect of it but, as far as a performance goes, the performers have been putting in work since November, so four months of really hard work and preparation, hours and hours of rehearsal time. So it was not easy to make that decision. But by midnight, we decided to do that, and so we put together an email and sent it out to our audience members saying, “Look, we know yesterday we told you the event was going on, but today we’re here to tell you that it’s not.”<br /><br />I think that was an opportunity for our organization to act as a leader in the community. Then, the next day, Friday the 13th, everything started to get canceled. Everything. I’m on a lot of email lists for the Overture and the Majestic and High Noon, and I was just getting a barrage of emails. This event’s canceled; this is canceled; that’s canceled. Hour by hour and day by day, more and more cancellations were coming in, and that really helped reassure me that we had made the right decision to cancel our fundraiser event. It still feels a little emotional talking about it, because it’s something we worked very hard on. <br /><br />Choir right now is obviously also canceled. At first we were meeting and considering the possibility of postponing our cabaret show and running it at the end of May. Nobody knew what the timeline would be like on this thing. We had our regular spring concert scheduled for the end of May. We thought, well, we can just plug our cabaret show in there, and that would be that. As the days and weeks continued, we determined that, no, we’re not going to be able to have our cabaret event and we’re not going to be able to have our spring concert at all. Our rehearsals were canceled indefinitely. Even our rehearsal space was closed off to us, because we rehearse at Capitol Lakes retirement community, and so as a retirement community, they were very concerned about their residents, so they had canceled all outside events anyway, so we were a choir without a home anyway. Now we didn’t have any reason to continue to rehearse, so that was that.<br /><br />Also, in terms of the chorus, in July, we were scheduled to have our gala music festival, which is an international festival that happens every four years, sort of on the Olympics’ summer schedule. It’s kind of the Olympics of gay and lesbian choirs. And so we were scheduled to have a week in Minneapolis where we would come together. There’s typically about 6,500 people from around the world who come together and sing with their choirs. It quickly became very apparent that holding an international festival in July after a world-wide pandemic would not be happening. That has also been postponed at this point, officially now. For a few weeks it was just talk, but it’s official now that that’s been postponed until next summer. So that again is another thing that is something that I have been looking forward to for four years, and it’s really hard to try to let that go. I know that it’ll be there a year from now, but it’s still a really big, big bummer.<br /><br />[00:16:25]<br />Interviewer: Absolutely. It sounds like you had some challenges to face. Thank you for sharing that, Danny. I think we’re going to wrap up here. Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you’d like to talk about, any experiences you’d like to share that we didn’t get to?<br /><br />Danny Atwater: Those have been the big things. The canceling of my choir event was the major kickoff for me to this whole coronavirus thing. Since then, I’ve been able to work at home. The library has been incredibly supportive of efforts for us to work at home. There are a variety of things that we are all able to do. It started out as a lot of professional development, which meant a lot of paths of learning: watching webinars, things like that. Then it started to transition to different work groups. Those groups were tasked with different things that we wouldn’t normally have the time to do in our daily jobs, but now we had the time to do it, so let’s sit down and talk about these things and flesh them out.<br /><br />At first, it was grueling the first couple of weeks, trying to get my work hours in. I was so grateful to have a job that was keeping me on, and, at the same time, it was like beating my head against the wall because of how frustrating it was, because it was so different. Now, five weeks in, I am busier than ever. I don’t have—I don’t feel like I have time to do all the things I’m supposed to be doing, all the different projects and committees, and different things I’m supposed to be learning. It’s a challenge to fit it all in each day now. I’m happier now that I’ve settled into a work routine like that. That’s been interesting.<br /><br />Daily life has been kind of surreal. I feel a little bit adrift. But it’ll be okay if we all just keep doing what we’re supposed to do: stay home, not be around each other. Then we should be able to beat this thing.<br /><br />Interviewer: I think that’s a wonderful note to end on. Thank you so much, Danny.<br /><br />Danny Atwater: Thanks, Tyler. I appreciate it.<br /><br />[END OF RECORDING]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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COVID-19 story by Daniel Atwater, 2020
Subject
The topic of the resource
Epidemics
Public libraries
Social distance
Men's choirs
Rights
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Copyright 2020, Daniel Atwater and Madison Public Library. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
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Atwater, Daniel
Contributor
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Furo, Tyler
Date
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2020-04-22
Description
An account of the resource
Danny Atwater shares his experiences working as a multi-site library assistant at Madison Public Library during the lead-up to the Safer at Home social distancing measures, and what work looks like during the library buildings' closures. Danny shares about the process for decision making to cancel Perfect Harmony Men's Chorus' large-scale annual fundraiser.
Coverage
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Madison, Wisconsin
Language
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en
Identifier
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covid19-044
cat-arts
cat-work
covid19
covid19-044
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/9bafcc5c02724fde4517e64af556f4f9.mp3
3c2ad22a020ffccff7a365513df39586
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Poetry
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:01:08
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Close Call
Subject
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Poetry
Epidemics
Social distance
Rights
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Copyright 2020, Dana Maya. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
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Maya, Dana
Date
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2020-05-06
Description
An account of the resource
A poem by Dana Maya, about social distance measures in Madison, Wisconsin, in spring 2020.
Coverage
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Madison, Wisconsin
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-043
cat-arts
cat-inside_stories
covid19
covid19-043
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/78b7d66ea92423fb93c1c3e6685659d7.mp3
b261429b2deee26ccf6ec490bd18fd9b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Sound recordings
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:18:52
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-039<br />Narrator Name: Matt DeBlass<br />Interviewer Name: Danny Atwater<br />Date of interview:4/21/2020<br /><br />[00:00:00] - Start of interview<br />[00:00:57] - What have the last few weeks looked like for you<br />[00:02:39] - What does the city look like right now<br />[00:04:26] - Roommates’ work<br />[00:05:42] - Bartending - when bar might reopen<br />[00:06:15] - Library projects<br />[00:08:01] - Being a musician during Safer at Home<br />[00:09:04] - What type of music/Church services<br />[00:11:39] - How have things been going for family and friends<br />[00:13:33] - What sorts of things worry you right now<br />[00:16:29] - Good things that you see happening right now<br />[00:18:11] - Wrapping up/Thank you<br /><br />[Start of recording]<br /><br />Interviewer: My name is Danny Atwater and I am a library assistant for Madison Public Library. This interview is being recorded as part of the Madison Living History Project Stories From a Distance series. Today's date is Tuesday, April 21, 2020, and this interview is being conducted via the video conferencing software Zoom. So let's begin. Tell us your first and last name and describe your connection to Madison.<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: I'm Matt DeBlass. I've lived in Madison for about five years now. Moved here from New Jersey in 2014, 2015 or so. Beginning of 2015. And I currently work as a page at Hawthorne Library as well as a church musician at First Baptist Church in Madison and local working musician around town and part-time bartender at Bos Meadery, too, because we all wear a lot of hats these days. Or did, until recently. (laughs)<br /><br />[00:00:57]<br />Interviewer: So, Matt, what have the last few weeks looked like for you?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: They've been a little strange. A lot of time at home, obviously, because that's how it was for everybody. Obviously, the bartending job has kind of stopped. The library has us working. As a page, I'm only a part-timer, so, doing a lot of distance learning and a lot of writing and video conferencing, so there's a lot. And I kind of have been, finally, after, like almost, about a month, come into a kind of routine where I get up, I get dressed, because the whole, like, get out of your pajamas into your workday sweatpants (laughs) is very important. Then I, you know, get on the computer, do some work. Big part of my routine lately has been a daily jog. I used to be, like, kind of a casual jogger, like two, three times a week. Now it's turned into every day. That's my get-out-of-the-house time, but also after sitting in front of the computer for hours really helps me kind of recenter. And there's probably a little bit of subconscious anxiety about health-related stuff, too, where it's like, I'm going to stay as healthy as possible right now! Because, yeah, it's that kind of time. So, that, and I've also started—I live with three other people. I'm in a house with some housemates. We kind of have, we stay out of each other's way during the daytime. Then at dinnertime we eat together and watch TV and have like our little social time, which is really kind of a good balance. You know, it’s kind of tricky to manage living together with people, not being totally underfoot all the time, but also, you know, I genuinely like the people I live with, which is helpful. So we've been getting into a pretty good routine for that, too. So it's kind of, work in the day time, take a little afternoon break, and then have our family time in the evening. <br /><br />[00:02:39]<br />Interviewer: You mentioned work and I do want to get into what that looks like a little bit more. But I'm curious. You mentioned jogging. When you are out and about, what does the city look like right now? What does your neighborhood look like; what's going on out there?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: So I live in the Emerson East neighborhood, which is near Emerson Elementary School, about a block away from East High School, and it is—East Washington is still fairly busy. The side streets are pretty quiet mostly right now. There are a lot of dog walkers. I swear, everybody on the east side of Madison has bought a dog just so they can get out and walk them. (laughs) That may or may not be true. That's probably not true but it feels that way. It's like, I don't remember seeing so many people walking their dogs all the time. So there's dog walkers and joggers. I go up to—there's a park not too far away. I'll go up there. Usually though, one or two people at a time, and we're all pretty good about giving each other space. There's definitely kind of—some runs are kind of like a PacMan thing where I'll see somebody coming so I'll change direction and this block and that block or, you know, one of us will go out in the street. But it's been, it's been much quieter. Also, living near an elementary school, it's usually very noisy at this time of year, there’s usually morning and afternoon pickups and stuff, and that's been dead silent, which is a little bit strange. So it has been much quieter, but the East Washington corridor is still pretty active and busy, so that hasn't changed too much. There's lots of little—also really nice little signs on some of the doors and some of the kids have put, like, little encouraging messages in chalk on the sidewalks. There's a great—somebody did a—just a sheet of cardboard sign on their lawn. It just said that, "This is hard and you can do it," which is a great bit of encouragement. So, the neighborhood's been pretty friendly and supportive of each other from arm’s length or several arm’s lengths away, so that's been pretty cool.<br /><br />[00:04:26]<br />Interviewer: Your roommates. Do they have jobs that they're able to work from home? Do any of them have to head out to work and are you concerned about any potential risk of infection with them coming back?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: When this all started one of my housemates was working at the Co-op as a grocery clerk, but she left that job just because it was getting—it just wasn't a very comfortable situation. So right now, none of us have to leave home for work. My other—the housemates who own the house have a guitar repair business, actually. They do—they have their workshop in the back and they’ve kind of worked out no contact pickup and drop-off times for people. It's kind of, it's kind of a backyard business, so it's not a very—it's not really booming anyway. It's more, we all do little freelance things that way, so. They're still working, they own the house. We do some gardening and stuff, too, but right now—and I think my one housemate just found a job helping out with somebody else's garden plot doing some weeding. So she's found a no-human-contact job to do. So right now—in the beginning it was a little bit, we weren't kind of sure, I was kind of nervous with having someone coming and going into, you know, working in a grocery store, but now, we're all pretty safe at home most of the time.<br /><br />[00:05:42]<br />Interviewer: Let's talk about some of your jobs. You mentioned being a bartender and how that's pretty much dried up right now. <br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Yeah.<br /><br />Interviewer: Is there any thought of when re-opening might occur or just following the government orders right now?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Just following guidelines. The Bos—I worked at Bos Meadery down on East Wash and the owner Colleen is being very careful and would rather make sure all her staff and patrons are safe than push the issue. So right now it's just waiting to see what happens.<br /><br />[00:06:15]<br />Interviewer: And for your library job, what sorts of projects are you working on?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Right now there's been a ton of online training, a lot of—which has been super helpful. A lot of it's dealing with all the classes that we never had time to do while we were all working. And a lot of, you know, social justice, social issues dealing with—that librarians deal with interacting with the public, interacting with homeless and mental health issues and stuff like that. It's been really good. Also, some training on, like, managing your own stress and not freaking out, which has been cool. I've kind of done a few projects with a little bit of language translation. We had a Spanish language guidebook for libraries. I did one for French because we do get some people from French-speaking Africa and the Carribean, so I dusted off my high school French and did that. And I've been kind of trying to do compilations of useful sites for free books and stuff. And doing some blogging and writing, just because—just to take a break from the more passive soaking in, soaking in loads and loads of information and watching so many webinars, (laughs) which—they're all fantastic, but after you do two or three in one day, your eyes are just falling out of your head. So, so there's been a lot of—they've given us a lot of leeway. Our supervisors have been, kind of, very generous, like, "Anything you can do that's kind of useful, run it by us and we'll okay it," so that's—which is kind of great that they trust us so much to do that, and you know it encourages me to try to find things that at least have some utility to them as well, which is, it's kind of great working in an environment like that, really appreciated it. I am kind of looking forward to when we can get back to, you know, back to the books and to the people and everything else, but when everything's ready.<br /><br />[00:08:01]<br />Interviewer: Perhaps, most interesting might be your job as a musician. And so I'm curious to hear what it's like to be a musician during these Safer at Home times.<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: It's very strange and confusing. (laughs) Pretty much all of my live performances that have been booked for the next few months were all cancelled, including some wedding gigs which are a substantial income for me. It's not, you know, it's not my full-time job but it's a really—it really helps a lot with—as a part-time job. All of my live performances have been cancelled, my wedding gigs have been postponed until—if we know at all until the end of summer. So that's kind of a little scary financially? On the other hand, you know there's kind of this, I don't want to be irresponsible and encourage large groups of people to get together just to hear me. (Laughs) Totally not worth it. (Laughs)<br /><br />[00:09:04]<br />Interviewer: To clarify, what type of musician are you? Is there a specific genre? Instrument?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Primarily folk music, acoustic folk. Main instrument these days is actually the harp back there, the Celtic harp, as well as a few other things, and sing, guitar and mandolin, as well, but you know I do the weddings and a lot of coffee shop gigs and corporate things on the harp, which are really fun. I have been doing the occasional livestreams and online performances for people. Definitely been kind of leaning into the more relaxed and laid back end of my repertoire. I do a lot of Irish music, pub songs and loud, rowdy stuff, but now it's like, I'm going to play some harp music because everybody maybe can use a little bit of, you know, a little more chilled-out stuff and I think, you know, maybe it helps. but it–(Laughs) I hope so. <br /><br />And one of the other things I've been doing is I work for a church as a worship musician and we've been doing our–even before the Stay at Home order the church decided to cancel in-person services because there are a lot of older church-goers in the congregation and people with vulnerabilities. And, so, the first week we didn't really know what we were doing, but we've been doing Zoom meetings. And that's been an interesting, interesting way to play music because you know, you can't, you can't play a song and have everybody sing along. You just have to play and maybe they're singing along at home, or maybe they're just moving their lips with their mic muted, but—(laughs) It's also been kind of like trying to figure out the technical end of things. Zoom's not really great for music. It's really voice-oriented, so trying to get that to work, we've had to learn to fiddle with our computer settings and rig up external mics and do all these things to try to get the best audio quality we can to do that and then we have—there's me. There's actually three musicians and the music director has to switch between us and mute one and do that. So, it's been, it's been a very interesting way to do it. On the other hand it really seems like people are very glad to see each other on Sundays and there's really a—a really great sense of community and everybody's, you know, really just happy to be there, even stuck from home, and a lot of our older churchgoers have really taken to the technology of it, too. Everybody seems to have figured it out pretty well, so, you know, there's that, you worry about that barrier. It's like, it's almost kind of a stereotype that older residents aren't going to be able to figure out how to do stuff online, and it's been surprising how adept a lot of them are and how comfortable everybody seems to be kind of moving in this digital space as well as we can. It's strange times but I think, you know, in that end of things we're adapting pretty well.<br /><br />[00:11:39]<br />Interviewer: How have things been going for family and friends?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Most of my family's out east in New Jersey, including my daughter, who's a—she works in a food service place in a service station, so her job was deemed essential because it's where a lot of truckers come and stuff and supply lines and all that, so she's had to go to work and—she's okay, and she says people are mostly following all the social distancing rules and her company's giving them extra money and paid sick leave, just in case and all that and–but, you know, I worry. She's 19, she's healthy, she's fine; in her mind she's invincible as, you know, we all were at that point. I worry about her, though, but it's—you know, she feels like she's being useful and she's doing stuff and bringing home money for the family and all that. So they're taking care. My mom passed away a few years ago, so she's gone, but my dad had retired to the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania and kind of become this quasi-mountain man that he’d always wanted to be. So he's pretty well out of everything. You know, I think he goes to the grocery store every couple weeks, but he's really—he was already distancing, (laughs) and happily. So most of my family's in pretty good shape. My other brother—I have several brothers—the oldest of my younger brothers is working for the city of Paterson, New Jersey. He's a mechanic for their fleet, so he fixes fire engines and ambulances, so he's been really busy including having to sleep at work because they're just busy enough with the ambulances going in and out constantly that he's maintaining a lot. But he's got plenty of protective gear. He doesn't actually interact with people so much as the equipment. So, you know, it's—they're family and you worry about them, but everybody seems to be doing okay so far.<br /><br />[00:13:33] <br />Interviewer: What sorts of things worry you right now?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Well, there's the inevitable health worry. There's kind of that scariness. You know, it’s just like, oh jeez, this—having known a few people who've gone through the disease and having had a friend's father just died of it recently, it's been pretty close to home, and it's, like, not something I want to deal with. <br /><br />But also there's that—I don't know where things are going financially, socially. There's been definitely a lot of anxiety about paying the bills and stuff. I'm really lucky. I'm not particularly financially prosperous to begin with, but I've managed to have jobs that have kept me on, you know, with at least a partial income stream. I've got a living situation where my rent is cheap and basically while this is all going on I'm just paying utilities and groceries and not really having to worry about—I'm in a, you know, I'm not well-off but I'm in a much better position right now than a lot of people are. So I'm very, very grateful of that, but I don't know where it's going to go. I don't know what's going to happen in a couple months, whether, you know, the whole music career, such as it is, might be pretty much done for a while. I don't know. I don't know what it's going to be like. And that kind of uncertainty is really worrying. It's like, how bad is the economy going to get, how bad are things going to get for me? Is anyone I know going to get really sick? So there's a lot of that going on.<br /><br />I'm, at the same time, very frustrated with some of the pushback on the closures that's been happening. There's a lot of, you know, "Reopen this and that," and I understand where the frustration and worry that comes from, but I feel like the—what they're pushing for will cause a lot more problems than it's going to solve. They're worried about paying the bills, but if there's—you know, if things get worse health-wise for a lot of the country and enough people are worried that's going to cause even bigger economic and social problems as well as just, like, all the deaths and misery of the whole thing. So that, and especially this week that's been very big in the news, so that's very frustrating. Frustrating's a nice way to put it, I guess. So there's a lot of–like, the news anxiety is definitely a thing and I've definitely had to kind of discipline myself about, like, turning off the phone and the computer at dinnertime and not going online and reading stuff before bed and just kind of maintain a little peace that way and find little things to do around the house. I started, you know, obviously I play music a lot and I've been doing, I started a Patreon thing where I can try to, you know, push myself to make more original music for people and get subscribers to that because I won't be playing live. I started drawing and doodling more, which is always, like, something that used to be a hobby years ago, but it's been kind of like my little daily meditation, a way to unplug and sit there with my sketchbook. Whatever I can do to kind of keep myself in balance. And of course the daily exercise and the daily jog, just to get out, get out of the house for a while.<br /><br />[00:16:29]<br />Interviewer: What are some good things that you see happening right now?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: I think in a lot of communities people have, you know, like in a lot of disasters and bad situations people really start turning to their neighbors and communities, and even though there's that kind of physical distance, people—most people—seem to really get that sense of, hey, we're all in this together, you know. We're all working together for a common goal, to try to minimize damage, to try to work—so there's that sense of community in connection with other people, with strangers and just feeling like you're all on the same team. It's been pretty great. I would hope that all of this kind of makes us collectively take a look at kind of economic and healthcare systems and look at kind of the nonfunctional parts of it a little bit better, or could be done better, could be fixed up and taken care of more and make some changes. I know it takes—it might take even more than a global disaster to change some minds and (laughs) political leadership. But I think that a lot of people are just waking up a little bit to, like, hey, we've got to find better ways to handle this. And so maybe that will result in some better, better management of that. <br /><br />Yeah, I don't know, I just—there is on the selfish end, there's a little bit of, like, I've been working a lot of customer service and people-facing jobs for a while, so having a little break has been kind of nice. I've been, I've been having more time to myself. And there's—when I can set aside all the anxiety and, like, oh yeah, I can sit back and read more, or I go for a run, I can sit on the porch when it's nice out and just chill out. I kind of had to be forced to by a government order, but I finally managed to chill out and relax a little bit, so—(laughs)<br /><br />[00:18:11]<br />Interviewer: Is there anything else that you want to talk about that we haven't brought up yet?<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: I think we've covered pretty much what's going on. It's been, it's been strange times, but I've been very lucky to have community and work environment and, you know, stuff like that that's been pretty supportive. And, so, you know, I'm doing okay compared to a lot of people, and I think it's—it could've been worse on my end, so it's just a very strange time to be living through. And every now and then it's hard to wrap your head around what's going on.<br /><br />Interviewer: Well, Matt, I want to thank you for your time today and thank you for sharing your story.<br /><br />Matt DeBlass: Thank you, Danny, I'm, you know, I'm sure I'll see you soon. One way or the other. (laughs)<br /><br />[End of recording]
Dublin Core
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Title
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COVID-19 story by Matt DeBlass, 2020
Subject
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Public libraries
Running
Bartending
Roommates
Epidemics
Social distance
Rights
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Copyright 2020, Matt DeBlass and Madison Public Library. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
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DeBlass, Matt
Contributor
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Atwater, Daniel
Glaeser, Colleen
Witkins, Romelle
Date
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2020-04-21
Description
An account of the resource
Matt DeBlass shares what life has looked like since the social distance measures went into place in Madison and Wisconsin. Matt describes what the Emerson East neighborhood looks and feels like right now, what life with roommates is like during a pandemic, and what being a musician is like at the moment.
Coverage
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Madison, Wisconsin
Language
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en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-038
cat-arts
cat-neighborhoods
covid19
covid19-039
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/bdb7849ecbd2d6ba3202b58c60aacbbe.mp3
d0b7d80a473659b21e327cedf1afedbd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
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Sound recordings
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00:18:46
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Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-03<br />Narrator Name: Chase Frigen<br />Interviewer Name: Danny Atwater<br />Date of Interview: 05/01/2020<br /><br /><br />INDEX<br />[00:00:01] - Introduction<br />[00:00:51] - A look at the first few weeks of pandemic and Safer at Home<br />[00:02:58] - How the neighborhood looks<br />[00:04:23] - How he’s staying active<br />[00:05:14] - Impact on his job with Medicare<br />[00:09:03] - Impact on his job as pianist for a chorus<br />[00:11:25] - Impact on family and friends<br />[00:13:09] - Stories or images that stand out?<br />[00:16:12] - Good things happening now?<br />[00:18:43] - Wrap-up<br /><br /><br />[START OF RECORDING]<br /><br />[00:00:01]<br />Interviewer: My name is Danny Atwater and I am a Library Assistant for Madison Public Library. This interview is being recorded as part of the Madison Living History Project: “Stories From A Distance” series. Today’s date is Friday May 1, 2020, and this interview is being conducted via Zoom. Let’s get to our storyteller—please tell us your first and last name and describe your connection to Madison.<br /><br />[00:00:24]<br />Chase Frigen: Hi, my name is Chase Frigen. I’m actually new to Madison; I’m about to hit my one-year mark of being a Madison resident. Currently I work with Medicare for one of the local health insurance companies, as well as I am the pianist for Perfect Harmony Men’s Chorus. So I like to stay active in the community that way, and I’ve gotten to meet a lot of people and see a lot of cool things because of both of those.<br /><br />[00:00:51]<br />Interviewer: Thank you, Chase. Tell me, what have the last few weeks looked like for you in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Safer At Home order?<br /><br />[00:01:00]<br />Chase Frigen: The last few weeks for me have looked like two different rooms in my home (laughs) and that’s it (laughs). Pretty much it. As far as just living in general, I’m lucky enough to be able to work from home, so that’s what I mean when I say I’m in two different rooms—I have like my home office and then living room essentially that I hang out in. It’s been an interesting experience, obviously. I’m only, I’m twenty…shoot—twenty-eight years old (laughs), and I haven’t had a lot of experiences like this before, obviously. So it’s been a new experience for me and been spending a lot of time kind of afraid to go out, I would say is—and I’m sure that’s a normal experience for people. I mean, I definitely don’t want to get sick and I don’t want to be a part of the spread of COVID-19 as well. Simple tasks that you took for granted before are now a chore, or even like I said, like a little—like, to me—terrifying. I’m a germaphobe as well, so that doesn’t help. But going to the grocery store is an interesting experience for me, there are—I tend to go to one of the Hy-Vee grocery stores in the area and they’re doing great where they have arrows on the ground, which kind of route people through the aisles so—to keep everyone at least, you know, six feet away like they’re recommending. But of course they’re not going to enforce that as—they’re not going to be dictators about it I guess you should say, (laughs) or yell at people for not following the rules, but you do have people who don’t follow the rules and that, that causes me a little anxiety actually, when I’m walking through the grocery store. It’s—and I wouldn’t have ever thought this would be how life would be before this all started. It’s interesting and it’s new.<br /><br /><br />[00:02:58]<br />Interviewer: When you look out your window, what does the neighborhood look like right now? <br /><br />[00:03:03]<br />Chase Frigen: Quiet. (laughs) Everyone does a pretty good job; especially the first couple weeks of it you didn’t see anyone out. You maybe saw one person by themselves going on a run, or something, getting their daily exercise, which is totally fine. But the neighborhood that I live in has a lot of youth that is usually out in the front yard, or they’re in the streets playing catch, or what have you, and they—it’s been quiet, which I’m not used to. I won’t say that I don’t mind it (laughs), or that I mind the quietness, but it’s been different. It’s interesting to see. I’m glad to see that a lot of people have been paying attention to it, but I can tell that as we’re getting into the second month of this Safer At Home type of thing. People are starting to get a little tired of it, and not so much that it’s rebelling—I feel that people are still being conscientious of staying six feet away from each other and those types of things, but I feel like people are being a little more open to at least going outside, you know, like it was when it first started. I think there’s more knowledge now, people are washing their hands. It’s not as crazy as it was for the first couple weeks where everyone was terrified to go outside.<br /><br />[00:04:23]<br />Interviewer: What are you doing to stay active? Are you doing things inside your home, or do you get out? <br /><br />[00:04:30]<br />Chase Frigen: I personally, I do try to get out and go for a walk. I don’t always get to that point. We don’t have a home gym at our apartment complex, which even if we did I’m sure that would be closed down seeing as all public gyms are closed down as well, understandably. But funny enough, we have a Nintendo Switch and (laughs) we use that for—we have the just dance game. That gets me—my blood pressure up. It’s good enough; it works. We’re using technology in ways that we wouldn’t have thought to, but I definitely know I need to stay active so that’s been a fun way for me to stay active. <br /><br />[00:05:14]<br />Interviewer: You mentioned your two jobs—the Medicare job and being the pianist for a chorus. Let’s talk about both of those.<br /><br />[00:05:23]<br />Chase Frigen: Sure. Well, starting with my insurance job where I work with Medicare, I hear a lot of interesting stories. I don’t have to talk to our members all that often, but when I do—I mean it’s typical when you have elderly people—especially now in this time people aren’t allowed to go out—they’re lonely. I’m lonely too, don’t get me wrong (laughs), but they’re lonely and they definitely talk a lot more now to me about non-work related subjects than I’m used to, which is not a bad thing; I’m welcome to it as well. And it’s interesting to hear all of the stories that some of the members have told me. For instance, I had one member who—I mean, we were just—to be honest I was taking a payment call for her, so I was just like “What’s your debit card number?” and then all of a sudden we got off topic and fifteen minutes later we’re (laughs) still on this phone call. And she and I—she had brought up the fact that her grandchildren, well, and also her children—her daughter had mentioned that her son, like, they got done—this was when COVID-19, the pandemic, first started where everybody was more like, “I won’t go out unless I absolutely need to. I’m going to get enough groceries for the week and if we don’t have enough we’ll make it work.” And this particular mother, she said that her son was still hungry after dinner, but they were rationing it out to make it through this time period of “No, we only go grocery shopping on Sunday,” or like, “One person goes.” And I found it interesting because the grandma was like, “Well, you know, if he’s still hungry after dinner—if you have a loaf of bread, give him some bread on top of that.” That sounds so archaic, and prior to this pandemic, no one wanted for things like that in these situations, or most of the time I should say no one wanted for that type of thing. <br /><br />So it was interesting to hear that and I was like, “You know, that’s true. I’m eating meals that I wouldn’t normally eat, or I’m spreading things thinner than I would in my everyday life prior to the pandemic.” It’s interesting—all those things that we take for granted, I guess, outside of this time. And I think that’s one takeaway that—and I’ve had multiple stories like that from members too where it’s like “Well, we had to adjust our lives to live in this time.” And what’s interesting too—like I said I work with Medicare—so a lot of my, the people that I speak with, they are elderly. And even people that are in their eighties are saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” And that’s interesting to me, and I think it’s going to be interesting when I’m that age to be like, “Well, I lived through that,” and I can speak to that experience as well. And as much as it’s been terrible, I mean I know there have been a lot of people affected by this that have lost family members due to COVID-19, and that’s absolutely terrible and I can’t imagine and I’m fortunate enough to not have to go through that myself, but these—this is something that I’m going to take away from where there are things that I am no longer going to take for granted. That’s the small blessing for me—and I hope for a lot of others as well—is that they can take that away as just something to move forward with in their life and know that it’s not always going to be good, and so when it is good you should appreciate it. <br /><br />[00:09:03]<br />Interviewer: Tell us about what it’s like to be a pianist for a chorus during this time.<br /><br />[00:09:10]<br />Chase Frigen: (Laughs) Well, I—I’m not being a pianist for a chorus in this time and that’s so weird to me! (Laughs) I still, of course, play very often—It’s something that I love doing. It’s actually one of my things that I try to do every day. And it’s not even that I try to do it, it’s that I want to do it every day. It’s my me time, it’s my quiet time, it’s my meditation time. And honestly I’ve—I didn’t really know how I would feel about it at first after finding out that we weren’t going to be meeting for rehearsals and things anymore, but it’s been a good time to be able to use that time to practice and get better at my craft. Even though, I mean, I’m in a fine spot where I’m at right now, but I definitely want to take advantage of all this extra time that I have, where I am home, where before my social life and work life, professional life—I didn’t have all this quote, unquote, “free time” to devote to practicing anymore. I feel like I’m in college again; I’ve made fun little exercises for myself to do on a daily basis. I’m learning things about myself as a musician a little bit deeper because I have more time to devote to it. It’s interesting—I miss it. I miss rehearsals and I definitely miss performing. <br /><br />We had a large performance that was supposed to go on right as the pandemic started, and all the leadership for the group did get together, and had a discussion, and it was a difficult discussion for everyone. And I weighed in as well on what my thoughts were, and it was best that we decided to call off the show. The venue that we were going to be in was close quarters for everyone, so—and that was even before it was really known to do the five feet apart, so in hindsight now, especially, I’m very glad that decision was made. I can’t wait to get to a point where we can reconvene (laughs) rehearsals. I’m excited to see everyone again, I’m excited to make music with everyone—making music by yourself just isn’t the same as doing it with an ensemble. <br /><br />[00:11:25]<br />Interviewer: Are you in touch with family and friends right now, and how are they doing? <br /><br />[00:11:30]<br />Chase Frigen: Yeah, I think that we live—you know obviously this isn’t an ideal situation, but in the era that we live in technology, I think that it’s easier than it would have been in the past, I mean, in past different pandemics that have gone on. We have—we’re meeting today, we have Zoom. We can get together as people—there’s Facetime, even Facebook allows you to chat with people if you have a webcam or a smartphone that’s capable to do that, and obviously just calling people as well; it’s easy to stay in touch. It’s funny for me—I feel like my parents’ life hasn’t really changed very much. My mom is a stay-at-home mom—she’s great at it (laughs). My dad, he does work—he works, actually, in telecommunications, so he was deemed as an essential-type of worker. So he still continues to go to work, and they have their own boundaries that they have in place because of COVID-19, of course, due to that. But their lives haven’t changed very much, it’s “Dad goes to work, Mom stays at home and does home keeping things and hobbies.” It hasn’t been too different. I think I, like, more that I’m home, my mom and I actually do get to talk a little bit more often, even if it’s just via text or something. Yeah, I think it’s, in a weird way, even though we’re distant, it’s bringing us closer together in a weird way too, because we do check in on each other, obviously, because we’re all concerned. Yeah, it’s been a blessing in disguise a little bit, I’ll say. <br /><br />[00:13:09]<br />Interviewer: Are there certain stories or images that you’ve seen in the last few weeks that stand out to you—that are indicative of this moment in time? <br /><br />[00:13:19]<br />Chase Frigen: Mmm (laughs), yeah. I think for me—and I think this comes from more of an opinionated standpoint—living in Madison, in particular, I’m sure everyone has seen over the last—I think it was just last weekend—obviously there are people who have been displaced with work because of this COVID-19, because their workplaces wasn’t able to accommodate some type of way for them to be able to continue to go to work safely, so there are a lot of people who are upset with how long the Safer At Home order has been and so there were the rallies that were going on around the Capitol. That was widely broadcast, both on social media and just in the news in general, and I struggle with saying that is wrong to do because like I said, I’m fortunate enough to continue to work from home. My job has taken very good care of us and I have an essential position that I do work in, so it’s not necessarily fair for me to make this judgment call I feel, but I am so mad that that happened. This is protecting people. This is something that we need in order to prevent the spread and to lower the curve of COVID-19—it’s necessary. I’m upset with the fact that they did that because, I mean, there were—I think they said—I don’t even, do you remember how many people they said showed up to those rallies? I actually don’t. <br /><br />[00:14:55]<br />Interviewer: The number fifteen hundred sticks out in my head. <br /><br />[00:14:58]<br />Chase Frigen: That’s what I was thinking too. But I mean, that many people—and obviously they were not—they were all rallied together, not following the five feet apart rule, or not even rule but just guideline. I don’t think they realize that had one person in there been affected by that virus, that spread to so many people around them. It did; it’s going to. I don’t want to hear that it caused a spike in COVID-19, like I sincerely hope and I pray that’s not what happens from this, but that seems like such a terrible decision that was made by those people who wanted to rally about it. I feel so bad that their lives have been displaced because of it, those that are affected by it, and I can only imagine what that looks like. I can only imagine what that looks like. I don’t know what that looks like, but that could have prolonged it for months more. You know? I don’t know. That’s one image that I’ve seen that I guess I’m not—that really sticks out to me that I’m passionate about (laughs) I guess you could say. <br /><br />[00:16:12]<br />Interviewer: What are some good things that you see happening right now?<br /><br />[00:16:17]<br />Chase Frigen: I think that people are taking a lot more—they’re appreciating things more. They’re not taking things for granted as much as they used to. Like I was talking about earlier, there are simple tasks that before this pandemic we didn’t even think twice about; it was just something that was easy for us and I think that that’s a good thing that people are—it’s opening their eyes like, “You know, I have it good here.” And that makes me think of people in other countries who don’t have it like this, like this is their everyday life is things like that don’t come easy to them like going to the grocery store for whatever it is you want, things like that. Some other good things that I’ve noticed as well—let’s talk about our healthcare workers. I mean, they’re putting in hours and hours and hours. They’re working on the front lines, essentially; they’re putting themselves at risks of exposure twenty-four/seven when they’re at their jobs, and they’re not necess…—well, they’re not getting paid more for this either. They’re still going to work, they’re getting paid their same amount and I can’t imagine that. I mean I work basically in the background of the healthcare industry, but I can’t imagine being on the front lines and the fact that they seem to show up every day, they’re helping people. The company that I work for actually owns clinics as well, they have a medical group side to their business as well, and we get periodic emails showing here’s how many people that we have seen and have tested positive for COVID-19, here’s how many people have been discharged, here’s how many people are on the mend, things like that. And that helps me feel good in what I do, seeing all these people are getting help—the help that they need. Of course, we get to see the sad side of that as well, that unfortunately there are those that don’t make it through the illness of COVID-19, but there’s a lot of good going on through what is a mess. <br /><br /><br />[00:18:43]<br />Interviewer: Well, Chase, thank you for sharing your story with us today and for taking the time to do so. <br /><br />[00:18:40]<br />Chase Frigen: Well, thank you very much for asking. I’m happy to be part of a really cool project. <br /><br />[00:18:45]<br />Chase Frigen: Thank you.<br /><br />[00:18:46]<br />Chase Frigen: Thank you.<br /><br /><br /><br />[END OF RECORDING]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 story by Chase Frigen, 2020
Subject
The topic of the resource
Social distance
Epidemics
Pianists
Men's chorus
Medicare
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright 2020, Chase Frigen and Madison Public Library. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Frigen, Chase
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Atwater, Daniel
Romelle Witkins
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-05-01
Description
An account of the resource
Chase Frigen, who has lived in Madison for about a year, talks about his experience during the social distance measures in place in Madison in spring 2020. Chase talks about what his neighborhood looks like right now, and how day-to-day errands have changed due to the Safer at Home order. Chase discusses what working for Medicare health insurance is like right now, and talks about the impact on his work as a pianist for Perfect Harmony Men's Chorus.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Madison, Wisconsin
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-036
cat-arts
cat-work
covid19
covid19-036
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/eec184de6ca10211eea538a019137edf.mp3
4841b3568f9186d198fe0d1aff6359b2
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-037<br />Narrator Name: Jenie Gao<br />Interviewer Name: N/A<br />Date of Interview: Spring 2020<br /><br />Jenie Gao: I grew up watching Bruce Lee movies with my dad, and lots of other age-inappropriate things for a child who could barely read. The scene of a man crushing another man to death in his bare arms was a thing of childhood nightmares. When I was very little, maybe five or six, my dad told me that Bruce Lee was an icon, flawless. When I was a little older, maybe ten, my mom told me that my dad never knew who Bruce Lee was until his thirties, after he had moved to the U.S. because of censorship in China.<br /><br />Bruce Lee was from British Hong Kong, and died seven years before my dad set foot on U.S. soil. When I was a little older than that, in my early teens, my dad told me, bitterly, one day, how you see Bruce Lee in his films, and he’s amazing. But you don’t see a man who broke his back and nearly ended his career. You don’t see a man who overexerted himself and would lie in bed for days, almost crippled, before he could fight again. Can you imagine if one of those fictitious villains came to fight Bruce Lee the day after a battle, and found him, invalid, at home? That part doesn’t make it into the movies. You don’t see the day that Bruce Lee died, when his brain swelled in his skull, and he was only thirty-two. You don’t see the impact of all the “too much” that made Bruce Lee who he was.<br /><br />My dad shared this, only intending to vent, and perhaps demonstrate the inevitable disappointment that comes with learning a person's flaws. My dad hated imperfection, to the point of cruel excess, deeply flawed though he himself was. But while it wasn't my dad's intent, the image of Bruce Lee lying at home, wounded, has become a lifelong metaphor for me instead. For the times in life when I don't feel like the fighter I was supposed to be, but know that after the recovery, the fight will continue. Bruce Lee did recover from his back injury, and keep fighting, after all. He did show up on set, after his most excruciating rest days. And he may not have died had he not obsessed with perfection. <br /><br />This week in quarantine was inexplicably harder for me. It wasn't paradigm breaking, like the first week in quarantine. It wasn't traumatizing, like the week Wisconsin's GOP tried to hijack the election. Rather, it was like all my energy to keep forging on vanished. I became torpid and heavy, like a bird with its wings clipped, or a wounded animal in its den. I worked, but I struggled to stay focused. Worse, I struggled to forgive myself for the things I wasn't up to. <br /><br />I remember on a particularly bad, stressful day several months ago, Christopher called me in the middle of the workday when he sensed something was wrong. I don't even remember what had happened, but I cried and I apologized that I couldn't be perfect. I want so badly to do things right. Perfection is a trap.<br /><br />But it's week seven of quarantine, and there are no right answers. You can run a responsible small business, and still get screwed by politicians and incompetent leadership mishandling a pandemic. You can stay on top of all the business grants and loans out there, but it doesn't matter if only five percent of businesses will get the PPP loan. Back when I was applying for college, even the most exclusive universities I applied to had a seven percent acceptance rate. <br /><br />You can roll with the punches and find new opportunities, but it doesn't change the fact that you don't like getting punched, and especially not over injustices that should have been resolved long ago. At one point this week I vented to Chris, "I don't want to just critique the model; I want to break it." I'm not willing to swallow my pride, and deal with the things that just don't change fast enough in this world. <br /><br />Bit by bit, I got my work done this week. I finished my client work. I applied for more business relief. I made more online sales. I started a new artwork. I mostly avoided social media. I was highly inefficient. I was not in the zone. I didn't feel a lot of joy. But I showed up, even with my wings clipped. And I am forgiving myself for the rest. My friends, I hope even the toughest among you are finding time to be gentle with yourselves. Even the fighters need to rest.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 story by Jenie Gao, 2020
Subject
The topic of the resource
Martial arts films
Family relationships
Social distance
Epidemics
Small business
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright 2020, Jenie Gao. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Gao, Jenie
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
ca. 2020-05-20
Description
An account of the resource
Jenie Gao shares a story about her father through the lens of watching films by martial artist Bruce Lee, and the systemic challenges she's facing as an artist and small business owner during the pandemic and subsequent social distancing measures. <em>This story was recorded for the Madison podcast, Inside Stories. Listen to the full episode and subscribe to the podcast here: <a href="https://inside-stories.simplecast.com/episodes/inside-stories-covid-19-6">https://inside-stories.simplecast.com/episodes/inside-stories-covid-19-6 </a></em>
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Madison, Wisconsin
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-037
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jane Wolff
cat-arts
cat-inside_stories
cat-work
covid19
covid19-037
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/4dc80aeabb3022f3ec8af3f1f2aaa8ee.mp3
2f1a13a29e209f1cac4990b049e438e3
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Sound recordings
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:20:00
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-030<br />Narrator Name: Allyson Bright<br />Interviewer Name: Danny Atwater<br />Date of interview: April 24, 2020<br /><br />Index<br />[00:00:52] - Talk about your recent Covid-19 Safer at Home story<br />[00:02:16] - Do you have separate space to exist?<br />[00:05:15] - What were the perspectives of your virtual retreat participants?<br />[00:08:45] - How do you view your business going forward?<br />[00:11:13] - How does living with MS relate to Covid-19?<br />[00:15:14] - How have things been for family, friends, loved ones?<br />[00:16:38] - What good things do you see happening right now?<br /><br /><br />[START OF RECORDING]<br /><br />[00:00:01]<br />Interviewer: My name is Danny Atwater, and I am a library assistant for Madison Public Library. This interview is being recorded as part of the Madison Living History Project: Stories from a Distance series. Today’s date is Friday, April 24, 2020, and this interview is being conducted via the video-conferencing software Zoom. I am joined by a very special friend today. Please tell us your full name and what your connection to Madison is.<br /><br />[00:00:28]<br />Narrator: Hi, my name is Allyson Bright, and I moved to Madison almost seven years ago after my husband died, unfortunately. I was thirty-two years old at the time and just needed a new place to build my life. Madison kind of called to me, as it does to many people, and now I think I’ll stay here forever (laughs) because I just love it so much here.<br /><br />[00:00:52]<br />Interviewer: So, Allyson, what have the last few weeks looked like for you? Especially in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Safer at Home order.<br /><br />[00:01:00]<br />Narrator: Sure! Well, it’s been interesting because I’m self-employed and I have always worked from home—so that part, I thought, wouldn’t be that different, but what I was unprepared for was the fact that I’m not home by myself, because I live with my partner and a roommate and they are both home. So it’s louder than I’m used to, and harder to focus, and just a little bit more chaotic. <br /><br />So that part hasn’t been that different, otherwise, in terms of getting my work done, but it’s been really interesting just in the range of emotions that have come up. And I personally deal with multiple sclerosis, so I am immunocompromised and therefore really can’t safely leave the house at all. So even to go to the store or other things, I have to rely on other people to do that. So, yeah. I’ve just been very stuck inside (laughs), and I’m a very social person, so that’s been really hard at times to just deal with, kind of, missing people in my life and missing the chance to go to a restaurant or a coffee shop. Or, gosh, the library and other places that I love to be in the city just day to day.<br /><br />[00:02:16]<br />Interviewer: You mentioned that there are three of you at home now; do you all have separate spaces that you can exist in?<br /><br />[00:02:23]<br />Narrator: We do, so that's been really helpful. I find that I’m working in my office way more than I used to (laughs) because working in the living room is not very effective anymore. So that part has worked out okay, and we’re pretty respectful of each other’s space. And thankfully we get along really well! That’s not necessarily the case for everyone I know right now. Like, there are some people who are dealing with strange situations in their homes. My partner and I are strong, and we love our roommate, so that part, interpersonally, has been nice, or easy for the most part. But just having to kind of focus in and get work done, and then, certainly, shifting certain aspects of my work because I can’t do certain things. <br /><br />So, my job is I’m a life coach and I teach classes that use art as a healing method for trauma recovery in women. So in some ways I was kind of ready for this giant trauma because I’m really used to hard things; as I mentioned, I’m a widow, and that I have MS so, you know, hard stuff is not new for me. But, for example, I had a retreat planned that was going to be in Milwaukee, actually in just a few weeks, and so I had to cancel that and go to a virtual version, and I did that the first weekend in April, and it was really powerful! I got to connect with even more people than normal, and we had women joining from all over the world, which was really neat, and we used the Zoom software to create art, and just kind of talk about what people were feeling. <br /><br />So that part has been a unique adaption, but it also turned into kind of a blessing, because I felt like I was able to help and serve people that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I also made that event free of charge to anyone who had been laid off or to any frontline healthcare workers, and that felt really good to me, and it was really neat to see those people be able to participate. We actually had one woman join who had been in self-isolation because she has the virus. She had not been able to leave her home, or even her room in her home, for almost two weeks. She actually had to leave the event early because she had to go back to the hospital. She is home again, and will be joining us for our next online retreat in a couple weeks. But it was very interesting just to see the extent—because she was on the screen and in her bed—of how intense it is, because, when we don’t know someone who has personally had it, the virus can feel kind of far away or not real to everyone. <br /><br />[00:05:15]<br />Interviewer: That’s very generous that you were able to offer that free of charge to certain individuals, and it sounds like it was a very powerful experience, I would imagine, for many of the participants. Two thoughts came to mind: one was that you had participants from around the globe, and so I’m curious if there was any, sort of, global perspective that was offered? And then you just mentioned the person who was actually in her room suffering from the virus, and how did that affect the mood of the gathering, or, you know, was it discussed; did she get asked a lot of questions, or things like that?<br /><br />[00:05:56]<br />Narrator: Yeah, so for your first thing, it definitely had that global feel, and I think because this is kind of the first time that, at least certainly in my lifetime, that the whole world is going through the same thing. Even other big events that we’ve watched happen have happened in a certain place, and the other part of the world might send aid, or try to help, but this is one of the first times we’re really all in it. So that really just made everyone feel closer; and we’re not that different in ways that we sometimes think that we are. And as far as the woman who had the virus, yeah, people asked her a lot of questions (laughs), but for the most part, they just wanted her to feel better, and they were glad she was there. It was really nice to be able to gift her some social interaction after that isolation; she can’t even really see her family; they have to leave her meals outside the door, and she opens it up and brings them in, and so it’s really, even within her home, totally isolated. The mood was impacted by that, for sure, but it was really just a very interesting event because it was both very somber at times and also very silly and joyful at times, which is kind of what I’m feeling about life right now. But, you know, there were some women who were really struggling, and who had been crying for a lot of the event and just really needed some help, and then, there was also a moment where one woman went and got these silly cat ear headband-things to put on, and I put on some Disney Minnie Mouse ears, because I thought that was funny, and then within five minutes, all 50 people on the screen had on Minnie Mouse ears, or weird hats, or one woman made a crown out of daisies from her yard really fast, so that was a really fun, silly moment, to see the world kind of connect around that. But some of the nurses that attended were able to talk about what they were experiencing, and those things, so I think that it really helped people feel—not so alone: both in that they could have a joyful moment, but also in that what they were experiencing, and the fear or anxiety that they were feeling could be shared and expressed, because not everyone has an outlet to do that, especially if someone is in their home by themselves in this isolation, or they’re just with a partner or family member that doesn’t want to hear those kinds of things, or just doesn’t provide that kind of outlet for sharing. So it was really powerful to be able to do that.<br /><br />[00:08:45]<br />Interviewer: What do you think your business looks like, going forward?<br /><br />[00:08:49]<br />Narrator: Oh man! That’s an interesting question. I think I’ll do a lot more of these virtual gatherings, because, again, I decided to do one right away again the first weekend in May, so that’ll only be a month apart, and I don’t know that I’ll want to stop. I could see myself doing this every month for the foreseeable future, or even long-term. It was really fun; it was really accessible; and it was a lot easier on me than the in-person events. As I mentioned, I have MS, so my energy is very limited, and I tend to need a ton of rest, and those things, to maintain my joyful, silly persona (laughs). Because I tend to be really outgoing, and bubbly, and I like to have a lot of fun, but I require a lot of rest and downtime to make that happen, and so the online version of the retreat was a lot easier for me in that way, and it was also more affordable for my participants. Then the other thing is it gave me an opportunity to give in a different way. I mentioned doing the free attendance for certain people, and that felt really good; I’d like to be able to continue looking at ways to scholarship people who are dealing with different things. Maybe when this is done, I can look at other people who have MS, or those kinds of things, and pick—there’s a different cause every month, that some people who are impacted by that could attend for free, because, yes I need to make money and be a business owner, and live in the world just like anybody else, but it’s felt really good to be able to give in a bigger way than I ever have before, and to really recognize what people are going through and struggling with. I mean, when someone messaged me that they’re a nurse—especially, I had a couple of ER and trauma nurses, including one here in Madison, joined—and I was kind of like, You guys can have whatever you want! (laughs) You know, they’re going online, and looking at my course offerings, and I’m like, Whatever you want, it’s free; I don’t even care. And it feels really nice to be able to give in a big way, but also still have lots of people show up who could afford to pay. I think not everyone is in crisis, and so it just was a really nice model, and I think that, going forward, it might be really neat to keep going with that.<br /><br />[00:11:13]<br />Interviewer: You mentioned living with MS; how does that relate to COVID-19?<br /><br />[00:11:19]<br />Allyson Bright So it basically just makes all the risks more risky (laughs), I guess I would say. I do fall in that category of immunocompromised people that are at higher risk, both to catch the virus and then have more complications if I were to catch it. So there’s a couple things that I’ve noticed: one is, in some people we’re seeing a lot of cavalier attitudes about the virus, and people who are like, Well, don’t worry; it’s only old people, or people who are already sick that will get it and die. And I’m kind of like, Hey, but I’m one of those people, and so are my parents! I grew up with two parents and one sister in my house, and we joked that, by that logic, only my sister gets to live. And so it’s hard, hearing that discounted. And there are a lot of people in those categories. It makes that risk higher, and then it also creates other risks, because—so MS is an autoimmune disease; I actually also have celiac disease, which is another autoimmune disease; I actually have like five or six things, but two that specifically make COVID more risky. The big thing is that the treatment I take for my MS works because it suppresses my immune system. So I don’t really have a strong immune system to even fight off a cold. I’m already supposed to use hand sanitizer everywhere, and be really careful about those kind of things, because I’m just at higher risk to catch anything. So when this came up, in some ways, my lifestyle habits didn’t have to change that much, but it’s just being extra aware of that. And then if I were to catch COVID, and recover, there’s a really good chance it could trigger MS symptoms, because they’d likely have to remove the medication to allow my immune system to fight the virus, which would allow my MS to flare, which could then create a whole spiral of problems, ranging anything from having to use a wheelchair full-time, or any of those things. I try not to live in that fear-based place, because I think that that’s one thing that’s really hard right now, is everybody’s terrified, and I think it’s important to be informed, and know what my risks are. I’m not going to go to the grocery store when I can send someone else—but I also can’t live every moment of my life terrified, so I just do what I can. And I’m really lucky that I’ve had a lot of people to rely on, because it would be a lot scarier if I lived alone, especially because—and actually, this is an important thing—a lot of the services that I relied on are at capacity. I’ve been using grocery delivery services for over a year because going to the grocery store has always been hard for me. I relied on those and they were always very consistent, and easy to use, and now the whole world is trying to get grocery delivery, and so I have not been able to because the systems are at capacity. So I’ve really tried to encourage people: if you are not immunocompromised, if you are not disabled, to go out to the store on your own and use some of those—go out in the world, because a lot of those services are heavily used in, quote, regular times, by individuals with disabilities, and those sort of things, and they have not been able to use their own services, and for people who live alone, that’s become a real problem.<br /><br />[00:15:14]<br />Interviewer: How have things been for family, friends, loved ones?<br /><br />[00:15:20]<br />Narrator: It’s hard; you know, we are on video calls a lot to connect—in some ways, more than we were before. I talk with my parents on video calls now, and I never did that before, even though they’re in Michigan. So that part has been nice, but it’s very hard, not being able to see people and hug people. I love hugs, and I just hate that I can’t express that. I have a lot of people in my life who are really extra-terrified, and don’t know how to handle it, so there’s a lot of anxiety in the air, and I’ve watched friends get laid off, I’ve watched people who are in danger of losing their businesses; there’s a lot of really scary economical things happening to people I love, in terms of their jobs and finances and those sort of things. It’s been really challenging, and I think the longer this goes on, the harder it gets in terms of that isolation piece. Especially for my friends who live alone. That’s a really hard thing. I’ve been very lucky to have—even having our roommate here with us, having three people in the house instead of two has been kind of delightful.<br /><br />[00:16:38]<br />Interviewer: What good things do you see happening right now?<br /><br />[00:16:43]<br />Narrator: As much as some people are being cavalier, I also see a lot of people stepping up and being generous and helping in different ways than ever before. A silly story is that my sister’s dog was lost, for about a day, a couple of weeks ago, and so she posted on Facebook, but because everyone was at home and in quarantine and feeling pretty helpless about life in general, the whole neighborhood went out and looked for this dog! And people she didn’t even know would be out. They’d be like, “Oh, are you the ones looking for Daisy? We’re looking for her!” People were posting online the streets they’d checked, and GPS maps of where they had been looking for this dog, and it really felt like there were, like, sixty people out (laughs) looking for my sister’s dog, and I just think there was this attitude of, like, the world’s on fire, and we can’t do anything, but my goodness, we can get this dog home! (Laughs) They did finally find her, and that was great, but it’s just neat to see people helping in that way. And I see people helping out businesses. I have a friend that owns a restaurant, and they decided to donate—you know, obviously they had to go to carry-out service only, and they were down to three employees from twenty-something, and they have an extra tip jar, and any tips that come into that restaurant right now are being given to their unemployed staff. So people have been tipping really generously, and they’ve been able to give quite a lot back to their staff. Now, it’s not what they would have been making, but I like seeing that the ownership of a restaurant is committed to doing that, and people just really don’t want their friends and neighbors hurting, and I think that is in some ways a global thing, and I think in some ways it’s a uniquely Madison thing. I really see things happening here that I don’t hear from other people. Someone started a virtual Madison tip jar, where anyone who—restaurant workers who worked in the city of Madison could type in their name and the restaurant they worked at and their Paypal or Venmo address, and people are just sending them cash tips. I don’t know of any other cities that are doing that, so I do think there’s some Madison love there, and it’s been neat to be a part of. And I think for myself, it’s really just helped me hone in on what’s important. You know, the first couple of weeks, I was grieving a lot, and really sad, and now I feel like I’m in my groove, and I’m really just kind of looking inward, and thinking about, What do I want from my life, and what feels most important, and what do I want to get rid of when this is all done, right? Because the distractions have all kind of waned, and so we’re left with the core bits of our lives now, and it’s about what feels good, and what doesn’t feel good. Like, what are the things we don’t miss doing? And do we have to still do that? So just asking those kind of questions, I think is really helpful.<br /><br />[00:19:57]<br />Interviewer: Allyson, thank you for your time today, and for sharing your story.<br /><br /><br />[END OF RECORDING]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 story by Allyson Bright, 2020
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright 2020, Allyson Bright and Madison Public Library. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bright, Allyson
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Atwater, Daniel
Glaeser, Colleen
Carter, Phoenix
Bergmann, Frances
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-04-24
Subject
The topic of the resource
Social distance
Art making
Epidemics
Multiple sclerosis
Description
An account of the resource
Allyson Bright describes what her work and life has been like since the social distance measures went into effect in March 2020. Allyson, who works as a life coach supporting women through art-making, talks about the shift from in-person to virtual classes and retreat spaces. Allyson lives with Multiple sclerosis, and describes her perspective of the COVID-19 pandemic through an immunocompromised lens.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Madison, Wisconsin
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-030
cat-arts
cat-work
covid19
covid19-030
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/769ac976fec8c24f88208c60e7900ff9.jpeg
1d0df6a1e5244205a86a23e4bdc2e7a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Still Image
A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Photographs
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Third grade pen pals, 2020
Subject
The topic of the resource
Postcards
Youth
Social distance
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Copyright 2020, H. Krueger and Robin Krueger. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Krueger, H.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Krueger, Robin
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-04-22
Description
An account of the resource
Written response about this image: Seeing my children write letters and postcards to family and friends has been an unexpected blessing during this time. They cut right to the chase: I hate not seeing you. I can’t wait to hug you. I miss getting licorice from you. I hope these days pass soon. --Robin Krueger, April 2020
Language
A language of the resource
en
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
covid19-image001
cat-arts
cat-family
covid19
covid19-image001
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/abb7860718f24cd593c67a14e27c038d.mp3
131a9ff347396c4a48b29b6339c7a4ad
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Recollection Wisconsin
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Sound recordings
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:25:03
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
Identifier: covid19-026<br />Narrator Name: David Spies <br />Interviewer Name: Danny Atwater <br />Date of interview: 4/22/2020<br /><br />Index<br />[00:00:00] - Start of interview<br />[00:00:40] - What have the past few weeks looked like for you<br />[00:01:41] - Pinney grand opening when the governor started to issue capacity limits of gatherings <br />[00:03:25] - Were you working on site at the clerk’s office or from home<br />[00:04:14] - What has being a musician been like the last few weeks <br />[00:05:59] - What has work at the library looked like<br />[00:08:53] - Were you involved in the spring election; what did that look like; how was that election different from in the past; what concerns did you have<br />[00:13:57] - What was the overall mood of having an election during a pandemic<br />[00:15:56] - Do you know of any elections officials that have ended up getting sick since the election<br />[00:18:35] - What might the national election look like; or is that still too far out to know<br />[00:20:37] - More detail on being a musician in the time of COVID<br />[00:24:57] - Thank you<br /><br /><br /><br />[START OF RECORDING]<br />Interviewer: My name is Danny Atwater, and I am a library assistant for Madison Public Library. This interview is being recorded as part of the Madison Living History Project: Stories From a Distance series. Today’s date is Wednesday, April 22, 2020, and this interview is being recorded via the video conferencing software Zoom. So let’s begin: please tell us your full name, and what your connection to Madison is. <br /><br />David Spies: Okay, my name is David Spies, and I am currently a library page for the Pinney Library for Madison Public Libraries. I’m also a chief election inspector, and a musician here in the greater Madison area.<br /><br />[00:00:40]<br />Interviewer: Dave, thanks for joining us today. What have the past few weeks looked like for you?<br /><br />David Spies: Well, it’s kind of interesting. Being a—having worked for Pinney Library, we were gearing up for our big grand opening. We had been closed for over a year, and everybody was excited. We actually did open on March twelfth, and we had over twelve hundred people there. Now, if you were paying attention to how the virus was going, it was starting to creep in around that time. So I had a little concern, but we took a lot of precautions: we were wiping down everything, keeping social distancing going. But it was—everybody was so excited to have Pinney open, as we were, you know. It’s a beautiful space, and has lots of great features that the—it’s going to really facilitate community in the library. But we only had three days in there, (laughs) because we had—We were there, and after those three days, everything shut down and it became Safer at Home.<br /><br />[00:01:41]<br />Interviewer: That was right during the time that the governor started to issue capacity limits of gatherings, right? <br /><br />David Spies: Right. We had opened, and it was right before the governor said fifty. So we were able to have the grand opening; the next day, I believe, was when they had fifty-person limit, and we monitored people coming in and kept it to that capacity. I had concerns that people wouldn’t heed the social distancing, and for the most part they did, but it was wise that—It didn’t really matter that we had that because the next day it went to ten, and then that kind of—And we had to basically close up, and the administration took it from there.<br /><br />Lots of things with the election: right after that kind of closed down I ended up working, helping out the clerk’s office. They had a whole bunch of absentees, the city of Madison. What was the stat? They had over sixty-one thousand absentee ballot requests, since they basically wanted to emphasize to voters that they might be safer by casting a ballot through absentee ballot. So since I had worked for a long time, over fifteen years, for the clerk’s office, being an election official, the library farmed me out to the clerk’s office and I took a Wisconsin Elections Commission training over about three days, to try to know the traits of how to work the system securely. And I spent a good week and a half entering absentee ballot requests so that they could help—and a bunch of us did that, so that we could help the clerk’s staff, enable them to facilitate the large volume.<br /><br />[00:03:25]<br />Interviewer: Were you on site at the clerk’s office, or was this something you were doing from home?<br /><br />David Spies: I did this remotely from home. Other library staff worked in the clerk’s office helping to organize the physical ballots, but because my chunk was basically checking IDs, making sure they had the proper ID, and it was facilitating that, and just making sure the applications were complete, and clicking the next buttons in the process and passing it on to the clerk’s office so they could finalize the request, and then get the ballot processed. I could do that all from home. But there’s very strict protocols from the Wisconsin Election Commision. They had this process in order before this whole pandemic to do these remotely—I mean, this is a statewide thing, so absentee ballot requests could be done remotely, safely, and securely. So I felt really good about that. <br /><br />[00:04:14]<br />Interviewer: You also mentioned that you’re a musician. What’s that been like the last few weeks? <br /><br />David Spies: Oh, right before we closed, I was supposed to have one of the busiest Marches and Aprils ever, not just having church gigs for Easter and the Holy Week with the Catholic diocese, but also I was supposed to adjudicate a full band concert festival for WSMA over at the Hamel Center. I was supposed to play several concerts with the Neophonic Jazz Orchestra all throughout the state and also playing with the Racine Symphony and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. All that evaporated right after that March twelfth week. Once the Safer at Home order happened, everything evaporated. It has been very quiet. Several musicians have been doing things online. I hadn’t until just last night. We had—I have a number of different groups that are remarkable, and we’ve been able to put together a project through Zoom, through a group that I had resurrected from about twenty years ago, so that was pretty fine.<br /><br />Musically, I’ve been picking up other instruments: working on learning electric bass, practicing my own instruments. But a lot of my time’s been doing a lot of online Facetime through work and stuff, so that’s kind of eaten a little bit into that. But we’ve been mainly maintaining social connectivity with our musicians. We made sure we’d had social hangs, and talking about strategizing how we’re going to do this during this time, and coming out of here. So it’s been interesting as a musician. I don’t teach a lot of lessons online. <br /><br />[00:05:59]<br />Interviewer: Let’s dig a little deeper into some of these things. So, for the library, what has work looked like for you? <br /><br />David Spies: Well, before what work looked like before the election was working for the Elections Commision; doing about twenty hours of that, or fourteen hours a week on that. But then, once the election hit, now it was kind of a little bit of a drift. The library’s finally getting a sense of—at least for the Pages, because there’s so many of us, and trying to figure out how we can best engage with the rest of the mission. I actually landed fairly easily into the engagement team, so I’ve done a number of subgroups through there. I’ve worked for the caregiver project for staff, basically trying to curate resources and provide support for staff during this time. Also working for the snail mail project, which started at Pinney and now has gone RUS wide, where basically we send each other actual mail through the US mail, supporting the US Postal Service during this time. Also working for various—I’m trying—well this project actually. I’ve been doing transcribing for this project; did a transcription I’m finishing editing, and so forth. I really enjoy working on the oral history project; I had previous experience with that.<br /><br />Also, I’ve been helping out with the Page newsletter; basically helping to distribute that, helping the team. That’s a brand new communication. That’s kind of helped get the pages oriented to what projects are available, how can they fill out their hours most appropriately for them, give them some direction. And I feel that’s been a great project, working with some really great people, and getting that clerk communication out. And so that’s been very helpful. Also helping out with the Zoom communication team a little bit. And we’re trying to figure out how we can use that to better foster community engagement, and also to work as a staff. That’s still in the fledgling stages, but I look forward to working with that in the future. So that’s quite a bit. Also working with the—lots of Zoom meetings. I probably have about six, seven Zoom meetings. I know other people, probably yourself included, have about thirty. (laughs) But it’s the way we have to communicate. We’re safer at home and this is a clear way to engage. You actually get to see somebody’s face, which is really helpful. But yeah, it’s been a very interesting time to work at the library. And I think they’ve been very good at providing opportunities, it’s just getting the opportunities clarified down to the Page level. Permanent staff have a pretty good network built in. The Pages, obviously because there’s so more, and they work such disparate hours, we had to try to get everybody on the same page, and I think that Page newsletter’s really going to help quite a bit.<br /><br />[00:08:53]<br />Interviewer: You talked about helping with the clerk’s office, and doing absentee ballots, and you mentioned that you have been an elections official for, I think you said fifteen years. Were you involved in the spring election? And what did that look like? How was it different than in the past? What concerns did you have at that time?<br /><br />David Spies: Yeah, the April seventh election was real interesting. Normally I work as a chief election inspector, and I’ve been a chief election inspector for almost ten years, and worked for almost fifteen years as an election official. I’ve worked at the American Family Walbridge location, two wards, wards eleven and seventeen. We have a staff normally of about twenty-seven, morning and afternoon, and then two chief inspectors. When, early on in the election process, we found absolutely all—we were down to just the two chief inspectors, none of the staff were available, so they merged our polling location with Kennedy Elementary, which had a good chunk of their staff, and no chief inspectors. So hey, there we’ve got a nice fit. But then East High School had merged with another location, with Madison Area Technical College, and they didn’t have a chief inspector, and since we had two, I was pulled from Kennedy Elementary last minute, probably like three days before the election, to work with a brand new staff. Actually one of the staff was somebody I had worked with at Pinney, Dominic, and so that was kind of fun. But he was, like, the only person on the staff that I had known out of the forty that I would be working with, and because we had two different wards we had two different tabulators, so it was really challenging. Normally at a polling place you have a single tabulator; it’s easy to keep track of ballots. It’s easy to keep track of the wards, relatively. I mean, we’re pretty strict about how we deal with ballots slips, and ballots, and working with the public.<br /><br />When I got to East we had to make sure all the staff were complying with COVID protocol, they weren’t available—you know, they were safe to be working in a public health situation when no one could enter the building before that. We had our ballot election at East High School’s new fieldhouse. And, previously at East, elections had been in a different location, and some of the staff that worked for me on that location at East had to go around and find where the tabulators and the express vote machines were located because they were not in our polling place when we arrived at 6 a.m., and we had to start an election at seven. So (laughs) they found the tabulators; we set up tables in the entire gymnasium. Well, we used about two thirds of the gymnasium. We were mindful of trying to maintain enough social distance space for voters, and also make it manageable for people who had accessibility issues: making sure they could physically walk to, say, the registration table or the poll book table or the ballot table, yet there was still the adequate distancing.<br /><br />City engineering had only set up plastics—they were working for each polling place having one poll book table, one ballot table, and the protective measures with plexiglass for that. So, instead of having multiple people at a poll book table, we were relegated to a very small staff, which made it a very interesting challenge. With only having four hundred in-person voters, but having approximately, in one ward of the two that I worked, fifteen hundred absentee ballots that we would have had to process throughout the day—and actually, that was fifth most in the city—we would get poll workers trying to process three at a time, and then we’d make sure that the physical voters could get through the line. Which meant most of those fifteen hundred ballots had to be processed after 8 p.m. Which is legal, it’s appropriate, but we spent a good three and a half, four hours processing absentee ballots after the polls had closed. And it was a challenge. My day started at 6 a.m. My day ended at 4 a.m., dropping off the paperwork over at the clerk’s office. However, I will say, at the polls it was a beautiful day, so people could line up six feet away outside the perimeter of the gym.<br /><br />People were engaged; they were excited. They were excited in spite of the fact that they were dealing with it in the middle of a pandemic. And, regardless of everybody’s opinion, they were still there to make sure that their ballot was cast. It was a remarkable situation. A lot of people were working under pressure, and I commend the entire staff. And, in spite of the fact of the pandemic, we made sure that every voter was able to cast a ballot, and have that ballot counted. We, at this polling place, had no provisional ballots cast, so I feel really fortunate about that; that everybody was able to make sure that they cast an anonymous ballot.<br /><br />[00:13:57]<br />Interviewer: You mentioned there was sort of an excitement surrounding voting. What was the overall mood of having an election during a pandemic? And did that mood sort of change during the course of the day? <br /><br />David Spies: The mood was shared by the staff and the voters. As staff we can’t physically—can’t take a position on the election; we have to carry out the election law, and the election rules, so we had to kind of maintain distance. But we shared the same opinions internally: that having a physical election during a pandemic is endangering public safety in a way that is not really a good idea. I mean, as I said, we had over four hundred people come through the polling place. If a poll worker had been sick with COVID, or any voter had been sick with COVID, imagine the contact tracing that would have to take place. Imagine having to just figure out who might have been exposed, even in a situation such as a very distant, open gymnasium, which—I was blessed. A lot of polling places were considerably smaller than that. But we had a very large gymnasium that we were able to take advantage of and I was grateful for that. People generally were anxious; there was some anger. We had press there to interview people. I mean, they came and saw lines, so they asked permission, I gave permission. They interviewed; they took pictures of the polling place, which they’re very welcome to do. There were some people that had some, like, posters saying that they thought this was ridiculous, unsafe. I think people, overall, felt it was unsafe, but they wanted to make sure that their vote mattered, and they went through with it in spite of the fact that we had all this pandemic going on.<br /><br />[00:15:56]<br />Interviewer: It’s been two weeks since the election now. Do you know of anybody, any elections officials that have ended up getting sick, or anything related to that? <br /><br />David Spies: I have no personal knowledge of any of my staff, or any staff on the city getting sick. We had masks, we had gloves, and there was plexiglass. So I assume every polling place had equal protective gear. Not quite to the level of, say, Robin Vos, who had probably medical protective gear at his polling place, and it was a drive-through polling place. We had curbside voting. A lot of people took advantage of that. I thought that was very wise. It provided additional measures for protection. I think we’re going to see more of that; we’re going to see more absentee ballot requests in future elections.<br /><br />Fortunately, I don’t see any repercussions. But, you know, I’ve come through it two weeks and I’ve been okay. I don’t know about other folks in my polling place, because we’re not in regular contact. I’m sure they would have contacted the clerk’s office, and there’s been a mandate that there’s been specific monitoring and tracing of polling place COVID cases because they wanted to see about this. I don’t know how that’s been reported and followed through, if they’re still doing the data on that. There’s been initial reports, but I don’t know who’s been issuing those reports; I don’t know if it’s coming from public health, or Wisconsin health, what the organization is with the state, but we’ll see.<br /><br />The upshot is I haven’t—I am grateful that I don’t seem to have any symptoms. Part of the symptoms of COVID-19 is you don’t show symptoms, so I’m still a little concerned. What I will say is, after having the Pinney grand opening, and after this election, I self-imposed a two week self-imposed—not a quarantine, but distancing enough. If I went outside I never left my car, and had people put stuff in my trunk. I was very careful to try to limit my potential exposing someone else. And that seems to be the big concern, is that if you may not personally be affected by this virus, you could affect somebody that is in a much different health situation. And I did not want to do that. So I am feeling better. I have masks. I will take advantage of that in the future to make sure that people are safe from my interacting with the world.<br /><br />[00:18:35]<br />Interviewer: The last thing I want to ask about elections: we have a national election coming up. Do you have any sense of what that might look like? Or is that still too far out to know?<br /><br />David Spies: It’s too far out to know because we actually have an election in between this time. The big election that everybody goes to is the general election in November, but Wisconsin also has an August primary for offices that are other offices; maybe city council, county clerk, maybe other issues. And, as it stands now, the governor has said the August election is going to proceed. I don’t know what the legislature has said about mail-in ballots. I’m not going to get into the politics; I sense it’s highly charged. I would just recommend to anybody personally, if they’re going to vote—and I highly recommend that they do vote—is that they make sure that their registration is up to date through myvote.wi.gov, and that they also request an absentee ballot for the remainder of 2020. That will put their health in a much better situation; they’re taking proactive measures. I think clerk’s offices in general are going to—even though it’s a big workload and a big ask, especially smaller municipalities—to have absentee ballots, because what happens if that smaller town’s election staff gets sick in August and they’re not available for—Well, I mean, who knows? I think they would be available by November, but why take that risk? Why not mitigate that risk? It’s hard to say. I do think there will be an election. I don’t think that’s going away. I don’t think they’re going to postpone it; it’s too important. I do think that a lot of people are going to take a serious look at alternative ways of casting their ballot. <br /><br />[00:20:37]<br />Interviewer: Let’s change gears a little bit and talk about you being a musician in the time of COVID. And you talked a little bit at the beginning about what that’s like; let’s go into a little bit more detail.<br /><br />David Spies: Well, I’m a professional musician in addition to being a Page. I teach music lessons, but I also, primarily, perform in a myriad of groups: I play in symphony orchestras, small ethnic music ensembles, jazz groups, and I’m a freelance musician. I live, basically, from gig to gig to gig. I have a few regular things that help tie that together, in addition to my day work as well for the library, which I am also heavily invested in. And part of that is being social with your musicians, being able to be at the gig so you can hear about upcoming gigs coming out, supporting your other musicians at their concerts. Nobody’s doing in person concerts anymore; it’s all now Zoom concerts, it’s now Facetime, it’s now Facebook Live streaming concerts. We had, just this past weekend, there was a major concert which, unfortunately, I missed because I was doing other things. That everybody—It was a huge gala, nationwide, and broadcast on three networks. As a musician, should I have watched that? Yes. Was I able to? No. (laughs) But this is how musicians are gigging.<br /><br />My cousin, who’s a musician down in the Keys, he was a singer/songwriter out of Nashville who writes in the vein of, say, Magaritaville. I can’t think of the—Jimmy Buffet! He worked six, seven nights at bars up and down the Keys, and now he’s basically doing every other day streaming concerts at noon for tips, and that’s how he’s making a living. For me, my first performance that I had was a quasi-live performance. I have a group that we resurrected from about thirty years ago called the Disposable Art Ensemble, which involves, actually, another person from the library, Jeff Brady, and his wife Kia, and then a friend of ours who’s a composer in Boston. We did a Zoom concert last night of a piece, a performance, about an eight-minute performance. And we recorded it to see if it synced, and it actually synced pretty well, so we put it up on the Facebook page. That was my first art of, say, actual live performance with other musicians since this has all begun. And I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot more of that. I know other musicians are doing it. I’m beefing up my technology, and getting better mics so that I can do this. I know people who are teaching at a lot of college lessons have invested in their home studio so that they can do it. I will be doing the same, but I’ve been, as you can tell, I’ve been keeping a lot of plates spinning and balls in the air, juggling, and trying to make sure everything is on target.<br /><br />I am blessed. I have a job through a library that’s able to keep me going. My wife also is working from home throughout, basically without interruption. So we’re able to maintain this. I know a lot of library Pages where their library job may be their primary source of income; they may be in school, they may be retired, I don’t know their circumstances. We have, I mean, how many Pages in the library? I am concerned for library Pages particularly because their load is hourly; they don’t have benefits, unless they have something outside of their current situation. And I worry about them in the pandemic, and making sure that they’re healthy and safe.<br /><br />But, as far as musically going, I feel like I’ve been able to keep engaged. I’m learning a new instrument—I’m learning electric bass. It’s nice to be a beginner again. But I’m also keeping, as much as I can, my other instruments up, and listening to a lot of music. Trying to find creative outlets is the key, and we’re going to be doing a lot of innovation between now and when this ends. And I think we’ll continue that, too. I’m finding that, as a plus, this allows me to engage with my colleagues in Boston or—you name it, around the planet. I’ll be able to—as long as they have access to the same technology, and we’re able to agree on a time physically, where we can all be there synchronous, we can do this thing. <br /><br />[00:24:57]<br />Interviewer: Well Dave, I want to thank you for taking the time to share your story with us. I appreciate it.<br /><br />David Spies: Thank you, Danny.<br /><br />[END OF RECORDING]
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Title
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COVID-19 story by David Spies, 2020
Subject
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Elections
Public libraries
Election officials
Voting
Social distance
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Copyright 2020, David Spies and Madison Public Library. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
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Spies, David
Contributor
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Atwater, Daniel
Propheter, Nicholas
Glaeser, Colleen
Date
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2020-04-22
Description
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David Spies shares his story about working at the Pinney Library on Madison's east side a couple of days prior to the Safer at Home social distancing order in spring 2020. David, who works as a Madison election inspector, shares a story about working with the City Clerk's office on processing absentee ballots. David discusses the impact of the social distancing measures on his music work, including shifting to some virtual music events.
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Madison, Wisconsin
Language
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en
Identifier
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covid19-026
cat-arts
cat-elections
covid19
covid19-026
-
https://omeka.madisonpubliclibrary.org/files/original/652eea4db63accbda64c41d33a910358.mp3
4b9a619de72f0f1a497f7567049b9438
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Recollection Wisconsin
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00:08:21
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Identifier: covid19-024<br />Narrator Name: Angela Trudell Vasquez<br />Interviewer Name: <br />Date of interview: 4/1/2020<br /><br />On January seventh, my appointment as the new Madison poet laureate was approved by the City of Madison. I began my role at the Martin Luther King celebration on January twenty-ninth by reading my poem “Everybody Is Somebody’s Child.” I sat on stage with Civil Right icons, hugged the lieutenant governor, and sat facing packed theater seats at the Overture Center. On February sixth I read to over fifty people at A Room of One’s Own from my latest collection, In Light Always Light. <br /><br />We don’t talk about it much as poets, but nothing is more pleasing than when more and more people show up to hear your poems, and the host had to keep bringing out chairs to accommodate the crowd. February twenty-second was my big public reception downtown at the Central Library, and again, many people showed up and I did my thing: taking the audience through the trajectory of my work, reading from all of my books. I even danced with my dance teacher Barb Wesson to one of the poems entitled “Wild Prayer.” My family came from Chicago, Milwaukee, and we had a gorgeous chocolate cake brought by Karin Wolf, who was my contact at the city; the person I am fortunate to work with in my new role.<br /><br />I just started January twentieth, about three months ago now. I went to AWP [Association of Writers and Writing Programs] in San Antonio the first weekend in March. People and organizations were cancelling. Some friends questioned my husband on the wisdom of my decision. I went anyway, and participated on a panel entitled “Writing Empathy Across Cultures,” and to represent Madison, of course, in my new role. The Isthmus, where my face was on the cover, was featured prominently at the IAIA booth, and people who walked by did a double take and stopped to talk. I must say, to see the teeming masses along the riverwalk in San Antonio, you would not think anything was coming for us soon as a country, or as a people. It was a beautiful sight, all of us coming together around Alamo Plaza, intermingling, not worried about what we could not see, what was in the air. Music, dancing, and laughter poured out of every doorway. <br /><br />Things, situations, can change very quickly. Sunday I was at the airport by 5:00 am, and the coughs echoed in the empty airport as did the news blaring from the TV screens. Someone sneezed without covering their mouth, and another passenger glared. We were herded through security and led on the plane. I made it back, but the country had changed from Friday to Sunday, and I was thankful to be back in Madison. I had a great time doing my literary thing in San Antonio; reading poems, talking on the panel, sharing space with old and new friends, and reconnecting with my IAIA colleagues from the Institute of American Indian Arts. <br /><br />I did not regret going. I do not regret going. It was the last time I would read my poems in public and talk about the work I have always done, being a poet and an activist living in Des Moines, Seattle, and Milwaukee, and now Madison. I met someone from my maternal grandmother’s home state in Mexico. I connected with other writers who bought my books, and were moved by what I said during the panel. I shared the panel with one of my MFA cohorts Joaquin Zihuatanejo. I did an impromptu interview at the IAIA booth with two of my favorite poets: Santee Frazier and Jennifer Foerster. I supported my friend David Trombley, and went to his off-site reading to celebrate his new book coming out in the fall. I joined the Latinx and indigenous caucuses, and met people I heretofore only knew from Facebook, or because I selected their work for a journal I was co-editing. I was with my people, writers. People who are passionate about words and the world around us. I was in my element. These are my people. <br /><br />The very next day I returned to Madison. I realized what was coming and signed up for a Zoom account, so I could continue my work as the Madison poet laureate. I taught indigenous poetics for the Speakeasy Project in early 2018 and knew the platform. I started emailing the library about taking our April fourth event online and communicating with the poets about the changes I saw coming. And then Conor Moran, Wisconsin Book Festival director, offered to help with Crowdcast, and my contact at the Madison Public Library and I went on, and I polled all the poets I invited, and they agreed to go forward in this new format for the first time. And someone who couldn’t participate before was now able to because of the pandemic. And all of us being basically limited to our home, now we were free. And so, the show went on and one hundred and twenty people tuned in. We had a great time. And I laughed and cried, all dressed up in my staged living room, solo. The recording is now saved for posterity or as long as the internet lives. We celebrated on April fourth online, just like we would have in person, minus the hugging and leaving our homes, driving. Conor was the magician behind the curtain, bringing us forward and back. Sean logged information into the chat feature on where you could buy the poets’ books. There was a robust conversation throughout the event on the side by the poets across the state, and those who read with me. We were eight poets strong. We were brilliant. <br /><br />My work continues. One thing I know as a long-time activist is that you must pivot when something comes up that blocks your current plans, and you must be flexible on how to achieve what you want to achieve. There was always another way. No one ever gained anything giving up. “Imagination is the greater activism,” these words my poetry mentor at IAIA, Joan Naviyuk Kane, once uttered in a poetry workshop, come back to me now. She was right. Imagination is the greater activism. <br /><br />I am now making final comments on the artwork completed by the Edgewood College design students to match the poems that I selected for the bus line’s poetry contest for Metro. Twenty-seven poems are being illustrated by the students, ekphrastic poetry in reverse. We will have a virtual poetry celebration in early May for the poets and the college students. I chose four students from Wingra school, where my husband went when he was a young boy. Busing from the east side of Madison to the west side. <br /><br />At the end of April I will participate in Wingra’s virtual poetry celebration for National Poetry Month online from my home. I will begin offering free poetry workshops for the community via my Zoom account in May. Pre-pandemic my poetry dance card was full. There was one weekend I was free between the months of March to May, and I had, at least, two poetry events scheduled per week. Now I am working from home for my day job, and my days and nights blend. I write and work on poetry in the early morning and late at night. <br /><br />Other poet laureates have told me this is the busy time, gearing up for National Poetry Month. For the entire month of April I have worked with the Madison Public Library in delivering a poem a day via my personal Facebook account. Now I am sharing poems from people who mentored me at IAIA and promoting their works, and books, and art daily. I buy my friends’ new books as they come out. I read. I am helping the Wisconsin poet laureate, Margaret Rozga, publish a book of poetry to mark her term through my small press: Art Night Books. I continue to write new poems, edit my own work, and submit poems and books. I continue to dream, and do yoga. I garden. My work as the Madison poet laureate continues online until we can be together again in community, and when we can it will be glorious. And I will not take it for granted.
Dublin Core
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Title
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COVID-19 story by Angela Trudell Vasquez, 2020
Subject
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Poets laureate
Pandemics
Poetry
Rights
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Copyright 2020, Angela Trudell Vasquez. All rights reserved. For more information, contact Madison Public Library.
Creator
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Trudell Vasquez, Angela
Date
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ca. 2020-04
Description
An account of the resource
Angela Trudell Vasquez shares her experience being Madison's poet laureate when all public events are cancelled due to social distancing measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. <br /><br /><em>This story was originally recorded and shared as part of an episode of the Madison podcast Inside Stories. Listen to that episode and subscribe to the podcast here: <a href="https://inside-stories.simplecast.com/episodes/inside-stories-covid-19-stories-1">https://inside-stories.simplecast.com/episodes/inside-stories-covid-19-stories-4</a></em>
Coverage
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Madison, Wisconsin
Language
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en
Identifier
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covid19-024
Contributor
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Nick Propheter
cat-arts
covid19
covid19-024