In the early days of the pandemic, life was very scary. There was a lot of uncertainty as to how long things would last, who would get sick, and how to adjust to all of the rapid changes taking place. It often felt a lot like a looming apocalypse. This meme just struck a cord with me. In a moment of stress it caused laughter. I only wish we did end up wearing some form of apocalyptic wear. I am disappointed that didn't happen.

My boyfriend and I found this church's billboard during the first week of shutdown in March 2020. We were driving around with nothing to do since everything was closed and found this sign too funny to not stop and take a picture.

When the pandemic first took place, I was working as an Executive Assistant at a Domestic Violence Agency. Our agency was initially sent home, which prompted a mad dash to learn how to hold Zoom meetings, how to securely set up working from home, getting laptops and printers to workers, and all of the other craziness associated with a rush to work from home. The first day we were sent home, I spent the day learning Zoom, checking emails and answers phone calls and texts. That was a Friday. On the following Monday, I was back in the office. No one else was there, so I could do a lot work without interruption. It was determined that our work as a domestic violence agency was essential. At the time, that was a major relief for this single mom of three girls. I remember feeling panicked about the possibility of needing to go on government aid or unemployment. So, it was a total relief to me to find out we were essential. I worked hard during that time to. It took more effort and energy to help others work from home. I was glad that I could work from my work office, but it still required a lot of extra work. After things settled a bit, I would hear about how much more people on unemployment received. It was frustrating to hear about honestly. But, at the time, this meme was exactly how I felt. I felt a lot of pride to be considered essential even if it meant more work (for less pay).

I am an extrovert. I get my energy from people. I love people. I surround myself with a lot of people. The three months leading up to the pandemic lock down I had been surrounded almost every day by almost 200 of my closest friends, people I call my family because we worked together on a theater production called Susanville Best of Broadway. When the pandemic hit, the show was cancelled and then even my work sent everyone home. I was home with my kids. And it was very quiet. We are a very active family involved in many local community projects. I have meetings every week and they have sports. All of sudden, we were home. And if I saw someone I knew while out in public (the grocery store) it was weird. I didn't know if I could hug them (I didn't) and would just awkwardly wave from a distance. It was terrible. In fact, my girls struggled and would still have friends over. I made them limit it to just one friend, but even then, we struggled. This meme really got to me. I remember hearing friends say how their life didn't change at all because they were already homebodies. The idea of being home was actually very stressful. I ended up working at my work, because being home all day to work was not very much fun. I learned a lot about myself during that time. Most importantly, I need people in my life.

After Susanville's Best of Broadway show was cancelled just a day before its opening night, Susanville's local online news editor Jeremy Couso reached out to the Best of Board members to see if he could publish an article about our show, the show that never happened. He and his wife attends the performance for a media night and he happened to have a video of the show. For a small production, the youtube video of the performance has had just under 900 views as of October 9th, 2021. I directed Wizard of Oz with a dear friend of mine, in a one year shot to direct. Watching the video of the show that didn't happen is honestly very sad and hard to do. We become family with the cast and to not reach the finale is painful. But the show must go on, and in 2022, Best of Broadway will take the stage again.

For the last few years, I have coordinated an event called, Dancing for a Brand New Me. It is a fundraiser event that is designed to not only bring about awareness to domestic violence in Lassen County, but it is a fundraiser to help pay for the the mortgage of the shelter for victims. Last year was the 7th year that local "Susanville Stars" were partnered with local professional choreographers to dance three dances before judges similar to NBC's Dancing with the Stars. Our local stars are usually very active community members who spend about 5-6 months learning the dances, but they also fundraiser to get sponsors. It becomes a fun, healthy competition to see who can out dance and out raise funds with each other. Most of the choreographers have participated in the event for many years. It has become a community favorite, selling out tickets both nights the third weekend in October. In 2020, we had to come up with four different plans on how we would perform, because of the pandemic. Our plans included only performing a livestreamed show to relocating our event outdoors. Normally, the event is performed in the local Veterans Hall that is equipped with stage, lights, and sound. In September 2020, I wrote a proposal to public health outlining in detail how we would manage the event. It took weeks for public health to get back to us. But what they approved was that our event could be held at the local High School football stadium, we had to mark off 6-foot distance, require mask, and have screenings at the gate. We had hand sanitizer stations and we were instructed two things: limited seats (200 people) and whatever we did, when we live streamed to not show the audience. The article that I attached talks more about the event than the obstacle it took to put on the event. It is incredibly difficult to move sound equipment in and out of a football stadium every day for a week. It is hard to do a staged performance when you are surrounded by a dirt track. It is hard to have your dressing room be the football locker room. It was very difficult to make all of the modifications and changes that we did. But we did it. And it was an amazing event. Even though we weren't supposed to, we have about 400 people in the audience each night. Most did not wear mask and most were sitting very close to each other. Even one of the public health officials sat in the audience not following the "rules". The event raised over $25,000! Just two weeks after our event, many of the Halloweeen events led to a Covid-19 outbreak in our community and the cases rose rapidly. Prior to Dancing for a Brand New Me 2020, we had zero cases. After Halloween 2020 our cases skyrocketed for a small town. I saw that we happened to just squeeze in one performing arts event just in time before things got bad. I feel like we were lucky and it was probably why the event was so well attended. I have the newspaper article and my proposal attached.

I am the board president for a local theater company, in a small town in Northeast California. For over 20 years, the production Susanville's Best of Broadway has produced a yearly concert series that features snippets from several different Broadway shows. Our production is 100% volunteer and is run by a production manager and a production team. Our cast runs over 100 people every year and includes community members of all ages. Our 2020 production was an epic year for us, as we had spent a lot f money on props, backdrops, and costumes. Several of the shows included Hamilton, Waitress, and my personal favorite Wizard of Oz (to name a few). Our production team started in April of 2019 to plan and the cast started to rehearse in January 2020. The cast would show up to rehearsals 6 days a week for 10 weeks. Two days after the pandemic was announced nationally, was supposed to be Susanville's Best of Broadway Opening Night. We schedule a total of 7 shows over two weekend. The day before opening night, our local public health team reached out to me. In a stressful meeting with the public health team and the Broadway board of directors, it was determined that we had to cancel our show. We attempted to do whatever we could to modify and change things, including social distancing, but pubic health was worried that if someone got sick from our show, we would end up with some sort of lawsuit we couldn't handle. They did, however, allow for us to present to anyone who had been at rehearsal, which included some family members and we called it a rehearsal. It was a sad night. Performing to an empty hall was sad. The cast cleaned up their belongings with hope that we would reopen in a couple of weeks. Not only were we unable to open the show, but we were unable to perform a concern series in 2021. Thankfully, plans are underway to have a performance in 2022.

The country was clearly still in distress when governments decided to reopen

South Carolina legislation and its residents have always been on the fence about COVID but when senator Lindsey Graham caught it back in March of this year, reality started to settle in. This was a wake up call to southerns and South Carolinians alike to start taking COVID mandates more seriously. I empathized with Graham but also was somewhat grateful that his sickness would be a lesson to others.

When Governor McMaster signed an executive order stating that children had to wear mask in schools, the state went bananas. Many began to question whether McMaster's hawk feathers were starting to turn white as many people formed their opinions on what was the correct way to implement health guidelines in schools. I feel like this shows the pushback our governor was starting to have with COVID guidelines since our numbers were the highest in the South along with Georgia the month prior. I also felt like this was funny change of events considering that the governor was the first opt in to South Carolinians not wearing mask when the CDC confirmed it was safe.

We marched up 4 miles of downtown Greenville chanting his name throughout the streets. I remember feeling like his name was a battle cry. I call to action. And a call for us to rise up and understand the true meaning of reason of why we choose to gather here today. George Floyd. His life was was tragically taken but his legacy was lovingly memorialize. It was beautiful to see and take part of historical moment like that. A moment of where a marginalized individual was taken out of the gaps and silences of history and placed right front and center within our cultural and society.

I regrets speaker's name but remember the impact of her words at the Black Lives Matter protest held in Anderson, South Carolina. This speaker talked about the importance of peace and understanding when joining arms with brethren and allies during pivotal times. I remember her walking off the platform and wishing I could her more. Overall, her speech was fierce, firm, and empathetic to us and the cause. Her call to action by asking the audience to take a pledge embodies to true spirit and essence of Black Lives Matter protest.

When things started to slowly open back up, I had decided to work at a nearby Amazon warehouse. While working there, it was difficult to perform the different tasks since everyone was required to wear a mask and maintain social distance from another coworker. In hearing instructions from people or someone to ask you a question, it was hard to hear someone while having to wear a mask in the work field.

When the pandemic first broke out out, many people didn't know what to think. In millennial and gen z fashion, many young adults turned to the internet to crack jokes and voice their opinion about the upcoming crisis. This meme pokes fun at the uncertainty of the viruses' signs and symptoms many medical and governmental officials had at the beginning of the pandemic. The mem also pokes fun at the idea of teenage angst and anxiety a rapid number of young adults are starting experience more and more during this recent decade. The pandemic may cause your nose and mouth to not feel anything but the real question is if young adults are really "feeling" the impact of what is going on? A Forbes report in April of this year has indicated that young people between the ages of 18-24 are starting suffer from more mental health problems than any age group since the pandemic started. Think what you will but this study definitely proves that more young adults will suffer long lasting effects of pandemic during and after the global crisis comes to a end. I liked this meme because it a representations of some of my numbs feelings I have had during this pandemic.

Last summer, I was employed by the Boys Scouts to work at one of the boy scout summer camps located in Georgia. To meet all health guidelines, we were required to wear masks, have weekly Covid testing, and make sure that we did not get sick on the property. Summer camp had only lasted between three and four weeks before we had to close, and send everyone home early.

I worked the polls at Nevitt Forest Elementary during the 59th presidential election. The lines were crowded at 6:00 prior to the polls official opening at 7:00. The energy in the voting room was definitely mixed--some determined, some anxious, and some angry at the previous conditions of Trump administration of 2017-21. Although the energy of the election results are still mixed today still, this meme reflects one of the more amused and joyous reactions of the election turnout. Thus, using one of Trump's infamous lines of his famed tv show Celebrity Apprentice, this meme pokes fun at the importance of public ratings not only in pop culture but in politics as well.

After 20 years of bloodshed, the Us military forces withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving it under Taliban rule. The departure was followed by a , two week process of which more than 120,000 people tried to evacuate (Council of Foreign Affairs, "The US War in Afghanistan" The tweet depict the heartbreaking images of crowds of people trying to cling to the sides of Us military planes at the Kabul airport and tweets from US civilians sympathizing with the troubles overseas.

Amidst Covid-19, the documentation of the police killings have been manifested into comparisons with the world-wide pandemic. These comparisons reflect the ongoing disparities between Black Americans and systemic racism. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation takes to Twitter to try to support this comparison but faces a backlash from a fellow BLM support who argues that the comparison is invalid based on the different progress the BLM protest and quarantine had made. I felt like this was important for me to post because I feel like it shows an effort from BLM supporters to combat the racism within our culture by arguing that society must view and address racism as a public health issue. Yet, the tweet continues to evolve as ironic as the lack of regards Americans have for coronavirus policies and laws continues to grow everyday. Base on how events go, we might regard the validity of this statement to be false down the road.

At the end of my senior year, before graduating with a Bachelor's, I was supposed to take a trip with a small group of students and a couple professors to Italy. When the pandemic hit, the school decided to cancel all summer course studies abroad. The trip itself was supposed to be a great way to end my senior year before I graduated. I was very much excited to finish my undergrad years with this one trip to Italy.

After a month of battling Covid-19, my father passed away due to complications caused by the virus. He was due to retire in January 2021. He worked for the El Paso Police Department for 23.5 years. His passing hit us all hard and it was unexpected as the doctors had told us several days before that he would make it. Then he took a turn for the worst. When his co-workers asked what did he look forward to in his retirement, he said spending time with his family and his granddaughter. We still miss him to this day, especially as the holidays approach.

Since we were forced to stay home for our safety, Netflix and other streaming services was a way to entertain ourselves. Netflix was our top streaming service during the pandemic.

A month into the pandemic, society seems to have disappeared due to social distancing and the stay-at-home mandate. In our local communities, if you wanted to dine out it had to be carryout. If you wanted to go shopping, you had to do it online.

At the beginning of the pandemic, people were stockpiling toilet paper and cleaning supplies.

Everyday when we woke up, it felt like the news was reporting on nothing but Covid-19 cases. This is how we all felt every morning

After 20 years of bloodshed, the Us military forces withdrew from Afghanistan, leaving it under Taliban rule. The departure was followed by a , two week process of which more than 120,000 people tried to evacuate (Council of Foreign Affairs, "The US War in Afghanistan" The tweet depict the heartbreaking images of crowds of people trying to cling to the sides of Us military planes at the Kabul airport and tweets from US civilians sympathizing with the troubles overseas.

2020 was supposed to be everyone's year. The year when everything would be alright. Well, Covid-19 had other plans.

We are all traumatized by 2020. So much so that we don't talk about it. If we had time machines, we would avoid visiting the year 2020.

A post from the RedFishStream Instagram page, which details the ways in which the West has dominated vaccine production and distribution, resulting in a disparity between available vaccinations for overexploited nations, particularly in Africa. Largely, this can be traced to patent restrictions either for medical equipment, or for the vaccines themselves; which make producing these vaccines almost, and if not impossible for these nations. As the description reads, "Less than 1% of the almost 6 billion COVID-19 vaccines administered worldwide have gone to low-income countries, while more than 80% were delivered to just 10 wealthy countries. Fewer than 4% of Africans have been fully immunized, with African leaders speaking out against Vaccine Apartheid at the UN General Assembly last week. According to the WHO, only 15% of the promised vaccine donations from rich countries have been delivered to low-income countries. An Amnesty International report published last week highlighted that when world leaders met at the G7 Summit to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out last June, the English county of Cornwall, where the G7 Summit took place, and which has a population of just over half a million, “had administered more vaccinations than 22 African countries combined.”

This is a newspaper from Cochrane Today, a subsidiary of the Cochrane Eagle on the adoption of the National day of Truth and Reconciliation in the town of Cochrane. The document talks about how other municipalities and even the provincial government have chosen not to participate in the first day of this incredibly important national holiday.

This is a news article documenting Geraldine Shingoose’s comments on how the new national holiday of Truth and Reconciliation must be observed; the article contains a video and conversations regarding how to teach children about Residential Schools in classrooms.

This is an image of my dog, Dobs – I’ve shared him before on this archive, but I just needed to share this image and justify as to why this dog is so important to me. When the pandemic began, I found myself more isolated than normal, as many people had; I barely spoke to my friends online, and began withdrawing into myself more and more with each day. I would have been completely alone. I don’t have much to say, but this is my best friend; he’s been here with me through some of the worst experiences I have faced during the pandemic, I won’t go into them too deeply, but I am just happy to have this dog in my life, his friendly nature and his funny faces really have had an impact on how I’ve been able to cope with so much.

A post on Instagram about the need for continual support for Indigenous peoples when it comes to protecting their sovereignty; and in resisting colonialism.

A meme referencing either how members of the UCP of Alberta going on vacation during the worst months of the pandemic, or our Premier's vacation during the onslaught of the 4th wave. I guess it's even funnier based on the fact that this can represent multiple instances.

This is a news article detailing the result of Alberta’s “Best Summer Ever” which saw almost all pandemic restrictions relaxed with only the begrudging exception of a required quarantine if you were to test positive – yes they seriously tried to get rid of that. ‘They’ being the UCP (United Conservative Party) of Alberta, which has exacerbated the pandemic through prioritizing corporate needs by pushing to continually open the economy at the expense of public health. Ontop of this, the continual gutting of our healthcare system, as a means to ‘legitimize’ the need for a private healthcare system coincided with this, and had devastating results on the lives of Albertans. Jason Kenny, the premier, went to our ‘greatest outdoor show on earth’ the Stampede; and flipped pancakes for all attendees with a smile. They sold ‘Best Summer Ever’ hats, while slowly our hospitals were filling up. As I am writing this, there is a humanitarian mission currently in my province, the army has been deployed to assist, and we are flying people to Ontario for medical treatment because our hospitals are at capacity. The cannibalistic nature of this party and overall of Capitalism has resulted in immense suffering for my province, people are dying in waiting rooms. The last portion which I wrote there really bothers me, I can’t comprehend that experience, you’re in somewhere where they can take care of you, or help you in anyway – but there’s nowhere to lay down, dying in a liminal space. I have Conservative, and Liberal friends who have stated that “it isn’t that bad” or that it’s “just the unvaccinated,” (yes this is a real comment a Conservative ‘friend’ told me in response to my anger with the situation) I cannot comprehend what they mean by either of these, the situation is clearly unacceptable. People have been willfully sacrificed so corporate executives can make their regular paycheques, why is that not infuriating people, why is it just this fixation on ‘getting back to normal.’ Normal is killing people, and having strong men like Jason Kenny smile and flip pancakes only adds onto the absurdity of the situation, I can’t help but be reduced to a boiling rage whenever I read anything relating to our province and the pandemic, I don’t want to live here anymore if this insanity is perceived as somehow normal, or at the most extreme, ‘tolerated’.

As of September 1st, Covid-19 cases are dropping nationwide. Even though there are still hot spots across the United States, cases have dropped nearly fifty percent.

2.) This is another photo within the Cochrane Times dedicated to documenting Canada’s first Orange Shirt Day; this was an article from the October 6th paper. The text underneath the photo reads: “Sharing Experience, Residential school survivor Jenny Clark shares her story with those gathered near the McDougall Stoney Memorial Church ahead of a ceremonial walk to Morley on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, September 30.

1.) This is the FrontPage paper for the Cochrane Times newspaper on October 6th, 2021. The front page’s photo content is as follows: “Members of the Stoney Nakoda First Nations and guests on the land make their way down Highway 1A from the McDougall church to Morley in a somber ceremonial walk on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation/Orange Shirt Day, September 30”

This is important to me because this is my partner speaking. At the beginning of the pandemic we were living in Montana on a working cattle ranch, so our experience was a lot different than what we were seeing on social media. We experienced extreme food shortages and ironically had an even harder time selling cattle to processors and feed lots.

The story of this video is based on mask mandates across the United States. How different cities and states are reacting to President Biden's pleas for companies and state/local officials to mandate masks.

This article shows how the economic bailouts of the pandemic helped large corporations much more than they helped impacted individuals. Since the beginning, we've seemingly been supporting and encouraging essential workers. The support can be identified as fraudulent because according to the Washington Post, big companies that employ essential workers didn't use their bailout funds to support their workers. Billions of dollars went out but aid is still running low where it matters the most, with hardworking citizens.

This article discusses the debate between patients who are unvaccinated and those who are vaccinated. Should it be a requirement for a transplant patient to get the vaccine? Being unvaccinated puts not only the patient at-risk for contracting COVID-19, but it exposes doctors, nurses, and other patients as well. Several states have already made it a requirement to get the vaccine before being placed on the organ transplant list.

Before we were able to get vaccinated, people were turning to other things to protect themselves and their families, especially supplements. This article represents the supplement strategy in that people were looking for any new answers to approach such a foreign situation.

This photo is an important reflection of what healthcare providers have had to endure and the lasting physical and mental toll the pandemic has taken. It was taken after a 12 hour shift of wearing PPE non-stop.

This conversation was interesting to me because it is an example of how the internet has been able to give people an idea of what the pandemic has been like in other parts of the world. It also presents a strategy some leadership enacted to control the spread of the virus.

I thought this interaction represented a common argument nowadays between people who are not as sympathetic to how the world has changed, and someone else who is trying to counter those negative ideas.

While the pandemic is still going strong, this type of post reflects some of the aftermath of the pandemic. Restrictions have loosened in enough places that people are able to return to restaurants, but there are still so many challenges and obstacles these essential workers are having to face. This picture left an impression on me because it is enforcing that sense of community and having to stick together to make it through these strange times.

This was one of my favorite places to go in college, and they were unfortunately unable to make it through the closures. It was especially upsetting because they were always busy every night and the continued restrictions in California were too much for them to afford to hold out until people could return.

I found this meme to be a funny representation of how important technology became during quarantine. People relied on it to stay connected, complete work, and go to school along with general entertainment to avoid boredom and burnout.

This meme leans into a lot of the anxiety at the beginning of the pandemic. There was a lot of information circulating regarding all of the little things you should be doing to protect yourself like washing your hands, sanitizing your groceries, and not touching your face.

I found this to be an interesting example of how people have used humor to cope with quarantine and the pandemic, and actually ironically reflects how a lot of information has spread. While relying on social media for reliable news is not typically advised, it can be less overwhelming than professional media and reflects the day-to-day perspective more accurately.