Item

The Smell of Quarantine

Title (Dublin Core)

The Smell of Quarantine

Description (Dublin Core)

During the early days of the pandemic, I flew from my duty station at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune to attend an eight week school. While most of the country was shutting down, the military was forced to find solutions to mitigate risk of infection while still maintaining readiness. The solution to this was isolating service members for two weeks prior to training, protecting potentially infected service members from each other while giving time to monitor for potential symptoms. Looking back at my experience being restricted to a room for two weeks, what stands out to me is not how I stayed occupied, the food that was provided, or how I communicated with family, but the smell of the particular hand soap I had in that room with me. Through meticulously using it to clean and wash my hands, the scent filled my room, and I became more annoyed with that smell than I was being restricted to a room. The smell of that soap slowly became my memory associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Looking back at that time, five months later, the smell of that soap still standouts as my COVID-19 memory, and I don’t think I’ll be buying that soap in the future.

Date (Dublin Core)

October 18, -0007

Creator (Dublin Core)

Luke Josey

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Luke Josey

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

Text Story

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Social Distance
English Aviation
English Labor
English Government Federal

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

Air Force
hand soap
smell
memory
sensory history
hygiene

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

Sensory History

Collection (Dublin Core)

Military

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history contribution to COVID-19 Archive

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

10/11/20

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

10/12/20
2/3/21

Item sets

Covid 19
Arizona State University

This item was submitted on October 11, 2020 by Luke Josey using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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