Item

Driving to Apartment

Media

Title (Dublin Core)

Driving to Apartment

Description (Dublin Core)

The audio recording are the sounds of my car and the cars around me as I drive home after another day at work on Dover AFB. I could explain and explore all the things that COVID impacted on the base as well as in regards to deployments, missions, and military/civilian personnel, but that will have to be a separate COVID story for another time. As for my car ride, the audio highlights one of the most confusing things about human behavior for me during the pandemic. Where was everyone going? Majority of businesses were closed. Visitation to family and friends were greatly discouraged. The beaches were closed. All the states around us were closing their borders. Yet, people were driving all about the roads like the COVID wasn’t going to stop them from being somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, the base was still open and I was still going to work. Also, a good portion of the people living in or around Dover were military or military families. Still, traffic around me didn’t ever seem to really slow down or make sense connection to the pandemic. In fact, the closer you got to the base, the worse the traffic became because the base had closed all their gates but one. This meant that everyone who needed to be on base to work or go to medical (not much was open at the start of COVID and things are slowly working their ways back to somewhat “normal” hours) had to go through a singular gate. I would sit in my car for almost an hour, listening to my music and the music of the cars around me as I waited impatiently for my wheels to a spin a few more inches forward.
In some ways, this audio clip reveals something special about the history of the pandemic. The audio and my story attached to it showcases not only the human nature to adapt, but also humanity’s resiliency to sustain a way of life. At the same time, pandemic unveils our values and driving force. For instance, were those driving around the pandemic going to work for monetary value? Were they driving to see loved ones through a window? Maybe they were driving just to have a purpose? Or they just trying to escape the confines of the sanctuary of their home? Was it about politics? This also brings about the question of fear. Fear of being alone. Fear of confinement. Fear of death. Fear of boredom. Fear of lost freedom.
Audio recording, story (about a sensory experience), recipe, etc

Date (Dublin Core)

October 14, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

Tonya Allen

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Tonya Allen

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST643

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

audio

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Government Federal
English Transportation
English Emotion

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

Dover
Delaware
air force base
traffic
boredom
fear
sound

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

sensory history
driving home
military

Collection (Dublin Core)

English Military

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

Sensory history contribution to COVID-19 Archive

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

10/16/2020

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

10/17/2020
03/05/2021

Item sets

Covid 19
Arizona State University

This item was submitted on October 16, 2020 by Tonya Allen 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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