Whiplash. It’s the only way to describe it. With two kids under twelve, we never fully relaxed into the “hot vaxx summer” everyone was planning. But in June both kids were finally out of the house in camps and preschool–all day, every day. Frankly it took a little while to get used to concentrating through […]
What a month. More changed for us in April than since the pandemic started. We worked ourselves into a frenzy waiting for our turn to get vaccinated, but ultimately both of us were finally able to get shots. Washington State flirted with maintaining the May 1st date for general adult eligibility, but ultimately accelerated it […]
Everything is moving quickly now. It’s disturbing, after so much stasis. We were relieved to see family members in other states get vaccinated, and thrilled to start planning (not merely dreaming) when we might see them again. Our state governor added K-12 teachers (but not higher education) to the then-current vaccination phase. Then President Biden […]
It’s been a year since we learned COVID-19 was spreading undetected in Washington State. More than half a million people in the U.S. have died. But signs are pointing in positive directions, finally. Case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths are all down from their terrible holiday peaks. More people have been vaccinated in the US than […]
Like so many others, I greeted the changing of the calendar year today with relief: there’s some psychic release associated with putting “2020” behind us. Unfortunately we start the new year with lots of bad news. A new virus variant first identified in the UK appears to be more transmissible, and it is already spreading […]
Today, I hope, marked the beginning of the end of COVID-19. The first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine were administered to health-care workers around the country. And the Electoral College voted for Joe Biden to be the next President. I had hoped to capture a bit more of the last two and half months […]
Things are… okay? For us, at the moment, maybe? Remote schooling started for the oldest earlier this month. The transition for everyone took some figuring out, but for right now it seems like we’ve stabilized in a surprisingly good place. The child is cooperative and as positive as he’s been since this all started, and […]
At 7:45 this evening I stepped outside, and it was fall. Not by the calendar, of course—the equinox is still a few weeks away. But the soft, cold drizzle in the gloaming made it unmistakably clear that Seattle’s summer was ending. What did we make of these last few months? We spent as much of […]
The mental space I had been using for COVID-19 has been entirely displaced by responding to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery; the subsequent protests; and local and national police response. Like so many white Americans, I often ignore the degree to which our nation and its institutions embody white supremacy […]
Whether due to lockdown fatigue, or skepticism, or confusion, or misinformation, or a sense that the threat has ebbed, more people in the area seem to be trying out social gatherings. Mostly with some nod to social distancing, but the threat feels more distant and solidarity more tenuous. Even in California and Washington, lockdowns are […]