A Year Ago Today: Going into Lockdown Because of the Coronavirus Outbreak in the United States (and the World)

Greig Roselli poses for the one year anniversary
of living through Covid-19 in these United States.

One Year Ago Today

Today is March 12th in the Year of Our Lord Twenty Twenty-One. Last year today, I was in a faculty meeting. “We’re not closing school,” they said. By Sunday, we were in lockdown. And the rest is history.

I feel like I’m living through a historic moment like folks who lived through the Great Depression and hoarded pennies in their mattresses. 

What Will Future Generations Say?

Future generations will ask, “What was

On the corner of 37th
Avenue and 79th Street
 in Jackson Heights, Queens

the Twenty Twentys like?” My friend Amira’s child, who is now ten months old, will want to know what he did during the quarantine. “Mostly eat and sleep,” Mom will say. “But it was a long time before you saw real people besides the doctors who birthed you and us.” And Sam will say, “OK. I survived a global pandemic.”

Recognizing That This is a Deadly Virus

As of today, 532,466 people have died in the United States; and, worldwide over 2.5 million people have perished. I recognize I’m privileged because I’m vaccinated and generally healthy (although I need to lay off the potato chips and ranch dressing). The pandemic has disproportionately hit the most vulnerable of society. I realize I’m in-person with students — so there’s always a risk I can be infected. But think about folks who work essential jobs and live in small apartments where everyone is working, coming into contact with many people. I can slink away to the haven of a more-or-less safe space in my apartment.

I think this global crisis has revealed just how fragile the ties that bind are. I’m grateful for today. I mourn those lost to Covid-19, and I’m hopeful for the future.

Kristen Ahfeld is a
First Grade Teacher in Queens.

How was your Covid-19 lockdown anniversary — and how are you coping? Let me know in the comments. ⁣

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Who is Your Favorite U.S. President?

Teddy Roosevelt is my favorite U.S. president. Why?

Theodore Roosevelt, January 8, 1907, Cove Neck, Long Island, New York 

1. I loved reading The Alienist by Caleb Carr - which is when I learned that Teddy Roosevelt was Police Commissioner in New York City from 1895 to 1897. I know. Just because I read about him in a fictional novel really should not count towards his prowess as president. But. Hey. Everything I ever learned has come from reading fiction.

2. His house in Gramercy is sick. He was born there in 1858. It is now a National Park! I went there once and the National Park Ranger fellow told me how Roosevelt survived an assassination attempt.

3. The dude survived an assassination attempt. He was reading a speech in Milwaukee and was shot. The papers he had stuffed into his breast pocket saved his life - cuz they partially blocked the path of the bullet.

4. Oh. About his service as President. How good of a president was he? I know he expanded the National Park Service. :-)

5. He was somehow indirectly connected to the creation/ marketing/rise in popularity of the Teddy Bear.

6. He was the most boyish president.

Theodore Roosevelt, Age 11, Taken in Paris, France circa 1870

7. And he was a New Yorker. The first President born and raised in the Empire State.

Happy President's Day! Who is your favorite president and why?

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Aesthetic Thursday: Matthew Jensen's "49 States"

Matthew Jensen, The 49 States, 2008-9

Google Streetview in Art
I am addicted to Google Street View. I am going to Philadelphia this weekend and I have already seen on Street View what the hotel will look like, what the front of a restaurant I want to have lunch at looks like — all as if I will have already "done" the trip before I even go. Someone else has already been there. Someone has already snapped a photograph. There is nothing new under the sun. But I like what Matthew Jensen has done in the Metropolitan Museum of Art display of his work — he has taken a collage of images from Google Street View and organized them alphabetically according to State (e.g., the fifty states of the United States).

Jensen's Work at the Met Reminds Me of the Iconic American Road Trip
Seeing Jensen's work at the Met, as part of an exhibit on contemporary photography, I think of travel, the association Americans have with the road trip and snapping pictures. What is a road trip without a camera? Now that we have Google to take our snapshots for us maybe the camera is dead on the road. *sad face*. The images Jensen has collected are absent individuals but it seems easy enough to insert a human being into each State's slot. Look, there is me in New York. There is me in Connecticut. I look at my home state of Louisiana and compare it to Wisconsin. They both seem the same — and taken as a whole the image captures a unity of sorts, the kind of unity I get when traveling on the interstate where every exit is the same as the ones that came before it and all the ones ahead will look the same and so on. Is this a new American flag? Maybe so.

Stray Observations:

• Why are there only forty-nine states in Jensen's collage? I did not have time to figure out what state is missing.
• Did Google allow Jensen to use their images?
• I feel like Jensen's work would be better if every picture in the series included a person whose face is blurred out.
• I want this piece to hang in a doctor's office.

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Weather Channel Weather Map for the Fifty Contiguous States for Monday, September 6, 2010

How the current surface weather looks like in the contiguous fifty states according to the Weather Channel on Monday, September 6, 2010.

The Weather Channel United States Weather Map at 10:00 PM EDT on Monday, September 6, 2010

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What I Eavesdropped at a Recent High School Graduation

In this post, I write about what I overheard at a high school graduation I attended.

The Author as a High School Graduate

At a recent high school graduation, an honors student receives recognition for a music and science scholarship. A parent in the row behind mine, says, "That's interesting, but, what do you do with music and science? Nothing, I guess."

If we need another example of anti-intellectualism in America - there you go.

Or, it could be just ignorance. Legitimately, maybe she did not how music and science can inter-relate.

However she sussed out the situation for herself, it was still a dim reminder to me to of how much my job is often looked at askance - or in a larger view - the often conflicted view Americans have of education.

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Thanksgiving: Turkey, Gratitude, and Capitalism’s Harvest

Thanksgiving is an iconic American holiday.

     I know the origins of the holiday are rooted in Puritan Christianity.
     I know it is based on the slow seductive manipulation of Native Americans but Thanksgiving, as we know it today, is neither Puritan nor is it Anti-native American.
     Thanksgiving is a 1941 contrivance to boost the economy under the FDR administration. Today it continues to be a worship of capitalism and a wish for plenty.
     Grateful 

     Thanks
     Gracious
     Whew. I better baste that turkey before it dries out. Don't want my guest consumers to order a refund.
I wish I could offer more profundity here, but sadly I am rather consumed by vodka and an unusually sanguine heart.

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