Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Tiny Coronavirus Stories: The IVC edition! UPDATED with new additions!


Five days ago, on March 19, 2020, Artists & Climate Change, a theatre project that uses drama to raise awareness about the climate crisis, began publishing a series of micro stories on their website which document life during the Coronavirus pandemic. 100 words in length and accompanied by photos, stories from around the world have been posted, four each day.

Because she was already a fan of their work, Rebel Girl heard the call early, submitted her own story and shared the project with her friends and students. Many have been accepted, published and more are forthcoming. As a result, in the first five days, five contributors with IVC ties appeared: three professors, and two former students. Not bad! UPDATE: as of today - March 25 - two more  IVC-related contributions have been published - scroll down to see these additional tiny stories. ANOTHER UPDATE: Friday March 27 finds a Tiny Coronavirus Story written by IVC Professor Brittany Adams. Check it out below. UPDATE #3: Two more IVC-related contributions appear today, March 28.  They have been added below. UPDATE #4: March 29 saw former Prof. Alex Bobrik's tiny story appear. check it out.

Perhaps you will write one of your own to submit.  It's free to submit. Think about it. As one of Rebel Girl's students observed: "We are living through history."

Rebel Girl presents the IVC edition below, but click the links to go to the site and read the others. See how we live now.

Rebel Girl misses you all. Take care. Stay safe. Zoom responsibly.

March 19, 2020

Waiting. 

KENTUCKY WONDER

Planting the beans made her feel like a woman in a fairy tale, the German kind, both magical and brutal. She and her son had bought the seeds years ago. They planted one, waited. Then he had taken the plant to school along with a chart marking its growth. She saved the rest. Now he was a senior and she was another kind of senior, which made her vulnerable during this plague. She planted the old beans in cans filled with dirt. She patted each down with a prayer. The day’s rain watered them. What did she have to lose?

— Lisa D. Alvarez (Silverado, California)

March 20, 2020

Do you want the last egg? 
POTATOES AND EGGS

By the second grocery store, he’s becoming mildly panicked. “It’s not about running out of supplies,” he’d told his wife. “I just want to see.” “Check for potatoes and eggs,” she says.

He thinks of the son and daughter-in-law working at the hospital. “Stay in medicine,” he’d advised, “it’s a good financial move.” Money. The President’s solution is a tax break. “We don’t need money. We need PPEs,” his son says. Over the phone. Now, it’s only phone and text contact. It strikes him he’s old, suddenly – by the stroke of a mouse on a spreadsheet, 67 and “At Risk.”

— Peter Gerrard (Irvine, California)

Sunday at the Seafood Festival

THE KEYS IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

Despite the declared national emergency, nothing changes in the Florida Keys. We arrive at the Seafood Festival early to avoid the crowd. We sit in the back. The conch ceviche is delicious. The band plays Tom Petty songs as the locals greet each other. “I don’t care. I’m still going to give you a hug.” In the bathroom a woman sighs impatiently as I wash my hands. When I explain I’m singing “Happy Birthday” in my head she says, “Oh that.” We stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, the Lord’s Prayer and the Star-Spangled Banner. Perhaps this will protect us.

— Mary Camarillo (Huntington Beach, California)

March 21, 2020

The loaf, brown as peasant rye.


PUMPERNICKEL


Pushing carts, we milled around the empty shelves of meat, eggs, bread, when I spotted in a dark display, a loaf of pumpernickel—round, brown as peasant rye, the devil’s farts, my mother used to say. Sandwiches for my daughter’s lunch, a slather of mustard—I set the loaf into my cart and pushed on. Coming towards me, a couple, white, sixties, better than this neighborhood market. The woman said, “Look, no bread.” He grumbled. I pointed to my loaf: “pumpernickel.” A day’s loot. His face twisted with petulance, “What if I don’t like pumpernickel?” And I missed my mother most of all.

— Linda Thomas (Irvine, California)




Badger Pass trail, Casper Wilderness Park 

IN THE DISTANCE, LIVE OAKS

“Any kids or dogs?” the ranger asked.
“No.”
“Playground’s closed. I can’t touch money.”

Driving toward the trailhead: mother, father, son; near a picnic spot, not eating, not playing, just standing bewildered by sun and silence.

The same sun beats brutal on the steep, dry trail. I snap photos of empty ridges, brief green in the wake of rain, soon to be desiccated, dangerous, latent flames.

This desert climb offers poor comfort for a transplanted daughter of streams and trees. But on the path down, grasses aglow with wildflowers, poppies flashing hope, and in the distance, live oaks still stand.

— Virginia Shank (Orange County, California)





Cameron and her grandmother, in 2018
I HELD HER

The morning they announced the pandemic, my grandmother died. She died in one day.

My grandmother’s body shook on that afternoon. I held her. It would be the last time I would hold her. In the afternoon, I was visiting her and doing my homework and there was no quarantine. Eight hours later I was sitting inside the car and my mom sent me a text. She couldn’t make the phone call.

All of that seems far away because my dad bought twenty rolls of toilet paper and now I’m making my way through twenty bottles of beer.

— Cameron Diiorio (Costa Mesa, California)


Missing home from home.
THE OFFLINE PROFESSOR

I wake at 3 AM, as if prompted by an alarm, but I have nowhere to go. My school is closed; I am suddenly supposed to teach online. Fuck online. I miss my students, my colleagues, work. Do the students have reliable wifi? Do they even have computers at home? Are they working because they need to pay rent? So many of them work in food service. What is this tickle in my throat? Was that a dry cough? I get up and find the thermometer. No fever. No fever, but no more sleep tonight either.

— Melissa Knoll (Corona, California)


March 27, 2020


Steps.
ORDINARY THINGS

I wonder how we got here. To the place where ordinary things frighten. A doorknob, the handle on the mailbox, the faucet, our own hands.

When our daughter learned to walk, ordinary things frightened us too. The corner of the coffee table, the brick fireplace, the stairs. It took six months for her to steady and for us to take a breath. Once she swallowed a small piece of plastic. A trip to the ER. A kind, older doctor who blew bubbles to calm our fears. Does that kind doctor have ordinary things: a mask, gloves, time to calm fears?

— Brittany Adams (Huntington Beach, California)


March 28, 2020


Our wedding, on top of today's news. 

A FOREIGN VIRUS

In these days of solitude, I remember why I no longer play my Baby Taylor and sing Psalms to the Lord, why I no longer sit in pews on Sundays and absorb the proclamations of charismatic men, why, now, I stare at my phone, at a Facebook post from a pastor I once admired, and war with myself. Should I say my Chinese wife owes him no apologies? Is it enough that people’s hearts have broken for those of his ilk to choose another adjective? “The virus is from there!” they’d say. And where it’s from is not here.

— Nathaniel Cayanan (West Covina, California)

Even the fog doesn't adhere to social distancing as it smothers the Pomona College clocktower.

A JOYFUL, SELFISH RESPONSE

It’s pouring. I wander, watching the torrent-soaked boxes carrying student valuables. Puddles coalesce. Students hug each other. They butcher pop tunes. Music reverberates from several dorms. Beer cans and wine bottles clog trash bins. “A far cry from social distancing,” I tell myself.

After avoiding handshakes and giving virtual hugs or elbow-bumps to favorite professors and not-so-close friends, I find someone I’ve missed dearly. We hug and catch up over dinner. I briefly think to myself, “how many people can’t hug loved ones because of carelessness?” We hug again and say goodbye. Letting go is hard.

— David Vejar (Tustin, California)

*

March 29, 2020

Please buy only what you really need.


SHOPPING TRIP

At the store, I replenish food supplies and check, again, for cleaning products. I’m struck by the boundaries that have been placed, the subtle encroachment of a new age, an air of sci-fi dystopia. Tall robots clean the aisles. “We’re stronger together,” a soft, feminine voice says over the loudspeaker. There are acrylic shields between guests and clerks, tape on the floor designating six feet between each patron like marks on the stage of a surreal, somber play. I pick up a jar absentmindedly, put it back, feel guilty; I never realized how frequently we touch each other.

— Alexis Bobrik (Berryville, Virginia)

***
I'll see you all this coming fall...




Newtonian advantages

Faculty Home Work
Remote work is proving difficult for many professors, given the circumstances and despite some early predictions to the contrary. What institutions are doing and can start doing to ease the pressure.
     When institutions started sending students and professors home due to COVID-19, more than a few academics opined on social media that this would be a boon for research productivity: the idea, presumably, was that isolation breeds creativity. A significant share of these posts mentioned Isaac Newton, who discovered calculus while “social distancing” during the Great Plague of London, starting in 1665. 
     Newton -- then still a student at the University of Cambridge and not yet a sir -- also watched apples fall from “that tree” on the grounds of his family estate during the plague, as a recent Washington Postessay explains. The period has since been called Newton’s annus mirabilis, or “year of wonders,” even if nearby London itself was draped in death.  
   The retorts came almost as quickly as these views were voiced. No, this spring will not be a time for groundbreaking insights and increased productivity, and institutions should not expect either, academics argued. Many also pointed out that Newton was not a professor during his isolation, let alone one thrusting all his courses online for the first time. Nor was he a parent, simultaneously acting as daycare provider or teacher to children displaced by widespread pre- and K-12 school closures.... continued
Orange County has 30 new cases of coronavirus; total number up to 125 -- Orange County has 125 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of Monday, March 23, up from the 95 reported on Sunday, marking the biggest one-day jump in the numbers thus far. The number of cases nearly doubled over the weekend in Orange County. And, about 600 people have tested positive for the coronavirus in Southern California, with that number expected to grow quickly as more testing is done. Jeong Park in the Orange County Register -- 3/24/20

California now says it needs 50,000 more hospital beds to meet coronavirus surge -- New modeling shows California needs 50,000 additional hospital beds to meet the incoming surge of coronavirus patients, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Monday. It’s a dramatic jump from the 20,000 extra beds Newsom said the state needed just two days ago, and reflects what the governor describes as dynamic modeling that’s constantly changing as new numbers about coronavirus infections pour in.  Sophia Bollag in the Sacramento Bee$ Taryn Luna in the Los Angeles Times$  Thomas Fuller, Tim Arango and Jo Becker in the New York Times$ -- 3/24/20

Coronavirus: Social distancing measures could last two or three months, Newsom warns -- Tough social distancing measures to stamp out the coronavirus’ spread may need to last two or three months in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested on Monday, in a drastic contrast with President Trump, who just minutes earlier had predicted the U.S. economy could reopen for business in weeks, not months. Casey Tolan, Fiona Kelliher, Paul Rogers and Kerry Crowley in the San Jose Mercury$ -- 3/24/20

Trump says he may soon push businesses to reopen, defying the advice of coronavirus experts -- President Trump, under growing pressure to rescue an economy in free fall, said Monday that he may soon loosen federal guidelines for social distancing and encourage shuttered businesses to reopen — defying public health experts, who have warned that doing so risks accelerating the spread of the novel coronavirus or even allowing it to rebound. Philip Rucker, Jeff Stein, Josh Dawsey and Ashley Parker in the Washington Post$ -- 3/24/20

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...