Eastern Washington University Libraries is creating a digital archive detailing how COVID-19 impacted EWU and members of its community. First-hand accounts and expressions created during the pandemic can help future generations better understand what it was like to learn, work, and live during these uncertain times. We are calling upon you to contribute your journals, memories, creative writing, and photographs to create collectively a better record of how EWU experienced the pandemic.
For more information about submitting to the project, please visit the project website.
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Financial challenges
Anonymous
It has been difficult trying to stay afloat financially while surviving Covid. I lost my job and had to live with my parents while I pay for college through my savings. Class wise it’s kind a advantage since I have a room to myself and I get to really focus on my work that means I get to go at my own pase and won’t worry about rushing anything really.
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Year of isolation
Casey Bosse
My diagnosis of covid last June was anxiety provoking. I was one of the lucky ones. A year of isolation summed up in one photo I took.
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Hargreaves Hall during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-21
Pat Spanjer
Hargreaves Hall during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-21.
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Empty bus
Michael T. Nelson
Surreal. Disconcerting. But most of all--lonely. Riding a bus to and back from Cheney, a bus so often overcrowded it was difficult to find room to stand--had suddenly, and with a quiet severity, transformed into a reminder of the fragility of society, and how quickly, the daily norms and what can be expected, unravels.
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December Rain
Bradley Barker
I lost my mother during the covid pandemic. She was in a nursing home which was locked down for most of March-December. In late November, she contracted COVID-19 during an outbreak in the home. She passed peacefully in her sleep on the morning of December 11, 2020. She was an incredible woman of compassion and grace and I am blessed to be her son. I've included a poem I've written called December Rain, along with a couple of photos.
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Time capsule
Steven Bingo
On March 19, 2020, Eastern Washington University closed its buildings to the public. While the JFK Memorial Library opened its doors to staff by June and its lobby to students in November, parts of the library remain a time capsule from the date the library originally closed its doors. Issues of the March 11, 2020 Easterner remain in the study lounge. To date, this is the last paper issue of the student newspaper. The PLUS and Writing Center walls contain old staff photos, the signage on the Archives Reading room is curled from age and the humidity from the building sanitization in Spring 2020. The image of the March PLUS student of the month and the Multimedia Center were taken in September 2020. Eventually, these parts of the library will open, too, but until then, it’s a ghost from the pre-pandemic past.
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To those who lost a part of themselves
Katherine Fujimoto-Young
This piece of creating non-fiction describes the experience of a prospective Eastern Washington University student named Kailee from the perspective of her smart phone, a device she spent much time with during the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece discussing several challenges dealing with health, friends, and college.
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Get Lit 2020 marketing
Eastern Washington University. Division of University Relations.
I work in MarCom and came across some of my files from last year. These were published in the BlackLens Newspaper for the 22nd annual Get Lit! Festival. The first one ran in March, "V2" ran in April with a due date of March 15 when we still thought things would re-open. V3 is what ran in April to correct V2. The three ads represent a lot of hard planning being de-railed because of the uncertainty of lockdown. They never ended up having an event. The 2021 Get Lit! Festival is virtual.
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Gardening during the pandemic
Ielleen Miller
Looking through my photos for the past year, the one that says "pandemic" the most to me is this one, taken in late April, 2020. With shortages of specific items such as toilet paper, flour, and yeast, and panic about future disruptions to supply lines, lots of people got into gardening in order to be more self-sufficient. I had seen an article about re-growing certain vegetables, so I experimented with a live butter lettuce, green onions, and a romaine lettuce. Can one re-grow food? Yes, especially if you have a greener thumb than I do. Green onions work well. I thought the lettuce had a more intense flavor. But grocery stores experienced fewer and fewer disruptions, and I never saw a shortage of vegetables. So like other pandemic fads (sourdough starters, jigsaw puzzles, etc.), re-growing food for me came and quickly went.
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Salnave Elementary playground during COVID-19
James W. Rosenzweig
I wanted to share this image to capture what now feels like a forgotten moment in the pandemic -- for the first few days of statewide lockdown, I had taken my daughter to this playground at her elementary school in Cheney, since playing outside was about the only safe thing we knew to do. But then an order was issued to close playgrounds out of fear of the spread of covid-19, so this is a picture taken on March 23 -- you can see not only the big sign, but the faint yellow caution tape that's wrapped around all of the playground equipment. There was something very chilling about it -- at the time it seemed ominous but no one was sure yet how bad things would get. And now, with the playgrounds having been open for many months (though we wear a mask and hand sanitize, etc.), this picture feels more like a dream I had than like a memory.
