https://ift.tt/3bOFv2L <p class="intro">We all have our own ways of
reacting and responding to the pandemic. I, for one, cannot bring
myself to write, so I’m inspired by people who are using this
time of isolation and lockdown to document their thoughts and
observations and find new and creative ways to interact with one
another.</p>
<hr />
<h3>Launching new blogs and post series</h3>
<p>Ann Morgan, the London-based author who once <a
href="https://ayearofreadingtheworld.com/">read her way around the
world</a>, launched a new blog, <a
href="https://ajournaloftheplagueyear.com/"><em>A Journal of the
Plague Year</em></a>, to “explore the shifts that this period
will bring,” she writes. Heather Mason, a blogger in
Johannesburg, started a <a
href="https://2summers.net/tag/lockdown/">Joburg COVID-19 Lockdown
Journal</a>, filed under the “lockdown” tag of her blog,
<a href="http://2summers.net"><em>2Summers</em></a>.</p>
<figure id="attachment_41031"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41031" style="width:450px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-41031"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/screencapture-2summers-net-2020-03-31-joburg-covid-19-lockdown-journal-day-5-2020-04-01-14_18_15-1.png?w=450&h=493"
alt="" width="450" height="493" /><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-41031" class="wp-caption-text">Explore Heather
Mason’s <a href="https://2summers.net/tag/lockdown/">Joburg
COVID-19 Lockdown Journal</a>.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Blogging is also very much a collaborative and cathartic activity,
and some writers have come together — on group sites like <a
href="https://delirium.blog/">delirium.blog</a> — to share
meditations, rants, and the half-baked messages scribbled in their
notebooks.</p>
<p>In this spirit of community, Nicole Melancon at <a
href="https://thirdeyemom.com/"><em>Thirdeyemom</em></a> published an
update, <a href="https://thirdeyemom.com/2020/03/26/hello-from-minnesota/">“Hello
from Minnesota,”</a> on how she’s doing in her corner of
the world, encouraging readers to do the same and virtually check in
with each other.</p>
<h3>Sharing and documenting through art</h3>
<p>Many artists and educators are inspiring people to tap into their
creativity at home. Danny Gregory, based in New York City, <a
href="https://dannygregorysblog.com/2020/03/18/live-drawing-parties/">hosts
live drawing parties</a> online, sharing tips from his <a
href="https://sketchbookskool.com/">Sketchbook Skool</a> archive.
Illustrator Mica Angela Hendricks resurfaced on her blog, <em>Busy
Mockingbird</em>, to share <a
href="https://busymockingbird.com/2020/03/22/in-between-the-lines/">black-and-white
sketches</a> for use as coloring pages.</p>
<figure id="attachment_41030"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41030" style="width:505px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-41030"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/drawing-party-generic.jpg?w=505&h=284"
alt="" width="505" height="284" /><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-41030" class="wp-caption-text">Join Danny
Gregory’s <a
href="https://dannygregorysblog.com/2020/03/18/live-drawing-parties/">Live
Drawing Parties</a>.</figcaption></figure>
<p>Other artists are publishing pandemic-themed posts on a regular
basis, like Wellington-based cartoonist Sarah Laing, who publishes
daily comics in her <a
href="https://sarahelaing.com/tag/covid-19/">COVID-19 Diaries</a>
series, or the illustrator at <em>Ink & Paint</em>, who is
participating in an art challenge and <a
href="https://asiapasek.wordpress.com/">creating sketches each
day</a>.</p>
<p>People are reflecting, journaling, and creating — as well as
motivating each other — which is lovely to see. Here’s a
small sample of posts we read and loved this week, from cultural
commentary to personal musings, with art sprinkled in.</p>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://tedcooke.blog/2020/03/29/five-techniques-for-expanding-subjective-time-during-the-lockdown/">“How
to expand subjective time during the lockdown,”</a> Ted Cooke,
<em>Conscious Cookies</em></h3>
<p>“Time in the lockdown can slip away from us, and disturb our
mental tranquility,” Ted Cooke writes in a post on the mapping
of time to space. It’s at once thought-provoking and actionable,
including tips on living and working in a confined space during this
period of isolation.</p>
<blockquote><p>And this is why a day spent all in one spot will tend
to feel like it's passed quicker: as we experience the sequence of
activities in our day, each is a little bit less distinctive and
differentiated than it would be under normal conditions because it
lacks spatial context, and the different portions of the day then
bleed into each other.</p>
<p>This interfusion of the different parts of the day diminishes them
all. Your yoga headspace carries into your work headspace carries into
your argument with your flatmate headspace carries into your creative
time headspace, and the resources of your mind are never fully focused
on any one of these things.</p>
<p>And this lack of distinctness to individual moments in your day has
its flip side in memory, where because there are no spatial hooks for
it to gain purchase on, it becomes difficult to remember what we did:
there are no differentiated locations to trigger recollection. It's as
if all the photographs have been made on top of each other on a single
print.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://longreads.com/2020/03/19/why-im-giving-myself-permission-to-keep-writing-at-this-time/">“Why
I'm Giving Myself Permission to Keep Writing at This Time,”</a>
Sari Botton, Longreads</h3>
<p>Is it okay to think and write about something other than the virus?
Do our stories even matter right now? Sari Botton, the essays editor
at Longreads, works through these questions and ultimately thinks the
effort is worthwhile.</p>
<blockquote><p>I think often of a George Eliot quote: "It's never too
late to be what you might have been." But my grandmothers didn't live
long enough to be who they might have been. Maybe I am getting to.
Maybe my story about that will affect someone else — while I'm alive,
and later, when I'm gone. Maybe it's true what they say, that you
teach what you most need to learn; clearly I wouldn't be in the line
of work I'm in, helping people tell their stories, if I didn't believe
people's stories matter.</p>
<p>So that settles it: My story matters, and so does yours. I'm giving
myself permission to write as I feel called to through this dark time.
And if you need permission from someone other than yourself, I'm
giving it to you, too. I'm not shirking any responsibilities to do it.
I'm helping others out, staying connected to loved ones, making
donations to helpful organizations as I can, doing my job. But when I
am so motivated, I'm going to take a moment to write about what is
happening, inside me and around me. I will tell myself first what I
think and feel, and maybe later, share it with the
world.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://petescully.com/2020/03/29/home-sweet-home-sweet-home/">“Home
Sweet Home Sweet Home,”</a> Pete Scully, <em>Pete Scully’s
Sketch Blog</em></h3>
<p>Originally from north London and now in Northern California, artist
Pete Scully shares scenes from inside his home. “Working from
home, this is where I sit. I'm there right now too. I'm here a lot.
This was another late evening sketch, drawn from the dinner table. On
the screen are the latest coronavirus numbers. Even though this was
only a few days ago the numbers are so much worse; we are no closer to
flattening this curve.”</p>
<figure id="attachment_40978"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40978" style="width:695px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-large wp-image-40978"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/49711345802_9617bb898c_o.jpg?w=685&h=463"
alt="" width="685" height="463" /><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-40978" class="wp-caption-text"><a
href="https://petescully.com/2020/03/29/home-sweet-home-sweet-home/">“Home
Sweet Home Sweet Home,”</a> from <em>Pete Scully’s Sketch
Blog.</em></figcaption></figure>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://conjecturalintelligence.wordpress.com/2020/03/20/this-is-not-my-first-rodeo-real-talk-about-getting-through-this/">“This
is not my first rodeo (real talk about getting through
this),”</a> Raq Winchester, <em>InBLOGnito</em></h3>
<p>Raq Winchester has served as a U.S. federal employee overseas and
is also the spouse of a Foreign Service Officer. On her blog, she
shares learnings from many years of facing pandemics and lockdowns
around the world.</p>
<blockquote><p>You will also not have to train your kids how and when
to use the panic room, or do weekly drills on using the radio to call
Post 1 (the Marine on duty at the embassy). You will not have to train
your kids how to behave when they are kidnapped, or how to give the
kidnappers instructions, in English and Spanish, to call the US
Embassy. You probably won't have to teach them how to deal with
exposure to tear gas.</p>
<p>My point is: when you are ready to tear your hair out, remember
that it could be worse. You'll get through this.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://silencekilledthedinosaurs.com/2020/03/17/forward/">“Forward,”</a>
Lucy Grove Jones, <em>Silence Killed the Dinosaurs</em></h3>
<p>Despite an incredibly challenging year so far — facing her
fourth miscarriage, a bushfire evacuation, and now the pandemic
— artist Lucy Grove Jones focuses on a single word:
<em>forward</em>. “It means the future is coming. It means keep
going, there's more. It means you can't go back, so don't wait
around.”</p>
<blockquote><p>I'm worried about what happens when I run out of toilet
paper because everyone else has panic-hoarded it. I'm worried about my
older relatives. I'm worried about my chronically ill friends. I'm
worried about my siblings—both of whom are doctors working in
hospitals. I'm worried that next fire season a bushfire will reach my
town, my home. I'm worried I'll just keep miscarrying forever. I'm
worried about lurking tumours. I'm worried about living in a country
with a marginal environment and unsustainable habits while the world
gets hotter.</p>
<p>It's scary outside, and it's dark inside.</p>
<p>Forward is not about choice. It's going to happen anyway. The
future is coming, and you can't go back.</p></blockquote>
<figure id="attachment_40969"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40969" style="width:695px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-large wp-image-40969"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/forwards-tunnel.jpg?w=685&h=489"
alt="" width="685" height="489" /><figcaption
id="caption-attachment-40969" class="wp-caption-text">Moving forward,
through the tunnel. Illustration by Lucy Grove Jones at <a
href="https://silencekilledthedinosaurs.com/2020/03/17/forward/"><em>Silence
Killed the Dinosaurs</em></a>.</figcaption></figure>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/what-studying-disasters-has-taught-me-about-covid-19/">“What
studying disasters has taught me about COVID-19,”</a>
<em>LibrarianShipwreck</em></h3>
<p>“For the last several years, when people have asked me what I
study, I have told them that I study the end of the world.” At
<em>LibrarianShipwreck —</em> a blog on technology, critical
theory, and impending doom — the writer shares context and
framing around what we’re all learning and reading about
COVID-19.</p>
<blockquote><p>Forgive the US centric focus here, but: that millions
of Americans don't have access to paid sick leave is a slow disaster,
the racism endemic in the provision of medical care is a slow
disaster, that hospitals around the country are already stretched thin
is a slow disaster, homelessness is a slow disaster, heck the entire
US healthcare system could be called a slow disaster—when the
situation is "normal" many of these problems may not appear
particularly disastrous (alas) but when an event like a pandemic
occurs these slow disasters provide a rotten foundation atop which
things can only get worse.</p>
<p>It is fair to think about COVID-19 as a disaster, and it is
probably going to get worse before it gets better. Yet, when assessing
COVID-19 it is worth stepping back and recognizing all of the
disasters that have quietly and slowly built up over time which are
feeding directly into, and are exacerbating, this
crisis.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://longreads.com/2020/03/30/performance-art-on-sharing-culture/">“Performance
Art: On Sharing Culture,”</a> Soraya Roberts, Longreads</h3>
<p>Soraya Roberts is always on point in her culture columns at
Longreads, and her piece on social sharing and physical distancing in
a time when landmarks, cultural institutions, and communal spaces have
been abandoned is no exception.</p>
<blockquote><p>The image that struck me most was the empty piazza.
That Italian square — I believe it was in Venice — with no one in it.
Maybe a bird or two. It looked inviting but also wholly unnatural. A
city square is made for people, lots of people, people from
everywhere. If people aren't there, does it cease to be a square? I
wondered the same thing about the Louvre and its tens of thousands of
objects with no one to look at them — is it still a museum, or is it
just a warehouse?</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>Sharing online is not so much about enlightening others
as it is about spotlighting yourself. It's impossible to disconnect
the images of those now-empty spots from the continuous splash of
reports about the coronavirus pandemic gouging the global economy. In
America, the economy is the culture is the people. Americans are not
citizens; they are, as the president recently put it, "consumers." And
on the web, consuming means sharing that consumption with everyone
else. That the images suddenly being shared are empty exposes the big
con — that in reality, no one has really been sharing
anything.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://wronghands1.com/2020/03/24/pandemic-playlist/">“Pandemic
Playlist,”</a> John Atkinson, <em>Wrong Hands</em></h3>
<p>As usual, <em>Wrong Hands</em> cartoonist John Atkinson shares
lighthearted and humorous comics, which are very welcome right now.
Here’s his playlist of pandemic-inspired tunes.</p>
<figure id="attachment_40976"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40976" style="width:603px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-40976"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/pandemic-playlist.jpg?w=685"
alt="" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-40976"
class="wp-caption-text"><a
href="https://wronghands1.com/2020/03/24/pandemic-playlist/">“Pandemic
Playlist,”</a> from <em>Wrong Hands</em>.</figcaption></figure>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://notebookm.com/2020/03/30/on-writing-and-the-pandemic/">“On
Writing and the Pandemic,”</a> Lanny Morgnanesi,
<em>NotebookM</em></h3>
<p>Writer and journalist Lanny Morgnanesi muses on not being able to
write, and instead reads and reflects on the work of Joan Didion,
specifically a piece called “California Notes” in the
<em>New York Review of Books</em>.</p>
<blockquote><p>There's a famous Nora Ephron quote that reminds me of
Joan and has been repeated in this time of crisis: "Everything is
copy." I always thought it peculiar that such a quote would become so
famous, since few outside of writing know what "copy" is. The reason
must be because writers are the ones always repeating the quote.
Anyway, "copy" in this sense means "material" for writing, and now –
with the world shut down by a virus — everything is indeed copy. You
go outside for a walk and it's copy. You venture out and drive through
town and it's copy. You cook a meal or seek activities for your kids
and it's copy.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://radicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/when-the-world-wakes-up-and-we-are-all-inside/">“When
the World Wakes Up, and We Are All Inside,”</a> P.L. Thomas,
<em>Radical Eyes for Equity</em></h3>
<p>An avid cyclist, P.L. Thomas has thought of himself as an outdoor
person but not a nature person, but with social distancing guidelines
in place, he experiences an unexpected shift in how he views the
natural world.</p>
<blockquote><p>As we were cycling laps around a park in my hometown, a
friend and I talked about my new fascination with wisteria and we both
acknowledge not really knowing the names of trees and plants all
coming to bloom around the lake at the center of this park.</p>
<p>It seems a different kind of important now to see the various
plants and trees individually, and to know their names.</p>
<p>That day we were climbing Hogback I recall now that I did pause at
the top, I did look at the view, and I had to agree it was more than
worth my time to not just look, but really see the view from above the
trees and across the valley.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://sarahelaing.com/2020/03/26/the-covid-19-diaries-the-walk/">“The
Walk,”</a> Sarah Laing, <em>Let Me Be Frank</em></h3>
<p>Sarah Laing, an artist in Wellington, New Zealand, publishes
“pretty spontaneous and autobiographical” comics, often
about her everyday experiences. She’s in the midst of a <a
href="https://sarahelaing.com/tag/covid-19/">COVID-19 Diaries</a>
series; here’s a scene from <a
href="https://sarahelaing.com/2020/03/26/the-covid-19-diaries-the-walk/">“The
Walk.”</a></p>
<figure id="attachment_40981"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-40981" style="width:600px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-40981"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/covid26marchpanel9.jpg?w=685"
alt="" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-40981"
class="wp-caption-text"><a
href="https://sarahelaing.com/2020/03/26/the-covid-19-diaries-the-walk/">“The
Walk,”</a> from <em>Let Me Be Frank</em>.</figcaption></figure>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://lazymillhillfarm.com/2020/03/13/in-the-midst-of-it-all/">“In
the Midst of It All,”</a> Ben Hewitt, <em>Lazy Mill Hill
Farm</em></h3>
<p>Author Ben Hewitt runs a small-scale community farm in Vermont. His
blog at <em>Lazy Mill Hill Farm </em>offer a glimpse into the slower
pace of life on his family’s land. Posts are typically short yet
resonant, like this one.</p>
<blockquote><p>The virus spreads. The stock market plunges. The cows
nose at the newly bare ground beneath the big spruce. The cats mewl at
the door. The pumpkin has been there over a week now. It's not been
particularly cold, but cold enough that I suspect the man has burned
his wheelchair load of wood and has since gone back for more. Some
things are changing, some things are not, but in the midst of it all,
the fire must still be fed.</p></blockquote>
<hr />
<h3><a href="https://neildmurray.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/the-virus-diaries-4/">“The
Virus Diaries 4,”</a> Neil Murray</h3>
<p>Neil Murray, an artist and photographer in Florida, has begun a
series of sketches called “The Virus Diaries.” With people
sheltered-in-place at home, his fourth sketch really nails it.</p>
<blockquote><p>Dear diary,</p>
<p>The house seems much smaller than it did two weeks ago.</p></blockquote>
<figure id="attachment_41087"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-41087" style="width:623px;"
class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="size-full wp-image-41087"
src="https://discover.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/house-man.jpeg?w=685"
alt="" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-41087"
class="wp-caption-text"><a
href="https://neildmurray.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/the-virus-diaries-4/">“The
Virus Diaries 4,”</a> from <em>Neil
Murray</em>.</figcaption></figure>
<hr />
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong>Ready to start an online journal
to document your thoughts? Start a blog today.</strong></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><strong><a class="button is-primary"
href="https://wordpress.com/create/?utm_source=editorial&utm_medium=discover&utm_campaign=blogging-coronavirus&utm_term=art&utm_content=post_signoff"
rel="nofollow">Share Your Story</a></strong></p>
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