Quarantine Stories

for months in nineteen ten to make how you doing and today on kbr prisons quarantine stories yourself recorded stories poems and essays on how you're handling this time of social distancing working from home in coping with all around uncertainty in partnership with the white art center the watkins museum of history the state historical society and the board's public library we put out the call to katie our listeners to share your thoughts on how covered nineteen is shaping your life nowadays these are your quarantine stories hi my name is robbie ward and maurice we marched ahead to we marched together into a row with hope that may save us in june no time to write a sonnet by trish miller i sit at my bring you know a fancy new sewing machine stitching a

street scene yards and yards of green's stretch out before me a hundred percent cotton path it's not a wedding gown i so nora bibi's christening down nor a quilt with complicated stitching to de ice so not for fun but because i thought nine by six inch rectangles quarter inch elastic to make the recommended face masks can make a difference on never know candidates don't answer in this time of despair every mask is a prayer it would be false bravado far tried to minimize the sheer panic of corona virus and no fear of job losses and retired but on the other hand that means i'm more vulnerable wire virtue of age alone sell himself isolating practicing fourteen stay safer at home what everyone to college how my coping with my isolation and fear beyond binge watching

youtube videos listen to typecast and spending too much of my time on facebook well i devised to daily rituals to help me through and making them part of my routine has a calming effect my first practice gets me up every day the second gives me a reason to get dressed first thing every morning i find a spiritual songs on youtube to share i'm particularly partial to quarrel and poems but paulson walk to bluegrass ensembles large and small solace and every kind of thing instrumentation imaginable piece of the spend at least five hundred years and i get dressed in my t shirt of the day on a graphic user not my usual attire have a ton of them dating back as far as the seventies after two months in quarantine i will finally run out this week and then i'll have to start wearing them over again i'm lonely i'm scared i can't concentrate on meaningful work i haven't finished my

taxes i can easily put off cleaning out closets but i've got my newfound rituals to hang onto i've never missed posing a song and every morning i greet the day in a clean fresh t shirt and so she has to go without crist lugar kansas hi this is mike mattison of manhattan some people call this a poll that may be a stretch but they get real poets and poetry a bad name i prefer to call the pandemic related stream of consciousness maybe a circular regardless of the label here it is social distancing goes against nature the virus came from nature nature abhors a vacuum i need a vacuum the carpet carpet weaving is a lost art we need art and science scientists encourage social distancing hi my name is mary forth and i live in lawrence

early on in staying at home i was feeling so many different things i was lucky enough to not have to be worrying about my job or my money or where my next meal would come from and i felt an intense need to be very busy and to be busy if i couldn't be busy addressing the crisis in some way i needed to be busy do your everyday my house that needed to be taken care of but at the same time i also felt a need to stop and to breathe and to look around and say look at this moment and look at this world and look at my yard and look at what's happening outside and inside and with my friends so as i was thinking about that i did what i normally do and i tried to write about it and out came a poem in this poem is called on productivity during a global pandemic i when i make a great aunt

seated in sun as i am i am as i am a good soft or how yes the deep and conde still as if they meet in as of next is no different than now know now i mean now a meandering to the pasture not only not next or later barbara for that not at all no need for need to needed then okay move move now maybe under that tree are always to the barn or into the middle of mates then now as if you're going to treat the barn how long till it's over over like next flight beginning and new as new as now is ideal reading breath with everybody the impression of everybody had sent rain on our backs lightning of the tree

and now is thanks so much for this opportunity so you know yeah if it had occurred the day i want to be with people and the last to leave a gathering of hockey anymore before the isolation and the virus i would often go alone to restaurants five or six times a week just for the chattering manic know i have a roommate down lover's never hall once the work of homes in meetings are over and i called anyone who will talk with me one more time silent red like flood waters the current leader we evaluate the risk then i read of another struggling with the high winds on saturday afternoon corey where

are you at or if you're michael and i needed a howl literally having started dieting just before coverage cases from the street i was already contemplating it walking to marry to blocking hallways were in desperation i wore where are you over the last year but something happened i turned east instead i started walking like for a revival of the downtown and mastery over two miles away carrie how are or where on the high end

your novel is the nation's year without buying a car grass between greg patent a patch of radio to have a man on the porch of the blue hearts i read the looming against world quality guy glad to have you i made it to ohio three were my friend john was working or our leading social distance requirement i yelled for the tension over by big star and we had a conversation and my world seemed to write it felt i was ready to head home i walk or mild these walks have become miko patient forty five times a week i wander somewhere maybe worst a lot about the north did your field school where the

signs students when they see you when i need others i take history and we always weigh but one another to remind us of the measure get into the virus not to avoid innovation sometimes i walk downtown hard drive or i text my friend and the way that new permits went no sunday the taliban's press line to believe for then west on bob dylan's parkway where you slip away more recently have discovered the trail of rock chuck park where come upon dear willing to pose for my camera and abundant the purple and yellow wildflowers and i'm pretty sure it's creepy built of scoring a backwards and this morning's journey i made my way downtown with unusual saturday hamas down the library sat silent have bypassed by no lines at the race for

brunch no one sitting outside the ritual mourning the most is in hand store signs limiting customers to five at a time and of all things a lot of open parking spaces i headed back economy i thought i saw the new gleaming copper and crimson fire station number one first wondering how many times i have driven by its renovation with us my watch during a lockdown slowed my travel that opened my eyes and ears i don't know what will happen to these walks to work from home is replaced my usual forty five minute commute one way of art and i don't care because these water about the crab about really might help in the moment about replacing restlessness of wonder don't worry what you dr jodi johnson lives in lawrence today and k pr presents

quarantine stories yourself recorded essays poems and stories about how you're coping with a coveted nineteen pandemic so a far we've heard from robin more interest miller chris leiber mike mattison very warts and jody johnson i'm kate mcintyre coming up care and mariam goldberg an antenna time but first a quick thought from kelly part of lawrence still good anti depressant under the microwave after it exploded things are looking out for pandemic time one the dog goes out to cat comes in the daffodils so early in the day later sleep clinging to their of supplies truffles the ceiling fan spends red birds vivid as fire agreement undergrowth dissolves the pre bernal into anticipation and rain i set up in mice a bad an able to remember what i dreamt or while my girlhood

chest trembles in that sixty year old skin tomorrow my skin and i will walk and low to wear lily of the valley finally matches time which is not time as i knew or embellished but it sounds like of red winged blackbirds flashing fire over the wetlands where i ride again every few days weary of my own minds compost file to wander at least six feet away from children not going to school parents not going to work and dogs not going to sleep on the couch all of us are casting our wishes on the power of water and flight to all over the world it's a pandemic time singing that the speed of urgency down one corridor or in a hot on the edge of the village simon's to the weight of those who cannot gather around the grave

that cannot yet be done in the place we never expected for him for her for them three of the female carter no david orange all alarmed strikes are a parade of notes all dressed alike are looking for their map somewhere in the field a flame the size of a finger tap or the when candles still burning on shabaab service than oh so shallow mm oh says shalom shah hello monday new yorker yes jack in season singing well we three sing with them when square added eighteen and sam striking the match of our song somewhere in the forest for its two thirteen am somewhere where the facts here or is that

who cooks for you cause the barred owl who cooks for you now know when i speak a loud no one at all answers the dark blue sheen and smudge starlight landing after thousands of years here karen miriam goldberg of lawrence was the poet laureate of kansas from two thousand nine to two thousand thirteen i'm kate mcintyre today on k pr presents quarantine stories yourself recorded thoughts on living through thick of it nineteen pandemic nixon lives in lawrence and teaches for you when casey covers another following essay was recently published in the topeka capital journal like in that kansas city is also moving forward as we move into july with rising temperatures in the beginning of the summer people are increasingly restless on the past few months a stay home orders and social distancing news reports show individuals and groups becoming increasingly

frustrated and confrontation with various government officials and the restrictions on society all this is understandable because we as humans are as aristotle argued social by nature are also often iconoclast again resistant to authority no ice being told what to do as an educator this past spring semester challenged me for numerous reasons though the majority because as i taught were fully online to begin with like many educators i too had to move some of my classes online and yet despite these unforeseen circumstances i found a pandemic to be a subject too important an impactful to not have to address and my courses in one of my college composition courses i had students read and discuss essays by susan sontag such as oh this is a metaphor and diseases political metaphor to explore the power of language and how it can help us understand our world for example how the word viral gaining it had prior

to the nineteen i for one cannot think of this time in the same way now nor will it likely ever think of it in the way i previously hat language has power and words shaped the world we live in i teach advanced placement classes in comparison us government one of the central features of the comparative government class selected various ways in which the country studied governor people among the six countries that service the focus of the course china iran and united kingdom have all been substantially affected by the pandemic each of these countries have different forms of government running the spectrum from offshore terry in to democratic governments as you listen to navigate the avalanche of information regarding a pandemic how countries across the world have handled the situation has been central to the world's response to this crisis among them attention responses to

the various local state and federal regulations regarding a pandemic has been how these public health measures have impacted the fundamental civil and constitutional rights americans possess and teachers i have spent more than a few class sessions considering how to balance these often competing claims while freedom of religion freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are in the first amendment of the united states constitution there is not a similar constitutional mandate for public health crises nevertheless one of the most famous phrases associated with united states history and the american revolution is life liberty and the pursuit of happiness while liberty and the pursuit of happiness our cherished freedoms class discussions noted that neither of these liberties would be possible without the first life finally brought this semester are repeatedly told my ap psychology students after the past few months we've been living in the world's largest psychology experiments i signed work allowing him to explore how each of

us as individuals and as a society process the changes to our world in every class michael is the hole less insular not only the coarse material but to apply this material to their daily lives now more than ever education remains central to our lives as we as a society gradually open and are tenuous efforts to move forward next someplace and lawrence and teaches for you when casey a version of his essay was recently published in the topeka capital journal again at kansas today on k pr presents quarantine stories yourself recorded essays poems and thoughts on living through the covered nineteen pandemic i'm kate mcintyre the idea behind today's program came from our next contributor phil wilkie is the general manager of north state public radio in chico california a former colleague at kansas public radio and a good friend of mine when

they come in eighteen pandemic began sweeping the country back in march phil started writing a series of pandemic related hike to which he continues to post daily and facebook many of us take you were set to music by producer test england and featured on katie are present on april nineteen and now with an update here still working first to die now teenagers no one on staff wearing masks and it's disappointing puzzles the team filled pasta making hobbies nope work he'd work sleep for it driveway moments moments those years more insights

what fewer quandary break quarantine a worker jo nearing pompadour no need for a wristwatch they sometimes rarely manure throw out calendar brisk walks daily with bill weld lead is the general manager of north state public

radio in chico california formerly with kansas public radio's development department as special thanks to phill and to producer test they going for the inspiration for today's keep your prisons i'm kay mcintyre coming to you from my home studio relieve my guest room closet the sound pretty materials to improve the closet acoustics an old quilt several beach towels lots of pillows my notes for today's program or proper my daughter's old music stand most of us that kansas public radio or working from home now we're making it work one way or another how are you making it work we posed that question to kbr listeners the results today as quarantine stories yourself recorded essays poems and thoughts on coping with the covered nineteen pandemic our next quarantine story is stopgap pending performance from mike mattison his essay originally appeared in the manhattan mercury where he writes a regular sunday column there is a pretty sizeable collection a

ball caps high atop a shelf in my bedroom closet about the royals and k state caps an abramoff sort of others picked up over the years the same one of them perched atop my head since the pandemic reared its ugly counterpart in mid march it's a black cap with the words hotel california in the same electric blue descriptive script used on the nineteen seventy seven album of the same day forty three years of visual graphic consistency picked up an eagles concert last fall in vegas and selected it as my quarantine live for what by now is an obvious reason you can check out anytime you like but you can never leave maybe it's just me but lately i was a weekly the distinct impression that logic and common sense of checked out and consistency as we used to know what his left never to return two college town related events shark trend line back up and let me to this was like and ill and tasted football public videos from an evil bars aggregated posted on

social media showed young people lots of them doing what comes naturally party it also turns out the football players were not wearing masks or social distancing while getting together with friends after practice to enjoy chocolate milkshakes every field and spray it in forty three years but i remember being that age i was bulletproof and would've audibly scoffed at pandemic healthy agent the notion that i could spread it to others may have entered my mind but it would have been easily dismissed by worldly pleasures am i missing something wasn't this predictable do we have enough information to know if we relaxed restrictions exactly this would happen when i is that question rhetorically to friends and relatives i get back variations of a shrug or the beginnings of a reasonable thought possible explanation the response that seems to make the most sense is this one paraphrase we

cannot stay holed up in our homes forever fast on its heels comes a justification for my business or academics or sports or governments in certain way of life here perspective we have to get back to the way it was a kicker on that first point although i still pitched the once in a lifetime reinvention opportunity for big systems the federal bailouts approved during the early panic mode will not live forever how long is the political will exist to print money and shovel it back to the states when to stop gap become permanent by hairstylist went back into quarantine mode after the latest spike here in raleigh county by less haircut was in february and i trust the losses surrounding my ever emerging forehead to no one us one more reason to dawn the hotel california caf stopgap pending permanence or other college towns seen similar spikes in their it tells a cursory google search reveals why

yes it is an athletic department brass speculates other deal when football programs may also be experiencing spikes that were apparently more transparent than them so we show up in the national news as a hotspot carry these thoughts through to their logical conclusions assuming they are true it means hundreds of college students and football players were sick they got that way doing what comes naturally and what i like to believe is an enlightened community are we okay with that where from here one argument is let's get it right the first time course the barn door another argument is let's learn from our mistakes that strikes me is akin to the thinking that if we do not test as much the numbers won't be as high if i don't take my temperature never know i have a favor and tell us something none of which adds to my peace of mind for wildcat football before

no firm plans yet and what it'll look like a dove snyder family stadium for a very good reason they simply don't know too many variables not a factual data i was state wants to limit seating to have its stadium capacity if we do something similar instead of hollering big twelve wraps sock and spewing airborne nastiness from six inches away the next closest and will do it from eighteen inches away takes all still such a lovely place mike mattison writes a regular sunday column for them and had mercury rosalynn carter lawrence kansas pandemic emotions in week four loss and again a chasm has opened up right in front of me so

much has fallen away into the abyss the future pages on the calendar for mostly blank the future on planet bowl where something is written it's now just squiggles of crossed out events for one of my daughters may college graduation ceremony a splendid tradition imbued weekend of events with quaint names like iv day and illumination won't happen in spite of years of anticipation when i heard made his last college semester was going remote i saw this particular losses one that i would simply they're just too there is no alternative when limes beyond this one ceremony as the fog the chasm of loss loss of a sense of control that sense of control is after all just an illusion loss of options loss of any dependable insight into what is coming next i feel weakness in my own narrow when

i read over what i just wrote we've all experienced loss together living in this pandemic world our specific losses are individual but we share the same sense of heartache that's a new thing feeling like everyone has always the baseline idea of what everyone else is going through within my household of five mostly related people we aim to connect to eat meals together and have a nightly chat to assess one day and talk about the next i feel more in tune with my neighborhood like telling the world now that we're all consumed with one thing it may be that i'm simply more comfortable now to face to face interactions are so constrained whatever the cause i feel warm glow of camaraderie in being safe in my own house surrounded near and far by family friends acquaintances and strangers are connected by the same fear of disease and dash and the same resolution to

avoid them why this is my world by martin there was the art the creepiness of reality would make the world of terrible george bernard shaw this is my world right now roughly seven hundred square feet and total is bordered by restricting white walls and about my days and nights in this area roughly one third the size of a tennis court undoubtedly much the same as everyone else where i can room to roam made up for with much deeper sensory awareness of everything with it from a careless catches a neighbor the hardwood floor to defend martin and the neighbor's dog or even the occasional overwhelming growl of a truck down shifting on the highway i survive do my best to try to do for human and living

creature however i can say without a doubt that i cannot and will not exist without a constant reminder of what it means to be a complete be this gentleman could not endorsed either more than six feet a number we know all too well these days in any direction without encountering of being overwhelmed by spectacular works of human hands and spirits there may never be harder days for those who create these artists however i can say without a moment's hesitation that there will never be a time in which it is more imperative for artists to do exactly what they do and for the rest of us to graciously consume the output of their endeavors especially with our pocketbooks as a pound what's referred to artists as the antenna eye of the race this so it really illustrates that not only are they are out in front leading us but that they will be the first to encounter the end just pain and damage to the world often delivers

we who desire to occupy like foley and taste it develops a viciousness will overcome this curse that affection and the annihilation of our lives and livelihoods that has caused but make no mistake it will be upon the shoulders of our artists and their works to hold us and keep us until that beautiful day arrives this is my world by robin fair comes to us from the lawrence arts centers dear lawrence project and was read by say be barbie today and keep your prisons quarantine stories yourself recorded thoughts and coping with the covert nineteen pandemic again chris number of topeka you i was just three and a half when i contracted encephalitis as a complication of child with measles when it became apparent that this was more than the run of the mill measles case my parents following the doctor's advice

city to an isolation hospital i don't remember much except that my favorite stuffed toys now contaminated were not allowed to go home with me after my two weeks in quarantine five hundred americans died of measles and satellite us and countless more were permanently disabled each year before rhett see it was available i was not one of them fifty years later i was isolated again when i underwent a stem cell transplant this time though i was not being quarantined to keep me from infecting others i was kept from others so that they would not infect me chemotherapy kill the cancer cells but also compromise my immune system i was sent to omaha for treatment and my state coincided with the christmas blizzard of two thousand nine even an advanced medical complex there's only a skeleton crew over the biggest holiday of the year and

since some personnel were unable to get to work in the snowstorm the people i interacted with during nine months of isolation were few and far between over half a million americans died from cancer in two thousand nine i was not one of them when i can trade encephalitis as a three year old my parents followed doctor's advice and quarantined me so i would not infect others when it came from the baltic countries because of the chemotherapy compromised immune system baucus isolated me from others so they wouldn't infect me in the face of corona virus doctors advise us to stay home to protect ourselves and to protect others from covert nineteen this pandemic is unprecedented but it's not my first experience with isolation or quarantine over a million americans have contracted corona virus so far i'm not one of them are

in prison for topeka kansas the s l train home on a house because own start i remember i was a child a lot of joy and less time to play and i remember the darker side of fear anxiety and age of being locked in a cage because the world stopped i feel the pangs of yesteryear is the echoing their brain the tearing my chest and throat like a slow drip a constant has seen and was stopped breathing and deeper and more so attention of witnessing because the world started to step off the crazy

want to hold space where it isn't always clear but sometimes it is so bright because a world sought they can never go back to it was so because the world start i think the sky and the stars in a sacred waters i think the stanley mountains in our own creatures seen an unseen and i think the life giving sun unlike spending hard i think the positive or her infinite intelligence or compassion and hundreds more so because the world stopped i miss you and i love you that's a lot of hats earth day sheltering cia

today on cape pierre presents quarantine stories yourself recorded thoughts on coping with the covert nineteen pandemic our final quarantine story comes to us from jody johnson of lawrence and i've learned from the covert lockdown how badly we as humans want to ride around story alive is the narrative that we liked the principal storyteller and then along and the virus and they cannot reasonably we cannot voted out of office and they were crossing the protests began last year we're interrupting our story telling me my we're going away on the interior for our so called second wave of the virus in the fall you really now unnecessary duty school closures working from home and counting how our borders and routines are real

nurses and doctors quarantined family people sharing dying words of loved ones over a cellphone and isolation and facilities and first my friends and family talk about getting back to normal but those conversations have morphed into questions of what normal is than what it should be or all wear their storyline has shifted in normal may be hard to describe for a while at the least the corona viruses reorder the syntax of our days and causes the pain differently about even the monday as a regular commuter to kansas city is septic tank often about filling up with test lane closures and take any pre prequel oil changes and what you are deer on the way home but i haven't been to my office and almost three months and those phrases have dropped out of my discourse now i hear about clear skies

and animals returning to hum polluted habitat just stay home and in the quiet of the quarantined i cannot help a deliberate how my personal routines interest is protecting the world and the life of our planet what was routine an ordinary now because the storyteller caught in the maybe the greatest good to emerge from this crisis is slowing pays to have to re order our day to be reminded that our narrative can shift to any time i don't know about you but i have reworked all kinds of places social media in my life how much fresh produce items legally how often i call my aging mother the definitions of living room and all my interactions with the people is to provide that work and even how much every hour whitaker on irish reading one is normal with no difference to the story i want to ride i'm acutely aware that the narrative i crashed depends on so much outside myself

and that is not easy to swallow i want to take a corona virus to task for up and in my world for nothing about this to be my fault or i suppose at the virus it would be coupled with my anger and tell me this is just what viruses do when i'm the one who wrote a story with an inflexible cloth and only one ending that i was too absorbed in writing my own definition of normal to notice what was happening and there is much happening while we struggle with writing a new normal in the ag he lives seems to be unraveling you feed the pesky viruses not care that have highlighted social and troubling issues in our healthcare and labor's it's no consideration that we have an election to hold an open bar and a country deeply divided about our children may be falling behind in school but we're

all really it's quite obvious we have a lot of work to do going forward as we define normal there will be no vaccine for societal hell i increasingly here people use the term pre coded referring to the way things used to be if any knowledge in a pandemic has drawn a start line in our history that will have a huge tent may war in her book stop being reasonable how we really change your mind eleanor gordon smith looks at how people change course and light concerning one of her subjects and made a major share she writes the moment when he let go of his team have been characterized in evidence or new internal story so much as simply not going all many are searching for evidence of the way for it and hoping it will point to three a day but we have to quit telling that story and whether new normal and fall we can

make everything ever was fortunately we have a question to answer the most consequential wondering how we will take care one another as humans covert or not and there's a story to be told says you've been listening to quarantine stories and kansas public radio many thanks to everyone who submitted a quarantine story for today's keep your prisons we've heard from jodi johnson won a house chris luber robin fay year rosa lee carter mike mattison phil willkie nixon karen miriam goldberg very worst actress miller and robin lord a special thanks to say the barbie and stephanie proposal for their help with today's program thanks also to our partners the lawrence arts center the lord's public library the watkins museum of history and the kansas state historical society i'm j mak entire k pr prisons is a production of kansas

public radio at the university of kansas for the rest of this hour more stories of kansans in the cove it nineteen pandemic it's a brand new season of my fellow kansans from the kansas news service that's escape your present continues right after this