Six months ago, I found myself reflecting on my first half-year of pandemic living. A spring and summer of near-total isolation, non-stop chaos, and unfathomable suffering had sapped any semblance of optimism that March 17, 2020 Matthew held onto, leaving in its wake a despondent September 17, 2020 Matthew. I was scared another six months […]
isolation
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health, News
Youth suicides on the Eastern Plains spark political protest, “7 is too many” social media campaign
The latest deaths dropped on the tight-knit communities of the Eastern Plains like a heavy fog. Last month it was a senior at tiny Merino High, a girl who signed up for school plays and organized blood drives but was happiest in the rodeo arena. Then, just a few weeks later, in December, students in […]
Posted inColoradans, COVID, Health
On Edge: First, COVID took this Colorado man’s friends, then it took his health
Eddie Kemm found the pool table early in the pandemic. It was the second one he had scouted after the governor’s order shut down the bars — including Kemm’s favorite pool hall — in late March. When the halls went dark, so, too, did a significant part of the social life of an 81-year-old man […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
If your work or personal life has shifted to videoconferencing, maybe you’ve felt this, too
Zoom When I am listening looking at these faces I feel how we are all together. It is when I speak that the space shouts out where I am off-kilter vertiginous alone. MORE: See all of our Write […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Here’s what I’ve realized about remote learning: It’s not remotely the same as the classroom
I stopped teaching after five years – in 1981—thinking there might be something else I could do. I asked a veteran teacher at that time, who seemed happy in his job, why he kept at it. He answered: “In what other job can you have two good laughs a day?” Wise words. And perhaps one […]
Posted inCartoons, Opinion
Drew Litton: Parenting amid the coronavirus lockdown
More cartoons from The Colorado Sun.
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
Of whoopie pies and wilderness, and how isolation robbed me of my ability to focus
Here’s the thing about whoopie pies: They aren’t that good. Never were. The official Maine State Treat is a century-old tradition with a similar shelf life. Made mostly of sugar, flour, lard, and cocoa, they live somewhere between a cookie and a cake and are decidedly not pies. They are ubiquitous at the check-out counters […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
As one who teaches prisoners writing and literature, I offer this to all of us living in isolation
In this Poem You Have a Door to prisoners, refugees, immigrants, aged infirm, children at their screens, quarantined, us What I need to write nowis a different sortof poem, one thatdings like a text or betterrings like a phonecall and when youanswer it isyour best friend, brother,child, something, someone likethat and everything is perfectlyfine, they […]
Posted inOpinion, Write On, Colorado
When we met amid social distancing, it felt like starting our friendship from scratch
On March 25, I met a friend for a picnic near my home. For about eight months, he and I had gradually become accustomed to spending more and more time together. Before social distance began, we routinely spent 10-12 hours a week together, sharing meals, errands, conversations, and artistic projects, with the occasional evening date […]