BLOGGING DURING COVID

As my sixth anniversary of writing my blog, Postcards in the Air, drew closer, the world ceased to function normally. March 16, the date of the Shelter in Place order for the Bay Area, coincided with the starting date in 2014 of my first weekly blog posting.

During SIP, I began to notice patterns in writers the world over. Each week as I sat down to write my blog, I would try to find something that related to the pandemic as well as to my main topic of art and nature. So often after I finished my post, I would find an article or essay about the same topic, for instance, walking and observing more of nature, decluttering, and the emptiness of urban places. Just like me, writers expressed themes that SIP brought to their attention during each week. I marveled how so often my thoughts matched other writers.

In March, I wrote about how being an introvert made sequestering so much easier. I wrote about staying in place because I catch colds easily. I wrote about a squirrel building a nest, oblivious to the pandemic, and how all of nature ignored our travails. I wrote about first responders and neighbors who came forward with help. I wrote about how our society has forgotten the value of the common good. Each week a different topic for me came to my fingers. Each week after I had written my post, I would find articles by other writers on the same spectrum of thought.

In April I pointed out how so many of us were tackling projects that needed to be done, such as cleaning out closets and reassessing our values. Or we had given in to the stress of the pandemic and found ourselves not able to do much at all. I used calligraphy to prompt people to think about the words, Remember, I Wish, and Together. I showed my husband's photos of our walk around the now-empty San Ramon business park, where birds and ducks were flourishing, and humans had disappeared. I wrote about Earth Day and how the skies had cleared because of the lack of vehicles on the roads all over the world.

In May I wrote about the effects of the sun, how humans need the sun and how they are willing to break rules in order to be out at the beaches. During the month, I wrote about how everything mechanical was breaking in our house. Bill used his long-lost DIY skills, but some repairs needed experienced people. We worried about having other people in our home.

I wrote about an online class in making collages and how the practice of collage layering requires me to step back from the process and evaluate what I put down on paper. I came back to the wildlife that ventures into our yard each spring. We have deer with new fawn, squirrels and birds making our yard their home.

"There is no road. The road is made by walking."
Translation of lines from Antonio Machado's poem, "Caminante no hay Camino"

And then George Floyd was murdered, and the world changed again. I asked myself if this was the time to write a blog about art and nature. I found myself delving into organizations that provide activism for change and support for issues that Floyd's death brought back to our country. I found books to read and reminders that I needed to continue to be active, to stand up for rights, and to test my own prejudices and beliefs. Every essay that I read in the newspaper or online after I wrote mine had similar thoughts and calls for action.

Bill's list of books to read plus the NYT podcast "1619"

Even five months into the pandemic, I was still not ready to return completely to my regular themes. I published an article about a small project that involves making art to express more awareness of the cost of deaths by gun violence. The Soul Box Project (SBP) collects origami boxes with the name of a person who has died from suicide, domestic violence, random or gang-related shootings, or from mass shootings. The project leaders are based in Portland and have exhibited as many as 15,000 boxes at the Multnomah Arts Center and at the Cerimon House in Portland, as well as the Oregon State Capital. In April 2021 the SBP plans to bring 200,000 boxes to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The boxes remind me of the AIDS quilt project, which illustrates the power of something that starts small and grows in significance. Again, I felt the universal pull to this idea. Just after writing my blog, I received a notice from the Commonwealth Club that the AIDS quilt is coming back to San Francisco.

















My sense of collective consciousness with other writers seems to continue each week. A couple of weeks ago, I finished my post about artists as agitators and gave the Che Guevara poster as a prime example of artistic activism. I turned off my computer and went to watch KQED, whose Canvas series that evening focused on artists across the country making art to express their reactions to both the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

I think of myself as an independent person, thinking my own thoughts and writing them down as they come. It's only during a country-wide or world-wide event that I realize how close we all are in thought, how connected we all are to each other.




I am showing this week some of the artwork that I conceived while Sheltering in Place. This time period has been beneficial for creating whether I am doing calligraphy, collaging, or watercolor. Other people find the time to be constructive too.

Check out the latest article about crafting by Elizabeth Fishel in Medium.
https://medium.com/@erfishel/stitching-through-covid-19-98edf216f63c