The Pandemic Lens^®

Deadlines don’t care about pandemics, but it’s very challenging to craft a novel when the dumpster fire that is 2020 is more consuming than any work of fiction could ever be. This year is full of tangled storylines, confusing subplots, and conflicts that never get resolved. As @mia_sade’s viral post pointed out, “So many plot…

Look around.  The signs are everywhere—lives lost and transformed in the year of the pandemic. One doesn’t need to be a psychologist to see the widespread effects of COVID-19 on our collective psyche. Losses are everywhere; grief is thick.    As mental health professionals, however, we have a unique perspective on how the pandemic impacts people.…

I learned at an early age how to be alone. I had no choice; I was an only child. I grew up on a farm in southeastern Illinois, so I spent countless hours entertaining myself. On occasion, children from a nearby farm would come to visit, but for the most part I was left to…

We must use the lessons of history to save us. We must use them in practical terms and in artistic terms. Although it seems now that much of the leadership of our country is taking a hard line about “opening” schools and businesses, against scientific evidence of the dangers of too precipitate a return to…

For those of us who like to plan ahead, the corona-world has been a brute. Since last February, when this super-flu mushroomed into a pandemic, the future has been hazy. Sooner or later, it will come clear, but what will our lives look like then? They may be like they were before, or not.  We…

Just you wait, said my friends. Wait until your older kids have kids. You will adore being a grandmother! It’s one of the best times of your life. Well, it isn’t, it’s not even close. But the reason why has nothing to do with the hardy, round-eyed and utterly engaging little guy born to my…

Inevitably, the topic for me and my students in the Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing turned to the effect of life on art – most particularly, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the American social justice uprising on the creation of art. Our own virtual classroom, where we communicated as little faces…

“Where there are humans, you’ll find flies. And Buddhas,” wrote the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa. The pandemic seems to have sharpened the divide. Here are photographs of men sporting swastikas and toting long guns and Confederate flags, protesting government safety measures in Michigan’s state capitol. But here is the 28-year-old paramedic in Westchester, New York,…