A Vaccine or My Family: Children of anti-vaxers caught in the Middle
When she went to get her first dose of the vaccine, Anya, 27, told her parents she was going to get her Friday fix of samosas and rasmalai from Bharat Bazaar, the local Indian store. Her parents (family friends of mine) whom she was staying with, in Yuba City—while working remotely —believe that Covid 19 vaccines are “manufactured by the deep state” and that “when 5G gets turned on, it will kill everyone.”
“When they found out I was even thinking about getting it, they cried and legitimately thought I’d be dead in three years,” said Anya. So Anya decided to get the shot in secret. “I almost got caught,” she recalls. Getting the shot took quite some time and adding on the time to get groceries made my trip “seem extremely long.”
The American Mall : Dead as the Dinosaur
In March of this year, Neelu Joseph received a flurry of text messages from her mother, who was at the going-out-of-business sale at their local Macy’s. She was floored—not by the deals but because her childhood mall, Metrocenter Mall in Glendale, Arizona, was losing another big box store. Sears exited a couple of years ago, and the mall had steadily lost tenants like the Gap, H & M, and Abercrombie and Fitch. Her teenage self would barely recognize the place today.
What is causing air-rage in the U.S. and beyond?
“I am 40. My first flight was when I was 18 years old. Everyone was well-mannered and an old lady sitting next to me gave me a piece of gum. Fast forward to my last flight in 2021. Trashy people dressed like slobs acting entitled, choosing to punch a flight attendant.”
Joe Munroe, a lanky, brown-haired man with bushy eyebrows and a receding chin is talking about an altercation between a passenger on a Southwest flight from Sacramento to San Diego who got violent and knocked out two of the attendant’s front teeth.
Surviving and flourishing during the Pandemic
Sixty-three-year-old Julia walked to the edge of the campsite and yanked on the rope that held her food in a tarp off the ground. Outside her trailer, she placed folding chairs, a small camp table, and a Coleman stove, with an old-fashioned coffee pot heating on it. She measured the coffee, turned it on, and thought of what she would make for breakfast—maybe, an omelet with the sourdough bread she’d picked up from The Food Emporium at the nearby riverside market town.
COVID-Complicated Graduations: In-person or Virtual?
Her first reaction after receiving the email from the University announcing that commencement would be conducted online was to cry. Across Southern California, larger colleges were announcing plans for in-person graduations—so why not hers?
Then, twenty-two-year-old Anya dried her tears and turned to Instagram, asking: If Vanguard University hosted an in-person graduation, would they attend?
When eighty percent of the respondents said ‘Yes,’ she and two classmates created a GoFundMe account and started selling tickets.
One Year Later: How Two working Moms Are Doing
Priya Sethi walked outside the kitchen’s back door so that the strong salty sea smell blew onto the balcony. The air had a sharp tang that battled for supremacy over the scents of tandoori salmon and smoke (yesterday’s dinner) that blew out from the kitchen.
She couldn’t see the ocean—a row of bungalows identical to her own, some with redwood planter boxes blooming with trumpet-shaped pink petunias blocked her view. She could hear the water though . . . the steady dull thunder of the surf reminding her that it was close, at the edge of Manhattan Beach in Southern California where they’d relocated to.
How Young People Are Preparing to Party in 2021
After Noori Merchant, 23, got her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, she reached out to he friends to make travel plans for this summer.
“I’m going crazy. Like, I’m going absolutely nuts,” she says. “I don’t want to get to the point in my life where I’m tied down from family, from work, from whatever, and I didn’t make the most of my youth. So I was the one who was like ‘we need to hang out, we need to hang out.”
Her friends told her they needed to get their shots before they could hang out again. So she’s waiting on that. In the meantime, she’s preparing by practicing her dance moves in a skin-flaunting sequinned top with a silver tulle skirt she hasn’t worn in forever in her Washington D.C. home.
I Want the Pandemic to End /I Don\’t Want the Pandemic to End: Two Perspectives
When Anika Chandok’s Bakersfield middle school shut down last spring and her classes went online, it felt like the beginning of an adventure. “I was in my pajamas, sitting in my comfy chair, “ the thirteen-year-old recalls. “I was texting my friends during class.”
“Then I received my academic progress report. I was an A and B student before the pandemic and now I was failing three classes.” Anika gathers her wits and shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
“The academic slide left my mother in tears. My mom insisted I create to-do lists and moved my workspace into the guest bedroom to pull up my grades.” Pausing to take a sip from her water bottle Anika looks at her therapist Laura Mitchell Moore who gives her an encouraging nod.
The Trauma of Returning to the Work Place
Anil chews on the stub of the pen with which he was writing as he reviews the email from his boss: Since all employees at the healthcare start-up, he worked for had been vaccinated, the corporate bigwigs had decided that a return to the office could safely be ordered.
Re-entry date: May 1
Feeling a rising tide of panic rush upward through his spinal cord and into his brain, Anil can’t stop the thoughts going around and around in his brain like the bullocks they used in his father’s village to turn the water wheel. “I won’t be able to spend time with baby Arya anymore. How will my wife manage without my help?”
2020\’s over; Here\’s how to survive 2021!
2020 was a challenging year that many would want to bury so deep in their memories that they could forget it. Little wonder that on New Year’s eve people were celebrating the coming of 2021 as a return to ‘normal’ life.
And yet, the start of 2021 has shown us that monsters still lurk beneath the bed and that when the clock struck midnight on 31, the problems of 2020 did not just fade away.
Cheryl Fulton, an associate professor in the professional counseling program at Texas State University, noted that holding out for a better future “not only robs you of living fully now but may also rob your future present when it doesn’t live up to its promise.”