New Year’s Day 2021

Now that 2020 is officially a matter for historians, it’s worth reflecting that we’ve seen two general reactions to the year’s passing. The first is “good riddance”, and the second is the sober realization that 2020 is gone, but everything else that made it a difficult year—COVID included—is still with us.

Thursday Review: “History in a Crisis — Lessons for Covid-19”

There’s an everyday meaning and a technical meaning to the word “crisis”. There’s the usual meaning of a difficult or intense moment. On the other hand, the “crisis” in a story is when a climax becomes unavoidable. In other words, if a story reaches a crisis, there’s no walking away: when the story is over, […]

Thursday Review: “Better Prepare Than React: Reordering Public Health Priorities 100 Years After the Spanish Flu Epidemic”

This article is (you’ll pardon the reference) The Sixth Sense of pandemic scholarship. Michael Greenberger writes a series of painfully accurate observations in the 2018 American Journal of Public Health. The statistics, facts, and warnings in the first half of the piece read like a checklist of things that have gone wrong to lead up […]

Story-in-Place, April 11, 2020

Story-in-Place is a workshop to give healthcare providers a forum tell their stories during the COVID-19 crisis. The session will be online on April 11, 2020 at 2pm Pacific. Registration is free. We’re living through a crisis and a profound shared experience. Healthcare providers and related fields are on the front lines. One of the […]