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I’ve been thinking ahead to looking back on the pandemic. It’s a bit early perhaps but I find the diversion helpful; a little mental trick to get through another Groundhog Day. One of these days, after we win the race against the variants (GO VACCINES GO!) we’ll lean in to hear our friends talk in noisy restaurants, sway with the crowd on Prince’s Island at the Folk Fest and see peoples’ entire faces in the grocery store. What a day that will be.
We are all longing for the pandemic to be in the rearview mirror. While we want to forget it, museums around the world are busy collecting items that will serve as reminders. For example, Germany’s Cologne City Museum snagged a couple of masks worn by city councillors at the last in-person council meeting before Zoom took over. More recently, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. got dibs on the vial that had the first vaccine administered in the U.S. (an intensive care nurse in New York received that historic jab on Dec. 14, 2020).