Seven Days Last year, the cover of
Seven Days annual Wellness Issue, published on January 15, 2020, depicted a young woman in an 802 tank top sitting in a serene, cross-legged lotus position inside a protective bubble. With her were a steaming mug of tea, a vial of CBD and other cozy-healthy accoutrements. Said bubble floated above, wait for it, a flaming dumpster. The image was not meant to be prophetic. We
actually thought the world was a dumpster fire at the time. In January. We ll wait for you to stop laughing. The subsequent months were . well, they weren t good, folks. You were there, so we ll spare you the triggering rundown of 2020 s Greatest Hits. Let s just say things devolved, and quickly.
Illustration In her 1891 poem Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson compared hope to a bird. The bird perches in the soul, she wrote, and keeps singing even in the harshest circumstances. One hundred and 30 years later, a sighting of that particular bird would be most welcome. In the first week of January, 1.15 million people filed initial claims for unemployment benefits, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. On January 13, one week after armed rioters seized the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection making Trump the first president in U.S. history to be impeached twice. That same day, more than 3,900 people in the United States died of COVID-19 and 230,476 new coronavirus infections were reported, according to the
Joshua Schupp-Star getting vaccinated Joshua Schupp-Star can give you many reasons why he volunteered to join the clinical trial of an experimental COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Vermont s Vaccine Testing Center. All can be summarized in one word: hope. After receiving my first dose, I got a taste of the freedom that existed before the pandemic, said Schupp-Star, who is among the 284 volunteers in Vermont to receive an as-yet-unapproved vaccine made by British-Swedish drug manufacturer AstraZeneca. It s such a liberating feeling to walk around in the community knowing that my body had some protection against the virus that has caused so much suffering in the world.
dug Nap. Tall and rangy, with short, salt-and-pepper hair and serious large-framed glasses, he would loom over his display table looking formidable until he broke into a rather sweet smile. Nap s work, too, is instantly recognizable: colorful, in a semi-outsider-artist style, and usually featuring wry text. In fact, some of his most popular prints and cards are gaily hand-drawn quips such as Down with toilet seats, Caution: I have needs and Chard is the new kale. An au courant one: You d look better in a mask! The Burlington artist has entered 2021 with a new graphic novella titled
Friends & the Distance Between. If that sounds perfectly pandemic-inspired, Nap says that he actually began the project before COVID-19 drove us apart. But the book certainly has an unexpected layer of resonance befitting the times.