Pandemic-Part 3. Look for the gift
After about 2 weeks of being holed up at home, a lot of folks began to wonder if they were alone, really alone. I thought about George Stewart’s classic Sci-Fi Apocalypse tale, Earth Abides, written in 1961. The hero is a biologist doing research in the High Sierra Nevada (Ironically near my home). He gets a case of the “flu,” and thinks he’s going to die. Somehow he survives, and decides that he should get back to civilization. But as he comes down the mountain, he begins to sense that there is no civilization! No one is anywhere.
At the end of those first COVID weeks, I started to wonder if we were immersed in a similar scenario. I started thinking about all of the families with kids that were feeling disconnected. No school, no library story times, no playdates. The one thing I could do was to give the gift of storytelling…REMOTELY? So, I put on my Story Lady Super Powers Cape, and jumped off the cliff. Hopefully I’d be able to fly!
No prior experience with Zoom. No comfort with video-recordings. And then I discovered Facebook Live, and I made the leap! With help from the Mother Lode Storytelling Guild, I started weekly Story Time programs for different ages: Toddlers & Preschoolers; School-Age Kids, and Teens & Adults. We put out the word, and during that first week of Story Times, we saw an audience of nearly 200.
Shortly after a friend sent me a link to a grant from Cal-Humanities. They were requesting proposals from people whose work was impacted by the COVID-19 closures. Well, I had all my live programs had been cancelled, so I took a stab at writing the grant. And Voilà! I got one! I went to work with diligence. Soon attendance numbers grew as people shared the programs on their own Facebook pages. By two weeks out we had reached over 1500 households. I was humbled.
Telling stories and doing finger plays for toddlers & preschoolers
By the end of Summer 2020, the Mother Lode Storytelling Guild had produced 77 Shelter-In Story Times. Pretty good for a bunch of almost-Luddites! And of course, I am so grateful to Cal-Humanities for helping to keep me afloat during this time.
I hope that you can still catch them on Facebook at BZ Smith with the Buzz on Storytelling & the Arts.
But now what? COVID-19 has not “magically disappeared” with a “POOF!” as some predicted. Like my hero from Earth Abides, we’re building a new way of living and doing. My mom taught me to always look for the gift in times of adversity. At times in my life her words have been a mantra. I hear her voice each day. Hopefully we’ll get this virus, and the next one, and the one after that under control. Along the way, we are meeting ourselves in the mirror, and discovering so much about who we are….I know that I am making those discoveries.
Like Mom said, “Look for the gift.’ Read a book. Try a new recipe. Call an old friend. Tell your family why you love them. AND learn something new in the world of technology. How weird that our computers and Smart Phones may become the glue that binds us together for a while longer.
