Although the year 2020 has become almost synonymous with coronavirus, at this time last year — if you were living in America, at least — the word had barely even entered the lexicon. How much can change in a year, and how much can stay the same.
If anything, I think the COVID-versary — the day on which you, personally, realized “uh oh, this is actually going to make an impact on my life” — will be more important for most people than the new year, which can’t be marked with a gathering, much less with a healthy smack on…
Throughout this hectic and draining and incredibly stressful year, only one thing has been able to tear me away from the tight grip of the news cycle and allow me to come up for air: books, books, and more books. Before this year, I never kept track of my reading, but I began to do so at the tail end of August — and since then, I have logged 32 books (and counting). Being stuck at home for endless hours has its perks, it turns out. …
Trees must be some of the loveliest beings on this earth, deciduous or evergreen, tall and slender or short and rotund. The closer you look, the more you see — branches exponential, leaves delicately translucent, some squat bird secreted away amongst the greenery. When a storm is brewing, the trees will tell you so, roiling in the wind, flashing the pale underbellies of their leaves. They reach up and out, entwining with their brothers and sisters, tangling with the sky.
I can easily name my favorite tree: the Eastern White Pine, with distinctive clusters of five willowy needles. I will…
Despite President Donald Trump’s continued insistence that his administration has done a “great job” of handling the COVID-19 pandemic, cases of the virus are increasing drastically in many states, shattering previous records from the spring. Concerningly, this new surge in cases — which experts say is not in fact a second wave, but just an extension of the first — has been in part driven by the carelessness of young people, who, because they are less vulnerable to serious illness, feel no need to curtail their actions in order to protect themselves or their friends.
Just down Friendship Avenue from Giant Eagle, in that liminal space between East Lib and Shadyside, I awaited the bus in front of someone’s front stoop — pale concrete wandering up toward muted brick, dulled by a gray-washed sky. It was winter, of course, as it usually is in Pittsburgh, and the bus stop at which I huddled was nothing more than a small blue sign posted by the side of the road. The occasional car blew past. I tried not to peer down the street for that telltale square bulk, those extra piercing headlights, instead observing the squat townhouses…
The coronavirus, a disease that will kill you no matter your political affiliation, has somehow been transformed into a completely partisan issue. A simple cloth face covering, which study after study have shown to be effective in slowing the spread of the virus, and which is recommended by the CDC and almost every local government body, has morphed into an indicator of your political alignment, a declaration of your willingness to follow government directives. Wear a mask, and you will be labeled a sheep by skeptics, some of whom believe that COVID-19, which has now killed over 120,000 people in…
Whenever a dramatic shift takes place, personally or globally, the immediate human response is to sink back into a rosy and romanticized version of the past. Recently, whenever my mind wrestles free from my control, I find myself meditating on pre-Corona times: the routine comfort circling through bright stacks of produce at Trader Joe’s, the communal, holy-feeling silence of the public library — even the smushed chaos of a Port Authority bus at rush hour shines brightly in the rearview mirror. …
Sarah Stager
Aspiring writer, turtleneck enthusiast, and cat lover currently studying English Writing and History at the University of Pittsburgh
