Pandemic stories
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Respecting our food
“Cooking is at once one of the simplest and most gratifying of the arts, but to cook well, one must love and respect food.” ~Craig Claiborne Like everyone else I know, I cooked at home more often during the early days of the pandemic. I spent untold hours searching online for recipes to vary our weekly menus. And I realized (more than ever) that having access to the right ingredients is essential to preparing a delicious, healthful meal. Once I was able to get out and shop for our own groceries again, I was twice as grateful for the variety of fresh produce available at the local markets. I had…
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How big is your world?
“The world only exists in your eyes. You can make it as big or as small as you want.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald I’ve been staying close to home for the past week while recovering from a virus — and I’m reminded of how my world started shrinking during the pandemic. Oddly, after the first few weeks in lockdown, I didn’t feel as caged as I thought I would. I found countless ways to amuse myself around the house, spending the extra time reading, puttering, organizing, and exploring my inner world. At the same time, however, I also lost my sense of adventure. It was too easy to settle in, waiting…
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Sheltering Wright: My essay in NEWSWEEK
“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright It’s hard to believe a full year has passed since the global pandemic reshaped the way we live every day. Last spring, when the monotony of living in lockdown set in, Doug and I decided to spend more time at our Wright home (the Carl Schultz house) in St. Joseph. Prior to the pandemic, we’d put a great deal of effort into renovating and upgrading the home and its surrounding property — but rarely took time to actually live in the place and enjoy the results of our labor. The pandemic motivated us to change that last year, and it inspired an essay…
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Gardening Wright
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One year later: Notes from my quarantine journal
Cindy La Ferle “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” ~Søren Kierkegaard March 11, 2021… Today marks the one-year anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 shutdown in our embattled-but-not-beaten United States of America. To date, nearly 530,000 American lives have been lost to the virus. One year ago today, my husband, Doug, was waiting for surgery to reconnect the fingers he’d nearly lost on his left hand, thanks to a brutal accident with a table saw. It was an incredibly scary time to experience a medical emergency of any kind, because nobody — not even healthcare workers — fully understood the threat of COVID-19 or…
