Choose What You Will Remember: Own Your Pandemic Artifacts

I have been thinking a lot lately of this passage from The Social Life of Information by Paul Druid and John Seely Brown:

I was working in an archive of a 250-year-old business, reading correspondence from about the time of the American Revolution. Incoming letters were stored in wooden boxes about the size of a standard Styrofoam picnic cooler, each containing a fair portion of dust as old as the letters. As opening a letter triggered a brief asthmatic attack, I wore a scarf tied over my nose and mouth. Despite my bandit’s attire, my nose ran, my eyes wept, and I coughed, wheezed, and snorted. I longed for a digital system that would hold the information from the letters and leave paper and dust behind.

One afternoon, another historian came to work on a similar box. He read barely a word. Instead, he picked out bundles of letters and, in a move that sent my sinuses into shock, ran each letter beneath his nose and took a deep breath, at times almost inhaling the letter itself but always getting a good dose of dust. Sometimes, after a particularly profound sniff, he would open the letter, glance at it briefly, make a note and move on. Choking behind my mask, I asked him what he was doing. He was, he told me, a medical historian. (A profession to avoid if you have asthma.) He was documenting outbreaks of cholera. When that disease occurred in a town in the eighteenth century, all letters from that town were disinfected with vinegar to prevent the disease from spreading. By sniffing for the faint traces of vinegar that survived 250 years, and noting the date and source of the letters, he was able to chart the progress of cholera outbreaks.

My first thought of it came at the grocery store as I passed shelves empty of toilet paper, hand sanitizer, bleach, and other disinfectants. I wondered if maybe getting some vinegar might be the thing to do. I did buy a small bottle of white vinegar, but that is for coloring Easter eggs. And for what it's worth, in case you're wondering about vinegar now, it won't kill the coronavirus.

My second thought of this passage came when I went out to get my own mail yesterday. What about mail?, I wondered. If I were to save a letter, and if a hundred years from now, if a distant relative were to wonder over it, would they recognize it came from the Covid-19 Pandemic of 2020 and perhaps sniff it, maybe for the lingering odor of Lysol?

Of course, that is entirely a hypothetical which will not come to pass. Almost all my mail is junk. The recycling bin is between the mailbox and the doorway. The junk stops there. And for mail that is brought in, we're not attempting to sanitize it. If a letter survives a 100 years, the only odors will be dust. Or maybe olive oil and garlic if the letter sits in the kitchen and absorbs odors as I sauté. But not Lysol.

Remembrance of artifacts past

In the Druid and Brown passage quoted above, the artifacts are archived letters. They were saved by the 250-year-old company, deliberately stored and preserved. Which leads me to the third thought -- what deliberate artifacts will people save to remember this time to future generations?

I was born in 1959. So I grew up with parents and grandparents and teachers who had vivid memories of the Great Depression and of World War II. And they carried memories and sometimes artifacts. Photos taken. Journals kept. Newspaper clippings. For example, from WWII, my grandmother saved all the letters she received from family who were serving in the war. My aunts found them in her attic after she died.

My chosen artifacts

Me? My artifacts from this time will likely be what I write. I am not a picture-taker. Not a saver of newspapers or magazines. Not a keeper of documents. I also know that how I look back will be in part determined by what I choose to document. I am optimist. So here is what I want to remember from the past few days:

• Taking a walk has more meaning. It has always been healthy to do, but now it is more so and more necessary for more reasons. More neighbors are walking around the neighborhood. It's a socially-distance-able activity that lets you share a wave, a smile, a kind aside. So far.
• We have been lucky to have seen patience instead of anxiety. The grocery store in town had a line outside, with a local police officer letting people in when someone came out. She cheered folks in line, assuring it would be a short wait (and it was), suggesting we break out in song to see if we could 'go viral in a good way,' and otherwise using her authority gently and in a friendly way to keep spirits up and panic down.
• When I go into online meetings with clients our company serves, we take a minute to check in on how everyone is adjusting to the pandemic before starting. Even for those who have always worked from home, we are now part of world working from home because Covid-19 dangers require it. And so the new social practice in meetings is to take time to check in how people are adjusting to not only working form home if it is new, but also to the pandemic. We share insights, offer support. It is a necessary and welcome part of business meetings now. It helps clear the mind before diving into the meeting's agenda. In short, enhanced and explicit empathy makes meetings more productive.