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In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives. Globally the scale of human suffering as a consequence of Covid-19 has been very great. Everywhere people are now reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global crisis means for us, as individuals, living in the 21st century. This forum offers a space for writers to reflect on their experience in Aotearoa and to consider questions such as: What might we need to remember and preserve? What has been my experience, my observations, how might my priorities have shifted, in a good way, as a result of the lockdowns? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort through any of the following life writing formats — journalling, nature writing, memoir, commentary, poetry, notes on work in progress during lockdown… — please make initial contact through my contact page. Next prepare a page of A4 writing, starting in the present moment and moving where you need to into the recent past and forwards from that point, with a title, brief bio, photo (optional) and your contribution will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

“Securing the memory of COVID-19 is the minimum we owe to each other in the aftermath of this catastrophe.”

Richard Horton, “Covid-19 and the Ethics of memory", The Lancet , 6 June 2020
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The Flowers Told the Story by Sylvia Nagl

6/10/2021

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Sylvia is a scientist who grew up in Europe and in her writing is particularly interested in the impacts of large world events on the lives of individuals.

It was the 26th of April 1986, my mother’s 60th birthday. A day of hiking in the mountains had been her special birthday wish. So here we were, on an exposed track through a large pine plantation that had just been clear felled. As we were nearing the summit, my mother was turning east, towards Russia. She said: ”I don’t know what it can possibly be, but there is something really wrong. I can feel it.”

​This was the day that reactor number 4 at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, exploded. Later it was said that the radioactive contamination ejected was five hundred times greater than that released by the nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
           

My parents lived about 1,000 km west of Chernobyl. This felt alarmingly close. At the same time, it is an enduring mystery to me how my mother could have sensed serious, intangible danger from this distance. But she did.

Over the next days, we were locked down like we are now, but could follow the ominous radioactive cloud growing and drifting across the Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, the Baltic states, Finland, Norway and Sweden on the evening news. Then it was further advancing across Europe on its unrelenting westward progress. As bad weather set in and rain came down, the radioactive fallout came down too. All we could do was shelter in my parents’ home.

Growing up in Europe during the Cold War, I had lived with a potential radioactive cloud over my head every day of my life. The numbers of accumulated nuclear weapons on either side of the Iron Curtain were beyond comprehension. We all were acutely aware that we could be annihilated at any moment, either through a nuclear accident or an act of war. Now, our worst fears seemed to have materialised. But then, in the following weeks, it emerged that the wind and rain patterns in this fateful time seemed to have largely spared my hometown, so very close to the Iron Curtain, from the fallout.

But the living world had not been untouched. As spring turned to summer, my mother’s carefully tended organic vegetables in the garden and the flowering plants in the forest she loved developed strange mutations. Spiders were building asymmetrical webs. The ordered geometries of nature’s forms were lost and what had taken their place was chaotic. It was an overwhelming experience, although it happened almost imperceptibly. It was like an apocalyptic horror movie without special effects. One had to observe closely to realise the monstrous events that had taken place. It was a catastrophe at the level of the molecules that make up life.
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    Rex McGregor
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    Roger Horrocks
    Ruth Bonita
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    Sandy Plummer
    Silvia
    Siobhan Harvey
    Sue Berman
    Sue Fitchett
    Sylvia Nagl
    Tessa Duder
    Tony Eyre
    Trevor M Landers
    Yvonne Van Dongen

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Deborah thanks Rangimarie Kelly and Pikau Digtal for website design and artist Karen Jarvis for her image ‘Writers at the Devonport Library,’ (2023)
Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
Copyright © 2023 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Conference Paper
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact