Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey
Part Nine, in Which We are Flummoxed and in Flux
It is at this point in our journey when what seemed far away began to draw near, and what was of mild concern quickly became dire indeed. I went from talking with Theresa one day about what parts of my job I might be able to do remotely— just in case—to banned from the building, in what seemed the blink of an eye, And almost all of the inhabitants of Wells Library, IU, Bloomington, the nation, and the globe did the same. My children came home from school, to stay, and we all began a new chapter in which we sheltered in place and fretted about those who had fallen ill and those who were caring for them.
The wasp work had to take a back seat to all of this, naturally, since the time and attention I did have went to multi-level work and life reconfiguration. I am grateful that the decisions were made to truly shut down. It is almost unthinkable for such a thing to happen, given that IU usually doesn’t even close during ice storms, tornadoes, and the like. There is a Hoosier heartiness that, as a California transplant, I have grown to admire. Though I confess I was much less enthused about this quality when it meant going to the soccer field on frigid Saturday mornings for kids’ soccer games. Matches were NEVER cancelled, no matter how hideous the weather….
The sheltering-in-place has now endured long enough to acquire a rhythm and flow of its own, so it has been possible to revisit the internship project, or parts of it at least. In the next installment, I will outline what the project’s “new normal” looks like.
Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.
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