By Ed Koenig
Edited by Martha Greenwald
On March 12 and 13, 2026, the American Folklife Center, a part of the Library of Congress, in Washington, DC, presented a symposium entitled “From Lived Experience to Public Memory: Commemorating, Documenting, and Archiving Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” The event coincided with the sixth anniversary of the declaration by the World Health Organization that COVID-19 had become a global pandemic.
As one of the over 1.2 million Americans who has lost one or more loved ones to COVID-19 (my partner of 33 years, Jody Settle, died in April 2020,) I was curious to see how the lived experiences of those who were most severely impacted would be represented. Unfortunately, our experiences were either ignored or glossed over during the various presentations.
The symposium instead looked at various aspects of how we coped and lived our lives during the temporary lockdowns that arose around the world to combat the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and how some of those changes have impacted and continue to influence our daily lives.
Sour, Dough
One of the obvious areas that concerned everyone was food, its production, and the related delivery systems. As was sometimes true prior to the lockdowns, comfort food became a source of solace for many who were fearful or, worse, mourning the loss of loved ones to this new virus. I was a bit disillusioned with a reference to a meme that discussed common weight gains during that period as “the COVID nineteen” (much as first year college students are often said to experience a weight gain called the “freshman fifteen.”) Unfortunately, the laughter from the audience that ensued ignored the sentiments of those who were most severely impacted.
One of the activities that seemed to become rampant during the lockdown period was the baking of sourdough bread. Myriads of families ordered bread making machines so they also could join in this activity. Perhaps, it was their way of feeling connected to others. Someone sent me one in the days after my partner died in April 2020. Looking at the box, I wondered what I was supposed to do with a bread making machine. I couldn’t bake a new partner! Sadly, the box sits unopened in the closet six years later.
More interesting, there seems to have been an increased rediscovery of old family recipes for favorite meals that had been stored away unused due to the lack of time in our busy society. Now, staying and/or working at home, there was more time to reconsider these foods and the comforts and memories they provided. This, of course, required ingredients that many did not regularly have at hand.
The food procurement system has been impacted or altered by the pandemic. There was a huge increase in the ordering of groceries on-line which stores then needed to deliver directly to the home. Restaurants, restricted from indoor dining, began relying on services like DoorDash and Grub Hub that came into prominence during this period. People began ordering take-out food from local restaurants if only to support them and help them to survive until the lockdowns were over. The message seemed to be that people wanted to continue enjoying their favorite foods without risk to themselves. Sadly, the risk to those who had to work to survive was only discussed in a passing remark that “comfort for one became discomfort for another.”
Several other observations were made about the impact on food delivery systems. There has been a notable increase in the number of farmers markets around the country. Researchers presume that people felt that shopping at these open-air concessions was safer with less chance of exposure to the virus.
A final thought is that there now seems to be an increased understanding of how the corporate industrial food system works. People have finally acknowledged that our food doesn’t miraculously appear on the shelves in our grocery stores. It requires a great number of human resources to grow, produce and ship products and then to stock the shelves – all of which put people at risk during the pandemic. The question left unsaid is whether people continue to care about those who are part of this important supply chain component.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how friends and neighbors stepped up to prepare meals that they shared with me when Jody died. They would call and come over and we would meet outside. Maintaining the recommended social distance, they would place the food nearby and step back. I would then go over and pick it up. After a brief shouted “thank you,’ we would return to our homes. The comfort offered by a homecooked meal and a few minutes of face-to-face contact was not something discussed during this portion of the symposium.
Synchrony/Cacophony
Music and the impact on musicians were the themes of several presentations. Because musicians were unable to perform together in-person, many of them tried to employ new on-line technologies, like Zoom, to continue their collaborations and performances. Because of the nature of internet technology at that time (since improved somewhat,) lags in transmission speeds often made the synchronization of the various musicians difficult, if not, impossible, often leading to cacophony. Musicians experimented, learned and implemented new techniques to overcome these difficulties such as writing compositions and arrangements where one performer’s last notes could be sustained and then the next performer would begin on the same note. Also, visual clues were used for one musician to cue another. These aided the musicians to continue their creative work until they could again work together in-person. An example of these new techniques was shown (performed via Zoom) by the Kronos Quartet performing the musical piece, Marejada (which translates as “surge”) composed during the lockdown.
Other speakers spoke of the means musicians in small or isolated communities used to continue performing for themselves and others. One presenter discussed a group of blue grass musicians in southern Indiana. As they told her, if they were to live the lives they were used to living, they would have to adapt. And, they did. Single performers would play from their front porches while friends and neighbors would sit in their cars listening to the performance. Later, as restrictions eased, some of the groups would gather to perform outdoor concerts. She even showed videos of them precisely measuring out six-foot social distance circles around each performer. They did the same with the folks that came to listen and enjoy. All this helped them to live during the lockdown.
Improvisation was the key to survival for many musicians. A project based in some impoverished neighborhoods of Washington, DC, put into service a rickety old van nicknamed the “COVID Van.” The organizer, from American University, and his wife would meet musicians, usually in their late teens or early twenties, who would perform while they, safely inside the van, recorded videos that, once edited, were shared on platforms like YouTube. This allowed these young musicians to continue creating and sharing new music with their fans even when they couldn’t appear in a public setting. Again, new ways of thinking worked and continue to be used now.
Several researchers who worked in Spanish-speaking Latin American communities discussed the role of music in providing information and solace to people from Mexico to Argentina. One of the interesting things they discovered was that musicians were less concerned about making music during the pandemic, but rather they focused on creating music about the pandemic. As they termed it, the music was about the humanity of surviving.
Much of this music focused on instructing people on how to stay safe — like washing your hands frequently, wearing a face covering, and maintaining social distance – “be a good citizen and we’ll get through this.” The one quirky thing they recognized in each country was that the music was usually upbeat and the videos created for these songs were almost always full of dancing and hope and smiles. They served as cheerleaders in a time of sorrow.
The use of folk art provided some further insights. Some art work served to educate people on how to protect themselves and, in doing so, provided continued economic survival for the creators. Of course, some art work served to memorialize people who died from COVID-19.
A Renaissance of Stitches
In the early stages of the pandemic when there was a lack of personal protective equipment, ethical questions arose about the creation and sale for profit of face masks while people were dying. This included examples where protective face masks were decorated with distinctive patterns and designs and intended to be sold as art work rather than to be used as protection against the virus.
Of interest to me was how seamstresses around the world gathered whatever materials they had at hand and produced many millions of masks for their friends and neighbors and others. Their work was so prolific that there was a run on the elastic materials used to keep the masks properly placed on the face. An interesting anecdote was how seamstresses in Cambodia produced and shipped face masks to underprivileged people in the United Kingdom and Australia.
During the lockdown periods, there was a notable renaissance in the art of quilt making around the world. Many picked up an avocation that they had set aside a long time ago. Many others first came to quilting at that time.
Over time, often influenced by social media posts that referenced the AIDS Memorial Quilt that was begun to memorialize those who had died during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, many tried to reproduce the feelings those quilts invoked in them and moved to sew similar quilts for those lost to COVID-19. Examination of many of the quilts produced reflect the social anxiety the creators were feeling whether from being isolated, having to maintain social distance when interacting with others, and, even the simple task of trying to find toilet paper. One other interesting aspect of this work was the number of quilting bees that arose on the internet via apps like Zoom. The people could sew while talking to others doing the same thing. It provided them a chance to share their feelings and their work. It allowed them to practice a tactile art without the need to touch.
Say Their Names
Another use of art serving to memorialize appears in the work of the Naming the Lost Memorial project in New York City. Taking inspiration from the reaction to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020 and the constant call to “say his name,” this small group formed and reached out to those communities that weren’t able to properly mourn their dead following their own customs and traditions.
After receiving a grant, the group expanded and joined with local artists and musicians from various immigrant communities in New York City to develop memorial artwork and events that gave honor to their cultural ways of mourning. They scheduled two events per year: one at Brooklyn’s Green-wood Cemetery in the spring and the other celebrating the Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos) at the Church of St. Marks-in-the-Bowery in Manhattan. I attended both memorials in 2025 where I recall and experienced how the rituals of mourning in various places such as Mexico, Guyana, and West Africa, among others, were performed to honor the members of those communities who had passed on. While loved ones were lost, we continue to remember and learn from each other.
The Naming the Lost Memorial project concluded with the most recent Day of the Dead event in November 2025. But the project will never really end as long as we continue to say their names.
There were other various presentations. Some of them I found interesting. One dealt with the impact of COVID-19 on the Navajo Nation. It was noted that in May 2020, the indigenous peoples of the United States had the highest COVID-19 infection rates. On a brighter note, by February 2021, these same groups had the highest COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates. The primacy of elders in the indigenous populations as repositories of their language, oral and written history, and native learning methods promoted the care of these elders to primary importance in their communities as they struggled against COVID-19. An elderly Navajo woman noted speaking about COVID-19: “I look upon it as a monster that is feeding on us.” The lack of resources for these indigenous communities from the U.S. government (the case before the appearance of COVID-19) accelerated the situation. Sadly, a number of members of the Navajo community were lost.
Others presentations I found disturbing. These made me wonder why anyone would want to characterize this period of history in this way. One of these compared some of the reactions to COVID-19 pandemic to those of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic dubbed the Spanish Flu even though credible scientific evidence shows it most likely originated at a U.S. Army base in Kansas City.
In 2020, early on in the pandemic, the use of the internet and social media platforms led to “ideas” and disinformation such as the belief that 5G cell phone technology or the financier George Soros was the source of the pandemic. The somewhat racist depiction, Kung Flu, was an ad lib from Donald Trump in a speech he delivered during the beginning of the pandemic. Other strange ideas also arose at this time like “vegetarians are safe – only meat eaters get COVID” and “gargling with salt water would dislodge the virus from your throat.” Many of the numerous memes that were shared via social media showed a disconnect between the perceived image and actuality. The hurtfulness of many of these memes to those who lost loved ones to or continue to suffer from the impact of COVID-19 was not mentioned or just ignored. There was no discussion of counteracting the misinformation arising from these memes and other postings.
For me, the most disturbing presentations made during the symposium revolved around the topic of play. One positive presentation in this area of play was an exception. Presented by two young scholar researchers from the United Kingdom who work with young people living with Tourette’s Syndrome. Their organization, Tourette’s Hero, developed several creative projects to help keep these individuals engaged. One they spoke of was named “Digital Heros of Imagination.” Using whatever materials were close at hand, the people worked to create their own superheroes and then to develop backstories surrounding their creations which they told through posters that shared with one another. When the severe lockdowns were lifted, they began a second program called “Journey to a Better World.” Here, they strove to instill and maintain a sense of joy and connection in their clients.
Other presenters discussed games for children like “Coronavirus Tag” in which a designated player who, in theory, carried the coronavirus would run around and tag another player who would become “infected” and would fall down as if dead. This continued until all the players had been “infected.” The game would restart with a different player designated as the one having coronavirus. Parents seemed to find that this game, and others like it, were inventive and catered to the physical and psychological vulnerabilities of the children while including them as historical witnesses to life during the pandemic. As a person who lost someone to COVID-19, I found the idea of this game offensive, particularly because it was presented as a celebration of creativity. If only my loved one could just get up and live again. In Finland, “Korona” was a board game, much like Monopoly, where players moved along the board trying to infect the world with a virus. Players often exhibited joy in watching the virus spread. I tried to ask the presenters if they had considered the impact of these games on children who had lost a parent, sibling, or caretaker to COVID-19. They were adept at ignoring my question.
All this leads to one overarching conclusion about these presentations. All of them, in their own way, were too focused on those who had the most privilege, e.g., those who had the ability to flee large urban areas for vacation homes in rural areas. There was very little note given to the financially challenged people who lived crammed together in urban centers and continued, at much personal risk, to venture out to “essential” jobs to serve the needs of those who were able isolate. In the end, I was disappointed. I think many of the presentations failed to consider the people who were most severely impacted by COVID-19, i.e., those who died and those who loved them.
