Category: Dispatches from the Field

The House

Date Posted: 08/18/2026

During those first months, Katherine would press her skin to the door frame and watch her dad work for hours with his tools, fixing things around the house, here and there, coming and going with his hands full of collectible toy cars, repositioning them millimeter by millimeter on the shelves after hours of cleaning. They would talk at times; at others, she would just watch and smile at him, as if supporting the walls while leaning on the frames. On July 20, 2020, her father began to feel ill. Eight days later he tested positive and Katherine too.

by ritualsinthemaking

We’re Not Done Yet: Taking Stock and Charting a Path Forward

It’s been a little over a year since we learned that the National Science Foundation grant supporting the Rituals in the Making project was “terminated, effective immediately.” As we wrote in a recent essay for Anthropology News, just because we lost our funding doesn’t mean we’ve lost our drive to research and write about the lasting effects of pandemic loss on American society.

by ritualsinthemaking

The Relentless Bully

Date Posted: March 23, 2026.

In the process of finding her voice as “a writer, observer, critical thinker, resister, and ally,” Dawn is continuing to evolve “as each new story finds its way into existence, continuously changing and transforming.”

by ritualsinthemaking

Vignettes of Time: Reflections on the Week COVID Came to Be with Hanaan and Avery  

Date posted: March 14, 2025

For Hanaan, COVID began in December when the news began reporting it, working as a volunteer in the ER and seeing people come in droves, fearing they had contracted this virus. But the world officially ‘ended’ when everything in the United States shut down. For Avery, it was a slow trickle, then all at once with her birthday on the 14th of March in Texas – a state that would become contentious in the debate over covid restrictions that came from the community efforts to stop the spread of the virus.   

by ritualsinthemaking