By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Some moments in 2020 were clearly wondrous – like when COVID patients recovered after weeks on ventilators. But many moments of joy were unrecognizable in a year dominated by isolation and worry.
When some Bowling Green area residents were asked to identify unexpected moments of joy during this year, they found happiness in some unforeseen places.
Elation was found in bugs, Turner Classic Movies, music videos, speaking French and more.
Making music in mayhem
When COVID arrived last spring, so did an opportunity to join a virtual choir for Pat Pauken.
Voctave, a professional vocal a cappella group based in Orlando, Florida, put out a call for people to join a virtual choir, with each person recording a solo track/video with their voice part at home and submitting it for compilation. Pauken, vice provost for Governance and Faculty Relations at BGSU, took a chance.
“I’m definitely not a soloist,” he said. “But I managed to get my part recorded on my own – a little bit out of my comfort zone, technologically and musically – and they accepted it.”
About 1,000 singers joined in – but Pauken can be seen briefly on the far right of the screen at about 4:15 in the video.
“This was a quarantine challenge I gave myself last spring. I’m thrilled I did it. And it’s pretty sweet to see the products,” Pauken said. “Feats of music and technology.”
Also in the video is BGSU graduate Drew Ochoa, who is one of the 11 outstanding members of Voctave. Ochoa has the second male solo in the song, entering at 1:09 in the video. “He is amazing,” Pauken said.
‘Bruisers’ and bugs
Janet Parks, retired from BGSU, found some unexpected joy this year from her high school in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
In the 1950s, Parks was a student at an all-girls high school named Girls Preparatory School. The school had an interscholastic sports program – but didn’t have a name for their teams.
“Our school colors were black and blue, so some of us enthusiastically appealed to the administration to name our teams ‘The Bruisers,’” Parks said. “It seemed an obvious choice to us. But the answer was, ‘No, that name is not ladylike.’”
“Many years later, after the concept of ‘ladylike’ had evolved somewhat, the school did adopt the name ‘Bruisers,’ but it was too late for my teammates and me,” Parks said.
Earlier this year, Parks made a modest donation to the school’s athletics program.
“In return and quite to my surprise, the acknowledgement gift was a face mask emblazoned with the word ‘BRUISERS,’” she said “Finally, more than 60 years after my initial aspiration to be a Bruiser, my dream came true.”
Back here in Bowling Green, Parks found joy in a 4-year-old budding entomologist. Chase Vroman, the great-grandson of Dolores Black and grandson of Penny Brooks, calls himself a “bug scientist.”
During the summer months, Saturday evenings were “milkshake nights” during which Parks gathered with a small group, socially-distanced and masked, in Chase’s driveway.
“Part of this weekly ritual would be a tour around his yard or around the block, during which he taught me how to identify a large variety of bugs and insects,” Parks said. “Had we not been forced to gather outdoors rather than in the air-conditioned comfort of their home, I might have missed those wonderful opportunities.”
Un-birthday & French chats
Marcy St. John has always enjoyed solitude – until it was forced upon her. So she learned how to Zoom, which is “hands down” the most useful skill she has acquired during COVID.
She and her kids, who live in Colorado and Oregon, have regular Zoom chats every month when their “un-birthdays” roll around.
“Suppose you were born on Nov. 10 – that’d mean that you and family members would share Zoom time chatting on the 10th of every month. It’s nice to have that to look forward to,” St. John said.
Another lifesaver for St. John – a retired French language teacher at Bowling Green High School – has been a French conversation group that she happened upon quite by chance. One day last spring she overheard a professor speaking French to someone in Grounds for Thought. They were part of a larger group and invited St. John to participate.
“Random joining in has typically not been a fun thing for me, but this time the friendly urgings and the utter lack of anything interesting on my calendar convinced me to grab a chair and start speaking la belle langue,” St. John said. “It’s been delightful.”
“Our French is earnest and clever, and someone’s always looking up words in an online dictionary,” St. John said.
Walks and words
Maria Simon, Youth Services Librarian at Wood County District Public Library, found comfort this year in a “gratitude journal.”
“It’s been the little things that have given me comfort and encouragement,” Simon said. “I started a gratitude journal for the first time during the pandemic. Most nights before bed I jot down two or three words that are good memories or experiences from the day.”
Though she hasn’t spent much time looking back at her journal, Simon has noted reoccurring themes.
“Nature and being outdoors, walks, books, my family, friends and colleagues, my dog show up most frequently,” Simon said. “The isolation and distance have been challenging. I only hope that I have still showed up for others during these trying times.”
With her efforts to keep connected with children through virtual storytelling, many young readers would say Simon more than showed up during COVID.
Domestic diversions
Retired Ellen Dalton saw the COVID shutdowns as motivation to clean house – literally.
She started cleaning out boxes of old papers, files and financial records – until she ran out of steam. Then she decided to dust off her sewing skills and her long dormant sewing machine to make cloth face masks.
“My sewing machine was stored in the basement and hadn’t been used for many, many years and I wasn’t even sure it still worked,” she said of the machine which had been a college graduation gift from her mother.
“What I found was that I couldn’t even lift it to carry it upstairs to try it out. The ‘portable’ machine weighs 42 pounds,” Dalton said. “So I bought a new machine and signed up with Sandy Wicks and sewed quite a few masks for BG Sews for Health as well as for family and friends.”
As for many others, COVID severely curtailed the Daltons’ travel plans for the year.
“The farthest my husband and I have travelled since March 1 was to Findlay to pick up fabric,” she said. “We did not go to New Zealand to visit our daughter in the spring, we didn’t go to Canada in the summer, we didn’t go to our Florida condo for December. We spent our first Christmas in Bowling Green in many years.”
Dalton joined much of the country in learning how to Zoom.
“I expected people in my age cohort to have trouble getting started with Zoom, in a time when they couldn’t very well invite a grandkid for assistance, but it doesn’t seem to have been an issue,” she said.
Zoom has allowed fellow BGSU retirees in Maine and Texas to “attend” meetings of the BGSU Retirees Association.
“As an introvert the enforced isolation hasn’t been as hard as for people who need contact with other people,” Dalton said. “My husband and I walk three times a day and have gotten to know our neighborhood much better, met some neighbors.”
The couple has also watched more TV – but not the trashy dramas or reality shows that have lured many binge viewers.
“We’ve watched so many PBS programs and discovered Turner Classic Movies,” Dalton said.
Back to school & virtual tailgating
COVID has seriously clipped the wings on Jason Miller’s social butterfly lifestyle.
“I am typically a very social person going to concerts and conventions and vacations over the summer. With all of the canceled, I needed something to take up my time,” Miller said.
So rather than spending all summer binge-watching shows, Miller started working on his master’s degree.
“It was something that I have always wanted to do but just kept putting off because I didn’t think that I had the extra time,” he said. Miller has completed four out of 10 classes required – and has a 4.0 GPA so far.
During his time at home from his job in human resources with the Wood County Committee on Aging, Miller also took the time to get his credentials from the Society of Human Resource Management.
“This was also something that I had considered for a while but knew the extra time studying would be a lot. Being stuck at home seemed like as good of a time as any,” he said.
But the year was not all work and no play for Miller. He was just forced to be social via Zoom, Webex, and over the phone.
“Gasp – who knew the phones could still be used to talk to people,” he said.
A group of six friends set up a weekly Friday night Zoom call to talk about the week, share adult beverages and just relax. This fall, a friend in Columbus set up a virtual tailgate, where a group could come together on Zoom to watch the game and cheer on the Buckeyes.
“This pandemic has taught me that connecting with people doesn’t always have to be face to face or an elaborate outing – although this extrovert misses face to face get togethers,” Miller said.
Resiliency and Plan B
Steve Arnold found unexpected joy this year from an event initially threatened by COVID.
A highlight for Arnold each year has been the Ohio 4-H State Leadership Camp. He and his wife advise a local 4-H club and volunteer at the state level.
But this year posed extreme challenges.
“In 2020, things changed drastically,” he said. So organizers came up with Plan B.
“When the staff and counselors got together, there were questions of whether or not we could pull this off,” Arnold said. “Not to mention questions about our sanity.”
But after seemingly endless Zoom planning sessions, the “camp” went on.
“The three-day camp was a rousing success, and the campers had nothing but good to say about the camp,” Arnold said of the camp which was held on Zoom. “This really highlighted the need to be flexible, resilient, and willing to step out of our comfort zone. The adult staff learned as much as the campers – especially about ourselves.”
‘Country lawyer’ goes high tech
Attorney Drew Hanna was forced outside his comfort zone in March, when the pandemic hit and courts went virtual.
“I am 73 and not digital, so this was a challenge,” Hanna said.
So he sought out help from Rita Brieschke at the Wood County Senior Center, who equipped him with a tablet and taught him how to use it.
“Now I like online hearings. They save you so much time, especially if the courthouse is far away,” Hanna said.
“As our greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, who was a lawyer and a poet, once noted, “The only thing a lawyer has to offer his client is his time and devotion to the cause.”
Looking back over the last year, Hanna expects the words of Robert Frost to resonate: “Somewhere ages and ages hence, I shall be telling this with a sigh.”
