Historical Society Seeks to Preserve Mahaska’s COVID-19 Response
We are living in a historic moment, and the Mahaska County Historical Society will be collecting responses from residents on how COVID-19 impacted their daily lives once the threat has passed.
“We encourage Mahaska County residents to document their response to the pandemic in whatever medium makes sense for them. It can be a written journal, paper scrapbook or photo album, multimedia recordings or videos, anything that shows their genuine experience,” explains Margaret Spiegel, Director and Curator of the Historical Society.
Questions to consider and answer, which may be of particular interest to future researchers:
• What ways did your daily life change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How did you feel about those changes?
• While social distancing and/or self-isolating, did you notice your relationship with family members, friends, colleagues, or neighbors change? How?
• Are there any particularly activities or “simple pleasures” that you miss during this time period or have you found new pursuits throughout this ordeal?
• Have you, a friend or loved one become sick with COVID-19? What, if any, medical treatment did you seek?
• How have you dealt with your illness?
Once it is safe to do so, the Historical Society will put a community call out for donations of your response.
“We are working on gathering the response from different organizations and our media sources, but the individual experience and the stories shared by ordinary people are the heart of history. Those are things we especially want to preserve for our community.”
Spiegel would also like to attribute the phrasing of the questions above to the History Museum at the Castle in Appleton, WI, one of many institutions worldwide gathering responses from their communities at this moment in time.
