Pandemica

Edition #2

By Woodlief McCabe ’23

Staff Writer

Pandemica is an advice column for anyone struggling to make life function normally in isolation. I’ll address different challenges we are all facing, and give you some tips that will ease the stress. 

Lists

Without the change of scenery that normally comes with going between classes, you might be finding that certain assignments or tasks are slipping through the cracks. With less visual and sensory variety, we have fewer unique cues in our memories to help us remember that our World Politics professor assigned an essay or that we need to change our car’s oil. Having a notebook or digital checklist is a great way to organize your thoughts. And it’s not just for assignments! Make a list of things you want to buy, long-term goals or skills you want to learn. Checking something off a list is a hell of a release and can become its own motivator. When you make a list, include a few simple things that you can do right away to get your productivity flowing. For a particularly long task or something with multiple parts, use multiple checkboxes so you can get that sweet, sweet crossing-off feeling throughout the task. Really, it’s all about maximizing the number of times you get to use a nice pen and cross something off. 

Free Time

Planning out your day is a good way to stay on task. Calendar apps let you designate time for your hobbies and errands. Not only is it a good idea to prioritize having free time during the day, but so is putting it in your calendar. Don’t let other people eat into your time for yourself. Get comfortable with the idea of time when you have nothing planned. As soon as 2:30 hits, you do whatever you want. Video games? Art? Goose-spotting? Just don’t make a hard-and-fast plan. It’s also important to forgive yourself if you go a little over into your free time zone or if you forget. Don’t throw away your whole system if you can’t get it right away. 

Date Night 

Whether or not you have a significant other, “date nights” are always on the table. We all have a person or a group of people we miss. When meeting in person isn’t possible, it’s quite easy to turn to online conferencing. Zoom and Discord both allow screen sharing, which makes it possible to watch YouTube and Netflix (via the Netflix Party extension) with anyone you want. Watch something scary or romantic, or grab a drink (of water if you’re under 21!) and watch a telenovela. Get on Steam and find some games you can play together. There are also plenty of online alternatives to card or board games like Cards Against Humanity (online as Pretend You’re Xyzzy), Uno, Scrabble and more. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, but that you’re with someone else and enjoying their company. Sometimes when we become isolated, we forget how much we really do need company, and it’s an excellent excuse to watch the movie or TV show you’ve been putting off.

Artist Bisa Butler discusses recent Mount Holyoke Art Museum acquisition “Broom Jumpers”

Image courtesy of Laura Shea and Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

By Rebecca Gangon ’23

American artist Bisa Butlers’ 2019 quilt ‘Broom Jumpers’ was displayed in Mount Holyoke’s art museum in March, drawing substantial interest from the College community. Butler gave a talk at Mount Holyoke on March 5, during which she talked about her past and what inspired her to be an artist.

Butler graduated from Howard University with her bachelor’s degree in fine art before pursuing a master’s degree. While in college, she took a fiber art class and fell in love with the medium. She taught art at her old high school and, while doing so, continued creating her own pieces. In 2018, Butler became a full-time artist and has been creating pieces ever since. Since 2003, her artwork has been in group and solo presentations.

“As an artist or people who love art, you don’t have a set path,” Butler said. “A career in the arts is very passionate. If you have the stamina that supports you to have a career in the arts, it is not something that you are going to regret later. It might take you longer to get there but it is worthwhile..” 

Butler continued about how she chose what kind of quilts to make and fabrics to use. “I was starting to think of my identity as a black woman,” Butler said. “My father was from Ghana, West Africa, so that is one half of my background. My mother grew up in Morocco but now lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, so I have an interesting cultural mix between the African side of my father’s family and my mother’s family.”

“My father’s father died of appendicitis. They lived in the country and they didn’t have money, so if you had appendicitis you were going to die,” Butler revealed. “That death had catastrophic effects on my father’s life.”  

Butler’s father grew up without his father. Due to this loss, his family had to split up and grew apart from each other. Butler reveals that there is only one picture of her father’s side of the family, taken before they split up. Her father, by an anonymous donation from someone in his village who thought he was bright, was able to go to Catholic school. Butlers’ father eventually became a college president and continued to tell her that, if she worked hard, she could do anything. 

“I made a portrait for my father when he retired and I used fabric from everyone in the family. I tried to get a little bit of everyone in that portrait,” Butler said. “He was so happy because that was the only picture he had of his family.”  When observing the reference photo, Butler discovered that her grandmother had scarification on her skin. “Those were thought of as marks of beauty … where she is from,” Butler said. “That became an exploration of who this woman was that I never got to meet. I liked to look back to the past.”

Butler tries not to make quilts of well-known figures in Black History. “I feel like we need to recognize the regular folks,” she said. “I really pay attention to their face, their expression, their eyes, so that I can capture what they really look like.”

The name of the piece is an allusion to the practice of jumping the broom, a type of unofficial wedding ceremony done by slaves who were not legally allowed to be married. During these weddings, couples would jump together over a broom. Though it began as a forced practice, jumping the broom continues as a part of weddings in some African American communities. 

Butler finished the talk by discussing the symbolism of the hat worn by the woman in the quilt. “They are a couple so she has the lovebirds on her hat,” Butler explained. “It is not just that though, it's the caged bird in ‘I know why the caged bird sings.’ It’s not just a title but what that means as caged bird syndrome in African people or anybody who has been oppressed.”