Pandemic posting

Taking things one day at a time, and today, I wanted to record the work I’ve done the last few months.

I got to work on what felt like a very special assignment for a story about two Vermont mothers who both lost their adult children, and who connected through a pocket dial. Reported by Nina Keck in January, these two women shared a connection through grief. It feels particularly relevant now. Read/hear/see it by clicking here.

In February, I worked with VPR reporters on two stories about women and politics. In the first, reporter Peter Hirschfeld asked why the portrait collection in Vermont’s Statehouse consists nearly entirely of older white men. The image below is of Sen. Ruth Hardy, who introduced legislation to create a task force to diversify the art in the “People’s house.” She’s standing with a painted portrait of former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, the only female governor in Vermont’s history and one of just three women in the official Statehouse collection.

Right around the same time, I had the chance to photograph the real-life Madeleine Kunin for an episode of Brave Little State, about why Vermont is the only state in the nation to never send a woman to U.S. Congress.

Then March arrived, which is when all this COVID-19 stuff got real. The first few weeks, the news and my digital editing duties went on pretty much non-stop. While it hasn’t slowed down a whole lot, this past week I’ve found the time/brain-space/desire to make photos again.

This week, VPR’s Peter Hirschfeld wrote about the risks home health nurses are taking to care for their patients, some of whom have tested positive for COVID-19. Joe Haller, seen below, had just attended to a Burlington patient who had tested positive and had returned from the hospital just a couple days before.

On Thursday, I had the best morning I’ve had in a while at the ECHO center, which is currently closed and which surprised me by welcoming me inside (with a mask on, and at a distance from others) to photograph staff members caring for the animals. Watching the enormous sturgeon getting hand fed was definitely my favorite part, though the baby turtles came in a close second.

Stay safe, everyone.