Brief pause

Life has slowed down from a gazillion miles an hour for like a minute, so here’s some work from the past four and a half months.

VPR has continued to provide opportunities to improve my portrait-taking skills, including some through-the-window ones that have become so popular these days. The first is of TJ Maynard, his partner Fallon and their daughter Ophelia, who my coworker Liam Elder-Connors interviewed about not receiving unemployment benefits for weeks following getting laid off. The family was very patient as I figured out the window glare amid some uncooperative clouds and sunshine.

This next portrait is of childhood friends Famma Abukar, left, and Riziki Kassim, right, who launched a grassroots fundraiser this spring with many other Somali Bantu women to supply food to refugee families living in Kakuma, Kenya during Ramadan. Photographing these two was so much fun — while they both have kids and busy lives and don’t see much of each other now, Famma and Riziki seemed to revert to their younger selves when they got together for this portrait. They giggled and reminisced on the steps of Burlington’s City Hall, where they used to hang out as teenagers.

That portrait was one of several I got to take for my colleague Abagael Giles’ series on multilingual/multicultural communities providing information and resources to Vermonters during the beginning of the pandemic. One thing we learned: The state had been failing to reach out to residents who spoke languages other than English. Officials have since acknowledged this and connected with community leaders.

At the same time, Vermont, like everywhere else, has seen a surge in anti-racism activism after police killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in late May. During one of the initial protests, a crowd confronted Burlington Police in its parking lot, and both the interim chief and deputy chief listened as organizer Harmony Edosomwan and a chorus of other Black men and women enumerated allegations of police brutality and demanded apologies.

For anyone who is interested in following continuing anti-racism actions in Vermont, I highly recommend Anthony Marques’ newsletter “Our Insight.”

In response to these demonstrations, some Vermonters have committed racist acts. The below mural, on a rural road in Jericho, Vermont, was defaced a few days after I took this. Along similar lines, I recently rode along with my colleague Emily Corwin as she set out to answer a question submitted and voted on by audience members for the people-powered podcast Brave Little State: Why do some Vermonters display the Confederate flag (and what does it mean to them?)

Earlier this spring, I met several Vermonters who shared the ways in which the Muslim holiday Ramadan had to change to accommodate the pandemic. Instead of the usual “30 nights of Thanksgiving” as one imam put it, people had to stay out of the mosque and break their fasts alone at home. According to Middlebury College associate chaplain and Muslim advisor Saifa Hussain, the loss of communal activities presented both a sadness as well as a kind of focus for the sacred month.

“So much of our work is around spirituality and retreat,” Saifa told me. “Now we are really forced to establish retreat in our homes.”

I have a whole photo essay up on VPR’s website, but one of my favorite images is of Saifa, below, praying with her two cats nearby. This was on a warm evening in May, and after spending a couple hours letting me photograph them, Saifa and her husband Matthew Casey generously shared a to-go plate of chicken, rice and veggies from their evening meal. I accepted it, despite COVID stuff. And after a couple of months isolating and feeling like the world was falling apart, I don’t know — it meant a lot (and tasted really, really good).

Outside of work, I’ve been finding special solace in getting out for a run or walk most days. As a kind of practice, I guess you could call it a form of prayer, I go through the act of searching for a photo every day of something beautiful or interesting or funny or whatever. Just something I’m grateful for. I post those on my Instagram account.