Paul Lai - This was 2020: Minnesotans write about pandemics and social justice in a historic year

When COVID-19 spread around the world in late 2019 and early 2020, we hardly knew how changed our lives would become. In Minnesota, we entered a stay at home order as part of pandemic precautions in mid-March. Many businesses closed, and workers found themselves unemployed, working from home, or part of a category of essential workers in healthcare, grocery stores, and other services that could not stop for the virus. Our cover art by Carolyn Olson, from a powerful series of pastel drawings of essential worker portraits, depicts grocery store cashiers and baggers, masked as they carry on their duties in helping community members obtain necessary food items. This was a viral pandemic that radically challenged and transformed our social and public lives.

On Memorial Day a couple of months later, just as we were teetering on the edge of summer and realizing that the pandemic restructuring of our public worlds was not going away anytime soon, a Minneapolis police offer knelt on George Floyds neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds outside a convenience store, murdering him in front of a crowd of concerned citizens as three other officers stood by. A teen, Darnella Frazier, captured this horrific act on video, and that video spread widely online and on TV, leading to weeks of Black Lives Matter protests on Minneapolis streets and around the world for social justice. The city burned. The brazen disregard for a black mans life sparked widespread attention to anti-racist work and increasing awareness of racism as a pandemic and a public health concern of its own.

As summer rolled into fall, especially with the presidential election, combative discussions heightened on the airwaves and in our communities about everything ranging from wearing masks to slow the spread of COVID and reopening businesses to immigration policies, gun control, voting rights, and more. Anti-Asian violence intensified as the presidents rhetoric fueled hatred. Throughout the year and into 2021, as we grappled with issues big and small, we also had to figure out different ways of connecting with each other, socially distanced and online.

In early 2021, Ramsey County Library partnered with The Loft Literary Center to host a series of writing workshops online focused on writing about 2020. Led by poet and essayist Michael Kleber-Diggs, these workshops engaged participants through the written word and gave us tools to think and feel through our experiences of the past year. These workshops helped lay the groundwork for This Was 2020 as a collection of writings by Minnesotans of pandemics and social justice.

In collecting these writings, we hope to open up conversations about our experiences as well as to document and archive the year for our communities. When we put out a call for submissions for the book, we received many powerful pieces. We saw whole families submit writings together, and we heard from people across the Twin Cities and elsewhere in the state. We were heartened to see how much care people showed for others, and we selected pieces that demonstrated this sensibility the strongest. Ultimately, we know that there is still a lot we must do to recover from 2020 and to continue anti-racist work, and we hope that these writings help us collectively heal, reflect, and build a better future.

Paul Lai, Librarian
Ramsey County Library
May 31, 2021

He wears a surgical mask, although not enough research has been done to know if cardboard bears can contract Covid or spread it. He mostly wears it to protect others, and so he is a noble, caring bear. The window, against which he presses his face tirelessly, faces the parking lot of a townhouse. Cars come and go, people walk by, and children wave back at his two dimensional hand, and I think I hear him sigh.

He misses the hugs and living room gatherings with friends and family. That all seems distant to the bear now. The murmur of voices that mean other souls are near when you went in a restaurant, or bookstore, or museum. It was the communal background of sound that we never knew was so beautiful until now, he thinks. The bear waves to remind others and himself that we are still all a part of the larger whole.

Brown acrylic paint had been slathered, mud-like, onto a shape that was cut in the image of a bear. It was cut from a cardboard box that had once held a product made on the other side of the world. Those people too, who are as far away as you can get, are now wearing masks similar to the bears. He waves for them too from his window.

Thank heaven, the bear thinks, for our technology that allows us to maintain our relationships. However, talking on computers and phones is too much like pressing against the cold hard window to see others. It is better than being a solitary cardboard box, but not as nice as being closer to others.

On Halloween, in respect for the occasion, he wore an extra mask. Like Batmans cowl. That mask covered what the surgical mask had not. He knew that no gypsies, goblins, princesses, or superheroes would visit with open bags in small hands and declare the time honored ultimatum of Trick or treat. He waved anyway.

During Thanksgiving, he held a turkey leg up high like the lantern on the Statue Of Liberty. He was guiding the faithful to enjoy what repast they may have. Give us your isolated, your masses, yearning to be huddled once again. There was not be a table full of adults and children making noise and eyeing the whipped cream surface of a pumpkin pie. He waved anyway.

A Santa Claus hat perched on the little bears head as snow fell and trees were tied to cars. Lap sitting on Santa would be rarer that year. Static sounds made by the happy tearing of wrapping paper would be briefer than other years in memory. The bear hoped others would see him and smile. A small thing he knew it was, but it was all he could do nonetheless.

Groundhog Day came and went with not enough imagination on the part of the painter to decorate the bear. The little cardboard figure smiled under his mask and waved on anyway. Winter would turn very cold soon, and it was important he keep up his vigil.

Red glitter decorated his chest, like a giant heart medal, on Valentines Day. Love to all because all need love, it seemed to say, at least it seemed to me. That window was frigid and fogged up with his breath, but his acrylic fur kept him warm in his duties.

He knows other holidays are coming that will require him to don a hat or wear a flower. These are not really his style, and sometimes he feels foolish and silly. Blushing under the mask, he thinks of hugs and the closeness of others, of small ones sitting in laps, and of hands being held once more. So he wears those changing adornments with courage and sacrifice.