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Chava Weissler and Nancy Fredland oral history, 2021 (Part I).
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- speakerOK, yeah, boy, that looks like a great machine.
- speakerI wish I had one of those when I was doing interviews for my field work.
- speakerOh golly, it's fabulous.
- speakerWhat does it come out like, you know, what do you get from that?
- speakerVoices, a voice recording.
- speakerBut it's no longer a tape. Do you remember those tapes?
- speakerRight. Right, right. Oh, boy.
- speakerCassettes. Anyway, go ahead.
- speakerI wanted to ask when you first heard about the pandemic
- speakerand what did you think if if you have any recollections about that?
- speakerI have recollections because I remember reading about China you know, it's they're seeing
- speakerthis in China, you know.
- speakerThat was something that they didn't know about yet, they were going to look into it, so
- speakerand it struck me, as you know, could go on elsewhere to
- speakercould spread. Yeah.
- speakerWe sort of decided Nancy might talk first.
- speakerFine, fine. So I'll just hold off on.
- speakerSo maybe we'll come back to some of these questions when we get to me.
- speakerOh, fine. OK.
- speakerWhat what would you say were some of COVIDs most significant consequences for you
- speakerpersonally,
- speakerHaving to get, you know, vaccinated
- speakerand being I guess if there were restrictions, if you hadn't
- speakerbeen vaccinated, you couldn't go in there, you couldn't go out, just go to stores.
- speakerI know that was really a strong thing just couldn't
- speakercirculate the way you might have to.
- speakerRight. Right. And masking.
- speakerMasking. Yeah. You know, accepted that.
- speakerThat didn't seem to start like somehow, you know.
- speakerYou know, although I guess I've gotten used to it now, but.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerYeah, were there any particular incidents
- speakeror events during COVID that stand out to you?
- speakerAnything, um,
- speakeryou know, watching to see who was vaccinated and who wasn't and what that did, you know?
- speakerWe're always keeping an eye on that.
- speakerAll right.
- speakerHow about at the beginning before there was any vaccine
- speakerand just that that virus was known.
- speakerI mean,
- speakerYeah. What happened here at Cathedral Village.
- speakerOh our Director took charge.
- speakerHe swore to, you know, protect us, you know, really had in his
- speakermind what he could do. Yeah. Yeah, he did.
- speakerAnd he got right in there and got his vaccinations and it was right
- speakerin line to get anything done.
- speakerSo it tightened things up a lot.
- speakerDo you remember our experience over at Marías at the restaurant?
- speakerYeah. Tell Ann about that?
- speakerWhat do you mean
- speakerAbout how when we were eating there for the last day before the lockdown, you know,
- speakerthere were people, we were in the bar,
- speakerThere were families, you know, who were not masked or anything.
- speakerYeah, but don't you remember how. Well, OK, I could tell her later but you know,
- speakerhow the governor got on the television.
- speakerOh yeah. That was very interesting.
- speakerHappened to be watching television while we were eating a pizza or something.
- speakerYes. And and there was the whole array
- speakerof government people, the governor or the
- speakerSecretary of health or whatever her name, whatever.
- speakerShe was amazing. Yeah. And yeah.
- speakerKnow the governor or whatever.
- speakerAnd also then they came on with the Montgomery County people.
- speakerOh Arkush.
- speakerYeah. Afterwards.
- speakerBut there we were sitting in the in the bar.
- speakerOh real surreal.
- speakerAnd there was people all around, there were people all around.
- speakerThey were you know they were there for them was like there for like a post funeral
- speakerlunch or something like that.
- speakerEverybody's there and everybody's walking around and we're sitting there having our pizza
- speakerand beer or whatever it was. It was a place we like to go for lunch.
- speakerAnd all of a sudden, you know, instead of the ball game on the air, it.
- speakerWAs the governor.
- speakerSo that was very interesting and then it went on from there.
- speakerYou know what will result from that?
- speakerWow.
- speakerThat's an interesting environment in which to be informed.
- speakerYeah, well, that's OK because.
- speakerWell, that's that's got to go home and lock down
- speakerbecause they announced all the restrictions.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerAt that time.
- speakerYeah. When we were watching in the bar.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerSo we knew what we had to do next.
- speakerI think Marías is starting to reopen.
- speakerOh it's well reopened.
- speakerOh is it.
- speakerWe ate there.
- speakerOh wonderful.
- speakerYeah. It was crowded full of families running, everybody
- speakerrunning around. We were taken aback that it was so crowded
- speakerWell people were familiar with it, it wasn't they weren't like guests of the place like
- speakerwe felt we were. I mean,
- speakerYeah, there were people, I mean we do, we eat it Maria's but we
- speakerdon't eat there every other week or we had, you know, so we feel like it's a familiar
- speakerplace. Yeah. Still, there were all these people I
- speakermean, you know, we went took Nancy's son John out for his birthday there.
- speakerHe has to go. So and the food was good, but
- speakerit was really quite chaotic.
- speakerI did not expect it to be so crowded.
- speakerWas it lunchtime meals?
- speakerDinner.
- speakerYeah but they had whole family's a lot of kids.
- speakerAnd that's what's nice about Maria's.
- speakerit is it is a little scary after the pandemic.
- speakerRight. Right.
- speakerOh boy.
- speakerI wanted to ask about if there were any adjustments to daily
- speakerlife.
- speakerBecause of the pandemic.
- speakerYeah. Because we were I think we felt we should not go out
- speakerand not that I ever did go out much but still.
- speakerWhat about the change in how we got our meals? Well,
- speakeryou remember they were ordering,
- speakerremember, they delivered them instead of
- speakerYeah, that's right. They were really good about that.
- speakerI guess some of the places I like to go out in the city, you know,
- speakerwere for, you know, no longer possible.
- speakerAnd that was disappointing. You know,
- speakerwhat would you say?
- speakerNo, I was just thinking about how, you know, for months we never went to the dining hall.
- speakerIt was closed. Yeah. And they brought they brought us three meals a day.
- speakerIt took complete care of us.
- speakerRight.
- speakerI also wanted to ask you about technology, about
- speakerif that if you're what role, if any technology played in your
- speakerdaily. Did you do zoom?
- speakerYeah, but we were all doing zoom.
- speakerZoom. Mm hmm.
- speakerAnd staying connected with your family, that's not in town.
- speakerLess of that. But I think you definitely find out about the whole
- speakerthing.
- speakerMm hmm. And the village college was on.
- speakerThat's right. You know, the village college's residence
- speakerlecturing to residents.
- speakerYeah. Audience Yeah.
- speakerHow are your friends and family doing?
- speakerSuppose as far as pandemic goes?
- speakerYeah. That well most
- speakerof the families are like in the far end of Connecticut close to Rhode Island.
- speakerYou know, they're observing, they're doing what they need to do, but they don't seem
- speakerterribly concerned just because not a lot of cases where oh
- speakerWell, not anymore. For a long time, they couldn't see Sylvia in the nursing home.
- speakerYeah, but.
- speakerWas John able to come over here at the
- speakerbeginning?
- speakerWell, you know, he couldn't.
- speakerIn fact, what we did was we zoomed every since he used to come every Friday night for
- speakerShabbat dinner. We we Zoom every Friday night or else we would
- speakerdo face time.
- speakerAnd then when was he able to come by?
- speakerWell, so things loosened up for a while over the summer, and we actually went out
- speakerand met him in a park.
- speakerOh, right.
- speakerAnd also he was here for
- speakerRosh Hashanah dinner and Yom Kippur.
- speakerBut then we didn't see him for a long time until they were allowing visitors.
- speakerAnd then I guess the last couple of months, I'm not quite sure when it started.
- speakerHe's been coming back. Oh, good for Friday night's.
- speakerAnd Nancy's daughter Elizabeth stayed here once right before Passover.
- speakerJohn came for Passover, too, on the first night.
- speakerAnd Elizabeth came with our grandson for a few days right before
- speakerPassover. And she came down last
- speakerweekend for my birthday over
- speakerFriday over Saturday night.
- speakerOh, nice. Yeah. And then the weekend before that, we actually went on our first trip.
- speakerWe went to visit my brother in in Chevy Chase.
- speakerYeah. The virus was on then wasn't it.
- speakerWell yeah it was, it was loosening up.
- speakerThat's why we could go.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerI guess by then everybody.
- speakerYeah. We were all vaccinated even more so we went for my nephew's graduation
- speakerfrom Montgomery County Community College.
- speakerSo I
- speakerMontgomery County, Maryland?
- speakerand I have to say, I was really impressed.
- speakerWe watched the actual graduation on Zoom, which was a few days before I
- speakerwas so impressed by the institution.
- speakerIt's big, isn't it?
- speakerWell, it wasn't so much that it was the quality of the presentation.
- speakerAlso, they did.
- speakerThe governor came. I'm not sure it was the governor.
- speakerBut in any case, the all the Democratic people came.
- speakerThe senator came, had a prepared speech.
- speakerGreat. The what's his name?
- speakerJamie Raskin.
- speakerWow. I was very impressed with the administrative personnel.
- speakerI was very impressed at that.
- speakerWhat they had was each student I mean, they had a chance for each student to say
- speakersomething that I don't know how they picked the ones they used, but
- speakerseemed like all of them, but I guess not.
- speakerYeah, I know there must have been many. I mean, Nathan wasn't on there.
- speakerWe saw his later. But in any case,
- speakerI was impressed at how many times the students mentioned various supportive
- speakerbodies within the within the institution, you know, whether
- speakerit was for students from Asia or whether it was for kids with Asperger's or whether
- speakerit was whatever. You know, I really want to thank my counselor and the whole
- speakerorganization of whatever it is.
- speakerAnd it really also so impressed me this isn't so relevant to your study.
- speakerBut anyway, we watched it on Zoom.
- speakerThat's why it's relevant. Yeah, we probably it would have been a completely different
- speakerthing if we've been able to go in person. Yeah.
- speakerI mean, first of all, it was amazing how many kids thanked God.
- speakerWow.
- speakerI want to give a real shout out to God for supporting me.
- speakerAnd I also, you know, and I also want to thank my family in
- speakerGhana and my family here in the United States.
- speakerAnd a lot of those,
- speakeryou know, my family in Bhutan, my family and wherever, you know, it was really
- speakeryou could see the gateway to college for the immigrant community.
- speakerAnyway, I'm talking about other stuff, but I was that's great.
- speakerI know since you've taught at Community College.
- speakerI mean, it's great.
- speakerIt was really I was, you know, who knows?
- speakerIt may not be as impressive in real life, but it certainly put it on, you know,
- speakerand they also had this is resonate to this.
- speakerThey had an award for the best faculty person,
- speakerbest full time faculty person and the best part time faculty.
- speakerIt was good, the best. And the part time faculty person who got
- speakerthe award was directing the STEM program.
- speakerWow
- speakerthe Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Program as a part
- speakertime faculty. Oh, my goodness.
- speakerSo that tells you something about their finances?
- speakerYeah, it sure does.
- speakerOh boy. Maybe there's a small grant in there to supplement her part time,
- speakeryou know,
- speakerbut I mean, I was thinking, first of all, they praised you to the skies.
- speakerAnd second, she's contingent faculty.
- speakerOh, golly.
- speakerWell, to you that's impressive not to them.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerAnyway, well done. She got a job.
- speakerYeah, well, she did. But the point is they're not paying her a full time salary.
- speakerI understand that. I live that time.
- speakerI knew someone from one of the NIH
- speakerprojects. I knew someone that won the Teacher of the Year at that college and
- speakerwent on to win Teacher of Maryland.
- speakerOh, that's great. Yeah. She was wonderful.
- speakerYeah. Yeah, she was history professor.
- speakerYeah. Anyway, um, anything else that you wanted to add,
- speakerNancy? Anything related to COVID that I didn't
- speakerask about.
- speakerI'm going to ask Chava some questions, and if something occurs to you just interrupt,
- speakerjust just say, yeah,
- speakeryeah, because maybe something I'll say will jog your memory.
- speakerYeah, yeah, yeah.
- speakerBut thanks very much for your memories and
- speakercomments. This is going to be good.
- speakerI won't reiterate the questions, but unless you want me to.
- speakerBut just in general, what sticks out to?
- speakerYou know, me, I could give you an hour's lecture so
- speakerwhich is why I thought I should let Nancy talk.
- speakerI lost my chance. Now she's gone.
- speakerWell you just interrupt if this makes you makes you think of something.
- speakerI'm going to come back to you, Nancy how's that?
- speakerSo I guess
- speakerwe did have I mean, you know, I guess I remember hearing reports
- speakerand first I heard the minimizing.
- speakerIt's no worse than the flu, you know, all that kind of thing.
- speakerAnd then we had that very dramatic experience at Maria's,
- speakervery dramatic, where, you know, we became aware of what
- speakerwas going on in the state and in the county.
- speakerAnd so I did
- speakerfeel, as Nancy did, that Charles took charge.
- speakerAnd I think it is probably rather different being
- speakerin an institution than being alone.
- speakerPardon me.
- speakerSo that I think in some ways it really, even when we were locked into
- speakerour apartments, mitigated the experience.
- speakerIs it still recording.
- speakerI'm looking at the battery. It's fine, OK?
- speakerIt really mitigated the experience of isolation which other people had.
- speakerYeah, I did feel I mean, in some ways,
- speakerI mean, again, it's already starting to unravel, but I often thought I should write a
- speakerlittle piece, which I never write these little pieces that occur to me.
- speakerSo, you know, this was like that to me about how
- speakerthe period of extreme
- speakerlockdown was in some ways like a little harmonious paradise
- speakerhere.
- speakerThat is, we all felt or at least everybody I knew felt that Charles was working
- speakerreally hard, that he was doing a good job, that he cared deeply about
- speakerus. We felt the same way about Julian.
- speakerWe were impressed with all of the staff and their dedication and that
- speakerit would be a time that I felt like it was a time when
- speakerpeople would not people would, you know, it a time when
- speakercriticism of the administration, which there always is, is muted
- speakerin favor of, are all pulling together to get.
- speakerI agree. Yeah. Yeah.
- speakerSo I think, you know,
- speakerthat was for the first, you know, I don't know, many months.
- speakerI mean, even until relatively recently, I would say that was my experience here was
- speakerthat that Charles was doing his best, the administration were doing their best,
- speakerthe dining staff were doing their best, and Julian's sense of humor
- speakerhelped to and and the fact that they did so
- speakermany special events for us. All of a sudden they show up with beer and pretzels, you
- speakerknow, or or, you know, the July 4th decorations.
- speakerI was realizing I still have those July 4th cups that they gave out.
- speakerIt's almost July 4th again.
- speakerAnd and, you know, coming around the graduation
- speakercelebration for those who graduated and Charles in his graduation robes because
- speakerhe got his whatever degree got, I remember.
- speakerSo that and I felt like we were not that
- speakerisolated. We we were here, you know,
- speakerMitzi and I, who both like to cook and you, too, on occasion, you know, we would drop off
- speakerlittle foods we had made at each other's apartments, sort
- speakerof wave at each other. People would go outside for walks so
- speakerthat it really you
- speakerDid you see them when you dropped down and gave them stuff?
- speakerOh, I can't. No, you say no, I'm going to leave this outside
- speakeryour door, OK?
- speakerYou know, and sometimes
- speakeryou might catch a glimpse and you know that way with your mask on, you know,
- speakerand.
- speakerYou know, or somebody would would be baking cookies and they'd give good give out to
- speakerpeople they knew, you know, that kind of thing.
- speakerSo that I think it was very different from living
- speakeralone in a house or living alone even in an apartment building.
- speakerI mean, depending on the kind of apartment building, some apartment buildings are more
- speakerright. Sociable, sociable than others.
- speakerSo in some ways, I thought we were protected from
- speakerthe worst of the isolation here.
- speakerAnd also they cared, you know, it's like, oh, you know,
- speakerthe people that sort of had their eye out.
- speakerI mean, this whole transition with personal care is very controversial.
- speakerBut part of the genesis of it was realizing that during the lockdown there were
- speakerpeople who never came out of their apartments.
- speakerRight.
- speakerSo they're still arguing.
- speakerWell, yes. Or there were you know, I mean, this has been going on
- speakerfor, you know, just about a year and a half, almost since the beginning.
- speakerI'd say also at the beginning it
- speakerwas and you could see this nationally, a stimulus, a certain kind of creativity.
- speakerThat is, you know, all those people break baking bread.
- speakerI was baking bread, too. I revived my sour dough cultures just like the rest of the
- speakernation. You know, it was a wonderful cartoon in The New Yorker,
- speakeryou know, where a man and a woman are standing next to each other.
- speakerAn enormous blob of dough is rising over the New York City scape.
- speakerAnd one of them says to the other, I told you not to overfeed the sourdough.
- speakerAnd, you know, and and there were sort of creative
- speakerthings. I couldn't go out to buy plants for my little garden
- speakerhere. So I just I put out this notice on the form will swap
- speakerbread for flowers and people some people brought me flowers and
- speakerI gave them loaves of bread, you know.
- speakerSo in any case.
- speakerSo there was that. And also, I think, you know, I'm
- speakervery active in the village college in which residents teach sort of we have six month
- speakerterms, spring, fall, winter, spring, summer, winter and fall,
- speakerwhatever fall. I'm getting them out of order.
- speakerOh, boy. Anyway, and we were just about
- speakerto have, I guess, our spring term when this locked down and we just canceled
- speakerit. But by the summer, they were up on Zoom.
- speakerI was not teaching because I was also very sick during the summer.
- speakerSo I mean, and the ways in which that was affected by COVID was
- speakerthey actually in fact thought it was COVID to begin with, which I did not have.
- speakerBut everybody who came down, I had to spend three weeks and Nancy had to come with
- speakerme in White Lodge and they put us in isolation,
- speakeryou know, in the COVID isolation. They did that with everyone, you know,
- speakeryou know, so and everybody was there in full PPE and and all that kind
- speakerof stuff. Yeah, of course, you know, the gowns, the face
- speakershields, all that kind of stuff.
- speakerSo but they were really quite,
- speakeryou know, at first, quite sure that was what I had.
- speakerYou know, it was it was it was a long abscess.
- speakerSo it wasn't so surprising that they thought it was something like that.
- speakerBut but, you know, I had a high fever and I, you know, all this kind of stuff.
- speakerSo so the experience
- speakerof being in White Lodge was somewhat different.
- speakerAnd the fact that at first, you know, until I had, you know, a couple of negative tests
- speakeror whatever, and they could move us out of the isolation wing, it was I remember I went
- speakerin on my birthday.
- speakerOh, awful.
- speakerI was so sure I was going to have to do something terrible on my birthday this year.
- speakerIt's like leftover trauma. Oh, so so that was one thing.
- speakerAnd then I was really not well enough to teach in village college in the summer, which I
- speakerordinarily do. So other people picked up the time I had, you know,
- speakerwhich was nice of the people, you know, the resurrected old classes and things like
- speakerthat to feel good. And so yeah,
- speakerI mean and I've been very involved in trying to figure out all the Zoom technology
- speakerfor the village college.
- speakerWe haven't we did regularly zoom with
- speakerNancy's son on Friday nights and probably we did
- speakernot do any more face time than usual
- speakerfor some for with her daughter in Vermont.
- speakerI guess, you know, there was some stuff we did, maybe Thanksgiving.
- speakerI think we might very well have zoomed with my brother and his family because we usually
- speakerhave Thanksgiving. Yes.
- speakerWell, I don't know, I guess to be tell a telephone still seemed adequate, I prefer
- speakerit. Yeah, yeah.
- speakerAnd we did talk on the phone to friends.
- speakerOh yeah. My women's group switched to Zoom.
- speakerOh, I have a women's group that's been meeting in various forms since the 1970s.
- speakerWow.
- speakerOld friends.
- speakerYeah. You know, did, did you did you want to add something, Nancy,
- speakerat this point?
- speakerYeah. I mean, you know, the other thing I just wanted to say was
- speakerI started to say this is sort of burst of creativity in response to the
- speakerbeginning of it all.
- speakerAnd, you know, it's sort of like, oh, how are we going to do exercise?
- speakerWe've got Coach COSAC. You remember Coach COSAC?
- speakerOh, yes, yes, yeah.
- speakerTo yeah,
- speakerWe like Coach Cosan.
- speakerYeah. And then the sort of we had stopped doing after I came back from
- speakerbeing sick and we also had help at home and all that kind of stuff.
- speakerIt was, it was kind of different. But in any case that was is the way we kept up our
- speakerspirits. We got some exercise. Yes.
- speakerThat cheered us up
- speakerOh is it a show because I watch him on video?
- speakerNo that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- speakerHe's good. And let's see what else.
- speakerSo but I would say that by this point which is over a year later.
- speakerYeah. I'm tired out, I'm tired of, of trying to do creative things
- speakerwhich of course you don't do as many of.
- speakerBut I sort of like it was a tremendous burst of energy at the beginning
- speakerand then my energy gradually got lower and lower
- speakerso that I didn't have I just didn't have as much
- speakerenergy for trying to do things that fix things up or cheered us
- speakerup or that kind of.
- speakerAnd then, of course, we began to be able to do regular things like go to the dining hall
- speakeror have people over. Yeah.
- speakerGo out occasionally to restaurants or something like that.
- speakerGo out to a park. So so I guess
- speakerthat's just trying to think.
- speakerWas there anything else you asked that I didn't do.
- speakerAnything else that you remember, dear, from the year.
- speakerNo, I think you covered it.
- speakerYeah.
- speakerYeah. This is very helpful.
- speakerThank you very, very much.
- speakerBoth of you. Yeah.
