Times Chronicle & Public Spirit
Historical Society of Montgomery County searching for pandemic memorabilia
Organizers encourage submissions for Hindsight 2020 Collection Project
NORRISTOWN » Masking. Social distancing. Quarantining. Personal protective equipment. Remote learning. Zoom meetings.
What will those terms evoke for post-COVID generations?
Staffers at the Historical Society of Montgomery County hope their Hindsight 2020 Collection Project will provide context for future reflections about today’s pandemic. To that end, they’ve put out a call for photos and written materials that illustrate or describe the lifestyle changes that have become commonplace since March 2020 and are looking to archive these items in a digital library.
No, HSMC doesn’t want your face masks. But if you’ve taken pictures, kept a journal, written a poem or otherwise recorded how
COVID has changed your world, the project’s organizers would like to hear from you.
As one Hindsight 2020 release notes:
“2020 proved to be a historic year. The COVID-19 pandemic remains a focal point in most people’s lives. However, the challenges of this pandemic were compounded by a barrage of other situations, including, but not limited to, widespread financial stress, a surge in mental health challenges, protests calling for an end to racial injustice and the Presidential Election.
“We, at HSMC, recognize the historic events unfolding around us. To continue fulfilling our mission to engage with the public to collect, preserve and interpret the documents, artifacts and stories that reflect the evolving mosaic that is our county, we are asking the community to share their stories to document the events that happened in the county during 2020.”
Survivors of 1918’s Spanish flu pandemic are few and far between. But the written and pictorial data that does exist is fascinating, and details about COVID adaptations are likely to be just as interesting in years to come. Adaptations that turned the newlycoined “before times” into a new normal defined by delayed and re-imagined weddings, drive-by birthday parties, bans on nursing home visits, solitary hospital stays, salutes to essential workers, holidays without family and an upsurge in curbside pick-up and outdoor dining.
Did you stop going to the doctor? To church? To funerals? To restaurants? To the movies? To the grocery store?
Did you start baking bread? Washing your hands to a mental rendition of “Happy Birthday”? Cutting your own hair? Hoarding toilet paper? Turning to Peloton when your gym shut down? Sanitizing everything from incoming mail to doorknobs? Chalking your driveway with impromptu art?
“Our biggest response was during the lockdown, and it’s trickled off since then, but we’re still in the process of collecting information and digital photos…images that show what people were doing during the lockdown,” says HSMC Curator Karen Ploch.
“We have some photos from a rally in Norristown…to end the lockdown, and we have entries from a writing contest Upper Dublin Public Library conducted during the spring of 2021. We’re not really looking for a lot of physical items because we don’t the space to keep them, although we do have a cloth face mask made by Mount Zion AME Church, and we just got a banner from the county Department of Health promoting vaccinations for kids.
“So far, we haven’t heard from people who’ve been on the frontlines in places like hospitals and testing sites, and having some of their stories would be great. Also, we’d love to get (contributions) about the Black Lives Matter protests. Those are probably the two biggest holes we’d like to fill.”
According to Ploch, all material gathered for the
Hindsight 2020 Collection Project will be available to the public online “so future researchers can have easy access.” Details about contributing to the project are posted at www.hsmcpa.org. HSMC is located at 1654 DeKalb St., Norristown.
The organization’s research library, archives and galleries are open to the public Mondays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1 to 8 p.m. Additional information is available at 610-272-0297.