To All Readers

Welcome to the inaugural issue of A Plate of Pandemic:  Creativity in a Time of Crisis. Its purpose is to offer readers, on a quarterly basis, a selection of fine writing and art that responds to this difficult time in particular, and perhaps, more generally, to all difficult times.  Self-preservation has caused us to isolate from others for more than a year, and as I watched society shut down, I wondered whether Orwell’s prediction of perpetual war, perpetual surveillance, and perpetual misery had finally come to pass. 

Yet even while enmeshed in these depressing thoughts, I saw countervailing trends.  Extreme changes in workforce composition, in commerce, and in office protocols meant vehicular traffic was greatly reduced; consequently, the atmosphere, although sadder, had literally become quieter and cleaner.  People were walking and biking now, occasionally socializing outside in small groups.  Working from home relieved many of stressful commutes and harsh office settings, allowing them to become happier employees.  While the daily newspapers noted these facts, they paid almost equal attention, it seemed, to new trends in food culture.  Since most restaurants were closed, their patrons had to buy prepared food or cook for themselves.  Hundreds of articles appeared about folks learning to cook, experimenting with new ingredients and recipes, about restaurants reinvented as food banks or take-out shops, and professional chefs selling homemade delicacies from their apartments.  

All these culinary work-arounds offered a metaphor:  the pandemic as a catalyst for creative endeavor.  The pandemic has, as it were, handed writers and artists a feast, ingredient by ingredient, course by course, plate by plate.  It has allowed people more time to write, to read, to make music, dance, drama, and art.  It has extended subject matter and provided incentives to make good use of limited time, to unburden, to filter life through imagination and shape it into meaningful expression.  If cooks are cooking up a storm, writers are also working intensively, and artists are making art that wouldn’t have been possible during a pre-pandemic time, simply because the conditions of life have so dramatically shifted. 

My hope, and the mission of A Plate of Pandemic, is to serve up some of this impressive work to a readership hungry and in need of sustenance. 

Selma Moss-Ward

Editor

editoraplate@gmail.com

March 2021