We’re living (and dying) in a historic momenton April 17, 2020 at 6:15 pm

This COVID-19 interlude will have a place in history. We can too.

On Thursday, the Chicago History Museum announced the launch of “In This Together,” an effort to collect a digital record of the pandemic era as we’re living it, in “real time.”

CHM is inviting residents of Chicago and the suburbs to contribute stories, diaries, photos, videos, and audio recordings of their lives during this time of illness, economic disaster, and isolation.

“Now more than ever, the Chicago History Museum is committed to sharing Chicago’s stories,” CHM president Gary T. Johnson said in the announcement. The museum will post much of this material at chicagohistory.org/documentingcovid19. Some will go into the permanent collection.

There’s more information about “In This Together” at chicagohistory.org/covid19history/. Contributions can be made here.

I’m sending them my snapshot of Millennium Park in shadow, barricaded and empty on a sunny April afternoon. The only other time I’d seen the city this vacant and eerily quiet was on 9/11, a few hours after New York had been hit.

What have you got? v

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