There's said to be an old curse: may you live in interesting times.
Safe to say this spring qualifies.
It doesn't take a historian to know we're living through history. But for what it's worth, they agree.
East Tennessee History Center curator Adam Alfrey says health emergencies have happened here before. Newspaper clippings show cholera, flu and the horsemen of death of tuberculosis. But they don't capture the personal details that help history come alive.
That's why the history center has started a project asking for submissions of stories from people in the community about their experience during the coronavirus crisis.
"Those things help to put flesh on the bones of just names and dates that are included in timelines," said elementary school teacher Jan Dickens, who has participated in the history center's COVID-19 stories project.
It's not just stories Alfrey is collecting, but objects--maybe homemade face masks, for example.
"It's little wrinkles like that sometimes get lost in the larger more official record from an event," he said.
It's hard to think of what's happening to us now as a memory, but historians today are planning for historians tomorrow to tell people what life was like during these interesting times.
And they need your help. You can contribute your story by heading to the East Tennessee Historical Society's website at this link.