BAY AREA NEIGHBORHOODS 

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Life in the Time of COVID-19
A Photo Essay
​by  Charlene Anderson

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These days, we wear a mask everywhere we go. 

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There are long lines to buy things, even outside.

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​There are boarded up buildings, though the business owners
​do their best to stay open and be helpful

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Some even try to turn the boarding into art.

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At last, we can go to The Green Apple, but there is plenty
of reading before we even get in.

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Sometimes we feel like we are living in a tiny house, alone,

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Or are stranded in a mass of tangled weeds,
​not knowing what to do or where to go.

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Ocean Beach is still here, but with almost nobody on it.
(It was always fairly empty, but not like now.)

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And flowers bloom,
​uproariously, gloriously, obliviously.

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So, the world goes on,
​though certainly not as before.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Charlene Anderson received an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from San Francisco State University and spent most of her working life at the University of California San Francisco in grant administration. As a child, she always knew she would write, told stories to her friends, and even invented a pen name for herself, Charles Andrè. So, while working on budgets and submitting grant proposals at UCSF, she continued to write and, in 2001 published a novel, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board. She has served in that capacity ever since.

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