High Street Hill Association COVID Portrait Project
May-June, 2022
Brookline’s High Street Hill neighborhood is located south of Route 9 and Brookline Village. Also known as “Pill Hill” for the prevalence of doctors in years past, it is loosely bounded by Walnut Street on the northwest and Leverett Pond in the southeast, and is defined by the Pill Hill Local Historic District in Brookline. During the lockdown, the neighborhood galvanized itself, with many people sharing their expertise, connections, resources, and time to help out locally and beyond to fight Covid and its impact. Many were also happy to make time to sit for socially distanced portraits and to share their thoughts on the pandemic.
These photographs were taken in May and June, 2020, to record the thoughts, experiences, and existence of some High Street Hill neighbors during the Covid crisis.
Angus, Freddy, and Hilary - May 6 . . . . . . “It’s kind of been a bit confusing. Like, we don’t know what to do. It’s all new to us.” - Angus . . . . . . “I really miss my friends, but school is a lot less work.” - Freddy . . . . . . “I like the slowdown, somewhat, of life, although work is bonkers.” - Hilary
Diana - May 7 . . . . . . “The best thing has been my next-door neighbor, who has been shopping for me. And I’ve been baking bread every day, two loaves. They get one, plus any cakes or other things I make, and she supplies me with everything I need.” - Diana
Wendy - May 7 . . . . . . “I work at the Public Health Department for the town. Our inquiries went from, ‘Are they going to close the schools?’ and ‘Can I have my fundraiser?’ to ‘I’m worried my building isn’t being cleaned well enough,’ and, ‘I have a neighbor across the street who has Covid. What should I do?’ We couldn’t anticipate all the different questions we were going to get, so it’s been a real learning experience.”
Elizabeth, Pat, Will, Emma, and Peter - May 6 . . . . . . What have you learned about your parents? “They’re boring.” - Emma . . . . . . “I’ve learned a lot more about their arguments about what they’ve bought on Amazon.” - Will . . . . . . “That they don’t buy enough toilet paper.” - Pete
Dorothy - May 7 . . . . . . “The other thing that has helped me get through it... I went to Home Depot early on because I decided I absolutely had to buy pansies and plant them. I always get pansies, and I get them early, and I thought ‘I don’t care what the rules are. I am going to Home Depot and buying a flat of pansies.’”
Lorraine and Bennett - May 7 . . . . . . Lorraine - “We are two musicians spending lots of time playing together. We play music, of course, and backgammon, we cook, and we put together 1,000 piece picture puzzles. We suddenly have time for all of it!" . . . . . . Bennett - “I taught her how to play backgammon, so she knows everything I know, plus what she knows, and I’ll never figure that out. So she’s got me.”
Deane, Micaela, Nathan, Eliza, and Peter - May 7 . . . . . . Peter - “We’re playing Minecraft with our cousins.” . . . . . . Nathan - “They have cousins all over the country, and they’re building a whole world with them. They’re like, ‘Follow me! Run over here! Where are you?’ So, they’re spending a lot of time in Minecraft, but it has this feeling of co-presence with other kids that the other video stuff doesn’t.”
Olivia, Chris, Eliza, and Ben - May 7 . . . . . . “We each have our designated rooms in the house. Dad gets the office, Ben gets the living room, I get my bedroom, mom gets the dining room. So we all work in our individual spaces. We usually don’t spend that much time together. We’re lucky enough to have enough space in the house to have some semblance of independence.” - Eliza
Pam - May 7 . . . . . . “Every day around 5:30, my daughter and granddaughter arrive for cocktail hour. They sit in the hall by the elevator, and I sit in a chair by the door into my unit, and we converse and imbibe, wine for the adults, a sprite for the child.”
Anita - May 6 . . . . . . "I did something on Sunday which was very liberating. I drove out to see my son and daughter in law in Concord. They had a small table in their backyard for me and another for them. It was wonderful. And we had a lovely dinner and a great time. I climbed a tree! It was a great escape.”
Peggy and Tad - May 6 . . . . . . “In the evenings we’ve been through a couple of TV series, which is something we’ve rarely done. But we’ve found a couple of good ones, including A French Village, which fortunately goes on for many, many episodes.” - Tad
Katie, Kent, Bailey, and Beau - May 7 . . . . . . “Bailey went and saw her friend Lou the other day so we could get a cake pan for Beau’s birthday. And they were saying hi to each other from afar, and I realized they don’t really know how to socialize anymore.” - Katie
Cassie, Rose, Phoebe, and Sarah - May 6 . . . . . . Sarah - “Mostly I am home at the moment, but one day a week I go and work at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in the Respiratory Infection Clinic.” . . . . . . Cassie - “And she works with the Covid patients.” . . . . . . Phoebe - “She says she’d rather get Covid than be stuck with us all day long.”
David - May 7 . . . . . . “I think in my 20 years plus in business, the process of safely re-opening my Jiu Jitsu Academy has been the most constantly stressful and confusing. With all of the due diligence and information overload, I’ve been doing over 300 emails and text messages per day, on top of teaching all of my online and in-person socially distanced classes.”
Vivian and Don - June 7 . . . . . . “Teaching violin and piano online has been a real challenge for us. I thought I would not be able to relate effectively to my students, because I work collaboratively rather than dictating. In a sense you can get closer. They get closer into the camera, and you get a kind of vibration I didn’t think possible. It has been stimulating to see that we could still teach empathetically and intuitively. ” - Don
Frances - May 6 . . . . . . “I’ve been watching ‘Squawk Box’ every morning to get a broad picture of the economy, and they have Scott Gottlieb on every morning so you really get up to date. It makes me more comfortable to feel that I have a pretty accurate understanding of what’s going on.”
Jenn, Biff, Ruby, Lawson, and Charlie - May 6 . . . . . . What advice do you have for the future? . . . . . . “Take it seriously early on. I feel like we’re in an ok situation, but it could be a lot better. It could be worse, but it could be a lot better.” - Biff
Thomas, Elaine, Madeline, and Tommy - May 7 . . . . . . “I would listen to my grandmother and my dad talk about World War II, the Korean War (my father’s a Korean War veteran) and the Depression, difficult times they went through, and I thought our society was so far advanced with technology and medicine that we would never experience anything like what they used to talk about. And now, here we are.” - Elaine
Joanna and Tom - May 6 . . . . . . “I think of my dad. I was a senior in college, and I called my parents after the John F. Kennedy assassination, and I said I thought the world was going to end. And my dad, a solid, pragmatic, no-nonsense, Yankee school teacher, a Republican, said, ‘This is a strong country. We’ve come through many, many hard times. We will come through this.’ And he was right. We did.” - Joanna
Ginger and Djems - May 6 . . . . . . “Other generations sacrificed a lot collectively, went to wars, built infrastructure, Victory Gardens, everyone doing their part. But these days we can’t even put on a mask because it oppresses our freedom. All the generations before gave up things because they knew that it wasn’t just going to be for them. They were paying it forward. We can’t even pay the present.” - Djems
Jillian, Christoph, and Casper - May 6 . . . . . . “It might be a little controversial but I would really ask people in the future to reflect on the negative long-term impact of these restrictions… it’s always a trade-off between short-term benefits and long-term costs.” - Christoph
Kate and Ben - June 7. “A frustrating thing is that we can’t go to the demonstrations, because we would be there. We’re there in spirit, but we don’t have a way of actually raising our hand in the crowd.” - Kate
Jennifer and Rob - June 7 . . . . . . “Gracie’s 11 years old. She’s tough as nails. Nothing’s ever bothered her. The last couple weeks, the fireworks. You can hear them in the distance and it’s driving her crazy. We had to go get some special medication.” - Rob
Jessica, Preble, Tilde, Helen, and Willie - June 7 . . . . . . “We will remember this time… with puppies in it.” - Jessica
Lena, Brent, Bella, Gracie, and Max - May 6 . . . . . . “There’s some really positive elements of this that I hope stick, and that we don’t get so busy that we forget about the good things.” - Brent
Phoebe and Elaine - May 6 . . . . . . “Open up your heart. Open up your mind. Accept. And make do.” - Phoebe
Kate - May 6 . . . . . . “I ponder anew and again the prayer attributed to St. Augustine, ‘Keep watch with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight…’ and I listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing ‘There's Someone to Watch over Me.’"
Caroline, Creighton, Skylar, and Alden - May 6 . . . . . . “Be kind. Stay safe.” - Schuyler
Mary, Paul, Annina, and Francesca - August 4 . . . . . . “I spent my entire career planning for this pandemic. The terribly flawed US response, shocking death toll, and the use of this disease to decimate the poor and disenfranchised and destroy people’s lives and livelihoods is almost unbearable. The Trump administration’s response to the pandemic is the ultimate form of voter suppression.” - Mary
Kunika, Nikhil, Ishaan, and Armaan, - August 3 . . . . . . “It was the week before finals, and we were all suddenly told to leave campus. Everyone stopped studying; no one did anything they were supposed to do. We just walked around to people’s houses saying, “Hey, it’s me. We probably haven't talked since first year but I’m back.” - Ishaan
Tom, Kate, Noah, and Esther - August 5 . . . . . . “One of the reasons we constrain our activities is that we have my wife’s parents at home. Because of the pandemic, we cannot find tickets for them to go back to China. They’ve been here since last December until now. They were supposed to leave a month ago, but it’s really complicated to get them on a plane now. They really want to go back, too.” - Tom
Tammy, Isaac, Joshua, and Abigail - August 2 . . . . . . “What were you guys playing today?” - Isaac . . . . . . “Oh yeah - what did you play today?” - Tammy . . . . . . “The Floor Is Lava!!!” - Joshua and Abigail