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Pauline Charles: Covid's Affect on the Economy, Baltimore
In 2021, a coalition of national museum and library associations awarded the Peale (Baltimore, Maryland) a Communities for Immunity grant. The goal of the project is for trusted, local institutions to engage their communities in order to boost COVID-19 vaccine confidence. Since being awarded the grant, we've been gathering stories from people about their experiences with COVID and getting the vaccine.
Whitney Frazier (00:00): All right. So I'm here with Ms. Pauline. Ms. Pauline, will you introduce yourself?
Pauline Charles (00:05): Certainly. My name is Pauline Charles. I live in Darley Park, I'm the president here. I'm 62 years old and I've been in the community over 40 years.
Whitney Frazier (00:16): Great. And when did you first become aware of COVID and what are your thoughts on how your experience has been over the last two years?
Pauline Charles (00:27): Well actually, right before they introduced COVID or was talking about COVID, I was extremely sick, and it just felt like it was something more than the flu. I mean, complete with body aches, the shakes, the chills. And as time went on, I spoke to a few other people who said pretty much the same thing, believed that they had COVID before they start talking about it so much or during the big shutdown. But actually COVID, it affects so many different people in different ways. Once they start closing down things and we watching the prices of everything go up and then you watch families that was receiving food stamps. And it was just amazing to go into the market and watch how some people carts... You could pretty much tell people are during the COVID time, just in the market. They were getting double food stamps, the children were getting food stamps. So you would see people and the cart running over.
Pauline Charles (01:33): And then you would have the working class people, what have you, and you could automatically you could just tell, I don't know if you noticed it, but you could look at someone elses cart and they would have five or six things that you're like, "Oh, they're paying with cash." And the person in front of a cart could be running over. So basically, you watch that sort of thing occur and then you just became a part of a distance. You couldn't communicate, you couldn't do family gatherings. We had two family reunions that we were supposed to have, that we couldn't have. So it's been a long time, even now, since financially now, family can't seem to get together.
Whitney Frazier (02:15): Yeah. Say more about that. So it sounds like you saw different impacts on different groups of people based on [crosstalk 00:02:24]
Pauline Charles (02:24): Absolutely. Yes. Just back again to the supermarket, you've been of course, and just seeing how the prices have went up tremendously. So of course, once again, you could tell, I'm in the market in the express line, because I only have six items, where if you look at over to my left their cart is running over, because these folks have food stamps, which makes all the difference. Then it's like, I went to Sam's Club this morning. We were actually looking at the prices of meats. My husband's a steak eater and literally, the steaks are running 45, $50 bucks a pack. Even looking at the meats in there, some of them look dark, they're so expensive. So people, they're sitting there and then probably go on sale. But it's definitely... I mean, as you know, the price of chicken wings, how that is. It's really affecting people, just the price of food.
Asset ID: 2022.05.20
Find a complete transcription on the Peale's website.
Photo by Kirby Griffin.
The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the recordings for this project do not necessarily represent those of the Peale or the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
View all episodes
By The PealeIn 2021, a coalition of national museum and library associations awarded the Peale (Baltimore, Maryland) a Communities for Immunity grant. The goal of the project is for trusted, local institutions to engage their communities in order to boost COVID-19 vaccine confidence. Since being awarded the grant, we've been gathering stories from people about their experiences with COVID and getting the vaccine.
Whitney Frazier (00:00): All right. So I'm here with Ms. Pauline. Ms. Pauline, will you introduce yourself?
Pauline Charles (00:05): Certainly. My name is Pauline Charles. I live in Darley Park, I'm the president here. I'm 62 years old and I've been in the community over 40 years.
Whitney Frazier (00:16): Great. And when did you first become aware of COVID and what are your thoughts on how your experience has been over the last two years?
Pauline Charles (00:27): Well actually, right before they introduced COVID or was talking about COVID, I was extremely sick, and it just felt like it was something more than the flu. I mean, complete with body aches, the shakes, the chills. And as time went on, I spoke to a few other people who said pretty much the same thing, believed that they had COVID before they start talking about it so much or during the big shutdown. But actually COVID, it affects so many different people in different ways. Once they start closing down things and we watching the prices of everything go up and then you watch families that was receiving food stamps. And it was just amazing to go into the market and watch how some people carts... You could pretty much tell people are during the COVID time, just in the market. They were getting double food stamps, the children were getting food stamps. So you would see people and the cart running over.
Pauline Charles (01:33): And then you would have the working class people, what have you, and you could automatically you could just tell, I don't know if you noticed it, but you could look at someone elses cart and they would have five or six things that you're like, "Oh, they're paying with cash." And the person in front of a cart could be running over. So basically, you watch that sort of thing occur and then you just became a part of a distance. You couldn't communicate, you couldn't do family gatherings. We had two family reunions that we were supposed to have, that we couldn't have. So it's been a long time, even now, since financially now, family can't seem to get together.
Whitney Frazier (02:15): Yeah. Say more about that. So it sounds like you saw different impacts on different groups of people based on [crosstalk 00:02:24]
Pauline Charles (02:24): Absolutely. Yes. Just back again to the supermarket, you've been of course, and just seeing how the prices have went up tremendously. So of course, once again, you could tell, I'm in the market in the express line, because I only have six items, where if you look at over to my left their cart is running over, because these folks have food stamps, which makes all the difference. Then it's like, I went to Sam's Club this morning. We were actually looking at the prices of meats. My husband's a steak eater and literally, the steaks are running 45, $50 bucks a pack. Even looking at the meats in there, some of them look dark, they're so expensive. So people, they're sitting there and then probably go on sale. But it's definitely... I mean, as you know, the price of chicken wings, how that is. It's really affecting people, just the price of food.
Asset ID: 2022.05.20
Find a complete transcription on the Peale's website.
Photo by Kirby Griffin.
The views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in the recordings for this project do not necessarily represent those of the Peale or the Institute of Museum and Library Services.