Marty—Santiago to Milwaukee
I was so grateful to be able to catch up with my undergrad anthropology pal, Marty Scissler for a talk about his experience with the pandemic.
Marty’s story begins in Santiago, Chile—where he lived for the past three years. The city turned into a place of unrest, and a new job location in Spain was on the horizon. Instead of saying goodbye to his friends with hugs, cocktails, and laughter and a slow move to Spain—Marty found himself with a cancelled job and a rapid-speed journey home to Milwaukee to hunker down with his family. Here’s Marty’s story, recorded May 24, 2020:
“Basically everything that I was set to do got cut short by the pandemic.”
“It was super anti-climatic I guess. All the things that you think that you’ll get to go through when you say goodbye to a place I didn’t get to do. So it was very weird.”
As this was the very start of cases spreading outside of China, Marty recalls that plane ride home…
The last photo Marty took from his window in Santiago, Chile
“The flight experience was crazy, they were taking everybody’s temperature before getting on the plane, and I didn’t have a mask at that time—so I was just washing my hands and using a lot of hand sanitizer. I was pretty panicked about it.”
Settled in and safe in Milwaukee, we discussed how centric technology is in our ability to keep connections.
“I feel like every part of my life that was already virtual is just now even more so ”
“I have been cooking my way through a lot of different recipes. I recently got “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” also. It’s been fun to explore—it’s really sciency—so it’s been fun to explore more sciency part of cooking and why things work they work. It helps you to do more, cooking improv [...] It’s nice to provide that for me and share that with my family.”
A theme is spending some more time enjoying the passions Marty already had: cooking, baking, yoga, and music.
“I didn’t have all my instruments with me in Chile, so coming home and having all my, home recording equipment, it’s been fun to—it’s helpful to be able to do that. Even if there’s nothing “productive” coming out it. ”
“I think that’s one of the big pandemic myths: you have to perfect a craft during this time [...] If nothing comes out of it, then so be it. I am just doing it to feel comfortable, feel happy.”
There was one thing Marty didn’t say, that I had notice from social media: he had been donning some incredibly fun and funky outfits during quarentine and gracing us with them on his instagram. Turns out, there’s some community-oriented love surrounding those outfits :)
“The last one that I posted, I had an article or two from a thrift store in Milwaukee. That’s something that I’ve been trying to do too. [...] I want to support them and she’s also donated some of her proceeds to to donate PPE to medical professionals. So, trying to give back, and trying to look good while doing it.”
“In the end it really is just about getting through it. And that’s why that communities coming together, that’s why that feels more essential. It really is just about getting through it, there is nothing glamorous about it at all.
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