Tell us about your year — in a photo or six words.
Your 2020 in six words (or one photo)
- Published: December 15, 2020
Here at the News, we’ve written thousands of words about this year — about the buildings, fields and forests that make up its physical framework; about the people who course through those places like neurons in a great nervous system; about every other little cog and sprocket of village life that make Yellow Springs what it is. And we’ve written about the pandemic, of course, which has left its mark on all those things mentioned above.
You’ve written a lot of words, too — here in the News Community Forum pages, but also in Facebook posts, in emails and letters to friends, in poetry and stories and in your own, private volumes.
It’s easy to write a lot when there’s so much to say about 2020.
The New York Times recently featured a column in its Op-Ed section entitled “The Pandemic in Six-Word Memoirs — ‘The World Has Never Felt Smaller.’” In it, author Larry Smith, the progenitor of the “six-word memoir,” remarks on the power of a few words to say a lot — like the famous micro-story attributed to Ernest Hemingway: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.”
Smith writes: “I’ve found that some of the most memorable six-word stories arise in the extremes — during our toughest and most joyous moments.” He then goes on to share a collection of six-word memoirs about the ongoing pandemic, the world’s current extreme:
“Can’t smell the campfire on Zoom.”
“Every day’s a bad hair day.”
“This is what time looks like.”
At the end of each year the Yellow Springs News — after writing so many words ourselves — invites readers to share reflections on the year that has passed, sometimes through the lens of the holidays, or of kindnesses experienced, or of comparisons to the hopes for the year ahead. This year, we welcome and encourage you to do the same — in six words. You don’t have to write about the pandemic — though you’re certainly welcome to if you wish. You don’t have to write about anything big or important or monumental. You don’t even have to write about yourself.
We challenge you to distill your 2020 into just six words and send those words to us. But for those who can’t reduce the year to only six words, we invite you to submit a photo that represents your year — which, of course, is worth an extra 994 words.
We’d love to share your photos and micro-memoirs with your community. And we’d love to share ours with you.
Can’t wait to hear from you.
Send your six-word memoirs or photos to ysnews@ysnews.com, mail them to P.O. Box 187, YS, OH 45387, or drop them in the dropbox outside our office at 253 ½ Xenia Ave.
The deadline for submission is noon on Monday, Dec. 21.
8 Responses to “Your 2020 in six words (or one photo)”
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Uke is my new best friend 🙂
Tatooine dive bar without the band.
My daughter Zooms and I putter.
Dog walks everyday; you’ll see me.
Short Street, It’s Fine Without Doubt
Thanks for the memories Yellow Springs.
Surreal, stressful, isolating, frightening, sad: RESIST!
Order more prunes.
Maybe I will do it tomorrow.