As school districts switched to remote learning, parents found themselves having to supervise their children’s school work at home. Here Willa and Sylvie Halfhill of Bettendorf show off the Mario characters they created out of Post-It notes, a lesson combing math and art, dreamed up by their dad, Matt.
Personal protective equipment, or PPE, was in critically short supply for health care workers early on in the pandemic, so home sewers stepped up, making and donating masks. In this photo, Stephanie De Pasquale Soebbing, of Rock Island, cuts fabric for an Olson mask. As the pandemic wore on, the general public was advised to wear masks to stop the spread, and that advice eventually became political and divisive among some people.
If it weren’t for the pandemic, Sue and Mike Freburg of Bettendorf might never have built a game room in their basement. A forgotten ping pong table was the inspiration for turning this unused storage space into a game room. Note the barn doors at left that hide shelves.
To show solidarity and the feeling that “we’re all in this together,” many people early on in the pandemic made paper hearts and posted them in their windows. These hearts were in a home off Bettendorf’s Olympia Drive.
Tibe and Doug Vander Linden of Muscatine “adopted” Muscatine High School senior Hope Reichert as part of a Facebook project to brighten the lives of 2020 seniors who missed out on so many other rites of passage. The Vander Lindens sent Hope an Iowa State University face mask and a balloon-topped basket of treats.
Because people were stuck at home with limited options of things to do, bird-watching increased nationally and in the Quad-Cities. Diane Noll, of LeClaire, shared this photo of bright male eastern goldfinches at her feeder.
Another sign of the coronavirus times: A happy birthday wish for a 5-year-old named Natalie, staked out in big letters in her front yard. The sign was accompanied by a car parade. High school graduation signs also were popular and some residents started small businesses to make the signs.
When the Festival of Trees joined the ranks of thousands of events that were canceled, Tim Riley of Eldridge decided to create his own Sugar Plum Ball for his daughter, Bella. Here the two ham it up for the camera before their personal ball on Nov. 24.
Some years I have to cast around for top stories in Home & Garden.
In this section as elsewhere, COVID-19 took center stage. Stuck at home, Quad-Citians helped children with their school work, tackled home improvement projects, planted more gardens, baked and searched for things to be happy about.
They also canceled events — spring plant sales, 50th anniversary celebrations of Earth Day, summer garden tours, the biannual quilt show and the Gold Coast tour of homes.
Also canceled were the Illinois and Iowa state fairs, the Rock Island County and Mississippi Valley Fair, 4-H competitions, fall and holiday bazaars and the Quad-City Arts Festival of Trees.
The latter prompted Tim Riley, of Eldridge, and Jackson Frerichs, of Davenport, to create do-it-yourself Sugar Plum balls for their daughters at home, complete with dinner, dessert, dancing, flowers and fancy clothes.
Former Times staffer and “Home Rookie” columnist Stephanie De Pasquale Soebbing took time out from her quilt business to sew and ship face masks for coronavirus protection, and showed us how to do it ourselves.
Bird-watching soared both nationally and in the Quad-Cities as people with little else to do finally took notice of a fascinating world just outside their windows. Kelly McKay, of Hampton, Illinois, tells me he has twice as many people signed up to be “feeder watchers” during this year’s Christmas Bird Count as in a normal year.
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