Members of the Coon family of Adams County in rural Eastern Washington are no strangers to adversity and challenges on their fifth-generation family cattle ranch. But this moment is different; the pandemic has sent the kids home from school, caused health concerns in their community and threatened the livelihood of their cattle business.

Last spring, Barbara Earl Thomas was working diligently on her upcoming exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, painstakingly cutting silhouettes of Black and brown children into large swaths of stiff paper. Then the pandemic brought everything to a halt. But Thomas stayed on course, at first working alone, and eventually aided by assistants in her outdoor studio. With the nation’s attention newly alert to social justice, she expands upon her lifelong journey of exploring race and innocence through revelatory visual art.
 

As weeks turn into months, Washingtonians try to make sense of the pandemic. Every walk of life has been upended by COVID-19, and as cases continue to multiply, we have tried to learn how to adjust. We've faced changes to rituals, celebrations, work and play. Elections and another national reckoning with institutionalized racism merged together with the health crisis to present unprecedented challenges, isolation and adjustments.

It’s adapt or disappear in the pandemic economy.

A debt crisis looms as renters turn to credit cards to stay afloat. Experts worry people may be destroying their credit to make ends meet during the pandemic.

The art of the mask comes to Seattle’s Museum of Museums.

Online classes and no college sports spell trouble for small towns that lean on a higher ed economy. From WSU to Western, college town businesses are feeling the squeeze.

Crosscut journalist Manola Secaira and Crosscut’s News and Politics editor Donna Blankinship speak about the stories that are a part of the new series, Facing the Fallout, which highlight the difficult decisions members of our community have had to make due to the pandemic.