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Shut-ins Send Funny Art to Getty

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 2, 2020| 11 Comments »

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Lot and His Daughters, about 1622, Orazio Gentileschi, at the J. Paul Getty Museum. Recreation on Twitter by Qie Zhang, Erik Carlsson, and their daughters with sheet and yellow dress.

Oh, my goodness! How I loved reading about this yesterday! The J. Paul Getty Museum in California invited fans on social media to use everyday objects from around the house to replicate pieces of art in the museum’s collection. I’m posting a couple of the results, but you really have to go to the site and enjoy everything that the museum has shared.

Sarah Waldorf and Annelisa Stephan wrote at the Getty blog, “On [March 25] we issued a playful challenge on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to re-create your favorite art using just three objects lying around home. And wow, did you respond! Thousands and thousands of re-creations later, we’re in awe of your creative powers and sense of humor.

“The challenge was inspired by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and a brilliant Instagram account called Between Art and Quarantine, but adapted with the invitation to use digitized and downloadable artworks from Getty’s online collection. …

“You’ve re-created Jeff Koons using a pile of socks, restaged Jacques-Louis David with a fleece blanket and duct tape, and MacGyvered costumes out of towels, pillows, scarves, shower caps, coffee filters, bubble wrap, and — of course — toilet paper and toilet rolls.

Cézanne and Vermeer have been a popular source of inspiration, especially Still Life with Apples (done to perfection with household pottery and gin) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (restaged with selfies and grandma, pug, or lab). Grant Wood’s American Gothic seems to capture the current socially distant mood, while Munch’s The Scream is appropriate for all ages and apparently tastes good on toast. …

“Christian Martinez’s 6-year-old daughter Bella has a love of nature that drew her immediately to this page from a Renaissance manuscript. Encountering the challenge over breakfast, the family let their imaginations run wild. …

“ ‘Pasta being life for a 6-year-old, it was first selected, followed by the boiled eggs, which happened to be cooling off to the side,’ Christian told us. Next came a brown paper bag as the canvas, and a basil stem from last night’s dinner. …

“[An] early 20th-century Scandinavian interior spoke to Tracy McKaskle ‘because we are all confined to home,’ she said. … For her re-creation, she stood on a chair and carefully placed some pins to hold the little picture, moved her dining room furniture out of the way, then perfectly placed an easel with a blank canvas. …

“Transforming into an ancient harp player with a vacuum cleaner ‘was the first thing that came to mind when I was looking at your collection,’ says Irena Irena Ochódzka, who posed herself into this amazing sculptural recreation. …

“[A] Baroque masterpiece ‘was the first painting that stood out to me [in the Getty collections] and I thought we could do it pretty easily,’ said Qie Zhang of this family project. Her two girls fought over the yellow dress, she told us, but you can’t tell from the delightful end result.

“Her husband’s pose also made us laugh with its allusion to parental exhaustion.”

More here. Don’t miss the Van Gogh made of Play Doh, carrot slices, and wooden beads! And tell me your favorite.

Male Harp Player of the Early Spedos Type, 2700–2300 B.C., Cycladic. Marble. Recreation via Facebook DM by Irena Ochódzka with canister vacuum.

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Bonus Post

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 1, 2020|

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Photo: Malcolm Greenaway

Nancy Greenaway sent me a couple of her lovely poems today, and they put me in the spring spirit. Thought I’d share them with you.

To Arms

After dull, damp, mud months,
tender green blades
duel to freedom
from the weather underground
where the fight for life
somehow survives
gray death’s dominion
over the frozen, surface world.

Just when we’ve thrown
gloved hands skyward
in surrender to whips
of winter wind,
daffodils shoot up blazing
captivating us with promises
of an armistice
called spring.

 

 

April

A great golden wall of forsythia
defines my neighbor’s property lines.

It glows through fog, competes
with daffodils to steal the show.

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Coronavirus Weddings

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 1, 2020| 10 Comments »

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Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
Jen Andonian and Matt Shearer, both epidemiologists, recently got married at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Many group events are being put off because of the war against coronavirus, but recently I’ve been learning how weddings, Passover feasts, funerals, conferences, and the like are probably managed in other kinds of war.

Here are two wedding stories from the Boston Globe.

Liz Kowalczyk reports on Jen Andonian and Matt Shearer, who “had it all planned: her burgundy floral dress, his matching checked tie. They live in Cambridge, but chose Ann Arbor, Mich., where they met as graduate students, for their simple courthouse wedding ceremony in March with immediate family. A reception for 75 guests would follow the next day at her parents’ lakeside restaurant.

“Then the fast-moving coronavirus began spreading through the world — and the United States. Andonian and Shearer, both epidemiologists on the frontlines of COVID-19 — she at Massachusetts General Hospital, he at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security — knew they could not ignore the risk of a large celebration. …

“When she told her coworkers at the MGH Center for Disaster Medicine the next day, a colleague joked: What about just getting married at the hospital? Her co-workers turned the offhand remark into an actual plan, executed in the midst of exhausting 12-hour workdays.

During quick breaks from setting up coronavirus testing sites and expanding intensive-care units, team members ordered flowers and vanilla cupcakes and devised a music playlist. Nurse Eileen Searle applied for a one-day state certificate to perform a marriage ceremony. …

“On Friday, Andonian, 30, and Shearer, 36, were married before a small group of disaster medicine colleagues, all wearing surgical masks and sitting six feet apart to prevent the spread of germs, as the sun streamed in from the windows high in the light-blue dome. It was a welcome but brief break amid the relentless arrival of patients ill with a relentless virus; the number of patients sick enough with COVID-19 to be admitted to Mass. General had more than doubled over the course of the week, to 61 on [March 27] alone.

” ‘This may not have been the wedding you wanted, but it is clearly the wedding MGH needed,’ began Searle, whose job includes training nurses to properly put on protective gear. ‘Thank you.’ …

“When they told their families about the plan to marry at the hospital, Andonian said they had mixed feelings. ‘Everyone was sad, but after seven years, they were ready for us to get married,” she said. …

“The couple arrived about 15 minutes before the ceremony was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m., walking past a long table outside the Ether Dome set with cupcakes to share, a cake for them to take home, tiny colorful containers of bubbles, and a gift bag hiding a bottle of champagne. ..

“As Andonian waited in the hallway, Shearer stood between a white plaster statue of Apollo and a glass case containing an Egyptian mummy, part of a small collection of artifacts [in the MGH museum].

” ‘You ready?’ Searle asked.

” ‘Let’s do it,’ he said.” More.

Another Globe story detailed how a photographer that a couple had never met was determined to put together all the traditional pieces so that a soldier could “elope.”

Megan Johnson writes of bride Victoria Pass, “ ‘If you still want to get married, I definitely want to get married,’ said Victoria. ‘We gotta figure this out.’

“The couple decided they’d wed at Chicopee City Hall. But with none of their family and friends in the area, Victoria wanted to have a photographer capture the moment. They started making phone calls, and stumbled upon Dani Klein-Williams, a Northampton-based photographer.

‘They said they were just planning a very quick, no-frills elopement at Chicopee City Hall,’ said Klein-Williams. ‘I was like, “Okay, can you give me two hours? I’m gonna put something even more spectacular together for you.” ‘

“Klein-Williams called Blantyre, the Tudor-style Relais & Châteaux property in Lenox, Mass. … Within two hours, she got approval from Blantyre, which was already shut down for their annual winter closure. …

“Next, Klein-Williams called her favorite wedding planner, Tara Consolati, who also happens to be ordained. Though she had never performed a ceremony before, she was on board to officiate. Carolyn Valenti, a Berkshires-based florist, offered up a blend of snapdragons, hyacinth, and other blooms. ‘She said, “I have all these gorgeous flowers and they’re just going to rot and die,” ‘ said Klein-Williams.

By the end of the conversation, she discovered that Valenti had a house guest who could bake. Without her baking equipment on hand, however, they dumped the contents of an oversize can of tomatoes, sterilized the can, and used that as a frame for a small wedding cake, topped with berries and flowers.

“[Klein-Williams next] … reached out to Mike Murray of Summer Wind Wedding Films, who volunteered to live stream the event, so Victoria and Jerrod’s family and friends could follow along.” More.

Oh, the kindness of strangers!

Photo: Dani Klein-Williams
Victoria and Jarrod Pass eloped in the Berkshires after having to cancel their 60-guest wedding in Las Vegas. A photographer they hadn’t met, Dani Klein-Williams, was determined the couple should have all the traditional features of a wedding.

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At Home and Bored? Let’s Dance!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 31, 2020| 2 Comments »

90-year-old grandma moves like Mick Jagger.

Don’t you feel that, among all their reports of gloom and doom, journalists are also trying to find ways to cheer us up? I sure am seeing a lot of articles about people helping  other people. Here is one about ways you can connect to online dance opportunities and performances, mostly for free.

Boston Globe dance critic Karen Campbell writes, “Dance, by its very nature, is an intensely personal endeavor, involving the body, as well as intellect and emotion. But dancing is seldom solitary. The sense of connecting with other bodies, other sources of energy, and the momentum generated by bodies moving together and in opposition can fuel a palpable electric charge. In this time of social distancing, those of us who regularly dance are missing not just the visceral thrill of movement, but the joy of dancing together.

“Meghan Riling, dancer/marketing director of Haitian contemporary dance company Jean Appolon Expressions, says, ‘There are so many people who refer to attending [Jean’s] Saturday class as “going to church.” With so [much] devastating news and a lack of physical connection, we really need to be there for our community as much as we can.’ The organization is now hosting online classes and tutorials. …

“Teachers and performers, many of them freelancers in the gig-based economy, are losing much-needed income. …

But Greater Boston’s dance community isn’t taking it lying down.

“Even as organizations such as Boston Dance Alliance, the Boston Artist Relief Fund, Dance/USA, MassCreative, Americans for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council seek ways to provide a glimmer of hope for some financial assistance, dance studios and independent teachers are finding ways to keep classes going.

“Using Zoom, Instagram Live, Facebook Live, Google Hangout, even Skype, they are live streaming from their living rooms and basements, with only a computer, tablet, or phone. The stylistic range of offerings is remarkable — from contemporary (Project31dance.org) to jazz (MassMotion.com) and flamenco (LSFlamenco.com), from country western line dancing (JKDance.com) to Dance With Parkinson’s (Urbanitydance.org), to a range of ballet, hip-hop, tap, and somatic practices. Some, like MiniMoversStudio.com and BallroominBoston.com’s Facebook page, have offerings tailored for young children. …

“New England’s busiest multi-genre facility, The Dance Complex in Cambridge, is offering its teachers the opportunity to live stream classes via the organization’s Instagram channel (Instagram.com/thedancecomplex), boosting visibility and access. Cambridge Community Center for the Arts (cccaonline.org) is jump-starting its interactive online video/remote learning and teaching platform to allow ‘students to attend remotely, and faculty members to teach from wherever they are comfortable,’ says president and executive artistic director Dan Yonah Marshall. The organization is offering its A/V online streaming setup to the greater dance community, too.

“Other studios are following suit, and in some cases increasing the range of offerings. “

Find many great links in the Globe article, here. Plus, you can check out free Alvin Ailey dance theater performances here.

Photo: Handout
Laura Sánchez, a dance instructor in Cambridge, teaches an online flamenco class. I know a five-year-old who should take this class.

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Cambridge Buying Meals for Homeless

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 30, 2020| 9 Comments »

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Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Globe Staff
El Jefe’s Taqueria is among the restaurants Cambridge is paying to serve hot and cold meals to homeless shelters.

One of the many interesting aspects of the Situation has been the way leaders in states and municipalities have taken matters into their own hands.

We know that individuals and both for-profit and nonprofit organizations are stepping up, but some government entities are, too. Across-the-board federal efforts would be better, especially if we don’t want to see New York suing Rhode Island and other such anomalies, but we’ll take what we can get.

Here’s a story about Cambridge, Mass., a city that some have called Moscow on the Charles mainly because it tries to help the poor.

Erin Kuschner, writes at the Globe‘s Boston.com, “With restaurants facing a sudden loss of revenue due to Gov. Baker’s mandated dine-in ban, and homeless shelters seeing a drop in volunteers helping to deliver and prepare food, the City of Cambridge came up with a solution to benefit both parties: Paying restaurants to make and deliver food to homeless shelters.

“The program launched Monday after the city reached out to both the Harvard Square Business Association and the Central Square Business Improvement District to help organize the initiative, with a goal of distributing roughly 1,800 to 2,000 meals to various shelters by the end of the week. …

“Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, said that it has already brought roughly 15 restaurants on board to make meals for local shelters like the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter and Y2Y, a youth homeless shelter that has seen many of its student volunteers leave following Harvard’s closure.

“ ‘It just made so much sense,’ Jillson said. ‘We were on board immediately.’ …

“Among the restaurants serving Harvard Square’s homeless shelters are Black Sheep Bagel, Cardullo’s, El Jefe’s Taqueria, Orinoco, Subway, and Veggie Grill. Jillson said that they have tried to provide a range of healthy meal options for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“The Central Square Business Improvement District partnered with PAGU to deliver meals to Bay Cove Human Services and the Cambridge YMCA.

‘We made our first delivery [Monday],’ said Michael Monestime, executive director at the Central Square Business Improvement District. ‘It was pretty humbling and sad at the same time. It’s hard enough being homeless on any given day, and then under these circumstances it’s even more difficult.’ …

“In addition to providing hot and cold meals to those experiencing homelessness, the city has set up a Cambridge Community Food Line, available to any resident who is a high risk for food insecurity.

“The delivery service provides a weekly bag of produce and shelf-stable food items to individuals and families who have experienced the following: The food pantry or meal program you used has closed until further notice; you have lost your job or part of your income and cannot afford groceries at this time; you are homebound due to illness, disability, or quarantine and do not have friends or family that can bring you food; you are at high risk for COVID-19 (coronavirus) and do not have access to a regular food source.”

More at the Boston Globe, here. Local readers, try to remember these restaurants and thank them with your business when we come out of the tunnel to the other side of this plague.

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Russian Theater’s Audience of One

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2020| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Jack Devant
The Perm Opera theater in Russia is getting around quarantine regulations by performing to an audience of one. At least, that’s the plan.

I have been reading a lot of articles about organizations that, although hurting badly from the pandemic, are managing to limp along. You are probably reading other such articles. Just as humans with underlying conditions are said to succumb more quickly to coronavirus, so do institutions with underlying conditions. Some weak nonprofits and businesses have already folded.

Others may come out on the other side of this with new ideas for a stronger future.

It helps to be adaptable.

Andrew Roth writes at the Guardian, “Picture the scene: The curtain rises as the orchestra strikes up the opening bars of Puccini’s La Bohème or Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin.

And in the 850-person auditorium of a storied Russian theatre sits just one lucky viewer, a lottery winner whose prize is the personal performance of a lifetime.

“Barred from hosting audiences due to the coronavirus outbreak, a theatre in Perm, a city near Russia’s Ural mountains, plans to host a unique experiment – private viewings of the theatre’s ballets and operas for the price of just a normal ticket.

“The project, called One on One, is the creation of Marat Gatsalov, the principle stage director of the Perm Opera and Ballet theatre. The idea, he said, predated the coronavirus pandemic. …

“When the local government in Perm, an industrial city that also has a reputation as a cultural powerhouse, declared that events with large audiences should be cancelled, he realised the time for the experiment had arrived.

“ ‘We’d been told that we can’t let viewers into the theatre hall,’ Gatsalov said. ‘But that doesn’t mean we can’t let just one viewer in.’ …

“Russia’s coronavirus outbreak has accelerated in the last week and the government has passed tougher measures to prevent its spread. One on One had been scheduled to open with Puccini at the end of March, but the theatre has said that it will begin holding shows only when the rules for the country’s theatres are clearer. …

“The lottery will work like this: 850 people will register for each show, whether it’s an opera, ballet or concert, and a winner will be selected and invited to buy a ticket at the theatre for the normal price.

“Nobody else will be charged, although the theatre could use the funds. Financially, Gatsalov said, the coronavirus crisis has been ‘catastrophic.’

“Asked about how he planned to keep performers safe, Gatsalov said he was trying to follow safety rules ‘as much as possible’ and said the theatre regularly checked people’s temperatures and disinfected the premises. But it was clear that plans were in flux. ‘Of course the theatre can’t be operating as normal at the moment,’ he said.”

More at the Guardian, here. I sure hope it works and will look for a follow-up story down the road. Meanwhile, you can watch New York’s Met opera nightly as an audience of one in your home. It’s a free service while the pandemic lasts. Check it out.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Perm, Russia, where a lucky lottery ticket will get you an opera performance for you alone.
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Washing the Bananas

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 28, 2020| 8 Comments »

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Image: Youtube

Because our age puts my husband and me in a high-risk category for Covid-19 and because I know the pandemic won’t last forever, I’m going to try the doctor’s grocery-disinfecting techniques from the 13-minute video below. It’s a lot of work and most people will think it’s nuts. But there are some good tips here. And you know, unless you are a health-care worker or suddenly homeschooling, you do have time.

Among the easier tips: leaving nonperishables in the garage or on the porch for the three days it takes for the contagion to dissipate; buy only hot takeout and reheat it in the microwave or stove; toss the outer cereal box and just keep the inner liner; dump bread into a container you can seal and throw out the bread bag.

Most people could manage that, I think.

Meanwhile, I confess that I am washing bananas now, but I’m not yet at the doctor’s 20-second requirement. At first my husband said, “Wash bananas? They have their own skin and you throw it out.” But then he realized we weren’t talking about washing because you are going to eat the banana but because the outside of anything that unknown people have touched can spread germs around your house.

But he still wasn’t really on board. Then he read a New York Times article by infectious disease expert Michael T. Osterholm, here, called “It’s Too Late to Avoid Disaster, But There Are Still Things We Can Do” (!) and decided maybe we do have to up our game. We’re on our own. Watch the video, and let me know what you think.

On a more cheerful note, whenever I can get technology to work, it’s been a pretty great boon. We had a four-way chat with our kids on FaceTime yesterday that was fun and funny, and today I go online with What’s App or Skype to help an Afghan asylum seeker with her grad school application.

Hang in, Folks. This won’t last forever.

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Spinning Spirits into Hand Sanitizer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 27, 2020| 7 Comments »

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Photo: Union Leader
A sanitizer customer hands a small bottle to Andre Marcoux, owner of Live Free Distillery in Manchester, NH. All kinds of businesses are stepping up to join the Covid-19 war.

A sense of helplessness pervades our lives now, so whenever anyone is able to actually do something, it’s a great feeling.

On Thursday our family learned that the folks at Klear Vu Home Textiles of Fall River (friends of Suzanne) and an official in Massachusetts state government (friend of John) were able to put together a deal to alleviate one critical shortage. Klear Vu is now pivoting from products like seat cushions to face masks. Congrats to all concerned!

Meanwhile, New England distilleries are stepping up to make hand sanitizer. Alcohol is alcohol, after all. And war is war.

The first distillery I read about was Flag Hill in New Hampshire. Paul Briand at Seacoast reported, “Brian Ferguson at Flag Hill Distillery and Winery is trying to figure out a way through the personal and economic challenges of a society laying low because of the coronavirus.

“Almost daily, he assesses how best to not only keep the business afloat but be a responsible member of a community at-large that is uncertain – even frightened – about what lay ahead. For the latter concern, he’s switched from the production of spirits, such as bourbon, at his distillery to make hand sanitizer full time, primarily for first responders in municipalities around the Granite State.

“As far as the future of the business at Flag Hill is concerned, he and his staff are trying to position the winery to remain on solid footing as a wedding and event venue once the pandemic crisis passes.

” ‘It’s extremely hard to plan,’ said Ferguson. ‘There’s no right answer. No one’s ever written a book on how to do this, all the pros and cons.

‘Every single day we just try to make the best possible decisions we can, answering the questions: It is moral? Is it ethical? Is it smart? Can it be accomplished? If we can answer all those questions, we can make the decision to move in that direction.’ …

“The tools, process and ingredients were pretty much on-site already, according to Ferguson. What it needed to ramp up production was regulatory permission (which distilleries received from the Food and Drug Administration last week). And he needed some logistical help, which he got from Matt Mayberry, an expeditor for Carlisle One Media. …

“ ‘He started connecting the dots between where we were with having supply, but not really knowing where the demand was,’ said Ferguson.

“Creating the hand sanitizer is a process akin to creating bourbon, rum, gin, or vodka: A distillery and lots of neutral grain spirit. Ferguson had that. All he needed was the other ingredients to make the sanitizer – glycerin and hydrogen peroxide. … He can produce 55 gallons of sanitizer a day. …

“While the sanitizer to the municipalities is done at no cost, he makes the 750 milliliter bottles [about 1-1/2 pints] available for consumer sale at $15 each. He’s taking orders by phone [603-659-2949]. More.

At the Union Leader, Shawne K Wickham writes about more distilleries.

“Andre Marcoux opened Live Free Distillery in a Manchester industrial park 18 months ago. The Manchester native’s day job is computer-aided design, but he spends his weekends making and selling craft liquor.

“Until recently, the stainless steel stills wrapped in red oak at Live Free had been turning out products such as his popular dill-pickle vodka. But on Saturday, Marcoux switched production entirely over to hand sanitizer, using a formula put out by the World Health Organization. The alcohol trickling from the still is now being mixed with hydrogen peroxide and glycerol.

‘It’s a giant chemistry set,’ Marcoux said, pointing to the stills he hand-crafted himself. ‘Turning grain into the water of life.’ …

“Every distiller he knows in New Hampshire is making hand sanitizer to meet the need, Marcoux said. ‘We’re all just trying to help out,” he said.” More.

And here’s an article in the Boston Globe about Industrious Spirit Company and Dirty Water Distillery. (I’m loving the titles of these New England distillers!)

“On Monday,” writes Jenna Pelletier, “Industrious Spirit Company tasting room manager Liam Maloney spent hours tossing small bottles of house-made hand sanitizer out of a window at the Providence, R.I., distillery.

“Simultaneously in Plymouth, Dirty Water Distilling was fielding an ‘overwhelming’ number of sanitizer requests from first responders. And in Everett, the owners of Short Path Distillery were waiting for more supplies to arrive so they could whip up another batch. …

“ ‘We thought, nobody’s able to get it, so let’s start offering it,’ said Brenton MacKechnie, head distiller at Dirty Water Distilling. …

“According to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, more than 300 distilleries in the country, including at least six in Massachusetts, six in New Hampshire, two in Rhode Island, four in Connecticut, and seven in Vermont are now producing hand sanitizer — something many of them said they never expected to be doing.” Hooray for flexibility!

In a different kind of initiative from Scotland, an opera company, noted here, is lending set-hauling trucks to Tesco to smooth out the supermarket’s supply chain deliveries.

Got other examples of repurposing for the war effort? Please put it in Comments.

Brian Ferguson, proprietor of Flag Hill in New Hampshire. The distiller and wine maker is helping the “plague effort” by focusing on hand sanitizer as long as necessary. Make a list of companies behaving ethically in the crisis and try to give them your business when this is over, OK?8839-brian-1080

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Libraries Providing Wifi

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 26, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Karl Gehring/Denver Post via Getty Images
According to Vice, the FCC needs to clarify whether libraries lose their subsidized rates during Covid-19 social distancing if they offer wifi away from their buildings.

Libraries, as usual in a crisis, are stepping up. Remember the critical role of the Ferguson Library during the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri? I’ve been following that library on social media since then, and I’m impressed with what it does for the community and how fast it responds to needs.

Now, during social distancing, libraries are offering wifi hotspots via bookmobiles. Karl Bode reports at Vice, “As millions of Americans hunker down to slow the spread of coronavirus, the lack of affordable broadband access has become a far more pressing problem.

“The FCC’s 2019 Broadband Deployment Report states that 21.3 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever, be it cable, DSL, fiber, or wireless. Recent studies suggest that number is actually twice that thanks to inaccurate FCC broadband availability maps.

“It’s a problem that is notably worse in many low-income and minority communities, long-neglected by the nation’s incumbent broadband monopolies.

“For many Americans, the local library is their best and sometimes only opportunity to get online. But with many schools and libraries closing to protect public health, these users are losing access to a valuable resource in a time of crisis.

“In a letter to the FCC [March 19] the American Library Association (ALA) floated a solution: why not turn the nation’s 16,557 public libraries into free, communal broadband Wi-Fi hotspots, then extend that access into the broader communities that surround them?

“American libraries are subsidized by the FCC E-Rate program, which helps them obtain and deliver broadband access to bridge the digital divide. But the ALA said libraries were worried that the [current administration] —which has taken aim at the program in recent years — would penalize them for extending broadband access to users that are technically not on library property. …

“The ALA urged the FCC to waive E-rate restrictions so libraries could not only offer Wi-Fi access via local libraries, but could also provide broadband service to disconnected communities via bookmobiles and mobile hotspots without running afoul of FCC rules. …

“Former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn told Motherboard that the FCC has more than $1 billion in available funding from the last round of E-rate subsidies, and could easily waive E-rate restrictions during a crisis. …

“On Monday the FCC issued a statement making it clear that libraries would not be penalized under E-Rate rules for extending Wi-Fi access beyond their property boundaries. …

“While the FCC said it was ok for libraries to leave their hotspots running during the pandemic, the agency simply ignored libraries’ questions as to whether they’d be penalized for extending access into the broader community. …

” ‘We are pleased that the FCC, in response to our request, has clarified that schools and libraries may leave their Wi-Fi networks on for community use without jeopardizing their E-rate funding,’ the The SHLB Coalition said in a statement. ‘The SHLB Coalition now encourages the FCC to take the next step and grant the Petition of the Boulder Valley School District to permit schools and libraries to extend their broadband services to surrounding residential consumers.’ ”

More at Vice, here.

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A Poet Finds One Delight a Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 25, 2020| 3 Comments »

 

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Poet Ross Gay celebrates life.

When Ross Gay read at our library, I liked his poems and his way of talking about them and I bought a book. Recently, I noticed that his writing and his joy in nature had come to the attention of both Maria Popova at Brainpickings and the environmental radio show Living on Earth.

From Living on Earth …
“STEVE CURWOOD: In an endangered world, gratitude and appreciation are difficult to balance with practical and existential fears. … Poet Ross Gay took a moment almost every day for a year to write about something that delighted him and has published these observations in his latest volume, The Book of Delights. In this exercise, he found joy in everything from bumblebees to folding shirts at the laundromat and noticed beauty he had never seen before. Ross Gay spoke with Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb.

“BOBBY BASCOMB: What inspired you to take on this project?

“ROSS GAY: I was just in the middle of a [pleasant] walk. I was having a nice, delightful moment. And I thought, Oh, how neat. … It’d be interesting to write a book about something that delighted me every day for a year. …

“BASCOMB: You had a few rules of engagement for your project for writing about delight. Can you tell us about those? …

“GAY: I wanted to write it every day. I didn’t exactly get to that. But you know, pretty close. And I wanted to write them sort of quickly. And I wanted to write them by hand. …

“BASCOMB: Would you mind reading a passage for us? I’m thinking of an essay called Black Bumblebees. …

“GAY: There is a kind of flowering bush, new to me, that I’ve been studying on my walks in Marfa. On that bush, whose blooms exude a curtain of syrupy fragrance, a beckoning of it, there are always a few thumb-size all-black bumblebees. Their wings appear when the light hits them right, metallic blue-green. I have never seen anything so beautiful. Everything about them- their purr, their wobbly veering from bloom to bloom — is the same as their cousins, the tiger-striped variety that shows up in droves when the cup plants in my garden are in bloom, making the back corner of my yard sound like a Harley convention. I wonder how I can encourage these beauties.” More.

At Brainpickings, Popova starts her appreciation with a Hermann Hesse quotation: ” ‘My advice to the person suffering from lack of time and from apathy is this: Seek out each day as many as possible of the small joys.’ …

“Each day, beginning on his forty-second birthday and ending on his forty-third, [poet Ross] Gay composed one miniature essay … about a particular delight encountered that day, swirled around his consciousness to extract its maximum sweetness. …

“One is reminded — almost with the shock of having forgotten — that delights are strewn about this world like quiet, inappreciable dew-drops, waiting for the sunshine of our attention to turn them into gold.

“He writes: ‘Patterns and themes and concerns show up… My mother is often on my mind. Racism is often on my mind. Kindness is often on my mind. Politics. Pop music. Books. Dreams. Public space. My garden is often on my mind. …

” ‘It didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study. …

“One of the readiest sources of daily delight comes — predictably, given the well documented physiological and psychological consolations of nature — from his beloved community garden. (Gay is as much a poet as he is a devoted gardener, though perhaps as Emily Dickinson well knew, the two are but a single occupation.)

“In an early-August essayette titled ‘Inefficiency,’ he writes: ‘I don’t know if it’s the time I’ve spent in the garden (spent an interesting word), which is somehow an exercise in supreme attentiveness — staring into the oregano blooms wending through the lowest branches of the goumi bush and the big vascular leaves of the rhubarb—and also an exercise in supreme inattention, or distraction, I should say, or fleeting intense attentions, I should say, or intense fleeting attentions — did I mention the hummingbird hovering there with its green-gold breast shimmering, slipping its needle nose in the zinnia, and zoom! Mention the pokeweed berries dangling like jewelry from a flapper mid-step. …

“[But his] transmutation of terror into transcendence haunts the book as a guiding spirit. ‘It astonishes me sometimes — no, often — how every person I get to know — everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything — lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted. Mother murdered. Dad died in surgery. Rejected by their family. Cancer came back. Evicted. Fetus not okay.

” ‘Everyone, regardless, always, of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we, and what we love, will soon be annihilated. Which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this, sorrow, of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness? Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is — and if we join them — your wild to mine — what’s that? For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.

‘What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?’

More at Brainpickings, here. (Want to bypass Amazon? Buy the book from Algonquin Books or IndieBound, here.)

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15 Photos, One Video

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 24, 2020| 7 Comments »

Recently, returning from a sunny walk, I heard Three Little Pigs calling out, “Stay positive!”

Sometimes my town is like that.

Today’s photos show that in New England it can be both spring and winter on the same day, graveyards are peaceful for walking, the deCordova museum’s outdoor art is currently free, and a candle in the window can symbolize hope.

Let me know what needs more explanation. Probably the Andy Goldsworthy art at deCordova. It’s not a mausoleum despite the graveyard theme here. It’s a kind of sculpture that will do magical things when there’s a heavy rain. It’s called Watershed.

The glass milk bottles are from a farm that delivers a range of necessities. (I’m feeling grateful today to all the delivery people in America. Stay well!)

 

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Isaac Newton and Social Distancing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 23, 2020| 15 Comments »

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Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Isaac Newton’s own first edition copy of his book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687) with handwritten corrections for the second edition. The young Newton was self-distancing from plague when he had his inspiration about gravity.

Folks, I keep a pipeline of possible blog topics, but not all the curiosities I saved back in December, say, seem right for this moment in history. So in case you are online a lot and have already seen some of my picks from current headlines, I’ll do my best to come up with different angles.

Did you see this one about Isaac Newton during the plague? Maybe a few people self-distancing right now will make earthshaking discoveries, too.

I first read the Newton tidbit in a rare-book story at Hyperallergic: “Issac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree and had an epiphany that would rewrite physics and the way we understand our universe. He later published his findings on the laws of motion in the 1687 book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Now, by sheer accident, a rare first-edition copy of this groundbreaking book was found in a library on the French island of Corsica.

(Fun fact before we continue: Newton made his discovery while ‘socially distancing’ himself during the Great Plague of London in 1665. He was a 20-something Trinity College student at the time.)

“Vannina Schirinsky-Schikhmatoff, director of conservation at the Fesch Public Heritage library in Ajaccio, was researching an index from the library’s founder Lucien Bonaparte — one of Napoleon’s brothers —when she discovered a copy of Newton’s 17th-century book.”  The Hyperallergic piece is here.

In a rather somber column at the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri adopts Newton’s discoveries as a metaphor for how we connect to others in this moment.

“There was a plague, so Isaac Newton went home,” Petri writes, “and for him it was an annus mirabilis, which in Latin is a ‘year of miracles.’ He discovered the theory of universal gravitation, began his study of optics and formalized what would become calculus. …

“I am told, at such a time, Isaac Newton sat at a country estate with an apple tree. His reflections upon the forces between distant bodies, propelling them together and apart, gave us gravity and enfolded the moon and the apple in a shared system of invisible laws.

“He saw a spider’s web of formulas spinning across untold space, in which the stars hung like dewdrops, and from them beams of light pierced his own seclusion. All kinds of lofty things entered the brain of Isaac Newton, some of them traveling great distances, and when he emerged, science was permanently different. Such was the life of Isaac Newton during the plague year.

“I am secluded, too. Perhaps, for a proper miracle, I should go look at a tree. I go for a quiet walk six feet away from everyone I encounter. … Other people pass along, distantly together in this space. We nod at one another. How far is too far? How close is too close? The force that propels us together in ordinary moments is currently propelling us apart. …

“I wanted to see my parents. I happen to be fond of them, which I realize is a symptom of luck. But I do not know what I may be bringing with me. I am terrified I will get too close. Thus, I take a telescoping metal stick for roasting marshmallows and brandish it at the end of my extended arm, to mark out six feet. So armed, I go for a walk with my dad, swinging it between us on the sidewalk, trying to trace an arc of safety. Is this funny? It feels almost funny, but for some reason, I am crying. …

See your family, without hugging? Please, we are of Scandinavian extraction! We have been training for this moment our entire lives! …

“This must be a year of miracles — not the common miracles we only see after they vanish, the miracles of people in a restaurant or a room or a theater together. No, other miracles: the shield we build for one another by briefly deserting those places. The connections that persist across distances, the formulas that make a familiar face appear in glowing pixels on a screen. Who would have thought that our old enemy the conference call would be an ally, in the end? Who would have thought that phone calls, long disdained, would come to the rescue? This is an advantage we possess over Newton.

“I cannot see anything easier than inventing gravity during a time of plague. How can you think of anything during such a time but bodies and the distances and forces between bodies. I feel nothing now but the pull of distant bodies too far away to touch. I feel nothing but the invisible ties that bind us across spaces, the imperceptible, far-off vibrations in the web that signal: Yes, there is someone here.”

More by Petri.

There may be a firewall, but you can get a month free at this newspaper, and it sure is good to have it during our the Covid-19 plague. Very reliable journalism.

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The Return of the Drive-In Movie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 22, 2020| 12 Comments »

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Photo: TheTakeMagazine
Drive-in theater. When? My husband says he can tell by the cars that the photo is circa 1950. (Homeschool history project: Research drive-in-movie theaters in your state.)

Everything old is new again under quarantine. People are suddenly getting an urge to bake their grandmother’s traditional recipes while stuck at home. Drive-in movies are back in vogue. Fancy a flic for a birthday party, all friends in different cars?

Speaking of birthday parties at drive-in theaters, I wonder if Carole remembers her party, when we saw the seafaring tale Two Years Before the Mast. How old were we? I don’t remember the plot, but talk about social distancing! I definitely wouldn’t want to be on a ship for two years like the crew in the film. For one thing, people get sick. In the old days, they didn’t get coronavirus like folks on today’s cruises, but scurvy, for sure. I do remember one sailor in the film got scurvy from lack of citrus.

I got a kick from Jake Coyle’s Associated Press (AP) report on folks lucky enough to find a drive-in today.

“The drive-in theater,” he write, “long a dwindling nostalgia act in a multiplex world, is experiencing a momentary return to prominence. With nearly all of the nation’s movie theaters shuttered due to the coronavirus pandemic, some drive-in owners think they’re in a unique position to give moviegoers a chance to do something out of the house while keeping distance from others. …

“The Showboat Drive-In Theater in Hockley, Texas, about a 30-minute drive outside Houston, normally sees ticket sales go down about 40% on a weekend when they don’t have any new movies. Last weekend, they saw a 40% increase, says the theater’s owner, Andrew Thomas. Usually open weekends, Thomas has kept screenings going through the week.

‘Obviously this isn’t the way you’d want it to occur, but I’m excited for the idea that there may be a new generation of people that will get to experience going to a drive-in theater and — I was going to say catch the bug,’ said Thomas, laughing. ‘Maybe some other turn of phrase.’

“There are just over 300 drive-ins left in the country. They constitute a small, oft-forgotten flicker in today’s movie ecosystem that hardly competes with the megawatt glare of the megaplex and the nation’s 5,500 indoor theaters. But through decades of disruption and change in American life, they have managed to survive. …

“In certain parts of the country, [they’re] one of the only remaining refuges of public entertainment — of getting out the house to do something while still staying inside your car.

“At the Paramount Drive-in near Los Angeles, Forrest and Erin McBride figured a drive-in movie was one of the only ways they could responsibly celebrate their anniversary.

” ‘We were like, what can we do? Everything’s closed,’ said Forrest before a showing of ‘Onward’ on Thursday night. ‘We were like, “Well, a drive-in theater is kind of like a self-quarantined movie date.” ‘…

“Drive-ins aren’t without their own virus concerns. Concessions and restrooms, in particular, still pose issues. All owners interviewed for this article said they were spacing out cars, reworking how customers could order food (sometimes via text messages) and limiting restroom occupancy.

“Chris Curtis, owner of the Blue Moon Drive-in in Guin, Alabama, said he was doing something that has long been anathema to drive-ins: allowing outside food and drink in. ‘In fact, we suggest it,’ reads the Blue Moon’s Facebook page. Like indoor theaters, drive-ins make their money almost entirely by concessions.

“ ‘We’re just trying to pay the power bill and the water bill and get through this, and give the community something to do at a time when there’s not a whole lot to do,’ said Curtis. …

“To keep the Blue Moon uncrowded, Curtis launched online ticketing for the first time. ‘I don’t want people driving from long distances just to see that we’re sold out,’ he said

“There are few movies left for drive-ins to play. For now, they can still screen recent releases like ‘Onward’ and ‘The Hunt,’ but those movies are already available on various digital platforms as studios have funneled their films to homes due to the virus. Earlier this week, all of the nation’s movie chains shuttered following federal guidelines that urged against gatherings of more than 10 people. The studios have cleared out their release calendars into May.

“Those postponements have extended all the way to major summer releases, including Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ (previously slated for May 1). Eating into spring releases will be hard enough for drive-ins, but summer is when they sell most of their tickets. Owners say that if they manage to remain open in the coming weeks, they could potentially play older films (though those cost almost as much as new releases to play). …

“Drive-ins could also improvise in other ways. Lisa Boaz, who with her husband has operated the Monetta Drive-in in Monetta, South Carolina, since 1999, said they’ve been contacted by churches interested in using the drive-in for Sunday services. Parishioners would listen to sermons from their cars through the drive-in’s FM-radio transmitters. …

“So long as it’s safe, Boaz appreciates the irony that in the year 2020, the best — and in many cases only — way to see a movie outside the house is at the drive-in. The pandemic hasn’t proven the supremacy of streaming as much as it’s shown how indomitable the urge is to spend a night at the movies. …

“Said Boaz, ‘The old ways are the best ways.’ ”

More at AP, here.

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Empty Seats

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 21, 2020| 2 Comments »

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Photo: Tom Gralish / Inquirer Staff Photographer
A friend wrote on Facebook about listening to a Covid-19 Philadelphia Orchestra concert March 12.

At first when I read her Facebook post, I thought a friend I’ve known since I was in nursery school had gotten inside the hall to hear this concert. But I see the staff kicked almost everyone out. I guess she listened on the radio.

Hannah posted: “I was touched by the Philadelphia Orchestra playing a concert to an empty hall on Thursday. They did Beethoven’s 6th, a good choice for this strange time in our history. The acoustic was different, of course, and lent a crispness to the sound. It was their last performance until whenever. Available for streaming on WRTI. Thanks, orchestra!”

Looking up more info, I found an article by David Patrick Stearns at the Inquirer.

“The Philadelphia Orchestra was never meant for an audience of one — or few. That’s why the Philadelphia Orchestra’s audience-less Thursday concert felt like a parallel universe.

“You had the familiar orchestra musicians in full concert dress, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and the beloved Beethoven Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6. Except different. On Thursday afternoon, the Philadelphia Orchestra canceled all of its events through March 23. ….

“The concert’s Plan B, which fell into place that same day, had the performance going forward to a nearly empty house, streamed on the orchestra’s website (though a snafu put it in Facebook Live) and recorded for WRTI radio broadcasts. …

“For those who were there, it was confounding to have the orchestra standing to receive phantom applause that wasn’t there. This was not a dress rehearsal, but the real deal. And it was also a reminder of the gravity of the situation.

“The atmosphere, though, was hardly grave. … For all of its magisterial image, the Philadelphia Orchestra isn’t easily unnerved, thanks to history of foreign touring under highly changeable circumstances. …

“Of all the composers, it’s Beethoven who has been there for the public through centuries of hardship, Nézet-Séguin said in a spoken introduction to the concert: ‘And we’re still inspired.’

“ ‘We rehearsed the program … we were gearing up to play it,’ first associate concertmaster Juliette Kang told me at intermission after playing Beethoven’s 5th.
‘We had to play it. It was an artistic imperative from the inside,’ Kang said. ‘The emotional whirlwind everybody’s in, it came through in the piece. It did for me. I could feel that struggle in the Beethoven.’

‘Though the hall was empty, I could feel trembling inside of me,’ said concertmaster David Kim. …

“Internet chatter praised the orchestra for maintaining its presence — along with criticisms that the musicians were at risk just from being together. There’s an edge of covert panic out there, and you can almost feel the struggle between people’s sense of hope and fear.

“On the hope front … On Twitter, pianist Igor Levit (@igorpianist) vowed to stream performance videos from his home every day at 7 p.m. Central European Time. The Berlin Philharmonic played a streamed concert from an audience-less hall on Thursday afternoon, including Berio’s Sinfonia, whose choral contingent embeds the words ‘Martin Luther King’ into the orchestral texture. …

“In Philadelphia [Beethoven’s Fifth] was not the kind of end-of-the-world Beethoven heard from European radio archives when empires were crumbling during World War II. Nor was there the hopelessness felt at the Philadelphia Orchestra’s post 9/11 concert at the Mann Center in 2001.

“The current adversary is an invisible virus, not a fallen hero or an act of war. Thursday’s concert had exceptional momentum, as if to say, ‘We will get through this.’

“Beethoven’s usually genial Symphony No. 6 (‘Pastoral’) had higher peaks of tension and release than usual, with an aggression in the third-movement peasant dances that led more logically than usual into the storm scene that followed — as if Nézet-Séguin conducted it as an opera without words.” More from the Inquirer critic here.

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Resilience of Refugees in Camps

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 20, 2020| 7 Comments »

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Photo: Elias Marcou/Reuters
Migrants from the Moria camp in Lesbos, Greece, use their skills to sew protective masks.

A friend posted on Facebook a Patch.com request for people with sewing machines who might be willing to make surgical masks. This particular call to arms is local to Massachusetts (read), but you might find a similar opportunity near you. All Hands on Deck!

In Greek refugee camps, residents who have already known a ton of hardship are on the case: they know that they’re not likely to get much protection from outside.

Katy Fallon has the story at the Guardian: “In some of the most dangerously overcrowded Greek refugee camps, it has become a race against time to raise awareness about Covid-19 and ensure an outbreak does not spread among an already vulnerable population.

“In the infamous Moria camp on the island of Lesbos close to 20,000 people live in a space designed for just under 3,000. There is is already limited access to running water in the camp, and toilets and showers regularly block due to overuse. The first case of Covid-19 was confirmed on the island last week when a Greek woman from the town of Plomari tested positive. So far [March 18] this the only confirmed case on the island.

“There is an increasing sense of urgency in Moria about hygiene and handwashing. In the absence of support from the Greek authorities, residents are taking matters into their own hands.

 ‘The conditions were out of control and so we knew that we needed to do something by ourselves,’ said Deen Mohammad Alizadah, 30, originally from Afghanistan.

“The members of the team are a snapshot of the diverse population of Moria, heralding from countries such as Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and the Congo region, each dispensing advice to their own communities. …

“Due to high demand, face masks are currently in short supply in pharmacies in the local town of Mytilene, and since there is no current mass distribution of masks to the camp, industrious Moria residents have come up with their own solution.

“In a small building around a kilometre from Moria, a group of four Afghan women have volunteered their time to sew face masks for the camp’s population. Stand By Me Lesvos, a Greek NGO, realised that they could make use of the sewing machines from a previous project.

‘It was set up within six hours on Friday,’ said Mixalis Avialotis from Stand By Me Lesvos. ‘One of the Afghan women used to be a tailor in Kabul and said she’d have no problem managing the operation.’

“The women are working at a rapid rate and in their first day made approximately 500 masks, which are fashioned from cotton fabric bought from local shops. The masks are then packaged into plastic wrappers purchased from the local Lidl supermarket and boxed to be brought to the camp. The masks, which will be given out for free, will initially only be distributed to camp residents who start to feel unwell or exhibit symptoms of the virus, such as a cough. …

“On the island of Samos where the refugee camp hosts nearly 7,500 people in a space designed for 648, conditions are similarly cramped. … Guilia Cicoli, co-founder of Still I Rise NGO, which runs a youth centre for children living in [camp], told the Guardian that they had spent a lot of time speaking to the children about Covid-19. The children have also produced posters about hand washing and hygiene in class.

“ ‘Most of us are Italians so we took it very seriously and started awareness raising before Greece even had any confirmed cases,’ she said. ‘Before we had to close last week we had already replaced handshakes with elbow or feet bumps.’ More at the Guardian, here.

Meanwhile in the US, some hospitals feel like they are on their own, too: “Medical staff in one of the nation’s epicenters of the novel coronavirus outbreak have resorted to creating makeshift masks to care for patients, Bloomberg News reported.

“Washington state hospital workers, part of Providence St. Joseph Health system, are improvising protective wear by crafting masks out of marine-grade vinyl, industrial tape, foam and elastic bought from craft stores and Home Depot, the outlet reported.

“Washington state has the highest death total from covid-19 and the second highest total of confirmed cases.” Read this.

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