After Pulse: Catholic Charities

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Gary Testor executive director of the Catholic Chrities of Central Florida, went to mass the morning after the Pulse Nightclub shooting. He head that there had been a shooting but the information was sketchy at the time. At about 10:15AM he got a text message from the chancellor of the dioceses, Carol Brinati, that Deacon David Grey was going to call. The call came at about 11am. David was at the Hampton Inn with other clergy. He needed counselors. Ten minutes later he called back and had realized that there was a need for Spanish speaking professionals.

It was chaotic at the Hampton inn and translators were needed. Gary called Debbie Cruz to arrange to get translators on site by 1pm.

Joel Stinera,was called by Debbie and then Rosa. He drove down to the Orlando Regional Medical Center (ORMC) and arrived about 2 or 3pm. Family were waiting for news about their loved ones who may have been shot. It was crowded and disorganized. The experience was overwhelming and sad. He tried to comfort the family’s and friends of the victims.  Someone stood at a podium and started reading the names of the people at the hospital. After the list was read they said, “Well, if your family member wasn’t mentioned, they didn’t make it.” This was all in English. Many did not understand. Family cried. When family actually got news the chaos got worse. That experience marked him for life.

Julio Rivera saw the news on Facebook. His family began to call checking to see if he was OK. He flipped on the TV and couldn’t believe what he saw. Debbie Cruz contacted him and asked him to get downtown as well. People met at the Catholic Charities office and they went together to the Hampton Inn Hotel. They entered through the back door of the hotel. There was no security. They walked a long hallway with people crying, yelling and laying on the floor. He recognized some people, including former clients and talked to them. A doctor of director from hospital announced the names. The victims were in two different hospitals. The first names were people who were in stable but critical condition. Every announcement was in English. No one was translating. Julio tried to shout his translations over the chaos.

The second round was names of people at ORMC, in critical condition. People were advised to talk to a representative, but again this as all in English. People shouted, “Shut up we can not hear!” If a name was not announced then they did not have information about that person or they are deceased. When the translator announced that true chaos broke out. There was screaming crying and people hitting the walls. There was a lady on the floor and he gave her a bottle of water and tried to comfort her. The chief or police got u to the podium and said he understood the situation. He asked for time because they were still investigating. By that time no one was listening. It isn’t what you say, but how you say it and there was no compassion in the announcements. People who heard their loved ones names left for the hospitals. Everyone else stayed and waited. There was some media inside taking pictures. Julio stayed until about 7:30pm.

Intimate Apparel

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The Orlando Shakes will present Intimate Apparel by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Lynn Nottage from October 27 to November 20, 2021.

Set during the turn of the twentieth century, the drama, deftly weaves together a story that explores the complexities of identity, vulnerability, and human resilience. Sewing exquisite lingerie gives Esther, an African American seamstress, an intimate look at the love lives of her diverse clientele, but leaves her yearning for a romance of her own. When a letter arrives from a stranger, she embarks on a journey to build the life she’s longed for.

In my first sketch for the show poster, I identified with the seamstress as a creator. She had a family heirloom which was an intricate quilt. In the Disney animated short John Henry a quilt was used to introduce the characters and begin to tell the story so my thoughts wandered in that direction. I fell in love with painting her at her turn of the century sewing machine.

The cursive type I chose was a bit hard to read from a distance and though the seamstress was intimately involved in her craft the image was somber.

My second sketch was more on the mark being an intimate portrait of the creator fitting her clientele. This image had the added benefit of having some sex appeal. These two woman would talk during the fittings and the friendship became one they both relied on.

The cursive type remained the same so I turned my attention to refining that on the next pass. I tried variations with a needle and bobbin. The type became more delicate and also more bold so it could be read from a distance. I also needed to make the author’s name bigger which would require a few adjustments. I was getting close. Though everyone seemed happy with the staging of the scene, I felt the need to tinker. There had to be a way of posing the tow characters to expose the fact that they were close but also a bit separate. They could be friends, but not close friends. The client could not invite her seamstress out to the theater for instance.

I decided to turn the client from the audience a bit to show the laces on the back of the corset. This made more sense with the position of the character to the mirror but it detracted from an intimacy with the viewer. I went back to the frontal view for the final image and worked on reposing the seamstress’s reflection in the mirror. Pam and her niece posed to help me figure out what the  pose would look like reversed in a mirror.

Jean-Édouard Vuillard is a french artist that I love. He lived from 1868 to 1940. His painting inspired what I tried to do in painting the parlor interior. He used subtle greyed colors with bright notes of color in the lights.

Anyway, I identified with the creative journey of this seamstress as she embraced hopes of a future only to find those hopes were hung on an illusion.   Despite this she could return to her creative endeavors which offered meaning when love was elusive.

Director: Shonn McCloud
Scenic and Lighting Designer: Stephen Jones
Costume Designer: Dana Rebecca Woods
Sound Designer: Britt Sandusky
Intimacy Coordinator: KJ Gilmer
Dialect Coach: Vivian Majkowski
AEA Stage Manager: George Hamrah
Production Assistant: Nahaira Morales

The cast includes, Lilian Oben as Esther, Trenell Mooring as Mrs. Dickson, Laurel Hatfield as Mrs. Van Buren, Adam T. Biner as Mr. Marks, Martine Fleurisma as Mayme, and Chris Lindsay as George.

The Shakes requires all patrons to bring a vaccination card or proof of a recent negative COVID-19 test for admission. Masks are required for all audience members. All Shakes actors and staff are fully vaccinated. The theater provides a special section in the upper mezzanine for patrons who wish to be distanced from other parties due to COVID-19. When purchasing, seats for this section is indicated in bright red. I vastly appreciate their consideration, and it is there in the Phantom’s upper section that I sit to sketch.

Beach Day

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20 years ago, On September 11, 2001, I was off on  painting vacation in Colorado. In the morning I finished a plein air painting of a mountain range and I went to a fish camp to use the men’s room. A man outside the men’s room said the twin towers had been hit by planes as well as the Pentagon. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Instead of doing another painting, I returned to the hotel and turned on the news. I let the gravity of hat as happening wash over me for the rest of the day.

It was impossible to fly back home to Orlando Florida, so I ended up driving back across the country. Several times I was rattled seeing crop duster planes spraying fields in the mid west. All air traffic had been grounded because of the terrorist attack.

On this 20th memorial, Pam and I drove to the beach for some peace of mind. NPR news on the radio was playing audio for September 11, 2001 but we couldn’t listen. 2,977 people died that day and it was a day of infamy much like the attack on Pearl Harbor for my parents generation. So far, between 2020 and 2021 659,558 Americans have died from COVID-19. Will their memories ever be honored in the same way? Or will Americans deny, deflect and immediately ignore the toll from a tragedy that could have been mitigated with strong leadership and citizens who worked together to keep each other safe.

COVID-19 Psychic

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In America the surge of Delta COVID-19 cases is trailing off, but what will happen as we head into the winter months? Americans vaccinations have come to a virtual stand still and many people prefer to believe that the pandemic is over.

The virus will return and it will once again peak. Scientists are baffled to explain it’s continuing prevalence around the world. The best weapon against continued hospitalizations and deaths is to get vaccinated.

The New York Times reported that cases are rising in five northern states, Vermont, New Hampshire, Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota. This like the 2020 surge as the weather got colder.

There are about 80,000 cases a day in the United States. The U.S. is also not doing a great job of testing and contact tracing so those numbers are likely low. We are averaging 1,560 deaths a day. In the US over 50,000 people have died since that start of the Delta surge which began in June 2021. They did not need to die. A simple vaccine could have saved most if not all of those lives.

We can learn much about what might happen in the United States by watching trends around the world. Around the world there is declining activity. Europe however is seeing the highest number of cases and deaths in more than five months. Eastern Europe is particularly bad. Vaccine acceptance is particularly low in these countries. In Russia only 33% of residents are vaccinated. They don’t trust the government. Does that sound familiar? The death toll is likely under reported in Russia. The virus is not done with humanity. There are plenty of people that it can continue to burn through.

 

Waning Immunity

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The news every day has stories of breakthrough infections. CNN reported that 2 studies published October 6, 2021 confirm that the immune protection offered by two doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine drops off after two months or so, although protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death remains strong. The studies, from Israel and from Qatar and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, support arguments that even fully vaccinated people need to maintain precautions against infection.

Men’s immunity drop off faster than  women’s immunity. The study also indicated that immunity for people who get vaccinated after natural Covid-19 infection lasts longer. It’s especially strong for people who recovered from infection and then got vaccinated. “Overall, the accumulating evidence from our study and others shows that long-term response and vaccine effectiveness in previously infected persons were superior to that in recipients of two doses of vaccine,” they wrote. That leaves me wondering if being fully vaccinated and then getting infected also creates this sort of super boost to immunity.

Pfizer/BioNTech‘s vaccine protection against infection builds rapidly after the first dose, peaks in the first month after the second dose, and then gradually wanes in subsequent months,” Laith Abu-Raddad of Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and colleagues wrote. “The waning appears to accelerate after the fourth month, to reach a low level of approximately 20% in subsequent months,” they added.

Americans can choose a COVID-19 booster shot that is different from their original inoculation but the recommendation is to stick with the vaccine they got first if it is available, White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci said on October 22, 2021. 80 Million Americans are still unvaccinated so there is plenty of wood for this fire to continue to burn through.

Cavemen Understanding of COVID-19

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Dr. Michael Osterholm commented on a Center of Disease Research and Policy (CDRAP) podcast, that since the start of the pandemic scientists have been chasing the virus rather that getting ahead of it. Scientists are course correcting and learning as they go. It is like we are in the cave ages of understanding this virus, completely unsure what curve ball the virus it will throw next.

Numbers are beginning to fall and that results in instant complacency in most people. Masks and social distancing are abandoned. For July 4, 2021 President Joe Biden declared independence from the virus. However the Delta variant had just started to burn through America.

This has happened multiple times during the course of the pandemic and each time this lax attitude results in another spike. It seems very few learn from past history.

The vaccination program in America has come to a virtual standstill mostly along partisan lines. If you are not vaccinated, you can’t run out the clock on this virus. It will find you and you will know a COVID-19-related outcome. That might be a mild case or it could be death. 65 million Americans who could be vaccinated right now are not. That is more than enough human wood for this coronavirus forest fire to burn. Right now Covid-19 continues to surge in in Alaska and the upper mid-west states like Montana. It spreads daily like a lava flow from county to county and state to state.

As can be noted with Colin Powell‘s breakthrough case and death we can see that the vaccine is not perfect. Boosters are certainly going to a part of our future. The fight against this virus is not over. Now is not the time for complacency. There is no second guessing where tit will go next. To date 731,265 Americans have died from COVID-19 and that number continues to climb.

Colin & COVID-19

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Colin Powell, the retired four-star general who became the country’s first black secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, died October 18, 2021 due to complications from Covid-19. Powell, 84, was fully vaccinated. He was treated at Walter Reed National Medical Center where he died.

Powell had multiple myeloma, a cancer of a type of white blood cell, which can harm the body’s immune system, surgery for prostate cancer when he was Secretary of State and, more recently, Parkinson’s disease.

Powell delivered a well-known speech to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 laying out the White House argument for invading Iraq and stating that there was intelligence that the country had weapons of mass destruction. These excuses for invading Iraq later were proven to be based on false intelligence. Powell later expressed regret over the remarks before the U.N.

The former 45th president derided the news media for treating the former secretary of state “so beautifully” after his death. “Hope that happens to me someday.” he said.

 

62% of Police Die from COVID-19

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The Hill reported that COVID-19 accounted for more than 66 percent of all law enforcement deaths in the line of duty in 2020 and 2021, according to newly compiled statistics. The report from the Officer Down Memorial Page found that more law enforcement officers died from COVID-19 than from every other cause combined since the pandemic began in early 2020.

In 2020, 245 officers died from COVID-19, more than from gunfire, automobile crashes and other illnesses. So far in 2021, 228 law enforcement deaths have been recorded as a result of COVID-19 related illness, out of 356 deaths total.

2020’s death toll was the highest in 50 years, adding that the “silent killer” of COVID-19 was still on the offensive. “It’s climbing at a time when it should be decreasing with the knowledge, the expertise, the amount of training and education,” said, Patrick Montuore, the executive director of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, according to Bay News 9.

124 officers died in Texas, 53 died in California and 44 died in New York. Over 500 officers died due to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic. Despite these sobering numbers, The New York Times reported that police unions are fighting vaccine mandates. The head of Chicago’s police union, John Catanzarra, on October 12, 2021 encouraged officers to defy the city’s vaccine reporting mandate and risk being sent home.

 

Sweep

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The Tampa Bay Times reported that for 105 days in the worst of the pandemic, Florida’s COVID-19 death toll went missing. County death tolls were withheld from the public. Floridians had no idea how many of their neighbors were dying. This is part of Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis’ blue sky policy. If you hide the statistic from the public they can go about their lives in blissful ignorance.

The Florida Department of Health knows how many people are dying in each county, but stopped telling the public on June 4, 2021. That’s when state officials stopped releasing daily pandemic data, switched to weekly reports and started withholding data once available to the public.

The state directed the public to find that information via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But the CDC relied on Florida’s online portal of COVID data — which the state also took down in June 2021. The CDC’s tally of deaths for Florida went blank. The number of people dying in each Florida county went missing from June 4, 2021 through September 17, 2021. This episode that illustrates how governments continue to hinder the public’s understanding of the virus and its toll. What they don’t know can’t kill them, or can it?

The designer of the Florida COVID-19 dashboard, was fired when she refused to cushion the numbers. The dashboard was also scrapped just as the Delta variant began to kill Floridians in large numbers. Florida leaders spent years whittling down the Department of Health, leaving Florida with one of the lowest numbers of epidemiologists per residents in the country.

As of October 18, 2021, the Florida COVID-19 related deaths per 100,000 was 0.79 with an average of 170.3 Floridians dying every day from COVID-19. Only Texas has a higher death toll at an average of 197 people dying every day. Lets just sweep that under the rug.

Crealde’ Urban Sketching

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Each Sunday I teach an Urban Sketching class at Crealde’ School of Art . I continue to hold the classes outside especially sine the weather is getting so nice as it cools down. My next series of six classes starts October 24, 2021. The class starts at 9:30Am until 12:30PM. The Crealde’ campus is dotted with statues and curving paths making it a wonderful place to explore visually in a sketchbook.

In this class the students were tasked with the idea of sketching the tent to give the impression that they were inside of a room. They were taught the principles of one point perspective and then set out to capture the space using pencil, pen and watercolor. The goal is to produced finished looking sketches right from day 1. It is a delight so see students slow down and experience the zen of truly observing their surroundings. We live in a time of constant digital distractions and sketching with old school pencil and paper strips students away form that hive mindset for a moment. The hope is that some will become addicted to the act of creation every day.

I always do a sketch along with the students so they can see how I approach each sketch. I share the initial block in, the pen and ink stage and the watercolor while sharing compositional thumbnails that point out things they can consider in their own sketch.

I am proud that Crealde’ continues to keep students and staff masked and safe. I insist that my students must wear a mask any time they are withing 6 feet of one another. Personally I wear a KN95 mask at all times and many students follow my example. The hospitalization numbers continue to drop in the United States so I we continue to maintain precautions the numbers can continue to drop. This class each week is the one day I get out of the studio to feel the breeze on my face and get some sunshine. Sharing my love of sketching is helping keep me sane through this pandemic.