Mercy Kitchen

Posted on by Thor

Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida collects, stores and distributes donated food through a powerful hunger relief network spanning 6 counties: Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia. Their programs are fighting hunger and feeding hope.

When they opened the on the south end of Mercy Drive, I did several sketches of the opening of the building and of volunteers at work sorting food. At that facility there is the Darden Foundation Community Kitchen, a 2,000-square-foot, commercial kitchen space. Food could be prepared there and distributed to the community.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the community needs more than doubled. The kitchen was no longer large enough to meet the demand.

As a result of CARES Act funding through Orange County and financial support from the community, the food bank expanded into the new 20,000-square-foot facility, two miles from its main warehouse. Mercy Kitchen includes an expanded production kitchen, a cooler and freezer area, dry storage, and six receiving and distribution bay doors to support Second Harvest’s operations.

Volunteers and staff at this location support hunger relief efforts by packing meals for kids, seniors and veterans. Programs supported at Mercy Kitchen include:

  • 7-Day Breakfast and Lunch Boxes
  • Kids Café after school program
  • Summer Food Service Program

As I was sketching volunteers were busy preparing packaged school lunches. The assembly line work was fast an furious and the volunteers seemed to have a blast. They wanted to get a group photo together outside the building after their shift. 23,000 meals are prepared at the kitchen each day. Weekly 5,500 seven-day boxes (77,000 meals) and 450 family meal boxes (9,900 meals) are distributed to people in need.

Bring Hope Home is Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida’s newest innovation in response to the high demand for home-delivered food due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The program utilizes external delivery partners as well as volunteer drivers to safely transport perishable and nonperishable food items directly to those in need in a contact-free manner. Besides this program they also partner with 550 feeding partners in Central Florida. They include emergency food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, senior centers, day cares and more.

Our network of partners help us distribute food to six counties in Central Florida, including: Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia county.

I was glad to see that masks are required at Second Harvest. Now that the hospitalizations are slowly dropping due to COVID-19 there has been just a minor decline in the demand for food. The pandemic is far from over.  It will likely take many years before Mercy kitchen will see pre-pandemic levels of demand.

Omicron

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A new variant has shown up in South Africa and the World Health Organization (WHO) has labeled it Omicron. This variant has been spreading faster than the Delta variant which Europe, Northern American states and the world in it’s grip.

“Initially it looked like some cluster outbreaks, but from yesterday, the indication came from our scientists from the Network of Genomic Surveillance that they were observing a new variant,” Minister of Health Joe Phaahla said, stressing that it is currently unclear where the variant first emerged.

Initially given the number, B.1.1.529, it was rumored that t might be called Nu, the 13th letter in the Greek alphabet but they called it instead Omicron after the 15th letter of the Greek Alphabet. I had already started my painting of Gnu’s, which are like wildebeests,  stampeding, and since I was close to finishing I stayed the course.

Omicron has an unusually high number of mutations, with more than 30 in the key spike protein. It is believed that it is infecting the vaccinated as well as the unvacinated. Only about 21% of the population has gotten the jab. Many scientists have been warning that there should be a concerted effort to vaccinate the entire population of the world, but rich countries have instead been focused on providing third booster shots with the vaccines that they have hoarded for their own populations. By hoarding vaccines new mutations are able to develop in countries where much of the population is unprotected. Even so, half of the population in countries like America have refused to get vaccinated.

UK officials announced that six African countries will be added to England’s travel “red list” after the UK Health Security Agency flagged concern over the variant.The United States as always is slow to react. The United States will restrict travel from South Africa and neighboring countries effective November 29, 2021, a senior Biden administration official said. With air travel open for several more days over the Thanksgiving holiday it is very likely the Omicron virus has already arrived in America. The financial markets have begun to tumble, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 2.5%, its worst day since late October 2020.

COVID-19 Dodgeball

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CNN reported that Covid-19 cases in children are up 32% from two weeks ago, according to new numbers published November 22, 2021 by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). For the week ending November 18, 2021 there were at least 141,905 new cases among children, with children making up a disproportionate share of the cases, representing more than a quarter of all new Covid-19 cases for the past week.

Early in the pandemic, kids accounted for fewer than 3% of confirmed cases. That is because parents helped to keep them at home, socially isolated.  Now parents are glad to have the kids out from underfoot and back in school. Some schools are trying to keep the kids protected with masks and some form of social distancing, but some state governors are doing everything in there power to keep the kids unmasked so the virus can spread unchecked.

Cases have dropped since a horrific summer surge in the south, but now the cases are rising again as winter sets in. The number of children with Covid-19 is still considered “extremely high,” the AAP report said. This marks the 15th week in a row that child Covid-19 cases are higher than 100,000. But 939 children have died from Covid-19 in the United States since the start of the pandemic, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Children ages 5 and older are now eligible to get Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine. A study conducted by Pfizer showed that its vaccine efficacy was more than 90% against symptomatic disease. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that two-thirds of parents want to wait and see, or are refusing to vaccinate their children. Misinformation, mistrust and insanity are resulting in plenty of children that the virus can burn through. Those kids return home and infect the parents and grand parents and the dynamic dance of death continues.

Backyard

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I am teaching a sketchbook class with one of my Elite Animation Academy students. For this class, I asked her to get away from her desk and sketch something she sees every day.

I moved myself to the backyard for the lesson and sketched along with her. Ironically I have never sketched the backyard with its lush tropical plants and palm tree.

It was nearing sunset so I had to work fast as I added colors, with the tops of tree catching the fading sun.

The neighbors roof is covered with a blue tarp. They put it up after one of the last hurricanes. They have this interesting old stove pipe that sticks up, perhaps for a wood burning stove or fireplace. I am used to seeing these on the roofs of crematoria.

Colors were vibrant and bright as I began the sketch and gradually faded as the sun dipped closer to the horizon. I was in the shade the entire time.

This was a trial run to see how the new iPad is working. My old iPad‘s battery kept dying in an hours time even when it was plugged in. It made conducting classes a challenge. Ultimately I had to invest in the new iPad and a new laptop with enough power for Photoshop and video editing software. I am still working on the transition while backing up my files as best as possible.

I can say the iPad worked great for the duration of the sketch. I only stopped sketching because it as getting too dark and mosquitos started to bite.

Still Birth

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Having COVID-19 around the time of delivery will increase the risk of still birth. The risk of still birth is worst with the Delta variant.

The CDC released a study on November 15, 2021 bout the risks of still births due to COVID-19 infection.The study compared women with COVID-19 to women without COVID-19.

Pregnant women are at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 infection. Over 1 million births were in the study. Among those births there were 8,154 still births or about 0.65%.

21,553 women with COVID-19 were in the study. Of these women there were 273 still births or about 1.26%. The risk of still birth when infected with COVID-19 is close to double.

Prior to the pandemic still births were at about 0.59%. But during the pandemic women who did not have COVID at the time of birth experienced stillbirths at a rate of 6.4%. This in itself it a marked increase. Perhaps the women had been infected and recovered by the time of birth. It is also possible that omen avoided health care during the pandemic.

Prior to the Delta variant the risk of still birth was 0.98% or an adjusted relative risk of 1.47.  During the Delta variant surge the risk rose to 2.7% or an adjusted relative risk of 4.04 so still births were more than 4 times more likely during the delta variant.

It is safe to assume that in other developed countries the rates of still births would be comparable and in undeveloped nations the numbers of still births would likely be higher.

COVID-19 Stimulus Check

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Kyle Rittenhouse traveled from his home state to Kenosha Wisconsin where he shot 3 people and murdered two. He felt threatened by hands, a skateboard and someones feet. Had he not been walking around with a weapon he was to young to own, 36-year-old Joseph Rosenbaum, of Kenosha, and 26-year-old Anthony Huber, of Silver Lake, Wisconsin would not have died that night. Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a protester from West Allis, had his arm vaporized. The jury accepted the defenses claims of self defense and he was acquitted on all charges.

The Washington Post reported that  the shooter used his COVID-19 stimulus check to purchase the AR-15 he used in the fatal Kenosha shooting. “The Post found that the shooter, who was too young to buy a rifle, had arranged for an adult friend to buy the weapon for him using money he had received from a government stimulus program.”

That friend, 19-year-old Dominick Black of Burlington, Wisconsin, purchased the weapon for him at an Ace Hardware store in Ladysmith, Wisconsin on May 1, 2020, according to a criminal complaint charging Black with two felony counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to someone under 18, resulting in death. The gun was then stored at Black’s stepfather’s house in Kenosha, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

The shooter said, “I got my $1,200 from the coronavirus Illinois unemployment because I was on furlough from YMCA,” he said. “And I got my first unemployment check so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll use this to buy it.’”He told the Post he lived with his mother, a circumstance that would typically mean she claims him as a dependent on her taxes. That would make him ineligible for the $1,200 stimulus payment.

He was referencing several weeks of unemployment compensation approved through the CARES Act, said Washington Post Investigations Editor Jeff Leen. He said the shooter’s mother later told the paper that money for the gun came from “special unemployment” related to the pandemic. It’s more likely the shooter was referring to unemployment than the stimulus program itself, based on his life circumstances and description from him and his mother. That is indeed a “COVID-19 stimulus,” but not the one people would think of based on this post’s description.

Regardless you have to wonder how many more guns were purchased with COVID related government funds. As of November 21, the year 2021 has already become one of the deadliest on record for mass shootings. According to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), there have been 637 mass shootings in 2021, and more than 39,883 individuals have died via guns by their own hand or at the hand of another.

There has been a rush to buy guns since the pandemic began. According to the FBI, a record-setting 3.7 million firearm background checks were completed in March 2020, the month COVID-19 shutdowns began in the United States. This record was shattered only a few months later as protests for racial justice following the police murder of George Floyd rocked the nation, leading to 3.9 million firearm background checks.

Now that vigilante justice is the accepted norm in America, you can expect the number of senseless deaths to continue to rise.

Demo for Student

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I am teaching a virtual sketchbook class or Elite Animation Academy. This demo was used to show my student how to block in a sketch and start the painting. The idea was to use any items that just happened to be on the table.

I used an unfinished sculpture I started of a baby sea otter, some India ink, a magnifying loop, a pencil sharpener and an Apple iPad plug for a defective and broken chord.i the background is a Wacom tablet and several books. The tablet has overheated to the point where the screen is popping off and computer components are shoving out of a fissure in the bottom of the case. Maybe the battery is expanding and about to explode. The machine has outlived it’s usefulness though I am still limping by with it today. I vote two thumbs down for the Wacon Cintique.

I invested in a new iPad and laptop so that I am no longer panicking about he battery dying before I finish each painting. This past week I had to take brakes every time the computer shut off due to the battery dying. I am not a person who willingly takes breaks hen a painting is not yet finished. Hopefully the pace ill pick back up again next week when I the new machines up and running.

Much of my lesson plan included avoiding using horizontal lines and vertical lines. Background elements are all off kilter and at angles in my sketch. It seems impossible for most beginning students to resist the horizontal and vertical grid. I stress the point, demonstrate it and then hope that the principle is applied in action.

Anosmia

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Anosmia is a medical term for the loss of smell. Over a million Americans have lost their sense of smell due to COVID-19. Up to 1.6 million Americans have experienced a loss of smell for more than six months with little chance of recovery. Loss of smell may be even be more common among mild cases of COVID-19. Often, this loss of smell is accompanied by a loss of taste, the two senses being closely dependent on each other.

Studies have estimated that anywhere from 30% to 80% of COVID-19 sufferers can develop some level of anosmia. Upwards of 90% regain their sense of smell again in as little as two weeks. With so many people in the U.S. infected by the virus, even a relatively rare complication like long-term anosmia can still affect plenty of people.

The study, published Thursday in JAMA Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery, seems to be one of the first to try gauging the toll of chronic COVID-related anosmia in the U.S. The authors were compelled to study the issue after seeing many of these patients in their clinics. Somewhere between 700,000 to 1.6 million Americans (as of August 2021) have experienced a loss or change in their sense of smell lasting more than six months as a result of COVID-19 so far, they found.

There are treatments that are thought to improve a person’s chances of recovering from anosmia, such as smell training, and there are clinical trials ongoing now that are testing out experimental treatments. But for those unlucky enough to still have trouble smelling things months down the road, the odds of recovery are slim.

New Year’s Eve 2022

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Thousands of people will gather in Times Square for the famed New Year’s Eve ball drop tradition, so long as they show proof of vaccination against COVID-19, officials said November 16,  2021.

Last year’s celebration featured wacky waving inflatables tube men instead of the usual crowds. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said “We want to welcome those hundreds of thousands of folks — but everyone needs to be vaccinated,” the mayor cautioned. “All you need to do is have proof of vaccination and a valid photo ID and you are in.”

December 31, 2021 is Bill Blasio’s last day in office so if there is any fall out for hosting this superspreader, if will fall on the next mayor, Eric Adams. New York is one of the 21 states that have seen  steady increase in cases over the last week.

New York State Governor Kathy Hochel tweeted, “COVID numbers are on the rise in regions across the state, including Western New York & the Finger Lakes. We know what needs to be done: more shots in arms, boosters for everyone at risk, and common-sense social distancing & masking measures. Let’s move forward, not back.”

Austria Anti-Vax Lockdown

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Europe has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. Austria has ordered a lockdown for any residents who have not received the COVID-19 vaccine. The lockdown affects about 2 million people in the Alpine country of 8.9 million, the APA news agency reported. It doesn’t apply to children under 12 because they cannot yet officially get vaccinated.

The lockdown will initially last for 10 days and police will go on patrol to check people outside to make sure they are vaccinated, Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said, adding that additional forces will be assigned to the patrols.

Unvaccinated people can be fined up to 1,450 euros ($1,660) if they violate the lockdown.

“It’s our job as the government of Austria to protect the people,” Schallenberg told reporters in Vienna on Sunday. “Therefore we decided that starting Monday (November 21, 2021) … there will be a lockdown for the unvaccinated.”

Austria has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe: shamefully, only around 65% of the total population is fully vaccinated. The United States only has 58% of the population vaccinated. In recent weeks, Austria has faced a worrying rise in infections. Authorities reported 11,552 new cases on Sunday; a week ago there were 8,554 new daily infections. The United States had over 23,000 new cases on the same day and the cases are rising here as well.

There was a last-minute rush at vaccination centers in Upper Austria on the eve of the new restrictions.

But critics have questioned whether the move is constitutional. The far-right Freedom Party has said it will create a group of second-class citizens.