Grant School Dumont, New Jersey

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I am teaching online students how to draw using two point perspective. I have decided to combine these tutorials along with the idea of sketching building from my past and my families past. Since my students and I are not on location, I encourage them to look up a building in their hometown on Google maps and then find a street view of the building to work from.

I attended Grant School 100 Grant Avenue in Dumont, New Jersey, from kindergarten through 1971 when my family moved to Tenafly New Jersey. I recall getting in trouble in kindergarten for refusing to take nap time. Some of my earliest art work was exhibited on the fence in front of the school. I used to sketch the Mercury space capsule over and over again as a child. I knew how to draw every knit bolt an rivet on the capsule.  It is a shame none of those space capsule sketches survived.

I remember it being a big deal when I was finally able to ride my bike to school.

The school is named for General Ulysses S. Grant who led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War. Later, as president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who created the Justice Department and worked to protect African Americans during Reconstruction.

Ground Floor Re-Construction

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As an online assignment with my students, I had them take a google map view of their home and create a floor plan. In my case I re-created the floor plan of the home I was born in and left when I was 10 years old. Old family photos and corrections by my siblings helped me get some things right. The Thorspecken family at 239 Larch Avenue, Dumont, Bergen, New Jersey from 1955 to 1971. I was in the home for 10 years.

It is surprising how selective my memories are. I vividly recall how the TV home entertainment center looked. My father built it from scratch. I remember watching him solder electronic circuit boards. One of my earliest memories is of of lying on the floor and watching the funereal for President John F. Kennedy. I would have only been 2 years old but it is a vivid memory. However, when I saw a picture of a Hawaiian tropical pattern on a living room couch, it didn’t register as being real. My sister said it was covered with slip covers, but I remember those being clear plastic because they stuck to bare skin in a very uncomfortable way.

I found a baby picture of myself bare butted on the kitchen table, so it was easy to reconstruct that room. My sister had one picture of the back dining room. That room was also used as a nursery since it was close to the master bedroom. Family tradition is that I almost died in the nursery since I got a horrible case of Scarlet Fever when I was a baby. I have had feverish visions ever since.

The layout of the master bedroom is the biggest mystery. I only have one memory of that room. My mother had cancer and was often away in NYC for treatment. She was on the rebound and home for a week.  I remember lying in bed with her as a 10 year old and watching Dark Shadows. Today, I am binge watching Dark Shadows and I am wondering if I will recognize the episodes I watched with my mother around April or early May of 1971. It was a dark show for a 10 year old to watch but I have always had a taste for the macabre.

BA5 Father of…

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So what variants will follow BA 5? Most folks seem to be of the mindset that things can never get worst than the last horrific wave of COVID-19. We are now in the midst of the BA 5 wave and more people around me are infected than at any time in the pandemic. To date there have been 1,051,912 deaths due to COVID-19 in America with between 500 and 600 people dying every day. This has become the new normal that Americans seem content to shrug off while going unmasked and gathering in large superspreader groups.

A year ago Omicron was an unknown variant. It seemed to come out of nowhere, being a completely unique branch of the COVID-19 family tree. The BA variants are off shoots of Omicron. The hope was that each new variant would become less virulent and less infectious. The opposite has become the truth. BA 5 is the most infectious variant of COVID-19 to date and more importantly it is highly effective at evading people’s immunity from previous infection and vaccinations.

I am fully vaccinated and have both booster shots. That means nothing in terms of protection from infection. It does protect against serious infection and possible death from the virus. President Joe Biden is also fully vaccinated with both boosters. Despite this he has tested positive for COVID-19 on July 21, 2022. Biden tried to stay shielded by testing staff regularly before meetings and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said they still wear masks and stay 6 feet away from him during meetings. I however have seen plenty of public appearances in which he was unmasked including his meetings with Saudi princes. When asked where Biden may have been infected, the press secretary deflected saying that was not an important consideration. Like the past president, denying and deflecting seems to be the way the White House staff deal with the virus.

Some talking heads hope that future variants of COVID will become less infectious, but hope is not a way to conduct public health measures. I had hoped that when cases and hospitalizations rose then politicians would adjust and re-instate masking and social distancing requirements. Politicians lack the balls to roll with the punches and thus COVID is continuing to win the fight.

Rajendram Rajnarayanan, PhD, an assistant dean of research and associate professor at Arkansas State University, who has been tracking BA 2.75 which was first found in India and will likely peak in  September 2022, in America  “Right now, BA.2.75. seems to be the fastest of them all” he said. As of July 17, 2022 he had tracked just 14 cases in seven states: California, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. By now people should understand how exponential growth of a virus works, but then again ignorance is bliss for most.

Oldenburg

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Claes Oldenburg, best known for sculpting everyday objects like spoons and bowling pins into monumental public sculptures that loom large as buildings. Oldenburg died July 18, 2022 at the age of 93 from complications from a fall. He once proposed replacing the Washington Monument near the Capitol building with a huge pair of scissors.

During the Civil War, on July 11–12, 1864, Confederate General Jubal A. Early launched an attack on Fort Stevens, in what is now Northwest Washington, DC. Union reinforcements arrived in the nick of time to save D.C. from Confederate invasion.

On January 6, 2021 a mob of insurrectionists invaded the capitol building to stop the certification of the results of the presidential election and an attempt by Donald Trump to try and overturn the election. Insurrectionists who had been chanting “Hang Mike Pence” came amazingly close to the vice president of the United States.

The pandemic had kept Americans cooped up at home where they devoured super spreading conspiracy theories on the internet. Trump downplayed the coronavirus pandemic and promoting the unfounded claim that the US presidential election had been stolen from him. Conspiracy theorists took the bait and devoured it. Q Anon also claims that a powerful cabal of Democrats and elites are trafficking and abusing children and Trump is the only salvation. To this day, they still believe he won the election, and that the U.S. Space Force will hand the next presidential election to Trump.

In 1923 Hitler launched a coup from a beer hall in Munich. From there the marched on Berlin to overthrow the German democratic government. The coup was crushed and Hitler went to jail for a short time. He realized he had to take over the government from the inside and that is what he did in the years leading up to World War II.

Trump hasn’t learned his lesson from this despot. His coup was a desperate authoritarian attempt to stay in power. Trump lacks Hitlers cunning. He is a weak excuse for a despot but the dim witted still believe his every lie.

COVID Variant Pile Up

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Rather than becoming a seasonal virus, variants of COVID-19 like BA 4 and BA 5 are piling up one one another, with one variant quickly rising on the heals of another. You can be sure another variant will follow ion the heals of BA 5.  BA 5 is rampant right now in America and in England. Long COVID is as rampant with BA 5 as it was in previous variants like Delta. With so many people getting re-infected with BA 5, the chances of Long COVID symptoms are a growing concern.

The following are percentages of of total laboratory confirmed infections in triple vaccinated people who are complaining of symptoms after 12 to 16 weeks after infection.

Delta, 5%, BA 1, 4.5%, BA 2, 4.2% Unfortunately vaccines are not offering very good protection against long COVID.

We are in the midst of a huge BA 5 surge right now. President Biden is infected as are a number of Democrats who attended a Democratic Convention in Tampa Florida. My household just had a positive case of COVID and we managed to contain it under quarantine. BA 5 spread all over the world at an incredible rate while most people went about life as if there were no pandemic.

No political has the balls to suggest re-imposing masking, or social distancing requirements. They all fear the backlash. Instead mild “suggestions” are offered. “In the face of BA.5, the Administration is encouraging Americans to use at-home tests before attending large, indoor gatherings, traveling, or visiting indoors with immunocompromised individuals.”

Last Day of Quarentine

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The first three day after someone is infected by COVID-19 they are the most infectious. While the patient has symptoms, they are still infectious. A person is considered infectious for 10 days after the onset of symptoms, or they test positive. Today is the last of five days that our house guest will be quarantined in the guest bedroom. Tonight everyone in the house will take a COVID home test and hopefully we will all test negative. For the past 5 days I have been wearing a KN-95 mask held in place by the cloth mask Pam made for me in the first weeks of the pandemic. The home made cloth mask has certainly gotten plenty of use. We have taken every caution imaginable to keep the virus contained to a confined space. Our house guest is young, and an athlete, so thankfully symptoms have been mild. Hopefully the illness has run it’s course.

I got my second booster shot several months ago because I wanted to be ready for a possible BA5 surge. You would think that would protect me for any possible infection, but I recently read an article that the BA5 variant can re-infect you despite any previous infection, or like myself, recent vaccination. The article pointed out that a vaccination might only protect against infection for as little as 28 days. Oddly enough, that 28 day grace period ran out two days ago. The vaccine does however protect against serious illness and or possible death.

So this family is a test study in the efficacy of wearing masks and quarantining. The quarantine wasn’t text book perfect since the guest bedroom didn’t have an attached bathroom. But our patient was good about staying masked when going to the bathroom. Last night our patient lounged outside on the back porch in the hammock. As an added precaution, I kept windows closed in the bedroom I was sleeping in, since the windows open out to the back patio. I also realized that I could close the air duct in the bedroom which cut down potentially virus filled air circulation. A towel was also shoved up under the gap below the door. People who get infected with COVID-19 can be sick for 3 days to a month.

It will be so nice to finally relax a bit if we all test negative. During the next 5 days of a recovery period, Our house guest will once again be able to go to work and wander freely. We will stay masked whenever we are in the same room, and we will still eat in our separate rooms for an additional 5 days, so the isolation period is really only half over. It will truly be a miracle if we have dodged this close call with COVID.

We all tested negative.

Monochrome Thumbnails

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At my Sunday morning Crealde Urban Sketching class I often have the students to a page of monochrome thumbnails drawings. Most students get caught up in trying to mix just the right color when doing watercolors over thir sketch and this exercise helps them realize that how dark and light the washes are is of far greater importance.

This sketch was done back in 2020 when masks were still required at Crealde. I continue to wear my KN95 mask both indoors and outdoors when at Crealde. With this latest series of classes just one student also wore a mask. As BA5 cases rose this last week two more students chose to wear masks in class.

With summer fast approaching it is becoming harder to justify holding every class outside. I had one student outside who sat with no cover when the sun was behind a cloud. After 15 minutes she was in the blazing sunlight and barely able to see the brilliant white page she was working on. I encouraged her to seek cover and keep the people she had sketched and incorporate a different background. She pulled it off very successfully.

Most of my sketches done on location inn Orlando have been inside air conditioned venues, precisely because of the heat. Last weekend we sketched indoors and it was amazing to see how different everyone’s sketch was.

Pandemic Office

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I did this sketch of Pam using the hammock to do her office work. I sat inside looking through a glass panel of the back door. Since there are no interruptions she apparently has been getting a whole lot more work done. Today is day three of living with the COVID-19 virus in the home.  On Saturday July 16, 2022 the positive test was confirmed with an at home test for a member of the household. Pam tested negative as did I. The open air back patio was a safe space for the two of us for the first few days of quarantine.

Everyone is sleeping in separate bedrooms and the person who tested positive is staying in a guest bedroom behind a closed door for much of the day. The problem is that there is no bathroom attached to that bedroom. There is only a common bathroom in the hallway. We have worked around that issue by placing a portable HEPA filter in the hall outside the bathroom.

The first several nights I slept in the bedroom that faces out on the back patio. The air conditioning was on in the house and the air intake for the AC is in the hallway, which, as I noted has to be used to get to the bathroom. My thought therefor was that the AC may circulate virus throughout the house. I thought by opening the bedroom windows, the virus might get blown outside before it gets blown into my lungs. I had the odd habit of putting on a cloth mask when I heard the air conditioner turn on and then I would take the mask off when it turned off. The problem with this of course is that eventually I fell asleep and the mask stayed off.

Having to stay isolated in a bedroom for days on end can make anyone stir crazy. Last night the COVID positive patient left the quarantine room and sat outside in the hammock. The quarantine room windows were opened during this hammock time and surfaces wiped down. When I went to bed last night I wondered if I should open the windows since the back patio was now part of the quarantine zone. The virus was again inside the home. The AC must be circulating the virus again. I finally decided the benefits of opening the window outweighed the risk of the virus lingering in the air outside. Also with the AC on, air would rush out of the window rather than coming back into the bedroom.

Today I chose to change my safe zone from the back patio to the front porch. I set up a card table and lawn chair on the front port and that is where I went for breakfast and lunch today. Breakfast went fine as I ate my eggs and read the days news on by phone with my mask off. However at lunch time, a persistent fly found out I had food, so I moved into my car to relax and eat. I wasn’t going to spend my entire lunch battling a fly.

There are just two more full days of quarantine left and the COVID case seems to be a minor one. BA 5 thankfully has not in this case caused shortness of breath. Fever was countered by a cold shower and the only other major symptom seems to have been a runny nose. According to CDC guidelines, after the quarantine period the infected individual can go about life as usual as long as they stay masked. Everyone in the family can then finally sit down to dinner together after another 5 days.

Living with the Virus

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Today was day 2 of living with the COVID-19 virus in the house. Today was a full day of 8 hours of teaching virtual art classes. One adult student is learning Urban Sketching from me and I decided to teach him how to draw a room using 2 point perspective. I sat in a rocking chair in the living room and sketched down the hallway. At the end of the hallway COVID-19 lurks. These past few days have been the first days of the pandemic where I had to be masked at home.

Lunchtime was a major reprieve since I got to eat outside on the back patio. It was such a relief to be outside and breath the fresh air. That had been an ongoing policy of mine to never eat indoors for the five days of quarantine.

Students seemed to adjust easily to my being masked. Since much of my time with students is spent sketching, little has changed. Classes are sometimes interrupted when the dogs see the mailman outside the front window and then all hell breaks loose with the barking and snarling.

Right now the person who is infected is sitting outside. We had some discussion about weather that would be safe for our elderly neighbor. We had to weight weather the virus would dissipate enough over the distance to the neighbors fence and backyard. Most people are rather binary in their decision making during the pandemic. If mask mandates are lifted then no one wears masks. When pe0ple heard that it was safer to be unmasked outside, they decided to never mask outside even when in large crowds. I just watched a video from a doctor who decided to go to a crowed Eagles concert and he was infected outdoors.

Now that I have worn a mask for several days straight, it is becoming second nature. I can flick the mask on and off with ease when I eat outside. It has become a permanent accessory. Anti bacterial wipes that we used constantly at the beginning of the pandemic are now a critical tool as we wipe down anything we touch. So far I have tested negative. I plan to dodge this bullet, but it is clear that someday this virus will be impossible to avoid.

Eradication

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The COVID-19 virus will never be eradicated. Humanity had it’s opportunity to eradicate it but that opportunity was lost and squandered due to greed, indifference, and stupidity. Though Americans are done with COVID, the virus is not done with us. Vaccines have offered safety from hospitalization and death but not infection and or re-infection. I have both of my boosters going into this BA5 wave but still maintain all other safety precautions, like social distancing, masking, and washing hands often.

In America all safety measures have been dropped which allows the virus to spread easily. Politicians do not want to face the backlash of once again imposing mandates for masking, social distancing and lock downs. People would revolt and gather in large groups to protest and spread the virus amongst themselves and others.

Now someone in the household is infected and this is day 2 of seeing if those safety measures can keep me from becoming infected. The person infected is staying isolated in a guest bedroom but the bathroom is a common area of the home. I tested negative yesterday. Basic measures include staying double masked with my cloth mask holding a KN95 snugly in place. I am starting to winder if the fit of my mask is snug enough. I have a beard and that might be a factor in allowing the virus in. I would love a simple everyday hazmat suit.

I am fully vaccinated and have had the second booster shot. Results coming in from Israel show that getting the second booster does protect against getting infected for two months. If that is true for BA5 then I might dodge this COVID home invasion. With Omicron a person can infect on average eight other people. That is how the virus spreads quickly through a community and around the world.

Masking is patriotic. I wear it to protect the ones I love. There is no downside to masking and it is so easy to do. When I want to take an open air breather, I step outside in taste the non air conditioned air. Last night I opened the bedroom windows, turned up the ceiling fan and rolled up a towel to stop air from flowing under the door. We live in strange times, and the next five days promise to be pretty strange.

China enforced hard lock downs to stop the spread of COVID and they have had relatively few deaths. Chine did however suffer hard hitting economic consequences. In America, politicians have decided to go the opposite route. We have become accustomed to 300 to 400 deaths a day. The elderly and immune compromised have become expendable so that Americans can go to concerts and bars, living a carefree per-pandemic lifestyle. America is in denial.