Come Alive

Posted on by Thor

Encore presents Come Alive, in Steinmetz Hall in the Doctor Phillips Center for the Performing Arts on Friday August 19th at 8 PM to Sunday Aug 21, 2022 at 11 PM. Tickets are $19. I went to sketch a rehearsal in Steinmetz Hall. It seemed to be their first time in the venue since much time was spent trying to arrange the seating for the hundreds of singers in the chorus. All of the singers could not fit on the second level, so twenty five volunteers went to an even higher level to sing. There are 135 singers in the chorus and 60 in the orchestra.

It’s time to celebrate 20 years of Encore. Come see Encore alumni from across the country collaborate with new talent to perform songs from some of their favorite movies and musicals. In this exciting concert, you’ll hear the highlights from Encore performances across the years and fantastic new selections from the stories that currently capture their hearts. Join Encore as they take a fond look back at the past and an enthusiastic leap into the future!

We walked back stage to get to our seats in the hall. This is a truly awesome venue and I hope to someday to have the chance to sketch the amazing structures we walked past back stage. One structure looked like a two story tall fire hose reel and I cant figure out what it might do. There is more to this hall than what first meets the eye.

There were so many powerhouse singers in the cast. The show moves from one musical number to the next in quick succession with each song more uplifting than the last. It was an inspiring evening. When the full chorus joins in on a number you can feel all the voices as they reverberate in your chest.

COVID-19 Warning: An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. COVID-19 is a highly contagious disease that may result in personal injury, severe illness, and death. By visiting the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and or attending the Dr. Phillips Center shows, events, education programs, classes or other activities, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19. All visitors must follow the Center’s health and safety protocols. Please help keep each other safe.

Crealde Panorama 1

Posted on by Thor

After five days of COVID-19 quarantine, I was cleared to go back to teaching classes in person at Crealde. I tested negative for the virus and returned to the campus several days later. It was a nice morning so we sketched outside. I managed to completely forget my art supply bag, so instead I found a pencil in the summer camp supplies and sketched on a bit of table top paper. I didn’t have watercolors so I was only able to do line art.

The point of this class was to have students do a series of nine small thumbnail drawings to fill  page. With the layout I suggested three thumbnail drawings would line up across three stacked lines. I decided to simply stitch three thumbnails together to create panoramas. I scanned the drawings back at my home studio and then finished them off as digital paintings.

My first piece of advice is always to stay in the shade since the Florida Sun can be brutal. Most of the students stayed on the back patio area which is covered. As the sketches progressed it gradually grew hotter. There are ceiling fans in the rafters of the back patio but I couldn’t figure out where the switch was. Several texts to colleagues finally uncovered the secret, the switch was in the art studio next to my classroom. The fans made a huge difference.

Some students however ventured out to other parts of the campus and one misjudged how much shade she had. I  think she ended up in the direct sunlight and she returned to the classroom to finish her sketches in the air conditioning.

One student hunted down all the female nude sculptures around the property. I had never realized just how many nudes there were. As an urban sketcher it is very seldom that I will be sketching a nude. People tend to wear clothes at events in public. Yet the nude seems to be the predominant subject among the sculptures on property.

All of my students are women in this session at Crealde. That leaves me wondering why men don’t seem to have an interest in sketching. It is a real mystery.

BA5 Father of…

Posted on by Thor

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.

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.”

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.

COVID Inside

Posted on by Thor

While I was doing this painting demo with a student, I got a text informing me that someone in the house tested positive for COVID-19. After all this time, I am finally directly exposed. We all plan to isolate for 5 days from the world and each other to try and avoid a full house of infection. We are planning to each sleep in separate rooms. However, it is a small house. Suddenly we had to think about the home’s circulation. Would infected air disperse throughout the home? We are hoping not since the main air intake is just in one spot. Every home should be set up with better air circulation systems and HEPA filters, but that is not a priority to protect from something that can not be seen.

I have a small air filter in the studio area, but from the moment I found out COVID had smuggled its way into the home I masked up. For the next 5 days I will likely be masked 24 hours a day, perhaps except when sleeping. So, can illness be avoided with the highly infectious BA5 variant once it is inside the home? I am seated right smack dab in the center of the petri dish, so time will tell. I will continue to take every possible precaution, but that may not be enough.

The likely point of infection for this case of COVID is probably a summer camp. I am teaching virtual summer camps and will continue to do so, although I will be masked even at home. We are all still scrambling to figure out the best way to proceed. There is no clear play book. I teach an in person class on weekends and I had to email to let them know I will not be in. I tried to leave a voice mail but it turns out the institution had no way to leave messages. Ultimately through texts, messages and emails, the students were contacted.

BA Bingo

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The BA4 and BA5 variants of Omicron is causing a massive wave or re-infections thanks to its immune escape ability. IF you were infected with a previous variant of COVID-19 or if you are “fully” vaccinated, you are not protected from being infected by the BA4 and BA 5 variants. Some experts believe that over one million people are being infected every day. If, like me you have managed to evade infection so far, your time is running out before you become infected.

I continue to take basic safety precautions like masking and social distancing not because I fear death, but because I don’t want to have to deal with long haul COVID symptoms and complications. I had to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, a nightmare in itself, and in that tight crowded room no one had a ask on besides myself. I am amazed by that.

The vaccines are great at helping avoid hospitalizations and death but they are bot the ultimate solution in America’s new normal. The huge rise in cases caused by BA5 is resulting in a rise in hospitalizations. It would seem to make sense that a rapid rise in cases should result in people taking basic precautions, but Americans seem to be “over” COVID. The virus then happily take advantage of holiday travelers and people gathering in huge crowds. It seems humanity is pre-programed to huddle together in tight crowds and long lines.

Some believe that future variants of COVID will become weaker causing less severe illness but that is not a foregone conclusion. Pi, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, any one of these can become more deadly. This virus will never be eradicated. Generations from now, children will be getting vaccinated for COVID-19 because our generation wasn’t able to take the threat of the virus seriously. Take simple basic precautions to help stop the spread. Get vaccinated, wear you mask indoors and outdoors if in a crowd, and social distance. BA5 can spread person to person even with a brief passing encounter indoors and outdoors.

Chasing the Virus

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Scientists keep trying to keep up with the rapidly changing COVID-19 virus but it keeps mutating faster than they can develop new and more effective vaccines. With the rise of BA5 which can better evade immune protection, we could be facing a perfect storm. Travel over the July 4th holiday rose back to pre-pandemic levels. About 2.5 million people went through airport security check points. It was the largest travel weekend since the start of the pandemic.  With transmission levels high, large numbers of people traveling, and shifting attitudes about the pandemic, and the BA5 which has been shown to increase hospitalizations in several countries around the world. The pandemic is not done with us.

Vaccines seem to always be a step behind the virus. Boosters are becoming less effective against avoiding infection. Anti-vax misinformation has lead to vaccine uptake in the United States being lax at best. 90 million doses of vaccine have been thrown out in the United States because it went unused or expired. Variant specific boosters will likely never keep up with the fast COVID mutations. By the time a BA5 specific booster is developed there will likely already be a BA6 and BA7 variant that will completely change the playing field.

When first introduced the vaccines seemed like the ultimate solution. However with the rapid mutation of the virus it seems protection from infection may only last several months at best. Waning immunity and immune evasion are causing a continual rise in hospitalization. Chasing variants is not the solution. The dogs of science will never catch that rabbit.