Flight out of Pittsburgh

Posted on December 8, 2024December 5, 2024 by Thor

Flying out of Pittsburgh there was a layover in Detroit. I knew I was heading home when I saw Mickey Mouse on someone’s luggage. One other person was masked in the waiting area. He was Japanese where there is no stigma against masking. I charged my iPhone so I would have juice to order a Lyft once I landed.

The flight to Orlando was the most crowded flight I took. I was glad that I was in an exit row and because of that I had plenty of leg room to stretch out and relax. My hope was to hunker down and sleep. I tried to sleep but really didn’t succeed. Two rows behind me, several people were coughing up their lungs. The risk of exposure rises on longer flights.

After getting back to the studio, the next morning my throat was scratchy and I started coughing. Of course my first thought was COVID, so I tested myself. Thankfully the pink Binax test came back negative. What I assumed was a cold however, knocked me on my butt for several days. I am still snuggled up on the couch under a blanket. I was experiencing shivers. I haven’t been sick for over 4 years. I forgot what it was like to be out of commission.

The days after the flight out of Pittsburgh, I felt like crap. I used an at home test kit and it came up negative, so I chalked it up to a bad cold. However after several days of hard work outside, with a friend. I returned to the studio and decided to test one more time just to be sure. That test came up positive for COVID-19. It was a strong solid red line. I was infected on Delta Flight 1652 flying back into Orlando fro Detroit. I have to wonder how many others are spreading the virus around Orlando after that flight.

In the time I thought I had a cold, I managed to infect a friend which I feel horrible about. I now know I need to up my masking game when I travel by plane. The problem is that I have facial hair which breaks the seal of the mask. There are also small travel sized HEPA filters which I could pack in my travel bag and run during the flight. Though I take basic precautions, I now know they are not enough. When battling something as small an airborne virus, more precautions are needed. I need to buy new N-95 masks and I will have to shave my beard any time I travel. I may even decide to get goggles when I board a plane. More likely I will stop promoting my animated short film COVID Dystopia in person. Packing into a sardine can in the sky isn’t smart.

Since I am so sick, I decided to not go to FusionFest to sketch. I still feel it is important to keep others safe, so I am social isolating at my friend’s house. I was helping this friend with a huge outdoor sculpture, Since the first test came back negative, I continued to help. My friend however caught what I have, which is, as it turns out, COVID-19. I want to keep others safe but with my first infection I managed to fail horribly. I am social isolating in my studio now and will test myself again in 5 days.

So, is is safe to fly during an ongoing pandemic? F*ck NO. I managed to evade COVID for 5 years and now I have to up my game to evade it for the next 5 years.

We might be done with COVID, but COVID is not done with us.

Welcome Back

Posted on January 5, 2022January 6, 2022 by Thor

Florida Governor Ron DeathSantis has vowed that schools will remain open through the Omicron blizzard. Mask mandates for students are a thing of the past since DeathSantis created a law making mask mandates illegal to protect students.

The Governor has been at war with local school districts that wanted to mask mandates to protect students during surges of COVID. The administration’s policy was to deny school boards, the right to choose whether their children attend school masked or unmasked.

The State Board of Education docked pay from school boards that issued mask mandates in defiance of the governor’s policy. The Federal Government stepped in to cover School Board salaries. However, it is now illegal to protect the lives of students. The Governor wants students to get infected in the hope that it will foster herd immunity with what he considers an acceptable amount of death. COVID is not benign in in kids and it is not inconsequential.

So students are returning to classrooms mask free if they like, to spread this highly transmissible virus at will. Governor DeathSantis said, while speaking in Fort Lauderdale, children “do not need to be doing any crazy mitigation” such as testing or wearing masks, unless their parents want them to. He is also making moved to cut back testing just as the demand for more testing has grown in this wave of the pandemic. Tests will only be for “High Value” individuals, whatever that means. An example given was of an elderly grandmother given more testing consideration over an 8-year-old third grader. Clearly he feels that allowing children to get sick will held his re-election plans

According to The New York Times, “Large city school systems in Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee and Newark have joined a growing list of public schools across the country that have postponed reopening after the holiday break, switched to remote instruction, or have taken both steps because of COVID-19 outbreaks and staffing shortages.”

Florida reported 85,000 new COVID-19 cases on January 4th 2022. 61 people died that same day. Hospitalizations have spiked suddenly high above the peak of the Delta wave. It will get worse before it gets better. As of 6Pm on January 3, 2022 over 3,000 schools nationwide had closed for the week, according to Burbio, which tracks school calendars. Many schools are pivoting to virtual learning. School districts in and around Detroit, Atlanta, Newark, New Jersey, and Milwaukee, as well as individual schools elsewhere, have reverted to virtual learning for days or weeks, mostly because of staff shortages resulting from illness or quarantine.

Yesterday This Was Home: Animated Map

Posted on October 2, 2020October 2, 2020 by Thor

As Sam talks about the recent court case that makes segregation illegal when traveling between states, this animated map shows the bus route to Detroit from Orlando through Jacksonville. This was fairly straight forward, by setting up a start key that set position and scale of the art in Adobe Premiere Pro. I then zoomed out to include enough f the map to show Detroit as well. The white line showing the bus route was added in Callipeg copying each frame and adding a bit more to the line with each new frame. I think this was the first animation I did with the program to get used to the interface. I did enough research to be sure that all the highways were indeed circa 1957.

This animated short will be on display a the Orange County Regional History Center (65 East Central Blvd Orlando Fl) from October 3, 2020 to February 14, 2021 as part of the new exhibition called Yesterday This Was Home which is about the 1920 Ocoee Massacre in Orange County, Florida, remains the largest incident of voting-day violence in United States history.

Events unfolded on Election Day 1920, when Mose Norman, a black U.S. citizen, attempted to exercise his legal right to vote in Ocoee and was turned away from the polls. That evening, a mob of armed white men came to the home of his friend, July Perry, in an effort to locate Norman. Shooting ensued. Perry was captured and eventually lynched. An unknown number of African American citizens were murdered, and their homes and community were burned to the ground. Most of the black population of Ocoee fled, never to return.

This landmark exhibition will mark the 100-year remembrance of the Ocoee Massacre. The exhibition will explore not only this horrific time in our community’s history but also historical and recent incidents of racism, hatred, and terror, some right here at home.

The content will encourage reflection on a century of social transformation, the power of perspective, and the importance of exercising the right to vote, and will ask what lessons history can inspire for moving forward.

To promote safe distancing, the museum has implemented new ticketing procedures for this special exhibition. These procedures go into effect after October 3, 2020. For the run of the exhibition, the museum will have extended operating hours to create a safe viewing experience for a greater number of people. On Sundays after October 3, we will open two hours earlier at 10 am. and stay open two hours earlier until 7 p.m. And on Thursdays, we will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.