Tag: life in the time of Covid-19
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some stuff I’d love to see happen this school year
It’s now early September, which means that for most of us, school’s back in session, and has been for between two weeks and a month. It’s even back fully in person and “normal” for a lot of us, though I don’t know how long that will last. (I think it could last quite well—if folks […]
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a good vaccine rollout doesn’t require tech skills
There’s a lot of talk, of late, about vaccine rollouts, and whether or not the U.S. is doing a good job. Some folks think it’s an unmitigated disaster; others point out that rolling out a large-scale vaccine campaign isn’t easy (although they always manage to forget that, in Ye Olden Days, we somehow managed large-scale […]
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2020: Taking Stock of a Year of Plague
How does one even take stock of a year like this? Is it in deaths? My neighbor, who was a loving grandfather to the neighborhood, and one of our first losses to COVID? My sweet Siamese, my mother’s baby, claimed too soon by cancer? The hundred or so of my mother’s colleagues who lost their […]
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CSO Sessions Episode Five: Rossini, Dahl, & Prokofiev
CSO Sessions Episode Five will head into the digital beyond tomorrow, and so we watched it today: Gioachino Rossini’s Sonata No. 6 in D Major for String Orchestra (except it really isn’t string orchestra!), Ingolf Dahl’s Music for Brass Instruments, and Sergei Prokofiev’s Suite from Romeo and Juliet, arranged for brass by one Andreas N. […]
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CSOtv Episode Four: Mozart, Shaw, & Brahms
Today’s virtual concert was CSOtv’s Episode Four: Mozart’s String Quintet in C Minor, K. 406/516b, Caroline Shaw’s Boris Kerner, and Brahms’ String Quintet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 111. The Mozart String Quintet was, you know, Mozart. It’s light and airy and lovely, exquisitely performed. If you love Mozart, you’ll be thrilled! (I like […]
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CSOtv Episode One: Gershwin, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos, Gabaye, & Nielsen
Now that it’s almost gone from CSOtv, I finally watched Episode One, or, the one with pieces arranged (or written) for wind ensembles by George Gershwin, Astor Piazzolla, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Pierre Gabaye, and Carl Nielsen, and it was an absolute delight. The Gershwin was a pleasure, as Gershwin always it, though for me (I am […]
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Cook County, Queens County, & Raw Numbers as Obfuscation
Everyone has a different reaction to stress, and I am well aware that one of mine—getting pickier (and more prickly) about information accuracy—is not a normal one. Because I know and accept that my responses are in no way normal, and that I get colder as I get more stressed, I try to be understanding […]
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Performers in Our Quarantined World
It’s May Day in a year of pandemic, and there are (socially distant) protests and strikes to mark the day. We have begun, in the litter of eugenicist and genocidal commentaries accompanying this pandemic, to see discussions of workers’ rights and worker safety as well. I’m going to talk, today, about a very different set […]
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a litany on eugenics, population control, and virus rhetoric
There’s not a lot to be said about the virus bearing down on us. Some of us live in states or regions with governors or local governments that care. As an Illinoisan, I know not only that my governor cares but that each death weighs on him: I can see it in his face when […]
Essentially a Nerd 