Day 91, June 15, 2020

The Ingredients to a Good Life

Today's soundtrack: Stanley Clarke Band featuring Hiromi, Heineken Jazzaldia 2010 (Wow, you don't need to read the blog, go watch this!)

Leaving the house in the pandemic is such an intentional thing, it is like charting a journey, each destination plotted in logical order, estimated travel times, mask, bottle of water, I should have brought the hand sanitizer... and if I was thinking clearer, a towel.

This weekend I charted a path that enabled multiple errands I've been planning for weeks, months. But now that we are in Stage 2 (I say in slight jest), I thought I would venture out. We stopped for lunch in Northampton and ordered takeout from Woodstar on my phone while standing outside, and when my order was ready we picked it up from the window and took it around the corner to sit at a disinfected outdoor table and eat. Then we drove down to Holoyke to my amplifier technician and dropped off two guitar amplifiers that have been acting up. I don't know when I'll be able to play out again, but these have been on the long standing todo list.

I've taken my amplifiers to Jim for the last twenty or so years. He is a fantastic technician with tube amplifiers and almost every one I own eventually makes it into his shop for a tuneup or tweak. Tube amplifiers can be finicky things filled with high voltages, high heat, lots of vibration, and obsolete technology. But they can be the one thing that makes a guitar suddenly go from sounding great, to becoming transcendent. Because they are so finicky, one day, the guitar amplifier you have been playing almost every day for several months, will suddenly seem not as great as you remember, and so sometimes you have to switch. After a few weeks, or a month or two, you can switch back and suddenly it is that sound you remember and have been trying to recapture. Or... there is an annoying metallic rattle that accompanies every note. Or maybe the reverb, the nice hall emulating echo, doesn't work and instead it sounds like you are playing in a bedroom closet.  Then it is time to take a trip down to visit Jim. Jim has seen enough of my evolution with guitar amplifiers that he grants me my sheepishness when I show him a new acquisition and explain the problem. I'm afraid I am not monogamous when it comes to guitar amplifiers. I sometimes wish I could simplify my life and find that one thing that was perfect in almost all situations, but I haven't been able to do that yet. But who knows, there is still yet more to learn in this pandemic.

After leaving my amps with Jim, I crossed the river into Chicopee to pick up a bass pedal. I've been watching this bass pedal on Craigslist since before the pandemic trying to decide if I should buy it. It is designed by a boutique bass and guitar company in New York and utilizes the same electronics that are embedded in their very expensive basses but packed into a pedal format that you can plug any bass into and benefit from similar sonic shaping. Musical gear, it helps me tap into my childhood memories of accompanying my mother on flea market, tag sale, and antique shop forays. She was always looking for the perfect deal, finding that special thing that she could recognize as special. She has a fantastic eye and over the years collected museum quality pottery from China and Korea, beautiful hand woven rugs, furniture, nicknacks. She has reduced her treasures in the last few years, but she will still venture into an antique shop and her eye will survey the landscape with a critical accuracy. 

I still like to visit antique shops and flea markets, but my critical knowledge is much more confined to music and audio gear... but I peruse Craigslist and Ebay in a similar way, and this pedal disappeared off the listings for a few months, and I figured I had missed my chance, that it had sold. So when it appeared again, I emailed, bargained a little, and arranged the deal. We did the exchange through the door. His father called out from the living room where he was watching tv. The grown son appeased him, then we exchanged the pedal for cash, and he said he'd shake my hand... but. I nodded in acknowledgment and thanked him.

Then we drove across town to my friend and bandmate Jamie's house where I've had two speaker cabs sitting for the last several months. I knocked on the front door and waited as he corralled the dogs and then he slipped through the door and wrapped me in an embrace before I even realized what was happening. That was the first non-familial hug I've had in 91 days. It has been a long time since we have seen one another, or even talked. The band was on temporary hiatus before the pandemic struck. He shared what his life has been like working as an essential worker in food service for the duration of the pandemic. It sounds like a challenging life with the constant demands, the changing regulations for food and worker safety, and the constant threat of people not following protocol.

Jamie is one of those musical geniuses, a musical savant who has the capacity to channel an incredible array of musical influence and tones. The pairing of Jamie with our drummer Roger, also a musical font of knowledge made for fantastic practices and jams. It was a good 45 minute drive to practice, but the result was always fascinating where extended jams would blend into Prince jams, into a Beatles medley, and then a few '80s hits mixed with a few of our originals. I played bass and would follow along, mostly by feel, and it made our jams feel like an improvisational jukebox where you never knew what was coming, but when it arrived it felt vaguely familiar, and full of joy. So it was good to see Jamie again for a short visit.

Since we were down in that area, we decided to try a new (to us) Asian grocery store. The 5 Star Asian Supermarket has the old feel of a tired Chinatown grocery store where everything is tightly packed, the linoleum is scuffed and worn, and you can find everything from fresh eel, to durian fruit, to kimchee. After the tightly regulated experiences at Whole Foods, it was surprising to have no security guards managing capacity, no oneway signs in the aisles, and no taped markers spacing out the distance between customers waiting to check out. They were short on kimchee, but I got some Chinese spinach, baby bok choy, picked radish, and a few other things. It felt good to be in an Asian grocery store again and in a place where almost every other person was some denomination of Asian, our heritages as varied as the goods sold there.

Our tasks for the day complete, we headed home. After not having left a more than 20 mile radius of the house for the last 90 days, that felt like an epic journey, and we were both exhausted.

It is a hard thing to interact with people wearing a mask. I have become acutely aware that my expressions are hidden, and that much of my natural modes of communication involve facial expression as part of my response. Therefore, it takes much more effort to convey the same information I would in ordinary conversation. And we do this at a degree of distance, so you have to speak louder, and sometimes people respond, and sometimes they do not, and it is hard to tell if they haven't heard me, or if they are just not responding. Sometimes it makes your feel invisible. And it makes you very tired.

Someday people will play music together again. We will invite each other to dinner and cook each other food. We will share stories about what is happening at work. We will complain, and laugh, and smile, and be able to see one another's expressions. I look forward to that time. 

Take care and stay safe,

Leo

I've never seen cans of kimchi before!

From Our Friends:

From Josh Becker:

"White Academia: Do Better" by Jasmine Roberts

If you are a White academic or higher education professional, there are some tangible actions you can take to support Black faculty, staff, and students.

From a Tweet by Tara Parker:

"First Generation Equity Practitioners: Are they part of the problem?" by Estela Mara Bensimon and James Gray

So, what does it take to develop racial literacy in the context of higher education? In CUE’s more than 20 years of working with colleges and universities, one thing has become abundantly clear; first-generation equity practitioners who acquire effective equity-minded competence seem to all share certain qualities:

• They are not intimidated by nor do they reject the idea of Whiteness as a characteristic embedded in the practices of institutions of higher education and practitioners.

• They do not claim to “not see race,” and they do not insist that they treat everyone equally.

• They invest effort in educating themselves to be aware of how racialization operates in interactions, routines, and in ostensibly neutral choices.

• They advocate for responsible disaggregation of data by race and ethnicity, and they take precautions to establish conditions that will not lead to perverse outcomes.

• They can make a case for why racial equity has to be prioritized, particularly when there is a preference to focus on socioeconomic status.

• They do not accept “best practices” or “high impact practices” unconditionally because they understand that their deployment is vulnerable to Whiteness and can exacerbate racial inequity.

• They learn to analyze racial inequity as a symptom of institutional and practitioner malperformance.

Shared by Katherine and the CEI:

(Good to see perspectives of similar work happening around the world) For those of you in Australia looking for ways to contribute to anti-racism efforts here, or find reading material or podcasts to use in teaching or recommend to family and friends, the Victorian Women's Trust has put together a list of anti-racism resources here:

https://www.vwt.org.au/anti-racism-resources-from-australia-and-beyond/

Shared by Anne Wiley:

Institutionalized Racism: A syllabus

https://daily.jstor.org/institutionalized-racism-a-syllabus/

and 

The Moment Was Now – a new musical by Gene Bruskin – takes place in post-civil war Baltimore in 1869, a turning point in our history when the U.S. almost did the right thing.

Please join this special Western Mass. showing on Saturday June 20 at 7 PM on Zoom, with an introduction and Q&A with the playwright, Gene Bruskin, a fabled union organizer with local roots.

Watch a 2-minute trailer here.  This event is on Facebook here.

Register in advance:  https://aflcio.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_f4FnFtuqRXGIyT3sQNeZHg

The contemporary themes of the search for racial and economic justice and women’s rights reverberate throughout this musical.  The story reveals the impassioned but difficult search for unity among dynamic leaders of powerful labor, Black, and women’s movements during Reconstruction.  

From MCLA:

Analogous Colors by Titus Kaphar

On Wednesday, June 24th, 5-6:30 PM EST

Join us for a conversation about this work by Titus Kaphar. This is the current cover of TIME magazine. We at Gallery 51 are committed to creating safe spaces for discourse and dialogue with, about and through art. If not now, then never will we be able to engage in honest discussion about race and the experience of Black and Brown people in this country. Join us in exploring this piece through the lens of our nation's recent events. Let us use art as the vehicle to create and sustain non-judgmental dialogue with an opportunity to learn from one another's observations. We will be using VTS Visual Thinking Strategies @visualthinkingstratgies  Register HERE

From Yamaha:

As administrators grapple with how and when to resume in-person classes, teachers must be proactive as they prepare for the next school year, especially when it comes to getting grant funds for their program. We’ve put together our own funding resource roundup to help teachers locate the funds they need to support their music program.

Learn More

From the Vermont Studio Center:

Vermont Studio Center is extending our June Fellowship application deadline until June 30th. During this application period, we are offering 12 VSC Fellowships open to all visual artists and writers, as well as 9 special Fellowships. 

The Politics of COVID-19, Final (?) Edition

The most important contributions on the political, economic, and social effects of the unfolding crisis.

The Syllabus Jun 15

This double-edition of the Politics of Covid-19 is our 50th. Our archive now stands at more than 13,300 items (800 of them posted just in this edition). As life is slowly returning to normal - at least in some parts of the world - we’ll be putting this newsletter on (hopefully permanent) hiatus. In the meantime, you can always subscribe to our main weekly syllabi, which still feature plenty of articles, videos, and podcasts related to Covid-19.

The egg on the left feels a little chubby.

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From GCC's FITS group:

FITS (Faculty Instructional Technology Support) will be available to help with your technology learning needs this summer as you prepare your fall courses for remote instruction. I have created a very brief survey to determine what your most pressing needs are. The survey will be available until Friday of this week (6/19).

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/LR3NCTM