It was Memorial Day Weekend and Week and yet we’ve kept up with the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday schedule of Zooming, and we have a good quorum every time. We even had one our regulars join us from their beachfront hotel where they enjoyed a proper launch of summer, and graciously shared their views with us. We didn’t have any performances or speakers since the last post, yet people are happy to show up and hang for an hour our so. We’re not having our marathon talks, and COVID is not always the dominant topic of conversation, though as medical news surfaces we do talk about it. Politic being dark of late, we generally try to avoid it, but it does get mentioned, our frustrations, and our hopes and concerns for November’s election and whether it will actually happen. But mostly we focus on our days to days, the mics we are using on our calls, our mastery of our cameras, our virtual backgrounds, and of our sourdough starters. A few of us are online dating and carefully arranging the live meets and we are offering our collective support, as well as our curiosity. Distance dates? Do they involve masks? When do we cross into contact? Questions, opinions, advice, we all have something to say about it. Netflix and other online shows are always a good choice of topic. Most people are actually not watching so much television though, with the extra hours they are working, the distanced socializing they’re doing now that the weather has warmed, and just the way we’ve all figured out how to fill time. Some of us, alas myself, have dropped the regularity of our Instagram and online workouts, and wordlessly one made a strong statement posting a picture of a sloth on a branch as her virtual background. Next week we’ve booked several guests, so we’re keeping this going and keeping this interesting.
We had a bonus afternoon Zoom, a PareaGroover invited the group to a live virtual tour of the Jackson Pollack musem in East Hampton. We had a private tour of the studio, his house, and beautiful grounds which were displayed well on the luckily beautiful day, as well as a video about his method and his life. Several artists joined the Zoom and after the tour presented their projects. We had a dance video from a local artist hailing from Italy, and then presentations from a couple of her musician friends back in Rome who played for us from their apartments. We had a presentation by an artist whose project showcases international painters for peace, and she shared some works and some talks with the participating artist. Our PareaGroover, a dedicated international traveler, showed us some of her beautiful photos from her more exotic trips, and our host for the tour showed us her personal projects and photos of the art classes she teaches and sponsors. One of our PareaGroovers invited her seven year old daughter to watch the presentation. She was so inspired she launched off to her own “studio” and produced several works which her proud mom shared with us on Facebook.
This past week I also joined another Birthday Party Zoom, and got a new PareaGroover out of it. I attended a Zoom meeting in support of a nonprofit museum project with people hailing from a couple countries. Last night I listened to several talks Zooming in from all over. Today is a Jewish holiday called Shavuot which celebrates when Moses was given the Ten Commandments. The evening before is traditionally celebrated by studying the Ten Commandments and the Bible all night into the morning. The Jewish Community Center on the UWS of Manhattan has for several years celebrated this by offering free lectures, arts performances and films as well as snacks and a good opportunity to socialize between 9:00 pm and 4:00 am. Several choices would be available every hour depending on your taste in lecture or performance. This was the first year in fifteen that they would not have it because the center is closed for quarantine. But they did have it, online. No snacks or socializing of course, but they offered several lectures on Zoom simultaneously throughout the night. They had musicians playing from their apartments in Israel, rabbis speaking from theirs across the country, and talks about spiritualism, food and wine, from 9:00 pm to 4:00 am. Governor Cuomo calls this experience for New York a “Pause,” which is apt, because it certainly isn’t a Stop. And tomorrow there’s a DJ’d Zoom dance, and a day of performance to raise support for a Brooklyn music club, and most likely a lot more. And of course, our Saturday PareaGroove.
