Author: bahaft

This week our country, our world, stepped out in loud public protest. After staying behind our own walls for months in Pandemic refuge so many have risked the virus and the violence to peacefully protest against the murder of George Floyd and against a history of racism. Opportunist rioters are also in the streets breaking windows and looting stores leaving destruction and fear in their wake, and triggering the threat of military intervention against our own citizenship. City dwellers are watching thousands march below their windows and waking up to glass shards in their streets and gutted stores in their neighborhoods. And yet, we continue our PareaGrooves. On Saturday, May 30 we met as usual, and we began by chatting about dating, raising chickens in the city, and enjoying the warming weather. As the call went on we started to hear on our phones and laptops about the protests, which had just begun, and the increase in violence and looting. We all in the moment checked our Twitter feeds, our newscasts, and out our windows. One person reported on the hovering helicopters above her deck overlooking the East River; another with friends in the NYPD read live Tweets from the police on the ground; and we all had our televisions on, sharing with each other which stations were best at sharing the live images of the protests. Most of us live in NYC and this was happening outside our doors, and most of us are living alone. PareaGroove was started to combat loneliness and social isolation during the Pandemic, and it has now become a source of information and comfort from real fear about uncertainty and instability. In that moment as the City darkened to chaos we could provide a collective comfort to each other that no one could have ever predicted would be necessary. On our next call someone referred to this call we had together as having been “important.”

Tuesday, June 2, I went ahead as planned with Darryl Gregory, a wonderful guitarist who generously entertained us from a Zoom box. He is a very talented professional musician and teacher and the husband of a classmate of mine. Early in the day he emailed, asking whether I wanted to postpone the performance “due to the extenuating circumstances.” I responded no, on the contrary, we need the distraction and the chance to connect. Later in the day I learned about “Blackout Tuesday” and realized he may have been referring to that action, to put up a black box in our social media accounts rather than broadcast, as the reason to postpone. I didn’t think the purpose of this action was clearly explained, especially as it was planned only the night before, and I felt more strongly that “the show must go on,” and that people needed to connect as the week worsened. However, I did check in with him a couple hours before our Zoom to give him an out, just in case his professionalism and his promise to play dissuaded him from abiding by the action. He assured me no, he just wanted to confirm my group wouldn’t be offended. I knew they wouldn’t be, at least not those who chose to join. And so the show did go on, and he was great. He performed for a half hour, playing a mix of originals and covers. His encore for us was a new song he wrote, which he described as a contribution to what he told us was a new genre of “virus music” or something to that effect. It was really good, and the lyrics wonderfully captured the longing for real life connection a lot of us are experiencing. We encouraged him to record and share it, and I think he might. In addition to enjoying the performance we had a chance to share our continued experiences with the protests. A number of us live on the upper west side of Manhattan where protesters rarely march, it’s too far north. Protests generally happen downtown and midtown but since the 2016 election regularly occur in Columbus Circle in front of the Trump hotel, which is at the base of the upper west side. That night the protesters continued to march uptown from Columbus Circle, and past the curfew just instituted in the “city that never sleeps.” One of our group took her laptop to her window so we could see them, live, marching past. A march up Broadway is rare, I can’t remember when I ever saw one. People living downtown shared their experiences joining a protest, and of the wreckage of businesses they witnessed. The protests are continuing. Tonight we have another call.

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.

Now everyone is online. It’s not exotic any more, especially for the kids who have adapted to their Google Meet classes and their parents who have had to adapt to it for them. Arts are increasingly moving online, TV shows are being Zoomed in, the talk shows, the news shows, the fundraising variety shows, the concerts, the play readings, and some sitcoms. We are still doing the PareaGroove regularly. No special guests of late, just the conversations, mostly among our fifteen or so regulars, with occasional new faces or less regular faces. Our cities are starting to open, Memorial Day is on the horizon, and we’re excited to get back out, but very wary, some of us more than others.

I did an additional event, an alumni Zoom for women in my class. It wasn’t as easy to run as the PareaGroove because I didn’t really know most of the women and it was bigger.  I held it because a classmate of ours living a seemingly perfect life killed herself last week. She married her college boyfriend, they have five children and both have a couple degrees and a very successful lucrative professional career.  I didn’t know her but I knew and liked him.  This shook us up obviously, and one woman posted that she recognized women are having more trouble with this quarantine than men for lots of reasons, mostly the pressures to care for and worry about our families.  So I suggested doing the Zoom for people to vent and enough people were enthusiastic about it that I scheduled one.  Some people were doing okay, but some really weren’t, suffering sickness themselves, sick family members, having to care and Zoom-teach children, which is hard even when the kids are good, but really hard when they’re unwilling, on the autism spectrum, or having psychological issues, all of which came up among the thirty or so women who showed.  The ones who are working, most of them on the call actually, often had issues with now being overworked because there is no beginning or end to the day really.  People are worried for their kids that summer camp, internships, summers abroad, and next year at school are being canceled.  There were a couple professors on the call and they spoke about the challenges of teaching online. There weren’t many single people, like three or four maybe, only three of us living alone, and we are keeping pretty busy with “distanced” social events and Zoom calls. One woman did just lose her job because of COVID, and a couple had their salaries temporarily cut because of it.

I also joined in on a birthday Zoom this week where I didn’t know anyone except the birthday girl. It was an interesting way to meet new people, and an obvious way to get a bigger group as people were phoning in from all over the country, from their beach homes in the Hamptons and by the Jersey Shore where they’ve been sheltering, from LA, from Texas, Ohio, and Michigan. Many were dealing with the Zoom-schooling and some were frustrated that summer plans for the kids were canceled. Most seemed grateful for the time and the comfortable place where they found to land. The news reports about the quickly re-opening states like Texas and the protests, like in Michigan, are alarming. The Texan on the call assured us it’s not “horrid,” and those in Michigan were far enough away from Lansing to roll their eyes and feel as apart and appalled by it as we in the Northeast. Things in California sounded pretty okay.

What does come up consistently is that our restlessness has set in, and there is anxiety about the future, what we’ll find when we re-open, our health, our weight gain, will we find the little things about our neighborhoods and our lives which we loved again. However, as stressful as all this is, people do seem to be finding their stride and are looking for the silver linings. Most of us have gotten pretty good at the socializing from little squares, this is a new normal for now, that will find a place in our lives when our old normal finally comes back.

Another week into this Pandemic, another week of Zooming. There’s talk another, bigger, company’s tech will take over, but I suspect this collective box experience will still be called a Zoom. In any case, many happened this last week. Tuesday was Cinco de Mayo, and in celebration we had a bartender guest, Tony Delpino, and an Ask the Bartender session. We started with the history and joys of the the agave plant, the tequila and mezcal. We fast progressed to cocktails in general, preferred mixers, and of course the do-it-yourself adventures we were all enjoying in our at home efforts. My big aha moment was that we can make a pretty mean Old Fashioned with mezcal. That might be my new go-to fancy drink. Tony also just launched his own company producing a sort of egg nog with a kick, called coquito, which he of course calls Coquito Shop. One of our regulars became an instant customer.

This week we also had a couple PareaGrooves, a Thursday Happy Hour and a Saturday Hang, populated with both our regulars and some newbies. We get a lot of “maybes” on the Facebook invites, most of whom don’t come. This to me is fine as the point is for them to know there’s a place to go. However, as competing party Zooms proliferate this isn’t such an issue as it was when we began a month and half ago. Interestingly, one redeeming advantage of the Pandemic was a reduction of FOMO (“fear of missing out”) as parties were no longer happening. But now with all the Zooms FOMO has reared it’s unfriendly head.

The week was most notable to me with the several art-y Zooms I enjoyed. On Thursday the Theater of War production company did a Zoom performance of “Oedipus the King,” which, though written by Sophocles in 429 BC, was an appropriate choice. It was written just after Athens suffered three years of a devastating pestilence, and is set in Thebes, mid- plague and run by a narcissistic pissy king. It starred Oscar Isaac who, in addition to being a movie star, is an amazing classical actor, and boy did he tear it up in this. He costarred with John Turturro, Frances McDormand and Jeremy Wright, all amazing actors who gave stellar performances. To watch them act out of their Zoom boxes, alternating between the Gallery and Speaker views, was fantastic. It gave me hope for theater, it won’t go away, it will find a way.

I also attended another Zoom acting class, this one I joined because it had a guest coach from the UK who taught speech to the Royal Shakespeare Company. I got to sit in my living room and run the exercises with this gentleman working from London, along with fellow classmates Zooming in from all over the country and the world. The regular teacher took over after the guest and ran scenes and monologues with his students, and as an observer I got as much out of it as if the class were live. Incredible, how quickly art and education has adapted.

I also enjoyed another private Zoom-boxed concert in a regular weekly series, with young talented classical musicians taking turns playing exquisitely from their apartments in their shorts and flip-flops. As the weeks go on in this series the comfort level with the medium has increased for both the performers and the audiences, and in these moments we are collectively, live, enjoying art in the moment.

I also passed through a Zoom meditation, taught from Boston, where we all sat in our Zoom rooms with our eyes closed, a Zoom yoga, taught from New Mexico and a Zoom talk on where our economy is going.

We are starting to open slowly, NY probably slower than most. However, despite this I suspect these Zooming efforts will continue, and I suspect PareaGroove will as well.

It’s been a couple weeks since I blogged. Time has become a bit amorphous despite the calendar markers of regular PareaGrooves and Things to Do. Apparently this is not uncommon now in these strange times. Nevertheless we’ve had at least three PareaGroove events each week. Most are social, which people seem to prefer, and enjoy coming and going throughout. Interestingly a nice manageable quota of about ten to fifteen are usually present even on nights when twice that comes. Conversations meander across all topics, and people are laughing more easily, even though the virus and the quarantine are always touched on at some point every evening. Fortunately we have a couple scientists and doctors among us and as questions of COVID come up we are getting some good insights.

We had a couple guest speakers these past couple weeks both of whom happened to be doctors, and my classmate alum. To these I invited both the PareGroove gang and classmate friends. The first was a dermatologist and professor, Dr. Dina Strahan, of Aglow Dermatology, with whom we did “Ask a Dermatologist,” because who doesn’t have a question for a dermatologist. Our audience surprisingly was not all women, and the gents among us had some good questions and comments for her. Dr. Strahan had some excellent skincare and hair care tips, products to recommend, and advised wearing sunscreen if sitting alongside a window in our home office. Our second doctor speaker was a renowned expert in the medical use of cannabis, Dr. Jordan Tischler, of Inhale MD. Dr. Tischler came armed with a full slide presentation prepared for his more professional audiences, and he conducted an easy-going interruption friendly talk which definitely covered a lot of medical mary jane questions. He would not advise it for COVID, so there’s that. Nor is he a huge fan of CBD oil for any reason at all, aside from its placebo effect, which is at least worth something. People Zoomed in from all over the country for these talks, and this has been true of many of my social Zooms as well. I’m finding I’m meeting new people as people invite people, so it is becoming socially expansive for myself as well as my guests.

There’s talk that people are getting a bit Zoomed out because it requires a degree of constant attention and it really doesn’t replace real life. However, people agree it’s better than nothing, and despite the fatigue from it, the PareaGroovers are getting better with the rhythm of it all and conversations are becoming more fluid, and my need to moderate is becoming less constant even as really only one conversation can happen at a time, unlike a regular party. Aside from the occasional new face, and those who have come once or twice, there is a constant core group that shows up, many who didn’t know each other before, and from other states. One core PareaGroover mentioned we are starting to feel a bit like a family. I prefer to think of it more as the local pub where people can be relaxed and confident that they will know a few people, meet a few people, and that people will be cool and the place is safe, or the bartender will bounce them, And I have bounced.

In addition to the PareaGrooves, I’ve attended a couple other Zoom events. They’re popping up all over. I listened to several marketing gurus speak about the current environment. I listened to a Zoom play reading, and participated in one, though only reading the stage directions, which actually allowed me to be a more active audience member. And, I heard Dr. Ruth speak on a massive Zoom call of over four hundred, about her life, her love of music, and of course her advice for peace in the house and better sex.

Of all the Zooms this week the one that stands apart, the one that has taken nearly a week to write about, was the memorial held for my friend who passed from the virus. The gentleman we lost knew how to make an impression. He had on me, and his death surprised and stung. A day or two after we lost him a Facebook page sprung up in his name. Many of us shared our rememberances of him and it helped. His family graciously invited the group to “attend,” to watch, a small private Zoom Memorial this past Sunday. His siblings, his parents, a few of his closest friends, all shared poems, songs, videos and their prayers. These folk were not well Zoom acquainted and the feed kept dropping and popping up on other parts of the page, but the effort was made, and it mattered that it happened. In this time of non-in-person this somewhat collective opportunity to mourn was invaluable.

Also this week PareaGroove had a couple parties, the regular Saturday hang, which people have come to expect, and are now more frequently attending, anda smaller mid-week hang which was also well attended. Thursday we had a special guest, Frances Fitzgerald Cleveland of Frogworks, Inc., give a very thorough and informative lecture about aromatherapy and herbal teas, surrounded by her pets from her beautiful Colorado ranch, which she toured us around a bit. The major theme of the talk was how to chill the F out. Herbs highly recommended were frankincense, myrrh, spikenard, sweet marjoram, vetiver, oatseed, linden blossoms, lavender and bergemot, among others. Booze can only do so much! But I’m guessing a little tipple in a tisane can’t hurt!

Zoom parties have very quickly spilled over the boundaries of the PareaGrooves. It is incredible to see the push for community and connection and continuation of some kind of normalcy that has taken so many of us online, for parties, happy hours, talks, and religious ceremonies. Many churches and synagogues have been running online services for weeks, but this is relatively passive with few being interactive. This week, for Passover, thousands of people took online religion into their own hands.

Passover is the Jewish holiday that commemorates the escape of the Jews from Egypt, where they were being held as slaves, as relayed in Exodus, the second book of the Bible. It is celebrated with a dinner, called a “Seder.” Seder means “order,” and over the course of the dinner there is an order of many rituals, most involving food, and songs, and telling the story of the Exodus, as well as a nice meal. The commandment underlying and compelling the Seder tradition is to tell the Exodus story, arguably the origin of the modern Jewish people, “dor v’dor” or “generation to generation.” It is a fun time and a good reason to get together with family and friends. This year, with the quarantine, we cannot travel to our families’ and friends’ homes, we cannot sit with each other at dinner tables, and we are afraid to expose our elderly relatives, who are often leading the Seders, to the virus. You would think this would put a kibosh on Seders, especially since most modern Jews aren’t all that religious. Even rabbis were saying don’t worry so much about getting everything right this year. And yet the Seders went on. Within a handful of weeks families and friends across the country, across the world I’m told, organized online Seders using Zoom and other platforms. This involved sending out emails, figuring out the tech, putting together tables set with the Seder accoutrements like a plate with symbolic food, wine cups and candles, and figuring out how to explain how to do it all to our tech-insecure elders. And yet, as with the original Exodus, in just a few short days, so many pulled it off. Thankfully healthy, I challenged quarantine a bit and visited my parents to set them up with Zoom. My father ran a traditional Seder from his dining room as always, and my brother and his family participated from their table in their Zoom box, and my cousins participated from theirs, at least two in each box, totaling fourteen. We were Zooming in from Florida, Georgia, New Jersey and Connecticut. I stopped by a friends’ Seder after we were done, hit them perfectly at the “meal” break, and we were ten, mostly from New York and New Jersey. We shared our family Zoom Seder stories, our family stories, and our fears and gleaned information about the virus, and we met new friends. The next day Facebook and Instagram were populated by tales of Zoom Seders, many of which crossed oceans and continents, let alone the country. The wonderful, and often repeated, upside was that relatives and friends who might not otherwise have been able to celebrate Passover with each other because of the time and expense to travel, many of whom had not seen each other for years, were able to join each other at “the table” and celebrate a centuries-old tradition that is integral to the Jewish calendar. I really don’t think it was the religious aspect of the Passover Seder that drove people on such limited notice to make this collective effort and to spend this time together, to sing the songs we heard our grandparents singing, and which our grandparents heard their grandparents sing together at their tables. It was how much humans value tradition, and the embedded part of tradition which is the connection of friends and family and community. Our isolation had encouraged a collective focus on this value, and so quickly.

In transit from the parents back to my shelter locale I received a text from a friend inviting me to join the birthday “party” for her six-year-old. Again, with limited notice, friends and family came together, showing up at the designated time, to celebrate the little girl. She showed up in her Zoom box, cuddled between her mother and grandmother, wearing her fancy party dress, flashing unicorn headband and some just-like-mommy eye shadow. Her uncle and we honorary aunties came. Several more little girls popped up in their Zoom boxes with their unicorn and flowered headbands. A mom friend and her son showed up in a box and she quickly sculpted a unicorn-like figure with clay so her son could be part of the fun. The kids ran into their rooms to get their favorite stuffed unicorn dolls to show us all, pushing them in front of their laptop cameras to be admired. Then the birthday girl’s mom lit the flashing number “6” candle on their carefully iced and decorated homemade cake and we all sang “Happy Birthday” in unison, and clapped as she blew out her candles. Again, ‘dor v’dor,” “generation to generation,” we pass on our values of connection, community, celebration and support.

Saturday night we had another hang. I throw these up because somehow not being out on a Saturday hits many of us more poignantly. I found out, on Facebook, I’d lost a friend of more than a decade to the virus. I hadn’t seen him in a while but he was very important to me, he showed up whenever I needed him, and I did for him when he rarely beckoned. We knew we were in each others’ lives and that was that. To lose someone like this was painful. However, as he was an actor, among the many hats he wore successfully, I knew he adhered to the old adage “the show must go on,” and so it did. We opened small, with a handful of people, one who also recently lost someone, a 92 year old uncle. My friend was only in his late 50s, but there’s no weighing the importance of a loss in someone’s life. As people came on the conversation drifted to what was important to people at the time, one noting he recognized the box his new tv came in hanging out the back of a garbage truck, one focusing on her find of boxed wine. I was not in the right state of mind, so I begged out and left the Groove running. I heard after that it ran for more than an hour after I left, which was good. A party is supposed to do that.

Sunday I had a classmate, Jonathan F. Putnam, read from a book in his historical fiction series about young Abraham Lincoln, the “Lincoln & Speed Mystery Series.” He came really prepared with a slide show to accompany his readings and series explanation. We had a good showing from our class from around the country, as well as some PareaGroove regulars. Our author friend was calling in from London where he relocated his family a few years ago. So, we were able to compare quarantining experiences here and there. Much of it is similar, we’re all dealing with much of the same thing. Our discussion was really fun, about the book, about his experience leaving law for the life of a writer, about history, and about comparative politics. He had to hop off due to time differences, and we kept going onward, sharing our recent information gathering about the virus among other things.

Last night we had the “midweek hang” and a good number of regulars showed up, as well as some newbies. One of our Groovers had posted about an interview by a Columbia professor for her class of a NYT writer who had been warming about the virus for months. Another, on the Groove, was interested in watching. After an hour of chatting we figured out how to share the screen and run the Youtube interview and we watched that for an hour. A few people logged on and logged off during it, but it was a shared experience watching the stressful recalled forebodings and the fearful anticipation of worse to come.

This week is a week of holidays, Holy Week for Christians, and Passover starting tonight. Many of us are going to launch into Zoom seders. Some synagogues have public ones, some people are hosting private ones for friends and families. I tried to do a bit of matchmaking for the Seder orphans. We’ll see what the reports of such efforts will be at our next Grooves.

Yesterday, Thursday, a friend and classmate, William Pierce, read from a memoir-like work on our Groove which he published a number of years ago. It was lovely in its focus on the mundane that also transcended to the human commonality of overheard conversations, of using coupons in a market, of frustrations with various websites and apps, and of supporting a friend through a tough time. Only a couple weeks into being housebound the implied out-and-about aspect of the stories carried a strange poignancy. His share of his work inspired others on the Groove to share theirs. One gent shared a couple of his paintings, one a mid-quarantine effort, another an older work, and we all discussed his work, which then inspired another to share hers with all of us. Another shared her art, which was the study of therapy theories, and the idea that all this may be causing some semblance of PTSD, and of course this brought up romance and heartbreak; who hasn’t suffered from heartbreak, and now we have this experience to share. Our writer dropped off after a good two hours, and three more joined later for the extended hang.

The readings are fun, and more will come. But Tuesday, three days ago, the severity of what we are dealing with somehow hit hard. I can only assume that if I’m feeling this now then so are others, so I threw out a last minute event and true to form, a large number showed up, some for the first time. The conversation meandered as it does, from the virus to the banal to the latest television or beauty product we’re encountering. We all agreed we needed that “fix” that day, that moment, and we applauded each other and our effort and for showing up.

PareaGroove held a Saturday night party and a good twenty people came and went, one someone I never met, one I haven’t seen in over ten years. We had a regular quorum from NYC, and one zooming in from LA, one from Mexico, a number from across the river in NJ. We talked about the news, the science, the questions, the support for issues the quarantine coughed up for us all. Divorced parents and challenges with visiting kids, and regular order-outers having challenges cooking in their little kitchens. We also discussed and displayed our favorite salsas, the Groovers in LA and Mexico gave video tours of their apartments and balcony views, and a couple shared cat pictures. We also devolved a bit into a shouty political punch out for a few minutes, but that simmered down quickly with a bit of soothing and people came and went. I mentioned our upcoming book reading and one of our Groovers volunteered a poem, digging through reams of fresh work, and she offered a perfect poem on which to end. The Groove was sandwiched for me by two other Zoom meetings, a Saturday afternoon acting class and a Sunday afternoon college reunion. The acting class opened with introducing ourselves, all from our homes where we were sheltering in place, hailing from several different states, and coincidentally two from the same city in Belgium, a young man and a young woman, who didn’t know each other and met, rather charmingly, through that online class. One participant begged off early in the session, saying he was sick, a young man who proceeded to describe his symptoms, a clutching in the chest and terrible chills, and he blew it off as just a cold. I unmuted myself was all hell no, that’s Corona, take it seriously. His symptoms matched those of the people I know who went through it, and thankfully came out okay. This young guy will likely come out okay, but to dismiss it and hope it’s just a cold rather than take it seriously had me very nervous and felt compelled to express the seriousness. The class continued after he signed off. We enjoyed a scene reading, tweaking the the little Zoom boxes to focus on the two talking, and a video of a performance someone had made made, and workshopped a monologue one participant is developing. Sunday afternoon, today, I had another college reunion event, with more than fifty people showing up from all over the country, all over the world. We saw people’s pets and children in their laps, a cats tail crossing a box during it’s human’s share. Each of us had a minute to talk about what was going on for us, parents with remote learning challenges, our concerns for our elderly parents, our frustrations with being piled tight with families back home as schools sent kids home, our frustrations being alone in a small apartment, and people working harder than ever in their remote home offices without the boundaries of office hours. We had a NJ mayor speak about the challenges she’s facing and the support her senators were providing, we had a NY magistrate judge discuss the challenge of virtual hearings and assuage concerns about releasing some prisoners. Our university has a tradition of having a class reunion every five years, but these Zoom chats are bringing us together far more frequently. We mostly don’t know each other as our class was large, and some I did know I haven’t seen in decades, but the connection of having had four years together along with the connection of seeing each other cheered an otherwise gray rainy day.