Tag: Pandemic

Categories
At Large Opinion

Pandemic of Ignorance

Tucker Carlson (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

More than 10,000 nearly identical bills have been introduced by Republicans in legislatures around the country to stop what they say is a rampant movement to install Sharia law in our courts, governments, and schools. Muslims, the GOP alleges, are planning to start teaching Sharia law to our children. Local chapters of the Washington, D.C.-based ACT for America, which describes itself as the “NRA of national security,” are encouraging their supporters to show up at school board meetings and legislative hearings and to flood lawmakers’ inboxes and phone lines in support of anti-Sharia law bills. Right-wing media hosts are stirring up their viewers and listeners with a constant drumbeat against the impending peril of Sharia law. …

Wait a minute. … Oooh, shoot. This is embarrassing. Folks, I accidently used some of my notes from 2012 to start this column. Damn. I hate to retype all that. Here’s an idea: Wherever you see “Sharia law” in that first paragraph, substitute “critical race theory.” 

So here we are, once again dealing with a well-organized campaign over a non-issue meant to divert the mouth-breathing GOP base — and the national media — from any substantive debate on real issues. File this with: Liberals will take your guns, gay marriage will destroy society, transgender folks will take over women’s sports and pee in the wrong bathroom, climate change is bogus, and COVID vaccines are a government plot akin to the Holocaust. 

We are in the middle of a full-blown pandemic of ignorance, and it’s an aggressive strain — easily spread by social media campaigns, cynical politicians, and television hosts who prey on human gullibility, naivete, and plain old stupidity. This pandemic is being spread intentionally. You don’t have to be within six feet of another person to get it. A mask won’t save you. The viral ignorance is everywhere, but it’s particularly rampant in red states and among Republicans and other consumers of right-wing media. 

This pandemic is anti-science. It is anti-common-sense. And it is killing people. It is one thing to deny that raging forest fires, record floods, unprecedented droughts, record-setting heat waves and deep freezes, melting ice caps, and rising sea levels are just “weather.” Yes, that’s ignorance, and yes, it is literally killing people, but it is not as clearly ignorant as refusing to take a vaccine that could save your life. That is next-level stupid. And it appears to have infected around 30 percent of the country’s adults. 

Those resisting the vaccine give a number of reasons: Vaccines may have bad side effects. (COVID definitely has bad side effects.) I have powerful T-cells and natural immunity. (No, you don’t.) I don’t trust the government. (But you trust conspiracy websites and Tucker Carlson?) It’s my body and my choice! (You know who doesn’t have a choice? Millions of unvaccinated school children headed back to class in August. Maybe think about them.)

The evidence could not possibly be clearer that the vaccines stop COVID. In one study released just last week, 99.2 percent of those who’d died from the Delta variant were unvaccinated. 

In Arkansas, the Delta variant is spreading rapidly. Just north of there, Missouri has become the poster child for the pandemic of ignorance, a blotch of deep purple on The New York Times’ daily map showing COVID hot spots and high-risk areas. Springfield hospitals have sent out a request for ventilators. Most counties in Southern Missouri have vaccination rates in the 25 percent range. It’s going to get worse there before it gets better, since many are still resisting getting the shot (unlike the Fox News hosts ranting against the vaccine — most of whom got the jab months ago). 

Meanwhile, here in Shelby County, our vaccination rate hovers at around 35 percent. Local officials are urging those who are still unvaccinated to get it done soon. I hope people listen. I mean, if we can stop Sharia law, surely we can stop the pandemic of ignorance.  

Categories
Music Music Blog

With Patreon & an Online Variety Show, Goner Records Adapts to the Pandemic

Eric Friedl and Zac Ives interview the Archaeas for Goner TV

Record stores have been hit hard by the age of quarantine, and in the case of Goner Records, which is also a label and festival promoter, the effect has been tripled. And yet their many innovations, from a “telethon” for Record Store Day, to Goner TV (which debuted in July), to this year’s virtual Gonerfest, reveal their willingness to innovate in order to accommodate the new normal.

Now they’ve embraced another approach to both surviving and staying connected with fans and customers, one that is more typically associated with artists: Patreon. I spoke with co-owner Zac Ives to learn more about the reasons behind their latest move, and what kinds of offerings patrons can expect.

Memphis Flyer: Is the move to Patreon more for the store or the label?

Zac Ives: It is primarily built to help fund this extra content that we’re doing, like Goner TV and anything else we’re gonna build outside of this. It’s been cool to do all this stuff, but it’s taking up resources and time. We’re asking artists to do stuff, and it becomes a difficult issue to pay people for the work they’re doing, pay artists for performing. Without a way to fund that, it was proving to be a constant issue.

We worked with other things, like donation links and everything, but I don’t like that either. I don’t feel like people need to be bombarded with PayPal links all the time. You’re already taking this level of community out of the experience by not having people right in front of it, getting a live performance. So the positive thing about this is, it really allows people to have a more direct impact on things that they care about. And so that’s what this turned into. If you like what we’re doing, there’s a way for you to directly impact our ability to keep doing these things. And at the same time, it lets us be creative with what we can give back to people for their help, for being a patron.

We’re in the midst of creating this Goner archive of videos and performances and all kinds of different stuff that people can access with Patreon. And we’re also gonna give away cool caps we’re making just for patrons, as well as stickers and other little things along the way. We really didn’t want to make it feel like an exclusive thing. Goner TV is always gonna be free. And we want people to feel like they’re part of what we’re doing, whether they’re able to pay for this thing or not. That’s super important. But for people that do have funds to donate, we want to give them a lot of different options for being part of this on a different level. So far the response has been really good. People who have hopped on board are excited.

There’s gonna be a few different options for what people can get. The Goner Archive will only be accessible to patrons. And we may put up shows and playlists and podcasts and other stuff that will only be available to them. One nice thing is, it gives us the ability to grow. To talk to people about what they want to see, and make sure that they’re getting something back for their role. But a big part of this is that you can be a part of this thing that you feel is important. If this is something you want to see, this is a way to make it happen. That’s the part that’s fun for us.

Goner Records

Goner has always been so communal, and that’s what’s been difficult about the last year: Not being able to have Gonerfest and not being able to get bands on tour. Either on the performing side or the audience side, not being able to get out and have the social aspect of live music is difficult. So we’re trying to plug that void, in the short term. But long term, there are ways we can grow this and develop a niche that offers community but is also global.

Through Goner TV?

Yeah, for sure. Goner TV is a nice catch all. This year’s Gonerfest wasn’t necessarily Goner TV, but it was online content. It was a way to make a festival virtual. People could be together and interact, whether it was through the chat or break-off Zoom things. They all incorporated artists and author interviews, and there were films. All those things brought out a side of it that we’d like to explore more, including with Goner TV. There are all these opportunities to grow this thing in an interesting way. And the Patreon page is a way to make all those things happen, and for people to be a part of it.

The community aspect of it goes back to the long-cherished Goner chat board that was retired earlier this year.

Whether it was retired this year or ten years ago, nobody looked at that board anymore, but it used to be a central part of how people found out about music and food and someone to fix your lawnmower and weird 70s Italian horror movies. It was how you learned about all sorts of things before Facebook took over. And it was much more alive. It was a powerful and interesting thing, at a time when big corporations were starting message boards and trying to get people to talk about things on them, which I saw when I worked at an ad agency. ‘Oh, we just need people to get on our board and talk about our pantyhose!’ And you go, ‘Nobody wants to go on there and talk about your product!’

The reason the Goner chat board worked was, it was all like-minded people who were into talking about whatever. They were all sort of weirdos and loners and into strange things. And they found someplace where they could all interact. And it was a special thing, but I don’t know how those things really exist anymore. I think they’re just gone, and we’re trying to figure out how to replace that communal aspect of it. Facebook did a pretty good job of it for a while, and now it’s more corporate than anything. Trying to avoid ads and political speak and just have a natural interaction with someone is very hard to do these days. So Goner TV is a fun way to approach that communal aspect in a different way. A different take, a different time.

I like how it all kind of blurs together.

All my favorite things do that! We’ve always been that way. We’ve always been spread a little thin, maybe not putting enough focus on the shop or on the label because we’re trying to do all these different things. We threw in a festival as well. We just have a giant to-do list every day, juggling all these different projects. Maybe because we have short attention spans. The natural outgrowth is to blend a lot of different things, even to our own detriment.

Just out of sheer enthusiasm.

It is! And we feel lucky we get to do something we love as our everyday work.

Speaking of Goner TV, there will be a new episode on Friday the 13th?

Yes, we have a new episode! Aquarian Blood’s playing live. We’ve got a new movie segment that is really fun. Eric did an interview with Adele Bertei,  who wrote a memoir about being around Peter Laughner. And some other fun stuff. Then we have a couple more episodes coming. Bloodshot Bill is going to be on Dec. 4, and then one with Robby Grant and Greg Cartwright, a holiday episode on Dec. 18.

Categories
From My Seat Sports

Tigers Tested, Sweet Lou, and the NBA

The coronavirus, college football, and math. You can choose two, but you can’t have all three.

The average reproductive number for coronavirus infection — the number of people a person carrying the virus infects — is between 2 and 3. Some carriers of the virus won’t infect anyone they encounter, but some will infect more than 10. It’s the nastiest “bug” in recent human history, precisely because it’s so easy to share but so hard to detect.

Take this math and apply it to a college football game. Two programs on a field, each with a minimum of 100 people sharing a sideline. The idea of one of those teams playing as many as eight games this fall and keeping that reproductive number at zero is really bad math. It’s ludicrous. The Memphis Tigers and the program’s followers learned this after but one game, their season-opening beating of Arkansas State. With multiple members of the program testing positive for COVID-19 (as announced last Friday), the Tigers’ next game — scheduled for this Friday against Houston at the Liberty Bowl — has been postponed. At least.

So pandemic football comes down to the frequency of COVID tests within each program, and how those tests are reported. Were Tiger players and staff infected with the virus during their game against the Red Wolves (six days before the positives were announced)? Arkansas State played its game at Kansas State last Saturday, but several players on the depth chart were sidelined. And there was plenty of finger-pointing — toward the A-State program — over social media throughout the weekend. It stands to reason, if I understand contact tracing, that if one team had infected players during a football game, the opposing roster would be compromised (as potential carriers) a week later. It’s ugly math if you’re a football fan. And no game on your favorite schedule should be written in ink.

• For the third time in eight seasons, the St. Louis Cardinals are wearing a patch commemorating the life of a legendary player, one whose statue stands in front of Busch Stadium. The greatest Cardinal of them all, Stan Musial, died in 2013. Five years later, Red Schoendienst joined his former roommate in that great clubhouse in the sky. Then on September 6th, Lou Brock passed away at age 81. It seems especially cruel that a man whose number 20 has been retired by the Cardinals for more than 40 years was taken from us in the already-plenty-dreadful year 2020.

Brock’s 3,000th hit (in August 1979) is my earliest distinct memory of the Cardinals. I got the chance to meet Mr. Brock twice — once at Tim McCarver Stadium and once at AutoZone Park — and both times he treated me like I was the first fan he’d ever met. Like fellow Hall of Famers Musial and Schoendienst, Brock was somehow better at being a human being than he was at playing baseball. He also happens to have been one of the most competitive men to ever set foot on a diamond. (Brock is the only player Sandy Koufax acknowledges having hit with a pitch on purpose. Brock was that disruptive upon reaching base.) The world needs more Lou Brocks. I’m grateful we had him as long as we did.

• Nine months into the most unpredictable year of our lives, it’s nice have the NBA playoffs nearing completion. When it comes to the NBA Finals, what you expect is typically what you get. Since the turn of the century, only three teams seeded lower than third have reached the Finals. And all three — the 2006 Mavericks, the 2010 Celtics, and the 2018 Cavaliers — lost the championship series. The fifth-seeded Miami Heat could become the fourth “surprise” entry if Jimmy Butler and friends can knock off the third-seeded Boston Celtics. More than likely, the de facto Finals will be played in the Western Conference, where we could see a “Battle for L.A.” (unless the Denver Nuggets crash the party): both the Lakers’ LeBron James and Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard are aiming to lead a third franchise to a title. The NBA doesn’t exactly welcome Cinderella to its dance, but a clash of familiar champions — even in new uniforms — might be just the right vitamin for a 2020 sports fan.

Categories
News News Blog

Christ Community Health Services Moves COVID-19 Drive-Through Testing Site

Monday, Christ Community Health Services announced that it would be moving its drive-through COVID-19 testing site to expand access to testing services.

As of Monday, August 31st, all drive-through testing is being done at 1720 RKS Commercial Cove. Testing will continue to take place Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Chief nursing and quality officer Shayla Williamson says the move will allow for more testing to be done.

“The move allows us to increase our ability to test up to 500 individuals daily. We are encouraging people to pre-register to help speed the testing process,” she says. “Those wishing to be tested are asked to text: Test2020 to 91999 or call Christ Community at 901-842-3160. The Lamar site will allow for limited testing of individuals who have not pre-registered.”

Christ Church began testing in early March and has tested over 20,000 individuals with drive through testing at their Third Street and Hickory Hills locations.

Categories
Music Music Blog

The Arts and the Pandemic: Who Will We Become?

My brain, like many others, is exploding, but I need to share this.

Early in my time leading Opera Memphis, I was in a multi-week workshop run by the Assisi Foundation. I was one of only a handful of non-social service organization people. One of the questions we all needed to answer was “what would happen if your organization closed.” This was mainly to find out who might have overlapping or redundant services, so maybe wasn’t relevant to an arts organization. However, the question has never left me. I ask it to myself often, moreso in times like these. I could answer, “We are the only opera company for hours in any direction, so our closing would leave Memphis without opera.” I, and many of my friends, would say that is a terrible thing. Maybe it is. I fear that far more people might never even notice we were gone.

This is turning into one of the most challenging times in decades for so many people, parts of society, segments of the economy, etc. I do not mean to imply that opera (or any live art) has it worse than restaurants or churches or hospitals; that is not my point. My point is that every single person who loves or makes opera must now answer the question: What difference did our shows make in their absence? Beyond the walls of the opera house, who has suffered when the curtain didn’t rise? And are we comfortable if that number, as I think it may be for many of us, is very, very small?

This is a time for all of us to think creatively, but most importantly to ask ourselves: Who are we without performances? What role can we play, or must we play in this crisis, and in our communities?

I say this not to preach but to remind myself that how we act in the next few months, or longer, will likely have more impact on the field of opera than any full decade before now. We all now have a chance to embrace the change that is going to be necessary; to view it as an opportunity, not a tragedy. I have no idea what opera will look like in 5 months or five years, nor does anyone. But I know it will be here for as long as people have ears and souls. I never worry about opera disappearing. I do worry that if we spend too much time fighting against change, we allow ourselves to be Blockbuster instead of Netflix; Sears instead of Amazon.

My job at Opera Memphis is to do everything in my power to ensure we are Netflix, and I intend to do so.

This week we started asking for folks who are cooped up by the coronavirus to email us at singtome@operamemphis.org. We are going to drive our van and flatbed trailer to where they are, and sing to as many of them as possible. Will an outdoor performance on a trailer that just last month was hauling hay in Mississippi be the same as a show on the stage of GPAC, the Orpheum or POTS? Nope. Not even close. But again, not the point. The point is that when times like these arise, we cannot respond by worrying about what will become of the old way of doing things.

We need to remember that this is Memphis. We invent things. We innovate things. We export music to the world. We don’t mope. We don’t wallow. We grit, we grind, and we get on with the work of making something amazing. Whether that something is for 2 people on a Vollintine-Evergreen porch, or for thousands at the Levitt Shell, I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t care. If I know that there is one more person out there we can reach, who will hear our music and feel? That is something worth trying. Worth getting up for every morning. And so I shall.

Stay safe everyone, and #keepthemusicgoing.

Ned Canty has been general director of Opera Memphis since 2010.