Great to know. And it all makes sense!
@michele-b @UnkP is right and it doesn’t just include their coverage of the war in Iraq. But NPR has improved since Trump.
I think they had trouble trying to appear objective and got confused with what objective means. Objective doesn’t mean you give voice to liars and thieves, it means you report the truth. And since the Republican party has become a party of liars and thieves NPR has struggled with How to represent them.
NPR is mainstream not liberal although republicans think its leftest because anything that isn’t extreme right at this point is leftest.
I think they’ve done a reasonably good job with covering Covid, and they have started to be more on the side of objective truth in covering Donald Trump. But you can’t trust everything they say.
Remember when baseball started back up this summer?
Well, Covid appears to have hit the Marlins pretty hard. Maybe the Reds too. Better watch it while you can.
Here are the posts of Cancellations from the last two days that got deleted:
I have a friend who just conducted a concert with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra in Japan. Might be the only place doing live concerts right now.
Posted by: @michellepazicni
I just joined to be able to post, but I've been reading this site for years! Maybe this isn't the right place to ask this? Any ideas when music concerts will be back in the US? I really miss them :(
Many professional orchestras have either canceled through the end of 2020, or have canceled their entire 20-21 seasons. It is unclear how orchestras can be brought back onstage in a safe manner. Every classical musician I know is really hurting right now.
@lovendures The disconnect is really big here in my neck of the woods.... it's still a hoax to cover the sex trafficking and people voting for a Q Anon follower that Trump just fawns about *sigh* and so so much more. I am
I am amazed at the following particular disconnect.
1 on 1 college music lessons (with an instrument that doesn't require blowing anything so you can wear a mask) are online but k-12 music teachers are expected to teach in person, (with kids who can't figure out how to blow their noses) seeing 500+ students a week?
Someone please explain this "mad world" we live in. There is no rabbit hole big enough for all the disconnect going on in the world.
In the U.S.: Greed, politics led by the Republican Party. As for other countries - authoritarianism in countries led by right wing greed - Lebanon, Russia, Brazil, etc. Although there are exceptions, it isn't chaos, and it makes sense. They are out for themselves. They do not care about decisions that affect people's welfare, only decisions that affect their profits and their ability to stay in power for more profits.
My college daughter just got word that she will not be having any in person classes, including private lessons or ensembles until at least the end of September. As of yesterday she was still supposed to lessons in person and small ensembles.
I totally understand but I am amazed at the following particular disconnect.
1 on 1 college music lessons (with an instrument that doesn't require blowing anything so you can wear a mask) are online but k-12 music teachers are expected to teach in person, (with kids who can't figure out how to blow their noses) seeing 500+ students a week?
Someone please explain this "mad world" we live in. There is no rabbit hole big enough for all the disconnect going on in the world.
@jeanne-mayell Houston and Detroit Symphonies have given recent performances with a reduced number of masked musicians. I think Atlanta Symphony will be playing a modified season as well.
I know nothing about this issue so forgive me if I'm naive, but when Covid shut downs first happened, some music groups posted beautiful online performances where everyone performed separately but together from home using zoom. Is that too difficult for professional symphonies to pull off? People would enjoy watching that.
@jeanne-mayell Here are a few: :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG29VFMphpo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4YIquBE208
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneZmO3_Acs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XneZmO3_Acs
These are obviously not entire orchestras, but they are professionals, and there are enough of them to make it sound pretty good, so it's possible, just not easy. There are a lot more. Just go on Youtube and search for "social distance orchestra" Enjoy. :-)
@tgraf66 Oh man, those were wonderful. Loved Ode to Joy beyond words, and the 1812 Overture with one woman pounding the inside of the bath tub and a man sitting on the floor playing a child's xylophone and another woman sitting on her apartment window playing the triangle. Pure delight.
Zoom is VERY difficult to do with music. There is a time delay. Try signing Happy Birthday on your next Zoom call and you will hear everyone doing different starts and stops.
The virtual performances you have seen where people are performing from home or some other location alone and then put together on a screen like a zoom meeting are a totally different animal. They are individually recorded first and then put together. This is difficult as they need to be in time. We did a few recorded choral projects during COVID with our church. Our church recorded some hymns to be played during services of our young adults singing. They recorded at home and a professional put everything together. It was a nice project to do so they could actively participate in church while not being able to be there physically. They were not filmed, just voice recordings.
I know nothing about this issue so forgive me if I'm naive, but when Covid shut downs first happened, some music groups posted beautiful online performances where everyone performed separately but together from home using zoom. Is that too difficult for professional symphonies to pull off? People would enjoy watching that.
I have taken part in four such videos. Lovendures is correct, they are not done by zoom. In fact it is impossible for even two people to play together via zoom due to the lag. I have been teaching private lessons through zoom since March and it’s frustrating not to be able to play along with my student, though sometimes I ask them to mute themselves and play with me.
if you look closely at the musicians in those videos, you will see people wearing earbuds or headphones. That is because each of us had to record our own part separately, alone in our home, either to a metronome or to a click track. In the four videos I took part in, one was to a metronome set at a certain tempo, two were to click tracks provided to us in advance, and for one we were asked to play along with a prior performance of the same piece. None of that is easy, though playing with the metronome was less difficult to do than using the click tracks or matching a previously recorded performance.
Absolutely nothing about the process of making those videos is enjoyable. It takes an hour or more to come up with 10 minutes of usable video. Furthermore, I had to turn off the air conditioning because the noise was audible on the recording so I was hot and uncomfortable along with tired and frustrated by the time I had a good video I could submit. Multiply that by the number of participants in the finished video and you will see how ridiculously disproportionate the effort is to the result.
Once every participant has submitted their video, the producer requires dozens to maybe 100 hours additional work editing the videos and sound together. This is for a video which may last not longer than 10 minutes.
These videos do serve a purpose: aside from the novelty factor, they keep us in front of our audience and donors and can inspire financial support. But they are not a viable path forward for classical music.
@2ndfdl and @lovendures, thank you for explaining all that is involved. Appearances are quite deceiving. :-)
I sang to make a recording with a click track earlier this Spring for the first time. It was an experience for sure. My music teacher/college kids had to pretty much hold my hand through the process. haha
I heard a lot of "No Mom!"
One of my FB friends is an opera singer and he shared this video which is a collection of outtakes from people trying to record their parts for a virtual choir performance. Unfortunately it’s not on YouTube but if you’re curious, go to the public page of Eamonn O’Dwyer and scroll all the way back to April 25. (It’s public, so anyone should be able to see it, and he was expressing thanks for all the shares so I assume it’s OK to mention here.)
Be warned, what is described as “a slightly sweary look behind the scenes“ is actually a completely NSFW (but accurate) collection of f-bombs.
here’s a different one, obviously from an amateur choir, but it will give you the idea of how frustrating producing these videos can become:
The Queen Creek USD is up a creek without many paddles right now.
A week ago they voted to have in person classes on Monday. NO option for teachers to teach online as online is offered through an outside vender. They are requiring masks but with many exemptions allowed. The class size is normal, some have 40 or more kids. The district fails to meet the metrics the state has created to have in person classes but the district is not REQUIRED to meet those state metrics. It is a "suggested" metric.
I have a friend who teaches there. As of Thursday the entire Queen Creek HS science department (except one) had resigned. Much of the Math Department did as well. My friend who teaches there but in a different department resigned last night. The school district is fining all teachers who resign. thousands of dollars. Teachers are not allowed to find work at other schools until they pay the fine and their vacated position has been filled. Most of the teachers who resigned did so because they have health conditions that put them in a high risk category or have family at home who are high risk. Some simply don't want to be exposed to the virus, period.
Teachers at a neighboring school district were faced with a similar situation. They chose a different route for now. They called in sick for their first day of school also beginning on Monday. So many have called in sick, the district had to cancel first day classes on Monday. They have no idea what will happen the following day.
So, cancelations abound in school districts.
In my honest opinion, rightly so. This is no way to treat a education professional. No way to treat anyone.
Seriously absurd if not dangerous to begin with!!
To fine teachers for standing up to bullies for their inalienable rights to well, basically their life (queue up the Bill of Rights with some music) truly demonstrates the lengths that many are going to just to show for which side of history (and politics) their lines in the sand are being formed.
Pathetic but then big bad bullies truly are pathetic in all ways. So so sad.
Staying home too long leads some devious minds astray. They like to figure out ways to do harm to otherwise good programs, apps, or even the cloud storage systems.
Here's something that just canceled any iphone users photos used with the LightroomApp.
"Lightroom App Update Wipes Users' Photos and Presets, Adobe Says they are 'Not Recoverable'
"This morning, multiple readers wrote in to alert us to a major Adobe gaffe. It seems the latest update to the Lightroom app for iPhone and iPad inadvertently wiped users’ photos and presets that were not already synced to the cloud.
Adobe has confirmed that there is no way to get them back.
The issue first cropped up on the Photoshop feedback forums two days ago, when the Lightroom app on iOS was updated to version 5.4. A user named Mohamad Alif Eqnur posted asking why all of his photos, presets, and watermark data had been removed after updating to the most recent version through the iOS app store."
College athletics are getting canceled, which is resulting is programs being cut permanently because schools are losing so much revenue due to no football or basketball season. My son is a junior in college, on scholarship to swim division one. Smaller schools have been cutting their swim programs, but last week, the University of Iowa cut their teams. That program has been around for more than 100 years; U of I is the birthplace of the butterfly stroke.
My son, a very even-keeled, steady, optimistic kid, texted me on Friday, using words that felt very upset. He has been completely thrown by Iowa cutting their team, and is now feeling very uncertain about what will happen at his school. Swimming doesn't bring in money, his team went through a lot of bumps last year (grades, partying, disciplinary issues resulting in several guys being cut, as well as administration putting the team on notice that if the program doesn't turn around, it will be cut), and he doesn't know what to do if he can't swim this year ... or at all. He last competitive race in February was an attempt an Olympic Trial cut; now he's wondering if that was his last race ever.
Mom radar was on high alert, so my husband and I dropped everything and drove three and a half hours to see him on Sunday and make sure he's okay. He is coming to terms with online classes, though he would much rather be in class, but his big struggle is the team has been banned from using the pool because the community complained that the swimmers ... who are there on scholarship ... took up too many lanes. Putting the community over the athletes concerns him a lot, especially given they haven't yet gotten any indication of when the team can resume working out (they usually start in August).
He feels too far into school to switch to another school/team, but not ready to give up his dream and sport. My heart just breaks for all of the college athletes like him who are either living with the uncertainty of their sport and scholarship, or have found out that there is no more sport. Yet another huge blow, thanks to Covid and mishandling it from the beginning.
Schools are permanently canceling athletics? Not simply the year?
dang!!
i feel so much for you and your son. The community response to the college swimmers is really disappointing too. My daughter god sister was able to compete at the Olympic trials a few Olympics ago. Her family was so proud and rightly so. She also received a scholarship to swim and I know would have been disappointed to have had that taken away.
Can he swim in the pool as simply a community member to keep up his skills?
He should not take switching schools off the table. If he knows what his options are, he will have some control .
Perhaps the US Olympic Swim committee will have some suggestions. Perhaps his current coach. Perhaps he can take the year off and train back home?
it is good you both were able to drive down to visit him. Mom radar I can’t be ignored.
We can include him and your family in our Circle of Light Meditations on Wednesday.
dang! That just sucks!
Time to "cancel" the CDC?
The CDC has failed: Ex-health officials urge states to abandon agency:
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is promoting policies that will prolong the COVID-19 pandemic and, as such, states and local leaders should disregard the agency and strike out on their own.
That’s according to Harold Varmus, the Nobel-prize-winning scientist and former director of the National Institutes of Health, and Rajiv Shah, the former administrator of the United States Agency for International Development and current president of the Rockefeller Foundation.
The two laid out their argument against the CDC in a searing opinion piece in The New York Times Monday, titled: “It Has Come to This: Ignore the CDC.”
These are posts dated 9/9/20 that got lost with the recent site break. I do not have the authors' names.
RE: CANCELLATIONS 11:36 Am
@laura-f Am in agreement that "Maybe, like other countries, we need to fund higher education for a change and make it free to all. Let me remind everyone that our "most respected", oldest colleges in this country were originally created to support and reinforce the upper classes, starting with the British aristocracy/colonizers and ending with the slave owners/oligarchs."
RE: CANCELLATIONS 12:40 pm
Apologies for quickly jumping on education instead of Covid...
As a teacher I'v always found it odd that the curriculum isn't set by the federal government but per state. That is why education comes up short imo, but I am not an American so correct me if my view is incorrect.
@jeanne-mayell, I don't even think it has to be free, as long as it isn't as absurd in pricing as to what you have now (@laura-f, holy S%$t!). If you go to college here you pay between 1000,- to 5000,- a year as tuition. This depends on what you're studying and how long you take. A 2nd study will cost more. Students also get a public transport pass which lets them travel for free for about 4 years (so while studying). This is excl. housing (which isn't always needed if you can stay at home).
Primary school is free. Middle school requires a small fee, but going to school is mandatory until you have a degree or are 18 (21 in some cities). I think the system is pretty good, but... it also depends on teachers (Finland requires all teachers to have a Master's degree for example). However, if you want to get good teachers you need to have good pay and good working conditions. Could it be that that is why the problem lies next to a respectable curriculum?
This is an old article, but still relevant. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21354932
RE: CANCELLATIONS 2:42 pm est
I work for a university in southeastern Virginia. I'm not an administrator or faculty, just a staff person. I totally agree with what you said. Classes should have been totally virtual this semester with perhaps a few exceptions for courses absolutely require hands on labs.
Bringing everyone from diverse places to a central location for school is a great way to spread the disease as is sending folks back after they've already arrived.
My university has done some things to help reduce the spread, but I'm not sure it will enough. They aren't tripling up dorm rooms at the beginning of the semester and they are spreading out classroom spaces to allow for social distancing. Mask wearing is being enforced in buildings, but I can't say the students are really being responsible about wearing masks. They have a Covid tracking and testing protocol in place. Students, staff, and faculty report daily whether they have any Covid symptoms, have been exposed to anyone who has been diagnosed with Covid, or have been traveling outside of the state. Random testing is in place. I suspect those who report anything amiss get tested first, but supposedly they are randomly selecting people who report being healthy too.
Many staff are also working mainly from home with rotating schedules working in our departments. In my department, only one staff person is allowed to work in the department at a time, but we just started accepting appointments from individual researchers. This concerns me since I'll be sitting in the same room with a researcher, though I'll be wearing a mask and behind a Plexiglas shield. Other staff work at public service areas with higher traffic.
I know there is concern about budget and keeping up enrollment rates. I don't know that students would get a refund if school were to suddenly cancel classes, and I have heard complaints that students might be paying full tuition even if they are only taking online classes. That doesn't seem fair to me. Budget cuts, furloughs, and layoffs of staff have been suggested if the budget doesn't balance. So far they have been able to break even by reallocating funds and not filling open positions. I am happy and lucky to have a job during this pandemic, and also feel lucky I can work the majority of my time from home. I know others aren't so lucky.
RE: CANCELLATIONS 2:45 pm est
@laura-f My son's college town is a mess. Less than five new cases a day for most of the summer - most days were zero or one new case - and since campus re-opened three weeks ago, there have been more than 300 cases ... the majority of the cases are students. He's pretty sure things will shut down soon. The local city council finally voted last night to require masks (he's at school in a state that's had zero mitigation measures), and he said that the meeting had to be moved to a larger venue, and there were three hours of forum and questions. Places that have been convinced for six months that this whole things is "fake" and "stupid" are suddenly finding themselves forced to face reality, and it's coming at the expense of the students, campus communities, and their home communities, if campus closes fully. Two of his teammates now have it; I'm grateful he's in an apartment and most of his classes are fully online.
I don't know who said what due to tonight's forum kerfuffle, but before it went kerflooie I got notices that did say who mentioned me, so I'm tagging @saibh @moonbeam @melmystery
Re: That in the US each state has its own curriculae. Yes - huge problem. Patchwork systems do not work, at all. Each state can set its own rules for: curriculum, calendar, teacher certification, mandatory age of attendance, costs.
Re: costs of higher ed. Community colleges were free up until the mid-1970s, and have been increasing their rates steadily since then (remember, each state sets its own rules and prices). Right now, most CCs run anywhere from $1000 to $5000 per year, typically. Most of them are only for 2 years, so most CC systems offer guaranteed transfer to their state's 4 year colleges. Those 4 year schools are priced anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 per year not including dorms or meals. If you decide to go to a college in a different state's public system, it will typically cost anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000, depending. Private colleges start at around $45k per year, and right now the Ivy Leagues are running as high as $70k per year.
Re: College towns as hotspots. YES, absolutely, has been f*ed up in a major way.