Bleak of course (how could it not be with all the cancellations?). On the other hand, reading through the data gives a sense of where the people who run theatres think they’re headed. – Theatre Communications Group
Author: Douglas McLennan
How Vermont’s National Guard Army Band Did The Impossible And Built A Hospital In Four Days Last Week
The story of how about 70 National Guardsmen managed to transform a convention center into an alternate health-care facility in mere days shows a state community coming together to get ahead of the pandemic at a time when the federal response is faltering. – The Atlantic
I Donated My Paintings To A Prison. Did I Accomplish Anything?
“Who knows if the paintings I donated hold beauty in the harsh, isolated world of incarcerated people? I never ask these viewers directly; in prison, this question can beg answers like, “Your paintings? I love them. Get me out of here!” I wasn’t doing research, and didn’t need to know. The paintings just became part of the prison. It wasn’t until after teaching there that I got any sense of the paintings’ meanings in their context.” – Broad Street Review
Good News? Will COVID Kill Influencer Culture?
Social media influencers have had increasing… er… influence in recent years for their ability to get advertising messages out to their followers. But the COVID lockdown has crashed the market. And there’s even been backlashes to influencers who seem to be flaunting their enviable circumstances while the rest of us are stuck inside our apartments. – Wired
Oxford English Dictionary Updates With COVID Words
The dictionary’s executive editor Bernadette Paton said that it was “a rare experience for lexicographers to observe an exponential rise in usage of a single word in a very short period of time, and for that word to come overwhelmingly to dominate global discourse, even to the exclusion of most other topics”. – The Guardian
The Natural World Is Changing Around Us As We Lock Down. It’s Pretty Great
“People are suspended between terror and wonder. They’re terrified that this is all so fragile, but they also realize there are things we have been missing — the birdsong everyone is noticing, the beautiful skies — and that those things are important.” – Los Angeles Times
In Lockdown, Pollution Plummets, The Sky Returns And Indians Contemplate A Different India
The circulation of a billion Indians has not settled into the neat grid of social distance. On my phone, I see looming disaster. And yet, looking up, I see something else—a glimpse, behind the jungle crow facing off with two brahminy kites, of an alternative to how we live. In northern India, the change has been as basic as breathing. Of the thirty cities with the worst air pollution in the world, twenty-one are in northern India. – The New Yorker
What The Art Of The AIDS Era Has To Say To Us Now
Fear of and distancing from those who have or are suspected of having the virus counts as a similarity, the key difference being how AIDS became linked to identity . “In the early days of AIDS, all forms of contact were made fraught. I remember people going home and being told that they were not welcome.” – ARTnews
Where You Want To Be During The Virus Crisis: Berlin
Germany has a low infection rate, but additionally the city has efficiently tried to help its residents: “Fortunately, last week more than $1.4 billion was already doled out in Berlin to more than 150,000 of the city’s self-employed and small businesses. Colin filled out a short online application for the $5,400 which is being offered, no strings attached, available to freelancers. To his shock—as Germany’s bureaucracy is notoriously ponderous and time-sapping—the sum popped up in his bank account two days later.” – Boston Review
Our Interest In Dystopian Stories Is Soaring. Does It Affect Our Real-World Views?
“Is dystopian fiction likely to affect anyone’s real-world political attitudes? If so, then how? And how much should we care about its impact? In our research, we set out to answer these questions using a series of experiments.” – Aeon