A Personal and Professional Update
In this short post, I’ll share how Jewel and I are doing personally and professionally amid the upheaval caused by Covid-19. If you’d like to share the same, please write in the Comments section below.
Personal
Jewel and I are fortunate. We’re healthy and live in a comfortable home in a residential neighborhood in Stratford, CT, where, in a population of 52,000, only 236 Covid-19 cases have been recorded, with 7 deaths.
We happened to move here from New Rochelle in Westchester, NY in June 2019. We had no idea that our former city would be New York’s first coronavirus epicenter.
We’re grateful that our immediate family members remain healthy and gainfully employed, from those who work in health care and other essential businesses such as supermarkets to those employed by large U.S. auto companies and Silicon Valley firms.
Yet our hearts extend to those who have lost jobs and loved ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you reading this post now have had this experience, or know others living through loss. The uncertainty of our time prompts fear and anxiety, while at the same time bringing out the best and worst in human beings.
We spend our time, Monday through Friday, sticking to work, exercise, meditation, and dietary schedules. Routines and rituals bring order and structure as we move forward together, giving one another strength and love through this storm. We stay in touch with friends and family by phone and Zoom, and enjoy walks exploring our new neighborhood. No surprise: music forms our soundtrack; embedded speakers play all from jazz and gospel to R&B, chamber and orchestral music through our Sonos system many hours a day.
Music gives resonance to memory, Ralph Ellison once wrote, and the music we play of gone-but-not-forgotten artists to favorites of today not only evoke memories—the music also comforts and inspires us to reach for the beauty and excellence they represent.
We relax by reading, a favorite pastime, and by watching Netflix, Hulu, and content on Amazon Prime too. This past weekend we were astonished by the Oscar award-winning film Parasite. Never have we seen a film that integrates so many genres so well: tragedy, comedy, farce, fantasy, mystery, romance, and even horror. No wonder so many movie critics acclaimed it. As we say in black American vernacular: it’s all that. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so. It’s so good that we’re going to watch the film again soon to parse the brilliant screenplay.
Professional
Our consulting work and live jazz-based workshops for organizations have come to an abrupt halt. Images such as the ones above, with people in close quarters from workshops we’ve given for major institutions in the last year, seem like distant memories.
I teach a college jazz history course, now remotely. If you know anything about adjunct work, it’s not a king’s ransom. But so many others are worse off than me that I’d deserve to be smacked if I complained.
As Jewel and I have no idea when we’ll be able to engage clients in live workshops, we’ve pivoted to planning and preparing to present our model online as a digital platform. Our intention to develop such a platform over the next 12-18 months became an immediate necessity, our intense focus.
Please wish us the best. We certainly wish you health and well-being, personally and professionally, in this unprecedented moment. If you’d like to share your story with us, please do so in the Comments section directly below. Thanks.