May 18, 2020 — The Mendocino County Public Health Officer has reported the county’s 14th positive test result for covid-19, in an elderly man living in the Ukiah Valley. He is a close contact of two Lake County residents who have also tested positive. All three people were at a church in inland Mendocino County on Mothers’ Day, where a service that included singing was being livestreamed. Two of the people were among the singers, and one of the Lake County residents was hospitalized at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley on Saturday. The two other people are in stable condition, isolating at home.
There will be free covid-19 testing on Tuesday, May 19, at Eagle Peak Middle School in Redwood Valley from 7am to 2pm. The health officer urges anyone who participated in a livestream service with singing in a church in inland Mendocino County on Mothers’ Day to come get a free test.
If anyone understands the joy of singing in community — and how important it is to forego that joy right now, it’s Janice Hawthorne Timm, who teaches choir and a vocal jazz ensemble class at Mendocino College.
“I haven’t been running my classes,” she said.” That’s the thing. Because singing is super dangerous, and it looks like singing is going to continue to be super dangerous. There has been a number of national seminars and forums on the subject, about how singing and maybe even playing wind instruments might be the last thing that we come back to.”
A lot of the choir members are not young people who were looking forward to graduation as a major milestone in their lives. They’re also just not that interested in zoom, which, with spotty internet and cell phone service in rural parts of the county, is often a moot point anyway. “All of our students do not have access to good internet,” Hawthorne Timm points out. “You can get in the car and go to the college parking lot and work on your Chromebook, but honestly, that is not the way to do choir. That’s the way to get your English assignment in and that’s great.”
The real highlight her students were looking forward to was the end of semester performance, which would have been the evening of May 18. The jazz ensemble was planning jazz arrangements of opera pieces, for example, “Summertime,” a solo from George Gershwin’s already jazz-influenced opera, Porgy and Bess. “It would have been a snazzier, jazzier style, I guess,” Hawthorne Timm said with a laugh. “With jazz harmonies as opposed to traditional straight-up harmonies.”
A lot of the fallout from the pandemic has been giving things up, or postponing them. Hawthorne Timm hopes her choir and vocal jazz ensemble can have their concert next year. But it’s a different story for visual artists.
“Most artists today have a very, very robust online presence,” says Doug Browe, who teaches ceramics, gallery management, and portfolio classes at Mendocino College. “We are a very rural county, and people are not as attracted to an online presence. But it’s definitely truthful that today, art is driven by the internet.”
Normally, the juried student art show at the end of the semester is the most well-attended gallery event of the year. But this year, with the help of Tony Novelli, the college graphic designer, the art show is entirely virtual, from flower arrangements and videos of performances to paintings, alley adornments, and, of course, ceramics. Asked how students were able to make their pieces without access to the equipment, Browe said one of the first things he tells new students is, “You were put on the earth with the two most important tools you need for ceramics. And they’re attached to the ends of your arms. I know people who make work that is atrocious, who own every tool you can imagine. The best work is made under adversity. It’s not the tools that make the work. It’s the urge.” He encourages his students with prompts, video classes, and suggestions about how they can carve out “a personal space for creativity” as they shelter in place: a corner in the bedroom or kitchen, or maybe the garage. He also sent them home with clay and rudimentary tools, when he first learned that the college was switching over to an online curriculum. “And it’s amazing how many of them have commented on how that has really helped them get through this isolation period,” he adds.
It’s not too late for anyone enrolled in a class at Mendocino College to be in the art show by sending pictures of the submission to gallery@mendocino.edu. Browe hopes one of the outcomes of the disruptions caused by the pandemic is that there will always be a virtual student art show.
There will be a future. But in the meantime, “To acknowledge the truth that getting together to sing might be the most dangerous thing we could do,” says Hawthorne Timm, the choir teacher; “It’s really disheartening. However, I will say: creatures, all creatures, from birds to animals to humans, we’ve all been singing, ever since the day we were created. Ever since we were born, we’ve sung and we’ve sung together. And we will sing together again. We just have to wait.”