Ah, to be in traffic again.
Kristen and I are going to Georgia and find ourselves swiftly getting over the nostalgia of traffic on I-95. Kristen’s father shall be getting a new hip on Monday, and we’re going to try to make the post-op experience tenable in the two or so weeks we’ve got, if not free, than at least free ENOUGH, by being Good Children AND Good Adults both at the same time.
But first, the traffic.
The timing on the surgery has wavered and shimmered on our calendars for months, initially scheduled for the beautiful blank spot in our calendar over the holidays, but alas COVID’s Omicron party made a mockery of many best-laid plans of mice and me and so here we are, making it happen.
I’ve spent the past two weeks training Doug and Dave (Sandy Spring Museum and Institute of Musical Traditions) on how to keep the open mic at the Spring going, streaming, functioning. Last year I spent a lot of time with Sandy Spring Museum working on a HUGE (to me) grant for the museum to develop streaming infrastructure, and the grant’s initial work was supposed to kick into play near the end of February with a lot of “now watch what I’m doing” style training. Instead, it had to kick in a bit earlier with “I’m going to show you what you’ll need to know” style training, and much of the hands-on work and initial jobs have been handed off to Rowan during a fortuitous blank spot in HIS work calendar.
I shouldn’t be griping. Certainly one of my least favourite things is when someone complains about how someone ELSE’S tragedies and pain are just making their own Life hard – sans sympathy for the person who’s actually going through the SHIT, not simply the inconvenience of the shit.
That being said, the lead up for a lot of things that are happening in the last half of February and the first half of March : the Reba Heyman memorial show the Sandy Spring Streaming Lab, and the Chords of Courage children’s songwriting show are all things that have been variously prepared for over the course of 5, 7 and 10 months respectively and trying to prep for / keep them running remotely from a section of rural Georgia that has managed to keep itself free of the horrors of both cell coverage AND high speed internet is going to present some stresses.
But we’ve prepared for it, we’ve TRAINED for this, we WILL BE HEROES!
If we can just get through this patch of I-95 which is, absolutely and firmly, no longer nostalgic.
The Spring continues merrily along it’s path. I was really bummed when last week’s attendance was lack-lustre for the Honey Badgers, but the rest of the nights have been as packed as we are willing to pack them for the last couple of months. Last week we ALSO increased our capacity to 30 in recognition of slowly-declining COVID rates (and in recognition of how far we have to go yet, it’s good to note that we’re still at something like one quarter the Before Times room capacity!).
In any case, this week things felt a lot better, at least for the beginning of the evening, missing maxed capacity by one, which, since we had a special guest photographer, kinda worked out in any case. Unfortunately 1/3 of that population was one group of performers and students who showed up late and left shortly after performing – which was pretty crappy. I get that they’re school kids, but we might have to clamp down on that in the future since that means turning away people who, frankly, would’ve been there for our feature (the incredible Eli Lev) and the remainder of our list. The room really looked kinda empty by the end of the night, which always sucks.
So, the advance signup and the reduced capacity continues to throw challenges at us – and the next couple of weeks I’m actually going to be away, trying to make sense of all that stuff remotely, so who knows HOW it’ll shape up. Doug and the museum are trying to come up with some other solutions to allowing plenty of audience bookings while NOT overbooking performance slots, but so far this has been woefully over-complicated.
I just dream that we’ll get it all sorted out before our funding runs out, so it feels as if we get to end while looking like we knew what we were doing!
As we drive south, down past Richmond, through North Carolina, onward down I-85 passing and being passed in South Carolina, we’re of course weighed upon by worrying about angry, antagonistic anti-maskers and every stop for gas, snack or just for a bathroom break feels like we’re gambling on the benevolence of the locals.
Which – is kinda wrong I guess. So far at least, though not nearly as prevalent as back home, masks are still present. The signage stopped in Virginia, and in North Carolina that stopped too, but the staff in the truck stops were still masked up and here in South Carolina you can at least get COVID tests at the Flying J. We’re definitely in the minority, but we have yet to be alone or to get a hostile-seeming glare.
At this point, I’m past paranoia about actually getting sick. I’m not going to eat dinner sitting down in a local diner, but just going in to get a snack or to use the restroom doesn’t really worry me. Much as we’ve been taught by every zombie movie, humans are a greater enemy than the disease – and so I’m trying to offload layers of worry.
South Carolina is sunshiney and bright – we literally haven’t seen a cloud in the sky since we left Durham, NC this morning, and if there’s a wandering tone in my writing it’s because the sun coming through the window, and the gentle whatever-Kristen’s-playing on the radio, and the sound of the highway is all combining to make me very, very, very sleeeeeepy…