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20 | Community Facebook.com/TheReporterNewspapers ■ twitter.com/Reporter_News Pandemic Anniversary: Musicians, teleworks and evangelists take stock BYJOHNRUCH AND SAMMIE PURCELL The month of March brings a very un happy birthday for the COVID-19 pandem ic in Georgia. March 2, 2020 bore the dis covery, in Fulton County, of the state’s first known COVID cases. By March 12, govern ments and school districts were shutting down. By March 23, Georgia was fully in the grip of the pandemic, with Gov. Kemp issu ing the first stay-at-home order. Deadly to thousands, life-changing to millions, the apocalyptic pandemic has been transformative more than most lo cals guessed in those early days. To mark the grim anniversary, the Reporter caught up with some local figures who we inter viewed at the pandemic’s start and others who are feeling unanticipated impacts. THE MUSICIANS Joe Gransden, one of Atlanta’s busiest and most popular jazz musicians, predicted SPECIAL Jazz musician Joe Gransden. in mid-March 2020 that the pandemic shut downs would have a “very scary” impact on the arts economy. How right he was. “It’s extremely brutal out there,” Grans den said in a recent interview. “Some of the larger bands in town have folded, just dis banded.” For jazz and other arts that rely on smaller venues, the acts often “just can’t get people to come out and feel safe.” Granden said he was out of gigs until late August or early September, when some outdoor shows resumed and live-stream concerts became a phenomenon. Incorpo rated as a one-person limited liability com pany, Gransden was able to get loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration and the federal Paycheck Protection Program. But, he said, his family is still relying on the salary of his wife Charissa Gransden, an assistant director of fine arts at The Lovett School. “If I was single, I probably wouldn’t make it,” he said. With cold weather and indoor shows, Gransden said he has his own health con cerns, as there are “very few really safe places to play.” One whose precautions he is comfortable with and playing at weekly is Ray’s on the River, a Sandy Springs res taurant, where the band can get a large dis tance away from the patrons. While the novelty of live-stream con certs seems to have worn off, Gransden said, the many fans still enjoying them should remember to take advantage of an other huge convenience of the technology. “It’s really easy from your home to throw a dollar in the kitty, or five bucks or 25 bucks,” he said. “If everybody put in a dollar to tip, those artists are going to do well again.” For opera singer Kelsey Fredriksen, the last 12 months has been a virtual ad justment as well. In April 2020, the Cham- blee resident led a virtual sing-along of the national anthem organized by the city of Brookhaven as part of a “Brookhaven Strong” pandemic unity event. That was just the beginning. “I’ve only been doing virtual,” Frederik- sen said about her performances over the past year. “I’m pretty cautious about stay ing in quarantine, and so I haven’t been tak ing any risks to go out.” Close to this time last year, Fredriksen was waiting “on pins and needles” to hear how the Atlanta Opera would choose to move forward with its May production of “Madame Butterfly.” Eventually, the com pany canceled the performance. Since then, some companies have performed out doors, including the Atlanta Opera, which staged performances in an open-sided tent at Brookhaven's Oglethorpe Universi ty. Frederilcsen said she has been too con cerned about possible spread of the virus to participate. “There’s a lot of evidence that singing spews more germs farther, and the louder you sing, the further it goes,” she said. “It’s kind of depressing.” But in the virtual world, she has re mained employed as a staff singer at her church in Decatur, where individually re corded parts are put together, and she has shifted her business of piano and voice les sons online as well. In some cases, Fredriksen said, her stu dents are even learning at a faster pace than they were during in-person lessons. “Some of the kids nowadays, they’re just so attuned to the internet,” she said. “A cou ple of my students, they are just so good with a computer and just melding into it, that they just roll with the punches. Some of them are 5 years old and it’s just reality -- this is how it goes. They don’t have much to compare it to.” THE TELEWORK EXPERT Just a few weeks into the pandemic, Jo hann Weber said in a Reporter commen tary that there could be a silver lining for those fortunate enough to be off the front SPECIAL Opera singer Kelsey Fredriksen. lines and able to telework. Weber, who manages the “Perimeter Connects” alter native commuting program for the Perim eter Community Improvement Districts, predicted that the time- and money-saving aspects would make telework stick around for good. “The reality of work in 2021 may be something to celebrate,” he wrote at the time. While it remains to be seen what post pandemic work will be like, Weber said in a Feb. 8 presentation to the Dunwoody City Council that surveys show most workers have an appetite to continue with a perma nent mix of in-person and remote work, and many large employers are planning for it. Weber said Perimeter Connects recent ly got survey responses from 33 businesses representing about 24,000 office employees in Perimeter Center. About 66% of employers said they would have more remote work post-pandem ic. Only 3% said there would be no remote work once things return to normal. About 45% of the employers surveyed said they would have more work-from-home oppor tunities in the future, but did not have any formal policies or plans in place. Perimeter Connects also synthesized about 40 different global studies on remote work from over the past year, surveying re sponses from 175,000 respondents. According to the synthesized studies, many workers are ready to be back in an of fice, but 60% to 80% of employees want to work remote one or more days a week after the pandemic is over. “[Offices] serve a very social function, as well as the actual productive work func tion,” Weber said of the urge to an in-person return. “You don’t necessarily have to be in the same place to do your core work, but you would choose to be around people do ing the same work, even if you had no need to coordinate with them.” One piece of Perimeter Connects advice that the locally surveyed companies are of ten not following is to create a formal tele working plan. “[Employers] are not directly addressing how that work is expected to be done,” Weber said, which may indicate they are still thinking of teleworking as a tempo rary tactic. THE FAITHFUL “Did you know that the Bible foretold that soon we can look forward to a world that is free of sickness, health [issues], crime and death?” reads the handwritten note re cently mailed to a Sandy Springs address. It’s a message that once would have been delivered in person by Jehovah’s Wit nesses in their famous door-knocking min istry, but now is being done by snail-mail as the Christian denomination continues its complete pandemic shutdown. The suspension of the door-to-door min istry was “earth-shattering for Jehovah’s Witnesses,” says Robert Hendriks, the or ganization’s U.S. spokesperson. The group’s name literally means spreading the word of God, and it has fought decades of bat tles against religious discrimination laws worldwide for the right to conduct the door-knocking. SPECIAL Johann Weber, director of Perimeter Connects. “Now, all of sudden, it wasn’t a govern ment telling us to stop... Now it was the or ganization saying, ‘You need to stop from going to door to door,”’ said Hendriks. While some churches and synagogues fought for the right of exemption from shutdowns, Jehovah’s Witnesses shut down all in-person gatherings and activities ear ly and have stayed remote. Hendriks said that is based on two principles: the sanctity of life and Jesus’s biblical command to love your neighbor. “Life is sacred. And why would you risk even one life because you have a personal preference to meet together in person?” he asks. Beyond health risks, he said, “it’s how our neighbor feels about our coming to his door now. And that -- we don’t know when that will change... If they’re not comfort able, we're not comfortable. We’re not go ing to force ourselves on anyone and nor should we.” Like many secular organizations, the Jehovah’s Witnesses find the pandemic’s enforced distancing is accelerating some changes already underway and bringing some unexpected benefits. The organiza tion’s door-knocking efforts already found fewer people at home in a mobile age, lead ing to experiments in telephone and letter writing ministries that are now the highly organized new normal. Virtual meetings are often drawing more attendees than in-per- son versions, Hendriks said, especially for those with physical challenges. “You just wonder where this is going,” Hendricks said. “We could never have imag ined a year ago being where we are, and I have a suspicion that one year from now, we also will be amazed.” For Jehovah’s Witnesses, that includes a possibility far more amazing than, say, whether teleworking will keep more people home to respond to door-knocking. The or ganization believes “this [pandemic] is not the work of God,” Hendriks said, but could be a sign of the return of Jesus predicted in the Bible’s book of Revelation, which comes after a rampage by the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” whose members include a personification of Pestilence. “We’ll see,” said Hendriks. “We don’t pre tend to be prophets.”
