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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.”
