La Jolla Music Society Spring livestream season
Food and beverage event will let patrons shop, experience ‘entertainment’
Phone:
Online: (858) 459-3728
Feb. 20: Cocktail chat with Jazz at Lincoln Center founder Wynton Marsalis, 5 p.m. Free with LJMS subscription.
Feb. 20: Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra Septet, with Wynton Marsalis “The Democracy! Suite,” 7 p.m. Free.
March 3: Joffrey Ballet “Under the Trees’ Voices,” open rehearsal, 1 p.m. Free.
March 3: Conversation with Joffrey Ballet Artistic Director Ashley Wheater and choreographer Nicolas Blanc, 2 p.m. Free with LJMS subscription.
April 7: Joffrey Ballet, “Under the Trees’ Voices,” open rehearsal, 1 p.m. Free.
April 10: Philippe Quint, “Charlie Chaplin’s Smile,” 7 p.m. $15-$20.
April 11: Inon Barnatan, Philippe Quint and Alisa Weilerstein, 7 p.m. $15-$20.
April 30: Joffrey Ballet, “Under the Trees’ Voices,” 5 p.m. Free.
May 12: Yefim Bronfman, 7 p.m. $15-$20.
May 15: Sonia De Los Santos, 10:30 a.m. $15-$20.
June 6: Zlatomir Fung and Richard Fu, 3 p.m. $15-$20.
June 29: The Hot Sardines, 7 p.m. $15-$20.
Locally, the San Diego Unified School District made the decision to close all of its schools effective the following day to “prevent the spread of coronavirus” on March 15. A wave of school closings ensued, starting in small pockets and spreading nationwide from preschools all the way through our colleges and universities. This was done despite little to no convincing data of its benefit, and with no firm recommendations coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
At that time, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released preliminary data suggesting that the risk of serious illness in children over the age of 1 year who contract COVID-19 was relatively low, and that the mortality rate was almost nonexistent. However, the academy’s response was rather subdued regarding school closings, and administrators who weren’t physicians made many decisions without their expert input.
To be fair, motivation for these actions came from a desire to protect children and youth as we have always done during a crisis — returning them to the care of their parents and loved ones. But what if removing them from schools put them closer to those most threatened by the virus (grandparents, aunts, uncles and back-up caregivers)? And what if this disruption in their lives caused mental, emotional and academic consequences that will continue well beyond the time when their lives can return to “normal”?
As a pediatrician, I must advocate for my patients — especially during a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day for nearly 11 months, I have heard children, teenagers, college students and parents state that this open-ended hiatus from school — which could last more than an entire academic year — is taking a serious emotional, physical and academic toll on many of them.
We learned that the disease is less likely to spread if we limit the “circles” in which all of us spend our time. The concept of “small groups” suggests a setting where a group gathers regularly, can impose guidelines (such as social distancing and extra hygiene) and would be able to temporarily excuse members to protect the rest of the group.
Hmm .... sounds a lot like what we do in schools. Emptying our schools, colleges and universities is the opposite of what should have happened. These closed communities can be broken down into even smaller groups that can keep them from extensive movement among the greater population, allowing them to “quarantine” away from the more vulnerable people residing outside of those institutions. Our day cares and preschools figured this out very early in the pandemic.
Why would this be important?
If the folks who are the least likely to show symptoms of the virus (children and young adults) are made more mobile by removing them from their schools, they potentially may become infected more easily and become “vectors” of the virus to those who are at risk of more dire consequences of infection.
While older people are wise enough to stay put when told to do so, it is difficult to have children and youth remain quarantined without protestation. A week or two of “extended spring break” at the onset of the school closures was very different than an undetermined amount of time in educational limbo with many students still not getting online alternatives due to limited equipment or internet access.
Rather than having students living normal lives in school and outdoor sports, with gentle but firm limitations on their movements, students are now left with no place to go.
This has required extreme interventions to curb students’ movements when parents and communities have not been able to create “new spaces” in which the young could thrive.
So we have chosen to restrict the movements of our most vulnerable populations (those 65 and older or with underlying illness have been asked to stay home) while freeing children and youth to find places to navigate their education and social constructs away from the safety of their schools. As a result, everyone is miserable. We hoped this experiment would work. I daresay it has not.
Those of us in the medical community, service sectors and any number of “essential worker” groups have learned how to mask, wash our hands and practice social distancing with increasingly low amounts of virus transmission even before a single vaccine went into our arms. It is time for our educators to put on their “armor” and go to back to work as the heroes that we know they are. Those of us who have been doing this for nearly a year are ready to help them do it successfully.
In retrospect, I and my pediatric colleagues may be looked at as a group complicit in harming both our own patients and the vulnerable populations into which they have been released if we remain silent on this subject. I do not think it is too late to reconsider decisions about where our students should be spending their time both for learning and connecting to their social communities. For a number of reasons that I have given above, I think the time to reconsider is now.
is a clinical professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego. She lives in San Diego.
It’s still not clear when Walt Disney’s theme parks in Anaheim will reopen, but the House of Mouse hopes to appease its most ardent fans by holding a food and beverage festival on the grounds of its California Adventure
Park in March.
To help launch the festival, Disney announced it would recall about 1,000 employees who were laid off or furloughed after Disneyland and California Adventure Park closed last March as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the United States. An additional 350 Disney staffers have returned to work with the recent reopening of the eateries and stores in the adjacent shopping district known as Downtown Disney.
The food and beverage festival, tentatively scheduled for mid-March, will invite guests to wander through the park, shop for food, drinks and souvenirs, and take in what Disney calls “unique, carefully crafted entertainment experiences.” Dates and ticket prices have yet to be announced, and no details on the entertainment were released.
“This past year has presented extraordinary challenges, but that has not curtailed in any way our ability to move forward with a spirit of optimism,” Disneyland Resort President Ken Potrock said in a memo to
employees Monday.
State restrictions prohibit theme parks from operating attractions, but the Downtown Disney retail area next to the parks has been operating its shops and eateries since July.
In November, Disney also opened the shops and restaurants on Buena Vista Street, a main thoroughfare inside Disney California Adventure. The outdoor dining offered at Downtown Disney and Buena Vista Street was temporarily shut down in December when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a stay-at-home order in response to rising coronavirus cases. The governor lifted that order last month, allowing restaurants to offer al fresco dining again.
Food and beverage festivals
have been an increasingly popular event at Disneyland Resort, such as the Lunar New Year festival, which has featured booths scattered across Disney California Adventure offering traditional Chinese dishes and drinks, as well as musical performances and dancers.
It’s unclear how Disney will offer entertainment during its March festival without letting parkgoers congregate in violation of social-distancing guidelines.
Disneyland executives, along with the state’s other theme park operators and mayors of cities that are home to theme parks, have been pressuring the governor for months to create health protocols that let the parks reopen soon. He has not budged.
In October, Disney laid off 28,000 workers across its parks, experiences and products division; about 10,000 of those job cuts were at the Disneyland Resort parks, hotels and stores in Anaheim. Another wave of layoffs followed in November.
Two state lawmakers, Assembly members Sharon Quirk-Silva, D-Fullerton, and Suzette Valladares, R-Santa Clarita, introduced a bill last week that would speed up the reopening of all parks in the state by moving them into a less restrictive tier on the governor’s “Blueprint for a Safer Economy.” If the bill passes, Newsom is unlikely to sign it.
Newsom’s guidelines tie the reopening of the parks to the infection rates and number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents in the counties that are home to the parks, as well as to an equity benchmark. If the spread of the virus in a county falls enough, the theme parks in that county can reopen.