Week 8

Tomorrow morning will be the 8th week since my last live show on WUSC-FM on March 9th. The station remains locked down on automation due to the COVID-19 closure of the University of South Carolina. That date is significant to me because it marks the beginning of my social distancing. Aside from trips to get groceries and household supplies or to pick up take-out food orders, and one trip to Lowes to pick up some flowers, the cars have been sitting in the driveway wondering what happened.

Two months of missing lunches with friends, or visiting the folks at the office have taken their toll. I still don’t know how it feels to be retired because I know this is not normal. But I’m getting a little stir crazy.

One of the annual events I missed this year was DJ’ing the annual British Car Club show. This event shares the infield at the old Columbia Speedway with Tartan Day South, the premiere Scottish Games event in the state. I thoroughly enjoyed arriving shortly after dawn and setting my gear up and spinning tunes into the wind. Since the event lasted 6 hours, there were times when I left the computer in Auto-DJ mode and walked over to the porta-potties or over to the food tent for lunch.

There is a unique sound to music being played over a PA system in open air. One of the most striking aspects of that is when you are at some distance from the speakers; the music takes on an ethereal feel, fading in and out as if you were listening to a distant AM station with the skip varying. I loved that, because then I could see how folks were interacting with the music. I was not surprised if I caught a sexagenarian with a bandanna and a white beard singing along. I am always surprised when I see a young 20-something mom dancing with her baby in her arms and not missing a word of the lyrics of a song that has to be 40 years older than she is.

This morning as I was walking into my studio/office to write this blog, I caught that distinctive sound. “What!” I thought, “Somebody is throwing a party in the middle of COVID-19?” When the wind blew exactly the right way I could determine that the music and the language was Spanish, not English. And it all was much too loud to be a family gathering. Curiosity got the most of me, so I fired up the GMC to find out what was going on. I quickly determined that the source was not in the neighborhood so I ventured out to Garners Ferry Road. Sure enough that happy sound was coming from a parking lot church service from the store front church a mile away from the house. There were more cars in that parking lot than the one in front of the Lowes down the street.

My Yamaha 300 watt P/A system with a pair of Peavey PR-12 speakers covers a football field filled with thousands of people nicely with the volume turned up only a quarter of the way. In fact with all the outdoor shows that I have done I’ve never had to turn up that amplifier more than a third. But at even full volume, I doubt that it could throw sound a mile like this one was doing. I couldn’t get close enough to the storefront to see what they were using. It was definitely in the rock concert class. By using the store front as a backdrop the set up created a perfect concert shell aimed directly at my house.

I just realized that the last two paragraphs describing a parking lot church service speak volumes about just how isolated I am these days. I’m not complaining, mind you, I can count my blessings in that being retired I’m not losing income like so many of my friends and neighbors. The only comment I will make about the loosening of restrictions is that because I’m in the at-risk demographic, I’m actually going to have to increase my restrictions to stay safe; masks in public and increased hand sanitation. To me, being an adult is more than being able to do what I want and go where I want, it is also about being responsible.

These next few weeks will be key. The curves are showing signs of flattening but the rate of new infections is still growing. By the way, I am not an epidemiologist or a statistician but I think just looking at the raw total infection rates is misleading. Instead of looking at the total infections, I believe that we should be looking at the rates of infections weighted by the population. Here is what I mean; According to the DHEC Coronavirus web site; Richland County in SC has the highest number of cases in the state at 946, but the rate per 100,000 population is 227.54. Clarendon County has 218 total cases but their rate per 100,000 is 646.02. Richland is actually 8th behind Clarendon, Lee, Kershaw, Saluda, Williamsburg, Florence and Sumter Counties. DHEC switched to ordering their county results to those weighted by populations a couple of weeks ago. This is all based on relatively little testing and DHEC believes the number of cases is considerably higher. The day to day totals are also affected by the fact that not all testing facilities are submitting case numbers to DHEC daily thus skewing the daily numbers. My bottom line is that we just don’t know and I’m a little skeptical of both extremes of the issue.

So, I’ll be holed up in my home studio, doing social distancing radio on all the stations I’m on, all the while being grateful that I can do that. Oh MY!