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Ricardo Sousa, who writes for Smashing Magazine created a great plugin called Twittar. This plugin will use someones Twitter Gravatar if their email address is not connected with a Gravatar. For more info check out the full post at Twitter Avatars in Comments: A WordPress plugin Image credit: Ricardo Sousa

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In the last post “Creating a custom widget” I showed you how to create a custom widget. Well in this post I will show you how I used my custom widget to display all post with a certain custom field from outside the WordPress loop. In the last post I used this tag: <?php include(TEMPLATEPATH […]

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Today Matt Mullenweg from MA.TT declared today official plugin developer day because the plugin directory hit 4,000 plugins, check it out: 4,000 Plugins.  

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Digital Bank Guide is a clean and straightforward site which showcases the latest and best Digital banking offerings in a minimal manner.

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At the turn of the 20th century, a vaccine had been developed for smallpox, a virus that killed millions in the 1800s. Those who survived the disease were often left badly scarred or blind.

The vaccine’s protection, though, lasted only five years and had to be renewed. And people forgot to do that, leading to occasional epidemics, including a serious outbreak on the Meskwaki Settlement near Tama.

In February 1901, three dozen Iowa communities reported smallpox outbreaks. When Des Moines reported 200 smallpox cases in late February, the mayor closed the schools and prohibited public gatherings. Still, no one died. That would not be the case at the Meskwaki Settlement.

On Oct. 22, 1901, an area resident told Dr. Benjamin Thompson of Tama, “I believe the Indians have the smallpox.”

Thompson went to the nearby Meskwaki Settlement, home to 309 people, to investigate.

He learned that an Indian from the Winnebago tribe had visited the settlement Sept. 23. He had become ill, but no doctor was called and he continued meeting with tribe members.

Two weeks later, the Meskwaki were becoming ill.

Thompson went back to the settlement with Dr. George Carpenter of Toledo. The first wickiup they visited had four active smallpox cases and three people recovering from the virus. Two Meskwaki who’d lived there had died.

The doctors found another five cases and were told of two other deaths.

The doctors that night reported to a joint meeting of the boards of health in Tama, Toledo and Montour.

William Malin, the Interior Department’s Indian agent for the settlement, insisted there was no problem. But after another medical visit to the settlement, the three cities quarantined themselves.

By Nov. 2, 70 Meskwaki had smallpox, and nine members of the tribe had died. Two weeks later, the totals had risen to 90 Meskwaki with smallpox and 35 deaths.

To complicate matters, the Meskwaki declined offers to go to the hospital, they refused smallpox vaccinations and they refused to stay on the settlement. If they became sick, they would hide from the doctors.

The Tama Herald reported, “It looks as though the disease must run its course through the tribe, carrying off the aged and the infirm and weakening the constitution of those who may survive.”

The Iowa governor appealed to Interior Secretary Ethan Hitchcock for authority to enforce the quarantine among the Meskwaki. Hitchcock complied, giving the state the authority to “take any necessary action.”

National Guard hospital tents and cots were shipped to the settlement. The Meskwaki were vaccinated, and they acquiesced to the quarantine.

The local towns began raising money for medicines and provisions not covered by the federal government.

Meanwhile, Congress appropriated $50,000 — more than $1 million in today’s dollars — to eradicate smallpox on the settlement. The bill gave the Interior Department the authority to quarantine the village and, if necessary, burn Meskwaki wickiups and clothing to halt the contagion.

The state of Iowa chipped in another $7,000 to burn the clothing, blankets, wickiups and other property belonging to the Tama tribe and to provide replacements for the Meskwaki.

The money paid for disinfectants — formaldehyde gas and corrosive sublimate fluid — to bathe tribal members and their dogs. Members of the tribe were forced to move to a camping ground while their village was decontaminated.

Malin, the Indian agent, reported to the Interior Department it took seven days to clean and renovate “the Indian camp.”

“During this process, a large number of the wickiups, where the disease had been prevalent, also large quantities of clothing, bedding and other infected property, were committed to the flames and new goods of similar character supplied,” he reported.

“Twenty-four new board houses, built of good lumber, and some 2,700 square yards of very heavy duck for tents, to those who preferred tents to houses, were given in lien of the wickiups destroyed. ... The Indians emerged from the trying ordeal through which they had passed and came out into the world again, after having been confined to the limited area of their camping grounds ... with a higher and better conception of the white man’s civilization.”

That assessment aside, the Meskwaki Settlement survived and grew. It now covers 8,000 acres and is home to 800 of the tribe’s 1,300 members.

It wasn’t until 1980 that smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide.

l Comments: d.fannonlangton@gmail.com

When it comes to content marketing, we live in extraordinary times. With cutting-edge tools such as live video, VR and AI at our fingertips, we can give our community behind-the-scenes access to our company, people and products.

We can showcase our best customers and bring our brands to life.

But what if your business had to close all of its physical locations? What if your people couldn’t go anywhere?

And what if your community was distracted by ... something? Not a little something. A very big, pandemic-level something.

These are the questions that content marketers find themselves grappling with in the midst of COVID-19. In the blink of an eye, we went from having the tools to do anything to a hobbling array of limitations. At least, that’s what it can feel like.

But what if we flipped that thinking the other way? Twitter co-founder Biz Stone once said, “Constraints inspire creativity. When are backs are against the wall, we come up with some amazing things.”

Where can we look for inspiration? If you flip the through the opening pages of that famed marketing handbook “Us Weekly” — hey, what else is there to look at in a waiting room? — you’ll find a section titled, “Stars — They’re Just Like Us!”

These pages feature celebrities doing “regular people” things such as walking down the street and getting groceries. However, these days, despite their fame and means, celebrities have our same quarantined constraints.

And some are using this as an opportunity to create some amazing content of their own.

During this odd interlude, we can learn some valuable content marketing lessons from celebrities working within these same limitations.

Actor John Krasinski didn’t start a weekly web show in the middle of a pandemic to mug to the camera like his character Jim Halpert from “The Office.” Nor did he do it tout his Jack Ryan action-hero status.

Instead, in the midst of all of the bad news, he saw that what many people were hungry for was some good news. And that’s literally what he’s delivered with his aptly titled video series, “Some Good News” or “SGN.”

Featuring homemade title cards crafted by his children and set in his home office, Krasinski’s weekly show features a roundup of happy stories about creative kids, salutes to health care workers, unique ways to celebrate graduates and more. He also has concise weather reports from the likes Robert DeNiro and Brad Pitt.

While special appearances from famous friends might be out of your reach, you, too, can find ways to serve up more of what your audience needs right now.

Note: This might not necessarily be exactly what you sell. Ask yourself instead, what do they really need right now and how can we help?

For example, Don’t Panic Management is a team of virtual assistants. However, they saw that the small businesses they serve need help applying for government relief programs, so they started creating content around this.

On a recent episode of his WTF podcast, host Marc Maron talked about watching episodes of “Saturday Night Live At Home,” saying these shows were “touching.”

With segments shot by various individual cast members at home on their laptops and phones and featuring costumes from closets and cameos from kids and pets, SNL “At Home” shows how you can push our quarantined limitations to produce creative content.

In a recent episode, cast member Kate McKinnon shot an installment of her long-running “Whiskers R We” cat adoption sketch at home on her phone. Normally, this would feature several cute cats in studio introduced as McKinnon quips things like, “A cat is a smile with hair.”

The “At Home” installment features McKinnon in a homemade version of her costume with hand-drawn signs and her one pet cat playing nearly a dozen cats thanks to camera filters, mustaches and face masks.

SNL initially announced it would end their season early due to COVID-19. A few weeks later, the cast came back with their first “At Home” show.

They recognized the power of the moment and the outsized impact homemade content can have.

Another example of relevant, homemade branded content is a new ad from L’Oreal Paris, with spokeswoman Eva Longoria dying her gray roots at home in a video she shot on her iPhone. When you get hung up trying to make something polished and perfect, you often miss the opportunity to make something relevant and special.

Another SNL “At Home” sketch introduces characters struggling with the new normal of Zoom meetings shot with — wait for it — Zoom! The recent “Parks and Recreation” reunion special developed an entire half-hour script around a series of virtual meetings between Leslie Knope, Ron Swanson and others, all shot at home by the actors using iPhones.

We can use the same tools we rely on for virtual meetings to collaborate with others on content. Many already use Zoom and Skype for podcasts and videos.

You also can get creative in your content collaboration as actor and stunt professional Zoë Bell did. She challenged celebrity friends such as Scarlett Johansson, Margot Robbie, Drew Barrymore, Rosario Dawson and Zoe Saldana to help her stage an elaborate fight scene.

The resulting video stitches together individually shot fight scenes from the phones of 38 different actors and stunt workers to create one big knockout fight. The viral video garnered over a million views in just a few short days.

Just because we can’t get together doesn’t mean we can’t collaborate. Whether you’re simply using Zoom or storyboarding out something more elaborate, involving others always expands the reach of your content.

Yes, the content creators profiled here are celebrities. But they’re also more than that. They’re creative artists and problem solvers.

A frequent refrain in the early days of blogging and content marketing was, “think like a publisher.” This served as a reminder to write like a journalist, schedule content and publish regularly. However, with our current lockdown limitations, we should amend this as a reminder to think like creative artists — those who’ve used these limitations to spark bold, interesting new ideas for connecting with others.

What can you create that people need? Can you do it right now — today? From home?

Can you creatively involve others?

Thinking like a creative artist means focusing less on what you can’t do in these unusual times and more on what you can.

Nick Westergaard is a marketing strategist, keynote speaker and author of “Band Now” and “Get Scrappy”; nick@branddrivendigital.com; @NickWestergaard.

The City of Cedar Rapids Thursday morning issued a drinking water boil order for portions of southwest Cedar Rapids.

A rupture in a water main feeding the Bowling Street Booster Station and C Street Water Tower caused a loss of pressure, which created the potential for bacteria contamination to occur, according to a news release.

The two affected areas are bounded by these streets:

• For the first area, Schaeffer Drive SW east to C Street SW and 19th Avenue SW south to Highway 30.

• For the second area, Sixth Street SW east to J Street SW and 29th Avenue south to 36th Avenue SW.

The city is advising affected residents to:

1) Bring water to a boil

2) Let it rapidly boil for at least 1 minute

3) Allow to cool completely before consuming

The boil order should be lifted or extended by 1 p.m. Sunday, after repairs are complete, pressure is restored, flushing has occurred, chlorine levels have been monitored and two consecutive sets of bacteria samples have been collected for analysis, the city stated.

Water is safe to consume in all other areas of Cedar Rapids.

Summer is going to look a bit different in the Corridor this year as many, long-cherished events are being canceled or postponed. And the organizations that run those events want you to know they aren’t any more happy about it than you are.

The organizers of these events are having to make unprecedented, tough decisions.

“Cancellation is not a good word in our business,” said Chuck Swanson, Building a Legacy executive director of Hancher. “It is something that we really don’t want to do and it takes a lot for us to come to that.

“We live for the live performance and bringing the artists and audiences together. That’s the happiest time for me, so none of these decisions have been easy.”

Hancher has had to cancel numerous upcoming events in the past few months that would have brought to Iowa City in artists from all over the country and the world. It also is holding off announcing its upcoming season — which it typically would be doing at this time of year.

this isn’t something the staff has faced since the floods of 2008 and because they book events so far in advance they are confronting additional challenges.

“You know there’s so much that goes into a show before it happens,” Swanson said. “I just think of all the anticipation, booking the artists, advancing the show, setting ticket prices, advertising and then ticket sales.

“It’s like a farmer who does all this work to get his crops ready and then at the end of the season ends up with nothing to harvest.”

He noted Hancher has been reaching out to its booked performers and, in some cases, have had performers reach out to them to cancel upcoming shows.

The significant time and resources that go into planning large-scale events is the main factor in necessitating cancellation discussions and decisions at many organizations.

“Many logistical items have to be coordinated, from renting shuttles to scheduling volunteers and staff. Initial planning for some events begins as early as 12 to 18 months in advance and proceeds all the way up to the day of the event,” said John Myers, Indian Creek Nature Center executive director.

Citing the center’s annual Maple Syrup Festival, he noted food represents a significant cost and often cannot be saved or reused.

“We have had to be mindful of the financial resources available to us and ensure that we wisely manage those to ensure (the center) can emerge from this pandemic as a functioning and healthy organization,” he said.

“None of the decisions to cancel events or how to handle subsequent financial losses are easy and they challenge everyone,” Myers added. “As our whole lives have been upended, it makes even the simplest of decisions harder and that takes an impact on morale.”

He acknowledged staff members aren’t the only ones feeling the strain.

“We have a significant core of volunteers who are no longer able to give their time, which also creates a strain on morale and increases the amount of work that needs to be done when we return,” he pointed out.

Another primary factor is what is allowed and considered safe by the city, state and Iowa Department of Public Health.

“At this point, only allowing groups of 10 or less is a far cry from the thousands or people we usually see at the Iowa Arts Festival,” said Lisa Barnes, executive director of Summer of the Arts in Iowa City, which produces the Iowa Arts Festival.

“The governor has announced that reopening the state will be done in stages, and based on what we’ve found from other events around the country, concerts and large festivals will be the last to open,” he noted.

Summer of the Arts announced just last week that the Iowa Arts Festival would not take place this year, a month in advance of the event.

“We needed to make a decision so that we can move forward with alternative plans,” Barnes said, noting the organization has had questions about the Iowa City Jazz Festival, scheduled for July 3 through 5 and added a decision regarding that festival and July programming will be made by mid-late May.

“We also needed to make the decision far enough out to be able to work with our performers and cancel the agreements,” she said.

On Wednesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds loosened some but not all of the social-distancing restrictions for the remaining 22 counties she had put in place.

Discussions about the future of these events have been happening for weeks for many organizations, highlighting they are not taken lightly.

Carissa Johnson, executive director of the Cedar Rapids Freedom Festival, said conversations about the future of this year’s event started in mid-March, right around the time the Cedar Rapids SaPaDaPaSo Parade announced its cancellation for 2020.

“We plan year ’round for the two- to three-week festival,” Johnson explained.

“Our planning really ramps up in April and May, and we have many more costs associated with producing the festival the closer we get to the start. In order to protect our time and resources, we elected to cancel before we had more costs and variables to consider.”

As for who is making the final decision, organizations said many stakeholders are involved. Barnes said the decision on the Iowa City Arts Festival, for example, included staff, the board of directors, festival planning committees, the city of Iowa City and Johnson County Public Health, along with input from some of the vendors, artists and performers.

Tapping into experts in those public health field has been key as well.

“We have these assets, people, at the University (of Iowa), that have been really helpful as we make these decisions about canceling and as we prepare to think about reopening,” Hancher’s Swanson said.

The Freedom Festival include staff and board members in discussions, with recommendations from Linn County Public Health and the city of Cedar Rapids, factoring in the health, safety and well-being of the community.

“We are just as heartbroken as the rest of the community, but this decision was to protect our community as much as possible,” Swanson said.

“This community is a family and we will all get through this together and come back stronger next year.”

Myers noted organizations such as the Indian Creek Nature Center are also rely on advice from national associations, such as the American Alliance of Museums, and discussions among the leadership of many local cultural groups.

“For many events, we have also reached out to participants to gather their input and comfort level of attending once we are able to reopen,” Myers said.

The financial effects of having to cancel is stressful for organizations, too.

“Financially, this has been a hard time for the Nature Center to endure,” Myers pointed out. “We’ve had over 100 different programs, events and facility rentals canceled between March 15 and April 30, and our losses are currently over $250,000. As we approach the summer, there are a number of other events we continue to review, including our popular summer camps.”

The Nature Center has postponed a national conference to be held there in September — due to indications of low participation — for peers from around the nation who run not-for-profit and government nature centers.

“We are losing thousands of dollars in vendor fees and sales receipts because we had to cancel,” said Barnes, of Summer of the Arts.

“We have sponsors tied to certain events, like the Iowa Arts Festival, that in some cases want to carry over their support to next year, which impacts our fundraising for this year and next.”

She noted her group already has been made aware of funding that won’t be coming in from some sponsors next year due to the financial impact those organizations are facing as well.

And that can be tough.

“When we cancel, our whole staff is involved — from the box audience and public engagement folks to the technical production team and our front-of-house staff,” Swanson said.

“Our communication is key in talking through it all and then sharing clear messages with our audiences, especially in terms of refunds. But we’ve been encouraged by so many generous friends of Hancher donating their ticket purchase price back to us.”

While disappointment still is thick in the air, organizations don’t plan to abandon their missions and is keeping an eye on serving the public.

“This is a challenging time for everyone, and our board and staff is committed to finding creative and non-traditional solutions to ensure the Freedom Festival’s return,” Johnson said. “The community and our stakeholders have been tremendous supports of the Freedom Festival and we believe they will continue to do so in the future.

“We ask for understanding and patience as we try to navigate this crisis and what we can still provide for our community.”

Freedom Festival buttons will be sold this year as they’ve already been made, and “It’s a way the community can show their support,” Johnson said.

Barnes agreed and noted the Iowa Arts Festival committee is working on ways to support the performers, artists and vendors they had scheduled by trying to develop some virtual opportunities for engagement.

While the show, or events, might not go on, organizers said they very much want to remain connected to their audiences and attendees.

“I want to make sure everybody knows we care about them and that we’re trying to find ways to stay connected because I think we’re all in this together and the arts are one of the best ways for people to get through difficult times,” Swanson said.

Myers agreed.

“Indian Creek Nature Center will be ready to welcome guests and visitors back to our events as soon as we are able to do so safely,” he said.

“In the meantime, we hope everyone finds peace in nature by taking a hike or bike ride, having a picnic or just enjoying time outside.”

Imperfect Foods, an online surplus-stock grocery delivery company aimed at eliminating food waste, has begun is offering JetBlue Airline cheese and snack trays — $2.99 for three ounces of mixed cheeses, dried cherries and crackers.

Imperfect Foods CEO Philip Behn says the cheese and snack trays were an early casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Almost two months ago, before it became a nationwide pandemic, this catering and airplane meal supplier said they saw a decline in economy and business-class seats,” he said. “This was one of our first COVID-19 food waste recovery opportunities. We could only take a fraction of what they had.”

Behn said his company has sold 40,000 cheese and snack trays.

“We call that ‘breaking bulk,’” Behn said. “We have stepped up with co-packers to try to repackage some of those products — it’s hard work and it’s slow, given the importance of food safety.”

Yet there are bright spots. Imperfect Foods is a budget-conscious company, so high-end products such as pineapples are usually too expensive to offer their customers.

Where do people eat pineapples? Hotels. And with hotels stalled, Imperfect Foods has been able to buy and offer them for a fair price.

It has redistributed popcorn kernels previously destined for movie theaters and broccoli florets usually reserved for restaurants. Since the beginning of March, Imperfect Foods has doubled the volume of food it was previously buying, the JetBlue snacks among many.

Julianna Bryan, communications specialist for JetBlue, said the airline has had to dramatically reduce its in-flight food and beverage service to minimize contact between customers and crew members.

“We have temporarily suspended the sales of buy-onboard products including our EatUp Snack Boxes, EatUp Café fresh food items, beer, wine and liquor,” she said.

JetBlue has donated leftover inventory of snacks to Feeding America and other food banks, as well as hospitals.

JetBlue has worked with its business partners to sell unused inventory, such as the cheese trays, at a heavily discounted price with the goal of moving it quickly and minimizing waste, Bryan said.

JetBlue is not the only airline to have to find new outlets for its in-flight overflow.

Delta has had to unload its Biscoff cookies — and it serves 80 million to 85 million of these spiced shortbread favorites each year.

At United, the Dutch stroopwafels have been piling up.

In addition to selling some of their excess, airlines have put donation programs in place. Southwest has donated more than $400,000 in snacks and other in-flight items to not-for-profit organizations and nearly 13 tractor-trailers full of groceries to 15 food banks that are a part of the Feeding America network.

Delta has donated 500,000 pounds of food around the world in the past six weeks. Front-line workers and hospitals get the Biscoff cookies along with coffee and other in-flight beverages, while other perishable food has gone to Feeding America’s partner agencies like Georgia Food & Resource Center and Missouri’s Carthage Crisis Center.

And United has donated 173,000 pounds of food to food banks and charities, pulling from airport lounges and catering kitchens. United volunteers have also processed more than 428,000 pounds of food and household goods for the Houston Food Bank.

Nearly 327,000 Iowans have taken an assessment to see if they are eligible to be checked for COVID-19 under the Test Iowa Initiative.

Another free drive-though site for those who have taken the assessment and been scheduled for an appointment opened Thursday in Cedar Rapids — the fourth site in the state so far.

About 1 on 46 Iowans have been tested so far, health officials said.

State data release Thursday for the first time reveals big gaps in who has — and who has not — taken the assessment at TestIowa.om:

• Less than 35 percent of those who have been assessed for tests are men. Yet men are more apt to die from the disease than women. Of the 231 Iowa deaths so far, 51 percent are of men.

• Only 2 percent of those who have been assessed for testing are age 80 or over. But 46 percent of the Iowa deaths from the virus reported so far are in that age group.

• There are gaps in the rates at which urban and rural residents are completing the assessment. Nearly 9 percent of Linn County residents have been assessed, but only about 7.6 percent of Allamakee County residents have. Yet when looking at the rate of known infection per capita, Allamakee is far worse.

MARION — Marion’s 14-member COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force is beginning to work on recommendations of how to get people back to work, while keeping everyone safe.

“It’s hard to know right now at the beginning the various outcomes that are going to come out of this,” Marion Mayor Nick AbouAssaly told task force members in a meeting held this week via Zoom.

“Community sectors will work independently and report to the steering committee with ideas, strategies or policy recommendations,” he said.

In turn, the task force will consider recommendations to the Marion City Council, and AbouAssaly said he will update the council on the task force meetings.

“Unfortunately, we have to accept that the virus is here to stay,” AbouAssaly said. “It’s part of our life for the time being. We have to be able to plan for getting back to doing things and leading our lives in a way that allows us to exist with the virus in our community.”

Elizabeth Cwik, a Marion resident who works for the Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation, said there’s a “strong interest” among task force members to provide accurate information to the public about the virus.

“I see clear, consistent messaging from a variety of sectors from the schools, government, businesses and nonprofits. Then that message gets through,” Cwik said. “If that message is, ‘We care, and we want you to come out whole, and we want there to be a vibrant economy to be continued with every citizen’s effort,’ I think that’s a valuable contribution to the recovery.”

In joining the task force, Dr. Jaclyn Price said she hopes to dispel inaccurate information about the coronavirus and help businesses find ways to safely bring their employees back to work.

“I anticipate businesses will be operating at reduced capacities,” she said. “Maybe doing appointments rather than walk-in business, and cleaning more routinely.”

If businesses require employees and customers to wear masks, it will protect others from asymptomatic spread of the virus, she said.

“We will still see virus activity until we get a vaccine or herd immunity,” Price said. “This is going to be a problem for months to come. We’re trying to find ways to open slowly, but also understanding if we reopen everything and have to close it again, that could be more detrimental to people’s psychology or finances of businesses.”

The Rev. Mike Morgan of Marion United Methodist Church said “greater conversation” with government, business, education and health care leaders will help.

“Marion has become a town that is proactive,” Morgan said. “We really seek to have good things happen to our citizenry rather than let things happen and we react to them. ... As a person in the faith community, it’s important for us to be tending to people’s emotional, psychological, spiritual and, to some degree, physical needs.”

Comments: (319) 368-8664; grace.king@thegazette.com

Those serving on the Marion COVID-19 Economic Recovery Task Force, all Marion residents and volunteers, are:

• Nick AbouAssaly, Marion mayor

• Jill Ackerman, president, Marion Chamber of Commerce

• Shannon Bisgard, Linn-Mar schools superintendent

• Amber Bisinger, communications officer for the city

• Elizabeth Cwik, Greater Cedar Rapids Community Foundation

• Lee Eilers, executive committee member, Marion Economic Development Corp.

• Nick Glew, president, Marion Economic Development Corp.

• Amber Hoff, marriage and family therapist

• Steve Jensen, Marion City Council member

• Mike Morgan, pastor, Marion United Methodist Church

• Brent Oleson, Linn County supervisor

Lon Pluckhahn, Marion city manager

• Jaclyn Price, M.D., Mercy Clinic-Marion

• Brooke Prouty, program director, Marion Chamber of Commerce

Vice President Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op when he visits Des Moines today, according to Joe Biden’s campaign.

“Iowans are seeing up close the most consequential failure of government in modern American history,” said Kate Bedingfeld, spokeswoman for the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

“With nearly 300,000 Iowans filing for unemployment, rural hospitals on life support, Latino communities disproportionately suffering and workers on the job without sufficient protection, Mike Pence owes Iowans more than a photo-op — he owes them answers,” she said.

Pence, head of the White House coronavirus task force, is scheduled to meet with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, all Republicans, as well as with faith, farm and food production leaders.

Pence will talk to faith leaders about how they are using federal and state guidelines to open their houses of worship in a safe and responsible manner.

Later, he will go to Hy-Vee’s headquarters in West Des Moines for a roundtable discussion with agriculture and food supply leaders to discuss steps being taken to ensure the food supply remains secure.

Pence has called Iowa a “success story” in its response to the COVID-19, but Bedingfeld said the Trump administration failed to protect Iowa families from the virus that has claimed the lives of 231 Iowans.

“From devastating losses across the state, at meatpacking plants to rural communities, one thing is clear — it’s Iowans and the American people who are paying the price for the Trump administration’s denials and delays in response to this pandemic,” she said.

“Instead of listening to our own intelligence agencies and public health experts, Donald Trump was fed dangerous propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party — and he bought it,” she said. “Iowans deserve better — they deserve Joe Biden.”

For his part, Grassley said he welcomes the discussion with Pence.

“There’s much work to be done, and the pandemic is disrupting all of our communities,” Grassley said. “It’s important to hear directly from those who help feed the nation and the world.”

Ernst also is looking forward to the discussion of how Iowa is working to protect the health and safety of Iowa’s families and communities while reopening the state’s economy.

“We continue to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to tackling this pandemic,” she said. “Together, we will get through this.”

Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

Benjamin Stuben Farrar of Iowa City is a storyteller without a story to tell at the moment.

The first story is as dramatic and layered as his bold scenic and lighting designs for area stages: “Benjamin Stuben Farrar” is not his actual name.

He was born Stewart Benjamin Farrar 41 years ago in Kentucky. He didn’t want to go through life as “Stewie,” so he went by “Benjamin,” until he got to college at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He ran into so many other Bens, that his buddies decided to combine his names into “Stuben.”

That name followed him to grad school at the University of Iowa in 2002, where he earned an MFA in theater design. But when he moved to New York City in 2006 to pursue his career, he didn’t like hearing “Stuben” shouted across the theater.

“It sounded too much like ‘stupid,’ ” he said, “so I reverted back to Benjamin.”

But nicknames have a way of sticking. When he and his wife moved back to Iowa City in 2015 to raise their daughter, he switched to “Stuben” again, since that’s how people knew him there.

Professionally, he uses “S. Benjamin Farrar” and on Facebook, he goes by “Benjamin Stuben Farrar” so friends from his various circles can find him. Even though most people now call him “Stuben,” he still introduces himself as “Benjamin.”

“To this day, I have 12 different names,” he said with a laugh. “Only the bill collectors know me as ‘Stewart.’”

Like his name, his artistry knows no bounds.

He has planted apple trees on Riverside Theatre’s indoor stage in Iowa City; a child’s outdoor playground on the Theatre Cedar Rapids stage; and dramatic spaces for Noche Flamenca’s dancers in New York City venues and on tour.

These days, however, his theatrical world has gone dark.

His recent designs for “The Humans,” “The Skin of Our Teeth” and “Kinky Boots” at Theatre Cedar Rapids and “A Doll’s House, Part 2” at Riverside Theatre have been canceled or postponed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. He has “The Winter’s Tale” in the works for Riverside Theatre’s free Shakespeare in the Park slated for June, but time will tell if that changes, too.

“Within the course of two weeks, five productions were canceled or moved indefinitely,” he said.

Looking ahead, he’s not sure what shows he’ll have time to design for the upcoming seasons. He’s used to juggling three or four productions at a time, but he said that could become really difficult if the shows fall on top of each other at the various venues.

As with so many artists right now, his world keeps changing.

He and his wife, Jody Caldwell, an editor and graduate of the UI Writers’ Workshop, are both freelancers, leaving them with no income during this pandemic. So Farrar has been wading through red tape and delays to secure unemployment compensation and the government stimulus check, for which he’s still waiting. One bright spot was receiving a $1,000 Iowa Arts & Culture Emergency Relief Fund grant given to 156 Iowa creatives who have lost income from canceled projects.

With his regular revenue streams drying up, he’s been considering other ways to earn money through teaching theater or creating and selling more of his digital and film photography — an outgrowth of his fascination for the way lighting can sculpt a scene on stage.

“I love doing nature (photography). I love doing details,” he said. “I love photographing people, too, especially on stage — I love photographing my own shows. It’s just a lot of fun.

“For me, nature’s so interesting, especially living where we do in North America, there’s vast changes from one time of year to another. I just love looking at that on a very small scale, and how light happens to fall on that particular surface — how that surface changes color,” he said.

“Right now the redbuds are out. The magnolias came out two weeks ago and then they started to fall. It changes the landscape dramatically, especially based on whether it’s a morning light or afternoon light or evening light, whether it’s cloudy, whether the sun’s peeking through clouds and highlighting a few individual leaves. I find that super fascinating.

“That’s how I can look at the same boring tree at different times of year, at different times of day, and find something interesting to photograph.”

While his scenic designs create an immediate visual impact and help tell the story swirling around the actors, Farrar was a lighting designer before he became a scenic designer.

It wasn’t love at first sight. He took a light design course in college, but didn’t “get” it.

“It’s really difficult to wrap your head around it,” he said.

His aha moment came when he was running lights for an operetta in college.

“I just had these little faders in front of me so I could raise certain lights up and down. And the music was happening in front of me and I thought, ‘I control this whole little universe. I can make things completely disappear. I can sculpt things from the side, I can make things feel totally different — just like music can — just based on how it’s lit.’ And then I finally started to understand how the lighting hooked things together,” he said.

From there, his interest in lighting soared.

“I absolutely love lighting,” he said. “I think it’s probably given me more joy than anything else, just because I can go for a walk someplace and just the way the lighting changes as the clouds come in or out, or as the time of year changes and the angle of the sun changes, I really enjoy seeing that — and that’s what got me into photography.”

While his design work is a collaborative process with the director and other production team members, the ideas begin flowing as soon as he starts reading a script. With the flamenco dance company in New York, he might start working on a show two years in advance. With Theatre Cedar Rapids, the lead time is generally six months to look at the season overall, and four months to “get things going” on a particular show, he said. The lead time is about two months for Riverside Theatre shows, which have shorter rehearsal periods.

He begins thinking about the theater spaces, the text that the audience never sees, the show’s technical demands, and the scale in relation to the human body. He still likes to do some of his design work by hand, but computers and the 3D printer he has in his basement workshop have made the process much quicker for creating the drawings and scale models for each show.

He also enjoys the variety and challenge of moving between the small space inside Riverside Theatre and the large space inside Theatre Cedar Rapids, as well as the theaters at Grinnell College and Cornell College in Mount Vernon, as well as the theaters in New York and the touring venues that have housed his designs.

Ultimately, the goal of scenic design “is always about the storytelling,” he said.

“There’s a version of a show that exists in a script, if there is a script. Assuming it has a script, there is a scaffolding for that show in the script, and then there’s a version of the show in the director’s head, and then there’s a version of the show that’s performed in my head as I read the script. So there’s all these different versions.”

If the show is a musical, the choreographer brings in another idea, and the musical score adds another element. Sometimes Farrar knows the music very well, but other times, he doesn’t.

“Hopefully, I can integrate that well if I listen to the music while working on the show — not usually when I’m reading the script, but while I’m drafting the show. I’ll listen to the music to get a sense of how the show wants to move.

“Integrating all these different versions of the show — the text, what’s in my head, what’s in the director’s head, what’s in the choreographer’s head, the role the music plays — and then you synthesize all those elements, and then you find out how the show wants to move in the space it has. And how a show moves is one of the most important things to me. ...

“You get a sense that the show becomes this conscious element that wants a certain thing, and will reveal those things over time.”

And time is something he has right now.

Comments: (319) 368-8508; diana.nollen@thegazette.com

In August 1919, the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette opined in favor of the passage of a $5 million congressional appropriation to “investigate influenza, its cause, prevention and cure.”

“We all remember without effort the darkness and terror which engulfed the land last fall and winter as death stalked swiftly from seaboard to seaboard, into crowded city and unto lonely plain, sparing not the cottage of the poor nor the mansion of the rich,” the editorial said. “In four short months, influenza claimed a half million lives and pressed millions of others onto beds of sickness, suffering and helplessness. The nation’s mortality rate leapt high and with astounding speed. The nation was unprepared to cope with a disease calamity such as it has never known.”

The Gazette lamented that billions of dollars in loss were wrought by the pandemic of so-called Spanish influenza, compared with only $5 million being spent to investigate the virus.

“More has been spent in studying diseases of hogs,” the editorial argued.

Just less than a year earlier, The Evening Gazette did not see “darkness and terror” coming. A front page, above-the-fold story Sept. 25, 1918, asked: “Spanish Influenza just the old-fashioned grippe?” “Grippe” is an old-time term for the flu, by the way.

“As a matter of fact, in the opinion of City Physician Beardsley, and a good many other Cedar Rapids men in the same profession, Spanish influenza is just another name for the regular old fashioned influenza and is no different from the influenza we have always had. A bad cold is a bad cold, and a worse cold is grippe, which covers a multitude of things ...,” The Gazette reported, optimistically.

An earlier strain of influenza in the spring of 1918 had been less virulent and deadly. But the second wave was no ordinary grippe.

By mid-October, according to reports in The Evening Gazette, influenza caseloads exploded. On Oct. 12, 1918, the local health board shut down pool rooms, billiard halls and bowling alleys. It pleaded with store owners to avoid allowing crowds to linger. On Oct. 16, stores were ordered to discontinue any special sales that might draw more shoppers.

Restrictions tightened as the pandemic worsened.

Death notices were stacking up on Gazette pages, in rows reminiscent of small tombstones. Many victims were cut down in the prime of life by a virus that struck young, healthy people hardest. Mothers and fathers died, leaving young children. Soldiers serving in World War I died far away from home. Visitors to town never returned home.

Young brothers died and were mourned at a double funeral. A sister who came to care for a sick brother died, and so did her brother.

Ray Franklin Minburn, 24, died of influenza, leaving behind six sisters and two brothers. “Mr. Minburn was a faithful son, a devoted companion, a good neighbor,” concluded his death announcement on Oct. 21, 1918.

On the same page that day came news, tucked among the tombstones, reporting that Iowa Gov. William Harding had recovered from influenza, in the midst of his reelection campaign, and was back in the office. You might remember Harding as the governor who banned German and other languages during World War I and who was nearly impeached for bribery in 1919.

Not far from Harding’s update came news from the prison in Anamosa that “whisky and quinine” were being deployed to attack the grippe.

The pages of The Evening Gazette also were dotted with advertisements for supposed cures and treatments.

“Danger of infection from influenza or any contagious disease can be eliminated by using preventive measures,” prescribed by Ruby S. Thompson, chiropractor and naturopathic physician. Those included “Sulphur-vapor baths, Carlsbad mineral bath.”

You could build up your blood using “Gude’s Pepto-Mangan,” the “Red Blood Builder.” Keep your strength up with Horlick’s Malted Milk.

One ad looked exactly like a news story, carrying the bold headline “Druggists still asked to conserve stocks of VapoRub needed in ‘flu’ districts.” In a tiny notation at the end of the “story” were the words “The Vicks Chemical Co.”

That August 1919 Gazette editorial I mentioned makes me wonder what we’ll be writing in a year or so after our current pandemic.

Death stalking us swiftly from seaboard to seaboard in an unprepared nation, preceded by the casual insistence it’s no worse than the seasonal flu, sounds eerily familiar in 2020. More attention is being paid to hogs than the health of humans working in meatpacking plants.

Will we be writing in 2021 how reopening states and counties too soon led to our own second wave? Here in Iowa, reopening began before we had a fully working predictive model to chart the pandemic’s course and before new testing efforts had a chance to ramp up. Will decisions made without crucial information look smart in 2021? Or will we wish we’d waited just a couple more weeks?

What of the protesters demanding liberation? What about the president, running for reelection in a nation harmed by his crisis mismanagement? What will a new normal look like?

Will there be newspapers around to editorialize in the aftermath? After all, most of the pitches for fake cures are online now, some even extolled at White House briefings.

And will we be better prepared next time? I bet editorial writers in 1919 figured we’d have this pandemic response thing down to a science by now.

Little did they know that in 2020 we’d have so little respect for science. And after a century-plus, the darkness and terror apparently slipped our minds.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com

On Wednesday, Gov. Kim Reynolds removed some restrictions on businesses in the 22 counties that have been seeing higher numbers of Iowans affected by COVID-19, including Linn and Johnson counties.

Now those organizations have to make decisions — on bringing back employees, services to provide and how much access to allow for customers.

And as those businesses reopen — some after more than two months — crucial steps likely will include ongoing communication with employees and customers and a well-thought-out restart plan.

The Gazette spoke with business leaders about the challenges faced by business owners as they consider how and when to open their doors.

• David Drewelow of ActionCoach Heartland in Cedar Rapids is a consultant with 19 years of business coaching experience.

• David Hensley, director of the University of Iowa’s John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center, has expertise in small business management during a crisis.

• Josh Seamans is vice president of Cushman and Wakefield, a global commercial real estate adviser that operates offices in more than 60 countries including China.

• Steve Shriver is a Cedar Rapids entrepreneur who operates and/or helped found four diverse enterprises, including Eco Lips and Brewhemia.

Their responses here have been condensed from lengthy individual interviews.

How important is communication and having a well-prepared plan for resumption of business?

Shriver: The one thing that has been imperative throughout this whole process is communication with employees, customers and the public. I also would recommend writing as detailed a business resumption plan as possible.

One of the main reasons is to fully understand what you are doing as this is a brand-new challenge that none of us has faced.

Drewelow: You really need to be communicating now, more than ever, with your employees, customers, vendors and suppliers. What does your plan for the next 20 to 30 days look like? What are things that you can be doing right now to get ready?

Hensley: I think it is critically important to have a reopening plan because most businesses are not going to be at full strength right away. What might their revenue forecasts look like? How can they keep their costs down as their business starts to rebound before it gets back to full capacity?

Seamans: Your plan should include a checklist of reopening steps appropriate to your type of business. Retail will have different items than distribution or industrial businesses.

You need to communicate your plan to employees, customers, landlords and lenders.

How much will fear play a role in the resumption of business?

Shriver: Everyone has a different idea of the risks involved, such as using a handle to open a door or interacting with a person — the little things that we are used to doing.

When you look at the risk versus reward of doing that, some people will be willing to go into a store and others will stay home. Some employees don’t want to come back to work yet and some people are itching to get back. You have everything in between.

Drewelow: The fear factor is huge. For the small business owner, we try to channel that fear into a focus on being highly aware of all the possibilities to mitigate concerns.

If you own a restaurant, can you post the menu online or use disposable menus? That way, a customer doesn’t have to touch something that might have been handled by someone else.

Appropriate spacing of customers within a restaurant also will help alleviate some of the fear.

Hensley: You need to communicate what steps you are taking to protect the health and safety of your employees and your customers. If you will be requiring the use of personal protective equipment like face masks, are you going to make them available?

Will limiting the number of people entering a business be difficult?

Shriver: There are not a lot of people who want to gather in masses right now. It seems like as businesses start to reopen, it will be more like a trickle.

It will be just like turning on a water spigot, with the flow of customers gradually increasing.

Hensley: I think we will see a lot more customers buying, rather than just shopping. They are going to buy the items they came for and then leave.

If businesses have more vulnerable customers, I would recommend establishing separate early morning times like many of the grocery stores have done to provide a safer environment.

Many companies have adopted using digital conferencing platforms for meetings. Will we see that trend continue?

Seamans: I think Zoom will be used for more internal meetings, so there is no need for someone to fly from, say, San Francisco to New York. But in terms of sales, it does not replicate that face-to-face interaction.

We have done work with clients that live several hours away and we have to come in for a city council meeting for a project that we are working on. That’s a three-hour drive in for a one- or two-hour council meeting and another three-hour drive back — basically an eight-hour day. If we can Zoom in and answer any questions, that’s a lot more efficient at less cost.

What should a small-business owner consider when determining how many employees to recall?

Shriver: We will be able to bring some people back to work and generate some revenue, but not in a huge way. Anybody who can work from home should continue working from home for as long as they possibly can.

We should not be rushing to get those people back. There is no incentive.

Hensley: Owners are going to be making hard decisions. Do I bring back half of my team at full time or do I bring everyone back at reduced hours? What are those implications going to be?

In some cases, other industries have been hiring and some may be making more money. Businesses may have to pay more to attract that talent back.

Restaurants have been forced to change their business model from on-premise dining to carryout and delivery. Should all owners take this opportunity to examine and update their business model?

Shriver: We took two businesses — SOKO Outfitters, a retail store, and Brewhemia, a restaurant — and put them rapidly online within a month. When we come out of this, I think we will be stronger because we will have that infrastructure in place in addition to the old school face to face traffic that we used to have.

Hensley: I think this is definitely the time to look at your business model to determine what is appropriate given the economic situation that we have. That is not just going to be critical for reopening, but over the next six months to a year as long as we are dealing with the virus.

Some business owners will see that their customers have lost their jobs or seen their income drop dramatically. They are going to be changing their patterns of consumption based on necessities.

Drewelow: Some of my clients believe that are looking their competitors and realize that some may not reopen. They are looking at whether they can merge with them or somehow salvage parts of that business.

Some business owners have realized that the way they deliver products or services will have to change. Many of my older clients have been dragged into using modern technology.

At the same time Vice President Mike Pence was in Iowa on Friday to discuss the nation’s food supply security, U.S. Rep. Dave Loebsack called on the administration to take more measures to protect workers in food processing plants.

Loebsack also questioned the decisions to reopen the economy being made by the Trump administration and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“I don’t think we’re ready for that yet, quite honestly,” the Iowa City Democrat said.

“Ready” will be when adequate protections are in place for the people processing America’s food, Loebsack said.

Workers are showing up on the job, but “they fear for their families, they fear for themselves, they fear for everybody,” Loebsack said. “They don’t know if they’re going to catch this thing or not. But they’re there.”

Of particular concern are workers in food processing, such as those in meatpacking plants in Iowa where more than 1,600 cases of COVID-19 have been reported.

“I really believe that we should not open the plants if we do not ensure worker safety,” Loebsack said.

He called for President Donald Trump to use the Defense Production Act, which the president invoked to keep meatpacking plants open, to ensure an adequate supply of personal protective equipment for packing plant workers.

If Pence and the president are concerned about the nation’s food supply, then they need to “keep those workers safe and, therefore, keep those processing plants running” to avoid meat shortages at the grocery store, Loebsack said.

“We can’t have those plants running if workers are not protected. It’s that simple,” he said. “It’s not just the workers, it’s the families, it’s the community at large.”

With unemployment at 14.7 percent — probably higher, Loebsack said, Congress should extend federal coronavirus-related unemployment benefits of $600 a week beyond their current July end date.

He’s also pleased that the last relief package fixed a Small Business Administration Economic Injury Disaster Loan program to allow farmers to apply for assistance.

Comments: (319) 398-8375; james.lynch@thegazette.com

IOWA CITY — An Iowa City man has been arrested in Texas in connection with the April 20 shooting death of Kejuan Winters.

Reginald Little, 44, was taken into custody Friday by the Lubbock County Sheriff’s Office, according to Iowa City police.

Little faces a charge of first-degree murder and is awaiting extradition back to Iowa City.

The shooting happened in an apartment at 1960 Broadway St. around 9:55 a.m. April 20. Police said gunfire could be heard during the call to police.

Officers found Winters, 21, of Iowa City, with multiple gunshot wounds. He died in the apartment.

Police said Durojaiya A. Rosa, 22, of Iowa City, and a woman were at the apartment and gave police a description of the shooter and said they heard him fighting with Winters before hearing gunshots.

Surveillance camera footage and cellphone records indicated Little was in the area before the shots were fired, police said.

Investigators also discovered Little and Rosa had been in communication about entering the apartment, and Rosa told police he and Little had planned to rob Winters.

Rosa also faces one count of first-degree murder.

The shooting death spurred three additional arrests.

Winters’ father, Tyris D. Winters, 41, of Peoria, Ill., and Tony M. Watkins, 39, of Iowa City, were arrested on attempted murder charges after confronting another person later that day in Coralville about the homicide, and, police say, shooting that person in the head and foot.

Police also arrested Jordan R. Hogan, 21, of Iowa City, for obstructing prosecution, saying he helped the suspect, Little, avoid arrest.

First-degree murder is a Class A felony punishable by an automatic life sentence.

Comments: (319) 339-3155; lee.hermiston@thegazette.com

CEDAR RAPIDS — Adam Todd, adjusting like many Iowans to a social-distanced lifestyle since the novel coronavirus hit, celebrated a milestone 21st birthday with a drive-by parade Friday evening.

Todd, best known for being ABC World News Tonight Person of the Week in 2016, stood outside the Cedar Rapids house where he lives with his parents, Dale Todd, a Cedar Rapids City Council member, and Sara Todd, watching the cars drive by wishing him a happy birthday.

“My son has a bigger following than I would ever hope to have,” Dale Todd said. “Everybody knows he loves a parade. He loves the trucks and cars and people that are a part of that.

“There’s no better example that ‘it takes a village.’ He has had a team for 21 years.”

Todd, who will be graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

The parade was arranged by his mother, Sara, who invited friends and teachers to drive by between 5 and 6 p.m. to wave, shout happy birthday, hold up a sign, sing a song or do a dance, all from a safe distance — “whatever they’re able to,” she said.

Sara said Adam would have finished his last semester of education had the coronavirus not cut the school year short.

“That makes it extra special,” Sara said. “He hasn’t really gotten to say goodbye to his friends and teachers.

“We have appreciated his teachers so much. They have been a part of his team and really a part of our family.”

Adam, a member of the Washington High School junior varsity track team, captured national attention in 2016 when, during a cross-country race at Noelridge Park, he became distracted and veered from the course. Evan Hansen, a runner from Iowa City High, loped after him and guided him back to the track.

They ran the last mile together, the last two to cross the finish line.

That show of compassion and sportsmanship is what led to ABC News picking both of them as Persons of the Week.

In addition to Friday’s parade, Adam celebrated his birthday by taking his service dog, Turbo, on a run and trying to spot trains. He and his mom saw two.

“It was a good day,” Sara said.

Adam’s birthday cake, made by a family friend, was decorated with a train and a golden retriever that looks like Turbo.

“We were trying to think of a creative way we can help Adam have fun and celebrate him,” Sara said. “He deserves it.”

Comments: (319) 368-8664; grace.king@thegazette.com

Some Eastern Iowans are ready to go camping.

With Gov. Kim Reynolds allowing campgrounds across the state to open Friday, some people wasted little time in heading outdoors.

“They’re already starting to fill up,” said Ryan Schlader of Linn County Conservation. “By about 7 this morning, we had a dozen at Squaw Creek Park. People were coming in bright and early to camp. We’re not surprised.”

Schlader said Linn County Conservation tried to have the campgrounds open at the county’s Squaw Creek, Morgan Creek and Pinicon Ridge parks at 5 a.m. Friday. He expected all of them would be busy.

“I think people were ready to go,” he said.

Lake Macbride State Park in Johnson County didn’t see quite as much of a rush for campsites, park manager Ron Puettmann reported Friday morning, saying he’d had six walk-ins for the park’s 42 campsites.

Camping this weekend will be done on a first-come, first-served basis. Sites won’t be available for reservations until next week, though online reservations can be made now, Puettmann said.

“I’m quite sure people were waiting anxiously to get on,” he said.

While Reynolds’ campground announcement came Wednesday, Schlader and Puettmann said they had no issues having the campgrounds ready for Friday.

Schlader said county staff have been in touch with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and other county conservation boards to discuss protocols for reopening to ensure a safe experience for campers and employers.

“We anticipated at some point the order would be lifted,” Schlader said. “We were anticipating maybe May 15. The campgrounds were in good shape and ready to go.”

For now, camping comes with some limitations:

• Campers can camp only in a self-contained unit with a functioning restroom, such as a recreational vehicle.

• Shower houses with restrooms will remain closed for the time being.

• Campsites are limited to six people unless they are from the same household.

• No visitors are allowed at the campsites.

Puettmann said staffers and a DNR officer will be on hand to make sure guidelines are followed, but he didn’t anticipate enforcement would be an issue.

“For the most part, we’re going to allow people to police themselves,” he said.

It’s hard to gauge demand, Schlader said.

The weather isn’t yet deal for camping, and some people might not be ready to camp, given the continuing coronavirus.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Do people feel like they need to get out and enjoy a camping experience within their own campsite, or do people still feel under the weather and think it’s not a good idea for my family to go right now? ... We just want this to be an option for people.”

Comments: (319) 339-3155; lee.hermiston@thegazette.com

DES MOINES — In traveling to Iowa to call attention to the burdens COVID-19 brought to religious services and the food supply, Vice President Mike Pence unwittingly called attention to another issue: whether the White House itself is safe from the disease.

So far this week, two White House aides — President Donald Trump’s valet on Thursday, and Pence’s press secretary on Friday — have tested positive for the virus.

On Friday morning, Pence’s departure to Des Moines was delayed an hour as Air Force Two idled on a tarmac near Washington. Though Pence’s press secretary was not on the plane, White House physicians through contact tracing identified six other aides who had been near her who were aboard, and pulled them from the flight. The White House later said the six had tested negative.

Trump, who identified the Pence aide as press secretary Katie Miller, said he was “not worried” about the virus in the White House.

Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols and were considering a mandatory mask policy for those in close contact with Trump and Pence.

The vice president and 10 members of his staff are given rapid coronavirus tests daily, and the president is also tested regularly.

Miller, who is married to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, had been in recent contact with Pence but not with the president. Pence is leader of the White House coronavirus task force and Katie Miller has handled the group’s communications.

After landing in Des Moines, Pence spoke to a group of faith leaders about the importance of resuming religious services, saying cancellations in the name of slowing the spread of the virus have “been a burden” for congregants.

His visit coincided with the state announcing 12 more deaths from the virus, a total of 243 in less than two months.

Pence spoke with the religious leaders and Republican officials during a brief visit. He also spoke later with agricultural and food company executives.

“It’s been a source of heartache for people across the country,” Pence told about a dozen people at the Church of the Way Presbyterian church in Urbandale.

Pence told the group that continued efforts to hold services online and in other ways “made incalculable difference in our nation seeing our way through these troubled times.”

Iowa is among many states where restrictions on in-person services are starting to ease. GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds, who joined both of the state’s Republican senators at the event, has instituted new rules that allow services to resume with restrictions.

At Friday’s event, some religious leaders expressed hesitation at resuming large gatherings, while others said they would begin holding services soon,

“We are pretty much in a position of uniformly believing that it’s too early to return to personal worship. It’s inadvisable at the moment particularly with rising case counts in communities where we are across the state,” said David Kaufman, rabbi of Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Des Moines.

The Rev. Terry Amann, of Church of the Way, said his church will resume services May 17 with chairs arranged so families can sit together but avoid the temptation to shake hands or offer hugs. He said hand sanitizer will be available.

A new poll by The University of Chicago Divinity School and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows just 9 percent of Americans think in-person services should be allowed without restrictions, while 42 percent think they should be allowed with restrictions and 48 percent think they shouldn’t be allowed at all.

Pence later met with agriculture and food industry leaders. Iowa tops the nation in egg production and pork processing and is a top grower of corn and soybeans.

Meatpacking is among the state’s biggest employers, and companies have been working to restart operations after closing them because hundreds of their workers became infected.

As Pence touted the Trump administration’s announcement of the reopening of 14 meatpacking plants including two of the worst hit by coronavirus infections in Perry and Waterloo, the union representing workers called for safer work conditions.

“Iowa’s meatpacking workers are not sacrificial lambs. They have been working tirelessly during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure families here and across the country have access to the food they need,” said the United Food and Commercial Workers Union in a statement.

The Associated Press and the McClatchy Washington Bureau contributed to this report.

A 10th wedding anniversary traditionally is celebrated with a gift of aluminum or tin.

For Sondy Daggett, her 10th year of marriage to Liz Hoskins was marked with a gift of Champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries shared through a window.

Employees at Bickford of Marion, the assisted living and memory care center where Hoskins is a resident, surprised the couple with the anniversary gift on May 1. Despite the current coronavirus-related mitigation practices, the staff had created a special moment for the couple, who have been partners for 24 years.

Daggett burst into tears as employees played their wedding song — Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time.”

“It just touched my soul,” Daggett said.

Across the state, moments like this are relegated through windows or over a phone call. As the novel coronavirus pandemic sweeps through the country, long-term care facilities have locked down in an effort to keep residents healthy, which means their families are no longer able to hug their loved ones, or sit with them in their rooms.

For many families, the feelings at such times this time are conflicted. Typical Mother’s Day celebrations have been placed on hold, and recent milestones have been missed by those living in long-term care facilities. Simple visits through windows feel distant.

“Those are the moments you remember and you miss,” said Daggett, recalling memories of visits to Bickford of Marion from Hoskins’s grandchildren and family gatherings during the holidays.

Hoskins, who has dementia, has been a resident at Bickford since August 2019.

“The pandemic has taken this away,” Daggett said.

But beyond this new dynamic with which family members are left to grapple, they also have the constant worry that their loved one could fall ill.

So far, Bickford of Marion has not seen any cases.

“Every time you read about another outbreak — whether it’s close to home or anywhere in the country — it brings home how fortunate we are so far,” said Matt Hoskins, Liz Hoskin’s son. “I can’t imagine the anxiety the residents and staff are having once it breaks through the wall.”

As of Friday, 29 long-term care facilities across the state, which includes skilled nursing facilities and senior living centers, among others — have reported outbreaks of COVID-19 among hundreds of their staff and residents.

As a result, for some Iowans, that fear has become a reality.

Ruth Brackett’s son Jamie Degner, a 38-year-old resident at Harmony House Health Care Center in Waterloo, tested positive for COVID-19 this past week.

Degner, who has severe autism and intellectual disabilities, has been a resident there since he was 15 years old.

More than 60 residents and staff have tested positive for COVID-19 at Harmony House, an intermediate care facility. It’s one of two long-term care facilities in Black Hawk County reporting an outbreak, defined as three or more positive tests among residents.

Degner received his test results on Tuesday. He’s had lower-than-normal oxygen levels, but otherwise has recorded his usual vital signs and has not experienced symptoms.

Brackett said it is “unbelievably difficult to not be able to go be with him through this.”

As with many facilities across the state, Harmony House closed its doors to visitors in early March, when the first cases of COVID-19 began being reported across Iowa and the nation. Brackett said her son’s cognitive abilities make it impossible for him to understand that she is unable to visit because she might make him sick, so the staff instead tell Degner his mom is “at work.”

While she’s optimistic he’ll improve, Brackett worries whether Degner’s virus would take a turn for the worse.

“It’s tough because I have to trust” the staff, Brackett said. “There’s nothing I can do, so I can’t spend a lot of time dwelling on what I might do differently.”

The families that spoke to The Gazette believe the leadership at long-term care facilities are doing what they can to keep its residents safe and healthy.

At Bickford of Marion, officials have taken the unique step of promising public transparency of possible COVID-19 cases in its facility. On the website of every Bickford location is a feature recording the number of residents who have tested positive for COVID-19.

“Whether it’s COVID-19 or not, we want to be transparent with families about their loved ones’ care,” Bickford of Marion Executive Director Jacobi Feckers said. “I don’t know why other nursing homes haven’t taken that step because I haven’t spoken to other facilities, but I’m thankful that’s the route we’ve taken.”

It’s not just families who are placing their trust in management. Ron Moore is an independent living resident at Cottage Grove Place, one of the largest senior living centers in Cedar Rapids that has reported an outbreak of COVID-19 this past week.

According to the latest data from public health officials, five residents and staff there have tested positive.

The outbreak originated in the skilled nursing unit, and officials said they are working to ensure the virus doesn’t spread to the assisted-living and independent-living portions of the facility. They restricted movement between the facilities and conduct frequent temperature checks of staff.

So far, the general feeling among residents at Cottage Grove Place’s independent-living housing is that management has “done a good job” of controlling exposure.

“The feelings of the residents here are positive,” Moore said. “They appreciate what management has done to protect us.”

Still, life looks much differently at Cottage Grove Place. Moore said his schedule typically is packed with weekly book clubs and coffees with friends. Now he and his wife take walks, or try to connect with friends over email.

“I’ve found (residents) are not depressed at this time,” he said. “But in the future, if this goes on for many months? My prediction is yes, depression will be a serious thing.”

Local senior living centers have come up with unique ways to allow visitors to see their loved ones. Gina Hausknecht, a 55-year-old Iowa City resident, was able to see her mother in person for the first time in weeks after her assisted-living home, Oaknoll Retirement Community in Iowa City, created a “drive up” visit option this past weekend.

While Hausknecht sat in the car, she was able to speak with her mother, 93-year-old Ellen Hausknecht, for an hour outside the facility. Before this, it had been emotionally difficult for Hausknecht not to see her mom weekly as she usually does

“It sunk in that I don’t know when I’m going to see my mom again, and that felt really terrible,” Hausknecht previously told The Gazette.

Hausknecht said she hopes to take this year’s Mother’s Day as an opportunity to do something special, particularly given the difficult past few weeks.

“Our family isn’t super-big on these kinds of holidays but we do like to acknowledge them, and this year it feels important to take hold of any opportunity to celebrate,” she said.

Other facilities, including Bickford of Marion, also have eased restrictions on sending food and gifts to residents in time for Mother’s Day. Matt Hoskins, Liz’s Hoskins’ son, said the family’s usual Mother’s Day plans are impossible this year, so they hope to send Liz’s Hoskins artwork from her grandchildren along with other gifts.

Brackett, who will be apart from her son Degner this year, said she hadn’t planned anything for the holiday. She looks forward to her first in-person visit with him after the pandemic, when she will bring his favorite meal from McDonald’s and a new deck of Phase 10 cards.

Despite the feelings of being separated, their wedding anniversary on May 1 likely is something Daggett will cherish, she said. With Daggett acting as Hoskins caregiver since her dementia diagnosis in 2016, their wedding anniversary has been something the couple hasn’t celebrated in a significant way in some time, she said.

But that worry still creeps in the back of her mind. Daggett said she’s trying to remain “as confident as anyone can at this point.”

“I learned a long time ago you can’t worry about what you can’t control,” Daggett said. “But does that mean I still wake up at 2 in the morning worried about it? Of course I do.”

Comments: (319) 398-8469; michaela.ramm@thegazette.com

Yesterday, Cameron Koczon shared a link to the dingbat font, Pictos, by the talented, Drew Wilson. Cameron predicted that dingbats will soon be everywhere. Symbol fonts, yes, I thought. Dingbats? No, thanks. Jason Santa Maria replied:

@FictiveCameron I hope not, dingbat fonts sort of spit in the face of accessibility and semantics at the moment. We need better options.

Jason rightly pointed out the accessibility and semantic problems with dingbats. By mapping icons to letters or numbers in the character map, they are represented on the page by that icon. That’s what Pictos does. For example, by typing an ‘a’ on your keyboard, and setting Pictos as the font-face for that letter, the Pictos anchor icon is displayed.

Other folks suggested SVG and JS might be better, and other more novel workarounds to hide content from assistive technology like screen readers. All interesting, but either not workable in my view, or just a bit awkward.

Falling down with CSS text-replacement

A CSS solution in an article from Pictos creator, Drew Wilson, relies on the fact that most of his icons are mapped to a character that forms part of the common name for that symbol. The article uses the delete icon as an example which is mapped to ‘d’. Using :before and :after pseudo-elements, Drew suggests you can kind-of wrangle the markup into something sort-of semantic. However, it starts to fall down fast. For example, a check mark (tick) is mapped to ‘3’. There’s nothing semantic about that. Clever replacement techniques just hide the evidence. It’s a hack. There’s nothing wrong with a hack here and there (as box model veterans well know) but the ends have to justify the means. The end of this story is not good as a VoiceOver test by Scott at Filament Group shows. In fairness to Drew Wilson, though, he goes on to say if in doubt, do it the old way, using his font to create a background image and deploy with a negative text-indent.

I agreed with Jason, and mentioned a half-formed idea:

@jasonsantamaria that’s exactly what I was thinking. Proper unicode mapping if possible, perhaps?

The conversation continued, and thanks to Jason, helped me refine the idea into this post.

Jon Hicks flagged a common problem for some Windows users where certain Unicode characters are displayed as ‘missing character’ glyphs depending on what character it is. I think most of the problems with dingbats or missing Unicode characters can be solved with web fonts and Unicode.

Rising with Unicode and web fonts

I’d love to be able to use custom icons via optimised web fonts. I want to do so accessibly and semantically, and have optimised font files. This is how it could be done:

1. Map the icons in the font to the existing Unicode code points for those symbols wherever possible.

   Unicode code points already exist for many common symbols. Fonts could be tiny, fast, stand-alone symbol fonts. Existing typefaces could also be extended to contain symbols that match the style of individual widths, variants, slopes, and weights. Imagine a set of Clarendon or Gotham symbols for a moment. Wouldn’t that be a joy to behold?

   There may be a possibility that private code points could be used if a code-point does not exist for a symbol we need. Type designers, iconographers, and foundries might agree a common set of extended symbols. Alternatively, they could be proposed for inclusion in Unicode.

2. Include the font with font-face.

   This assumes ubiquitous support (as any use of dingbats does) — we’re very nearly there. WOFF is coming to Safari and with a bit more campaigning we may even see WOFF on iPad soon.

3. In HTML, reference the Unicode code points in UTF-8 using numeric character references.

   Unicode characters have corresponding numerical references. Named entities may not be rendered by XML parsers. Sean Coates reminded me that in many Cocoa apps in OS X the character map is accessible via a simple CMD+ALT+t shortcut. Ralf Herrmann mentioned that unicode characters ‘…have “speaking” descriptions (like Leftwards Arrow) and fall back nicely to system fonts.’

Limitations

1. Accessibility: Limited Unicode / entity support in assistive devices.

   My friend and colleague, Jon Gibbins’s old tests in JAWS 7 show some of the inconsistencies. It seems some characters are read out, some ignored completely, and some read as a question mark. Not great, but perhaps Jon will post more about this in the future.

   Elizabeth Pyatt at Penn State university did some dingbat tests in screen readers. For real Unicode symbols, there are pronunciation files that increase the character repertoire of screen readers, like this file for phonetic characters. Symbols would benefit from one.

2. Web fonts: font-face not supported.

   If font-face is not supported on certain devices like mobile phones, falling back to system fonts is problematic. Unicode symbols may not be present in any system fonts. If they are, for many designers, they will almost certainly be stylistically suboptimal. It is possible to detect font-face using the Paul Irish technique. Perhaps there could be a way to swap Unicode for images if font-face is not present.

Now, next, and a caveat

I can’t recommend using dingbats like Pictos, but the icons sure are useful as images. Beautifully crafted icon sets as carefully crafted fonts could be very useful for rapidly creating image icons for different resolution devices like the iPhone 4, and iPad.

Perhaps we could try and formulate a standard set of commonly used icons using the Unicode symbols range as a starting point. I’ve struggled to find a better visual list of the existing symbols than this Unicode symbol chart from Johannes Knabe.

Icons in fonts as Unicode symbols needs further testing in assistive devices and using font-face.

Last, but not least, I feel a bit cheeky making these suggestions. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Combine it with a bit of imagination, and it can be lethal. I have a limited knowledge about how fonts are created, and about Unicode. The real work would be done by others with deeper knowledge than I. I’d be fascinated to hear from Unicode, accessibility, or font experts to see if this is possible. I hope so. It feels to me like a much more elegant and sustainable solution for scalable icons than dingbat fonts.

For more on Unicode, read this long, but excellent, article recommended by my colleague, Andrei, the architect of Unicode and internationalization support in PHP 6: The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets.

My friend and colleague, Chris, has shared a spiffing idea, the Ideas of March. He suggests: ‘If we all blog a little more than we normally would this month, maybe we can be reminded of all of the reasons blogs are great.’

But wait, this post is called the Ides of March? Right. As soon as I read what Chris had posted, a twist on the phrase echoed in my memory. The Ides of March is a Roman festival dedicated to the god of war, Mars. Some say it’s on the 15th of March (today). I can’t find a reference that this is accurate relative to the Julian or current Gregorian calendars, so I will use the first full moon instead. This year it will be on Saturday, 19th of March, in four days time. Wikipedia has more:

The Ides of March was a festive day dedicated to the god Mars and a military parade was usually held. In modern times, the term Ides of March is best known as the date that Julius Caesar was killed in 44 B.C.

Dramatic stuff. Appropriate in these times, too. Mars may have been the god of war, based on the anarchistic Greek god, Ares, but he represented the pursuit of peace through military strength. A thoroghly debunked method if you ask me, but a pretty neat rationalisation still used today. The military pursues Gaddafi’s version of peace in Libya. Mubarak tried it, and failed, in Egypt. The Ben Ali regime collapsed under protests in Tunisia. Saleh is on his way in Yemen. Right now, Saudi soldiers are deployed in Bahrain to quell protestors fighting for democratic freedom.

Whatever you think about the current strife, one thing is true: Tyrants never last. I’ve been an advocate of Twitter, and its ambient intimacy for almost four years. In that time I’ve seen it buoyed by the innovations of its users. Smart folks using @replies, and retweets that became a part of the fabric, coded into links and threads (sort-of). Other smart people building clients with new ways of looking at the graph. I’ve seen Twitter take the good ideas and do good things with them. Yet now, Twitter isn’t just the platform any longer, it wants to be the clients too. From URL shortening and tracking, to changes in who can make clients, and how they work. People don’t like it. The same kind of smart people who helped it be successful. The same kind of people who permit benevolent dictators to exist until they become tyrants.

I’m still a fan of the idea of short messages. They are neat, by their nature, but lest Twitter forgets, they also exist elsewhere, too. They’re a snack between meals. Signposts to feasts. The real banquets are blog posts, though. I’ve learnt more from them in the last ten years than I ever will from 140 characters. That’s why blogs are something to be treasured. Blogs and RSS may be dead according to some, but I like that I disagree. After all, even with this rambling post, you’ve probably learnt something, just like I have writing it. Thanks for the prompt, Chris.

Don’t procrastinate, fire up your editor and share your own ideas of March. Drew, Lorna, and Sean already have. Go on, you know it’s been far too long!

Stories are everywhere. When they don’t exist we make up the narrative — we join the dots. We make cognitive leaps and fill in the bits of a story that are implied or missing. The same goes for websites. We make quick judgements based on a glimpse. Then we delve deeper. The narrative unfolds, or we create one as we browse.

Mark Bernstein penned Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web for A List Apart in 2001. He wrote, ‘the reader’s journey through our site is a narrative experience’. I agreed wholeheartedly: Websites are narrative spaces where stories can be enacted, or emerge.

Henry Jenkins, Director of Comparative Media Studies, and Professor of Literature at MIT, wrote Game Design as Narrative Architecture. He suggested we think of game designers, ‘less as storytellers than as narrative architects’. I agree, and I think web designers are narrative architects, too. (Along with all the multitude of other roles we assume.) Much of what Henry Jenkins wrote applies to modern web design. In particular, he describes two kinds of narratives in game design that are relevant to us:

Enacted narratives are those where:

[…] the story itself may be structured around the character’s movement through space and the features of the environment may retard or accelerate that plot trajectory.

Sites like Amazon, New Adventures, or your portfolio are enacted narrative spaces: Shops or service brochures that want the audience to move through the site towards a specific set of actions like buying something or initiating contact.

Emergent narratives are those where:

[…] spaces are designed to be rich with narrative potential, enabling the story-constructing activity of players.

Sites like Flickr, Twitter, or Dribbble are emergent narrative spaces: Web applications that encourage their audience use the tools at their disposal to tell their own story. The audience defines how they want to use the narrative space, often with surprising results.

We often build both kinds of narrative spaces. Right now, my friends and I at Analog are working on Mapalong, a new maps-based app that’s just launched into private beta. At its heart Mapalong is about telling our stories. It’s one big map with a set of tools to view the world, add places, share them, and see the places others share. The aim is to help people tell their stories. We want to use three ideas to help you do that: Space (recording places, and annotating them), data (importing stuff we create elsewhere), and time (plotting our journeys, and recording all the places, people, and memories along the way). We know that people will find novel uses for the tools in Mapalong. In fact, we want them to because it will help us refine and build better tools. We work in an agile way because that’s the only way to design an emerging narrative space. Without realising it we’ve become architects of a narrative space, and you probably are, too.

Many projects like shops or brochure sites have fixed costs and objectives. They want to guide the audience to a specific set of actions. The site needs to be an enacted narrative space. Ideally, designers would observe behaviour and iterate. Failing that, a healthy dose of empathy can serve. Every site seeks to teach, educate, or inform. So, a bit of knowledge about people’s learning styles can be useful. I once did a course in one to one and small group training with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. It introduced me to Peter Honey and Alan Mumford’s model which describes four different learning styles that are useful for us to know. I paraphrase:

1. Activists like learning as they go; getting stuck in and working it out. They enjoy the here and now, and are happy to be dominated by immediate experiences. They are open-minded, not sceptical, and this tends to make them enthusiastic about anything new.
2. Reflectors like being guided with time to take it all in and perhaps return later. They like to stand back to ponder experiences and observe them from many different perspectives. They collect data, both first hand and from others, and prefer to think about it thoroughly before coming to a conclusion.
3. Theorists to understand and make logical sense of things before they leap in. They think problems through in a vertical, step-by-step logical way. They assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories.
4. Pragmatists like practical applications of ideas, experiments, and results. They like trying out ideas, theories and techniques to see if they work in practice. They positively search out new ideas and take the first opportunity to experiment with applications.

Usually people share two or more of these qualities. The weight of each can vary depending on the context. So how might learning styles manifest themselves in web browsing behaviour?

• Activists like to explore, learn as they go, and wander the site working it out. They need good in-context navigation to keep exploring. For example, signposts to related information are optimal for activists. They can just keep going, and going, and exploring until sated.
• Reflectors are patient and thoughtful. They like to ponder, read, reflect, then decide. Guided tours to orientate them in emergent sites can be a great help. Saving shopping baskets for later, and remembering sessions in enacted sites can also help them.
• Theorists want logic. Documentation. An understanding of what the site is, and what they might get from it. Clear, detailed information helps a theorist, whatever the space they’re in.
• Pragmatists get stuck in like activists, but evaluate quickly, and test their assumptions. They are quick, and can be helped by uncluttered concise information, and contextual, logical tools.

An understanding of interactive narrative types and a bit of knowledge about learning styles can be useful concepts for us to bear in mind. I also think they warrant inclusion as part of an articulate designer’s language of web design. If Henry Jenkins is right about games designers, I think he could also be right about web designers: we are narrative architects, designing spaces where stories are told.

—∞—

Wow, this has been a busy period. I’m just back from the Ampersand web typography conference in Brighton, and having a catch-up day in Mild Bunch HQ. Just before that I’ve been working flat out. First on Mapalong which was a grass-roots sponsor of Ampersand, and is going great guns. Then on an article for The Manual which is being published soon, and on 8 Faces #3 which is in progress right now. Not to mention the new talk for Ampersand which left me scratching my head and wondering if I was making any sense at all. More on that in a subsequent post.

In the meantime two previous events deserve a mention. (This is me starting more of a journalistic blog. :)

First of all, an interview with Simon Pascal Klien, the typographer and designer who’s curating the Design Festival podcast at the moment. We talked about all things web typography. Pascal cheekily left in a bit of noise from me in the prelude, and that rant pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the conversation. Thanks for your time, Pascal! If anyone reading this would care to listen in, the podcast can be downloaded or played from here:

Secondly, Daniel Bogan of The Setup sent me a few questions about my own tools. My answers are pretty clipped because of time, but you may find it interesting to compare this designer’s setup with your own:

I should note that in the meantime I’ve started writing with Writer, and discovered the great joy of keeping a journal and notes with a Midori Traveler’s Notebook. The latter is part of an on-going search I’m having to find Tools for Life. More on that, too at some point. Here’s my current list of topics I want to write about shortly:

• Ampersand, the aftermath
• Marrying a FujiFilm X100
• No-www
• Tools for life
• Paper versus pixels

There, I’ve written it!

In 2003, my wife Lowri and I went to a christening party. We were friends of the hosts but we knew almost no-one else there. Sitting next to me was a thirty-something woman and her husband, both dressed in the corporate ‘smart casual’ uniform: Jersey, knitwear, and ready-faded jeans for her, formal shoes and tucked-in formal shirt for him (plus the jeans of course; that’s the casual bit). Both appeared polite, neutral, and neat in every respect.

I smiled and said hello, and asked how they knew our hosts. The conversation stalled pretty quickly the way all conversations will when only one participant is engaged. I persevered, asked about their children who they mentioned, trying to be a good friend to our hosts by being friendly to other guests. It must have prompted her to reciprocate. With reluctant interest she asked the default question: ‘What do you do?’ I paused, uncertain for a second. ‘I’m a web designer’ I managed after a bit of nervous confusion at what exactly it was that I did. Her face managed to drop even as she smiled condescendingly. ‘Oh. White backgrounds!’ she replied with a mixture of scorn and delight. I paused. ‘Much of the time’, I nodded with an attempt at a self-deprecating smile, trying to maintain the camaraderie of the occasion. ‘What do you do?’ I asked, curious to see where her dismissal was coming from. ‘I’m the creative director for … agency’ she said smugly, overbearingly confident in the knowledge that she had a trump card, and had played it. The conversation was over.

I’d like to say her reaction didn’t matter to me, but it did. It stung to be regarded so disdainfully by someone who I would naturally have considered a colleague. I thought to try and explain. To mention how I started in print, too. To find out why she had such little respect for web design, but that was me wanting to be understood. I already knew why. Anything I said would sound defensive. She may have been rude, but at least she was honest.

I am a web designer. I neither concentrate on the party venue, food, music, guest list, or entertainment, but on it all. On the feeling people enter with and walk away remembering. That’s my job. It’s probably yours too.

I’m self-actualised, without the stamp of approval from any guild, curriculum authority, or academic institution. I’m web taught. Colleague taught. Empirically taught. Tempered by over fifteen years of failed experiments on late nights with misbehaving browsers. I learnt how to create venues because none existed. I learnt what music to play for the people I wanted at the event, and how to keep them entertained when they arrived. I empathised, failed, re-empathised, and did it again. I make sites that work. That’s my certificate. That’s my validation.

I try, just like you, to imbue my practice with an abiding sense of responsibility for the universality of the Web as Tim Berners-Lee described it. After all, it’s that very universality that’s allowed our profession and the Web to thrive. From the founding of the W3C in 1994, to Mosaic shipping with <img> tag support in 1993, to the Web Standards Project in 1998, and the CSS Zen Garden in 2003, those who care have been instrumental in shaping the Web. Web designers included. In more recent times I look to the web type revolution, driven and curated by both web designers, developers, and the typography community. Again, we’re teaching ourselves. The venues are open to all, and getting more amazing by the day.

Apart from the sites we’ve built, all the best peripheral resources that support our work are made by us. We’ve contributed vast amounts of code to our collective toolkit. We’ve created inspirational conferences like Brooklyn Beta, New Adventures, Web Directions, Build, An Event Apart, dConstruct, and Webstock. As a group, we’ve produced, written-for, and supported forward-thinking magazines like A List Apart, 8 Faces, Smashing Mag, and The Manual. We’ve written the books that distill our knowledge either independently or with publishers from our own community like Five Simple Steps and A Book Apart. We’ve created services and tools like jQuery, Fontdeck, Typekit, Hashgrid, Teuxdeux, and Firebug. That’s just a sample. There’s so many I haven’t mentioned. We did these things. What an extraordinary industry.

I know I flushed with anger and embarrassment that day at the christening party. Afterwards, I started to look a little deeper into what I do. I started to ask what exactly it means to be a web designer. I started to realise how extraordinary our community is. How extraordinary this profession is that we’ve created. How good the work is that we do. How delightful it is when it does work; for audiences, clients, and us. How fantastic it is that I help build the Web. Long may that feeling last. May it never go away. There’s so much still to learn, create, and make. This is my our party. Hi, I’m Jon; my friends and I are making Mapalong, and I’m a web designer.

Facebook is not only a social media giant, the company also provides valuable tools for broadcasting. Today we release a connection to Facebook, which allows to use the Facebook tools for video/audio production and publishing within Auphonic and our connected services.

• Use Facebook for live streaming, then import, process and distribute the audio/video with Auphonic.
• Post your Auphonic audio or video productions directly to the news feed of your Facebook Page or User.
• Use Facebook as a general media hosting service and share the link or embed the audio/video on any webpage (also visible to non-Facebook users).

Connect to Facebook

First you have to connect to a Facebook account at our External Services Page, click on the "Facebook" button.

Select if you want to connect to your personal Facebook User or to a Facebook Page:

It is always possible to remove or edit the connection in your Facebook Settings (Tab Business Integrations).

Import (Live) Videos from Facebook to Auphonic

Facebook Live is an easy (and free) way to stream live videos:

We implemented an interface to use Facebook as an Incoming External Service. Please select a (live or non-live) video from your Facebook Page/User as the source of a production and then process it with Auphonic:

This workflow allows you to use Facebook for live streaming, import and process the audio/video with Auphonic, then publish a podcast and video version of your live video to any of our connected services.

Export from Auphonic to Facebook

Similar to Youtube, it is possible to use Facebook for media file hosting.
Please add your Facebook Page/User as an External Service in your Productions or Presets to upload the Auphonic results directly to Facebook:

• Distribution Settings
  • Post to News Feed: The exported video is posted directly to your news feed / timeline.
  • Exclude from News Feed: The exported video is visible in the videos tab of your Facebook Page/User (see for example Auphonic's video tab), but it is not posted to your news feed (you can do that later if you want).
  • Secret: Only you can see the exported video, it is not shown in the Facebook video tab and it is not posted to your news feed (you can do that later if you want).
• Embeddable
  Choose if the exported video should be embeddable in third-party websites.

It is always possible to change the distribution/privacy and embeddable options later directly on Facebook. For example, you can export a video to Facebook as Secret and publish it to your news feed whenever you want.

If your production is audio-only, we automatically generate a video track from the Cover Image and (possible) Chapter Images.
Alternatively you can select an Audiogram Output File, if you want to add an Audiogram (audio waveform visualization) to your Facebook video - for details please see Auphonic Audiogram Generator.

Auphonic Title and Description metadata fields are exported to Facebook as well.
If you add Speech Recognition to your production, we create an SRT file with the speech recognition results and add it to your Facebook video as captions.
See the example below.

Facebook Video Hosting Example with Audiogram and Automatic Captions

Facebook can be used as a general video hosting service: even if you export videos as Secret, you will get a direct link to the video which can be shared or embedded in any third-party websites. Users without a Facebook account are also able to view these videos.

In the example below, we automatically generate an Audiogram Video for an audio-only production, use our integrated Speech Recognition system to create captions and export the video as Secret to Facebook.
Afterwards it can be embedded directly into this blog post (enable Captions if they don't show up per default) - for details please see How to embed a video:

It is also possible to just use the generated result URL from Auphonic to share the link to your video (also visible to non-Facebook users):
https://www.facebook.com/auphonic/videos/1687244844638091/

Important Note:
Facebook needs some time to process an exported video (up to a few minutes) and the direct video link won't work before the processing is finished - please try again a bit later!
On Facebook Pages, you can see the processing progress in your Video Library.

Conclusion

Facebook has many broadcasting tools to offer and is a perfect addition to Auphonic.
Both systems and our other external services can be used to create automated processing and publishing workflows. Furthermore, the export and import to/from Facebook is also fully supported in the Auphonic API.

Please contact us if you have any questions or further ideas!

In a previous blogpost we talked about the Opus codec, which offers very low bitrates. Another codec seeking to achieve even lower bitrates is Codec 2.

Codec 2 is designed for use with speech only, and although the bitrates are impressive the results aren’t as clear as Opus, as you can hear in the following audio examples. However, there is some interesting work being done with Codec 2 in combination with neural network (WaveNets) that is yielding great results.

Layers of a WaveNet neural network.

Background

Codec 2 is an open source codec designed for speech, and aims for compression rates between 700bps and 3200bps (bits per seconds).

The man behind it, David Rowe, is an electronic engineer currently living in South Australia. He started the project in September 2009, with the main aim of improving low-cost radio communication for people living in remote areas of the world. With this in mind, he set out to develop a codec that would significantly reduce file sizes and the bandwidth required when streaming.

Another motivation according to David, was to be free from patented technologies used by closed source codes which he believes “require expensive and awkward licenses and are stifling innovation”. His belief is that this work can be done without requiring the use of patent protected codecs, so all his work is open source.

Potential Applications

Rowe’s perceived applications include VOIP trunking, voice over low bandwidth HF/VHF digital radio, (especially for amateur radio, so as to avoid issues with the use of proprietary codecs), and developing world and remote area communications, including military, police and emergency services.

Why we’re interested here at Auphonic is for its potential for longer podcasts, presentations and audiobooks, allowing for low storage and minimizing the effect of bad network connections.

How it Works

To achieve the lower rates sought, speech has to be reduced into the smallest possible information/data, and this means that the amount of redundant information that is transmitted has to be minimized.

To do this, Codec 2 uses harmonic sinusoidal speech coding. This splits the speech into 10 - 30ms segments, called frames. Each frame is then analysed for the fundamental frequency (or pitch), and the number of harmonics that fit into a 4Khz bandwidth. Further, for each of the harmonics within the 4khz range, the amplitude and phase are recorded.

This information is then coded, and the decoder reconstructs the audio based on this data.

Codec 2 Block diagrams - Encoder (left) And decoder (right)
Figure from Rowtel.

Audio Examples and Comparison with other Codecs

Whilst it all sounds great in theory, how does the reality match up? Let’s have a listen.

Here is a short wav audio file:

Applying Codec 2 (without the WaveNet decoder) at the different rates available, 3200bps, 2400bps,1600bps,1200bps and 700bps, we get:

These examples show significantly reduced file sizes.
Putting that information more meaningfully in terms of how much storage you would need for an hour of audio:

• At 3200bps, 1 hour of audio requires only 1.37MB (this would fit on one old 3½-inch floppy disk!)
• A rate of 2400bps equates to 1.03MB/h
• A rate of 1600bps equates to 0.68MB/h (Or approximately 2 hours of audio on one floppy disk!)
• A rate of 1200bps equates to 0.51MB/h
• A rate of 700bps equates to 0.3MB/h

So great compression, but the result is clearly not natural sounding.

As a comparison here is the same audio as a 8kb/s MP3:

The file size is significantly larger than Codec 2 and the quality is arguably still not useable. You can clearly hear what is sometimes called sizzle - the weird metallic sounds you hear on low quality MP3s.

There is a final codec which is worth comparing, one that that seems to capture the two ideals of usable quality at low bitrates that we want: Opus.
Because of it's convincing low-bitrate performance, Auphonic already offers Opus encoding all the way down to 6 kbps, the lowest bitrate that Opus supports.

Comparing Opus at this 6 kbps rate to the 8kbps MP3 shows a significant improvement - although slightly muffled, it still sounds natural:

Returning to Codec 2, and purely as s a bit of fun, here are some samples of Codec 2 on music! (Note that Codec 2 is not designed for music, it was only ever conceived for use on speech).

I personally couldn’t listen to the MP3 at this rate, so let’s listen to what Codec 2 does!

Codec 2 at different bitrates:

As you can hear, it is not suitable for this application at all!

Codec 2 and WaveNet

As we have heard, despite the impressive bitrates achieved, the end result is not very natural sounding.
However, where it starts to get more interesting is the work done by W. Bastiaan Kleijn from Cornell University Library. He has been using with Codec 2 running at 2400bps on the coding side, but replaced the Codec 2 decoder with a WaveNet deep learning generative model (for more informationsee the paper Wavenet based low rate speech coding).

Here are some samples from the authors:

Comparing to Codec 2 you can hear a significant increase in quality, and if you compare to the original, there is not a significant decrease in quality.

Conclusion

Whilst the (original) Codec 2 project represents very interesting work, it is limited, and the end result is not suited for podcasting. Also as we heard in the audio examples, it can only be used for voice recordings, and not music.

However, Codec 2 in combination with a WaveNet decoder improves the quality a lot and the low bitrate (2400bps) would be extremely interesting for podcasts and audiobooks distribution as well: one hour of audio would require only 1.03MB of storage!

Auphonic will add support for Codec 2 output files when the WaveNet decoder is in a usable form. For now we have just added support for Codec 2 input files.

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The post Student visa holders and New Zealand citizens in Australia and the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis? appeared first on Visa Australia - Immigration Lawyers & Registered Migration Agents.

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