A24 eZ sU THE WASHINGTON POST.FRIDAy, MARCH 27 , 2020
Weather permitting or 11 Am if
too hot.”
A native of New York City,
Beder has been playing the cello
since she was 11. She works as a
musician and a copy editor for
book publishers.
People began to arrive before
she began playing randy New-
man’s song “old man.”
“I’m a randy Newman fanatic,”
Beder said.
Her audience is not huge.
About a dozen people stopped by
Tuesday.
Neighbors Alex martin, a jazz
guitarist, and his wife, Leslie
Brice, showed up. “I love it,”
martin said. “This is what musi-
cians need to do.... We need it
just a little bit less than we need
air and food.... Especially now.”
Lee Hicks, and her children,
Beatrice and Hudson, stationed
themselves across the street. “I
think the idea that she’s brought
music and culture to us in this
chaotic state is kind,” Hicks said.
Nearby a woman and her dog
sat down by a telephone pole. It
was mostly quiet, except for the
birds and the traffic.
Beder played Bach.
“I always play some Bach, be-
cause we’re cellists, and we do
that,” she said. “Bach is one of the
only composers who wrote for
unaccompanied cello.”
She played the romantic mexi-
can classic, “Besame mucho,” a
lot.
“How is everybody?” she asked
her audience at one point. “real-
ly. Is there anybody here who’s in
particular need of some music,
like a special need?”
No one spoke up.
So she finished up with the
traditional klezmer tune “Gasn
Nign.”
As people drifted away, they
thanked her, as if for a gift.
She waved from the porch. “It’s
what I have to give,” Beder said.
[email protected]the coronavirus pandemic
gist at the University of Wiscon-
sin, described this as “the ‘tend
and befriend’ response, which we
are seeing happening around the
world.”
“We’re living in unprecedented
times,” mirgain said Thursday.
“There’s a lot of fear, anxiety and
overwhelm and heartache.”
The normal stress response of
flight or fight doesn’t quite work
in this case, she said, but people
can tap into their natural “tend
and befriend” impulse.
“It can actually help us culti-
vate well-being in the midst of
this pandemic,” mirgain said. “It
also spreads hope. There’s so
much we can’t c ontrol.... But the
one thing we can control is to...
help somebody or offer some
kindness or compassion.”
“That is what the virus hasn’t
touched, these innate capacities
we have as humans,” she said.
Aryn myers left gift bags and
thank you notes for her refuse
collectors in her Washington,
D.C., neighborhood. She included
toilet paper, candy and a Visa gift
card.
“They’re as much [on the]
front line on keeping us hygienic
as a lot of first responders,” she
said.
In an Arlington, Va., hardware
store, half a dozen customers
reportedly launched into an up-
lifting version of r&B star otis
redding’s “(Sittin’ on) The Dock
of the Bay.”
In Washington’s D upont Circle,
residents of an apartment build-
ing have posted notices volun-
teering to run errands for high-
risk people, offering to fetch gro-
ceries and other supplies.
Kitson Jazynka, a volunteer atby, and volunteers are making
free deliveries. Sewing and quilt-
ing experts have been cranking
out dozens of cotton medical
masks for hospitals.
Elizabeth D’Antonio, a retired
nurse practitioner and costume
maker for the Annapolis opera in
maryland, enlisted a group of 15
people — “ one guy and 14 w omen”
— to make masks for the Anne
Arundel medical Center.
many already had fabric, she
said. And a woman in the quilting
guild had just ordered 144 yards
of elastic. “She didn’t even really
know why,” D’Antonio said. “It
was kind of inspired.”
“I used to work [in intensive
care units] and I understand how
important it is to be protected,”
D’Antonio said. She said she text-
ed a local doctor she knew and
asked if the hospital needed
masks.
She said he replied: “A bsolute-
ly. Yes. When can you have some
for us? Can you have any?”
“That was Saturday,” she said.
“Sunday night I picked up 54.”
Tuesday night her team produced
205 more, and by Thursday an-
other 260. The masks are gath-
ered at her house and taken to
the hospital by her friend, Kent
Krejci.
She said she has heard that
some medical people are reusing
masks. “The CDC said just this
past week [to] use a bandanna.
It’s like, ‘Come on guys!’ ”
“It feels good to be able to do
something,” D’Antonio said. “Be-
cause you feel helpless in this
whole thing.”
Shilagh A. mirgain, a psycholo-
KIndness from A1
In isolation, a few notes
of kindness ring through
just need all the help we can get.”
She also needed the routine
back in her life, “to do something
positive, and not just tear my hair
out.”
“one of the main things that
I’m trying to do here... is break
through some of the isolation,”
she said. “I... am isolated. We’re
all isolated.”
“I wanted to be in the physical
space of my neighbors,” Beder
said. “my purpose is to connect to
other porches and backyards and
people on the street, some of
whom I know and some of whom
I don’t.”
There is traffic noise.
“I don’t mind it,” she said.
“Some of the traffic, people roll
down their windows, so that’s a
plus.”
As s he spoke, a homemade sign
taped to the porch railing read:
“Cello music Daily @ 4 Pmresidents of one D.C. commu-
nity have displayed inspirational
homemade banners, according to
Petworth News.
“Everything Will Be oK,” said
one. “may the force Be with You,”
said another. “Don’t Give Up,”
urged another.
Back on 34th Street in mount
rainier, Beder, 69, said she start-
ed her mini concerts a week ago,
with a cello made around 1870 in
Prague. “It’s not that old for a
cello,” she said.
She is a member of a group
called A musical Heart that pro-
vides music for hospice patients.
“People who are in any kind of
extreme need, music is normally
quite a big help,” Beder said.
Now the community is in dis-
tress, she said as she sat with her
cello on her porch Tuesday. “for
me, some of this, playing here, is
coming from that,” she said. “WeChildren’s National Hospital in
the District and a writer for the
hospital’s f oundation, made a vid-
eo of herself reading a children’s
book to send to the youngsters
stuck in the hospital.
Unable to volunteer in person
because of the virus, she took
steps to do so virtually.
“Having visited kids at their
bedside... I just have a tiny bit of
insight as to what it’s like,” Jazyn-
ka said. “It’s hard... on the best
day.... I t kind of makes me sad to
think of those kids not having the
extra attention... from the vol-
unteers.”
So she recorded herself read-
ing “Sally Goes to the Vet,” a bout a
dog visiting a veterinarian.
In many places, people have
been propping teddy bears in
their front windows for the enter-
tainment of children on “teddy
bear hunts.”mICHAel s. WIllIAmson/tHe WAsHIngton Post
neighbors watch as Jodi Beder plays her cello from her front porch in Mount Rainier, Md., on
Wednesday. Beder, who’s been playing since age 11, usually plays Randy newman, Bach and klezmer.boost the local economy — are
also worried about an influx of
visitors seeking to “socially dis-
tance” themselves from others by
retreating to wilderness.
“Look to your backyard and
recreate there,” said Emily Nie-
haus, mayor of moab, Utah, who
on Wednesday called on nearby
Arches and Canyonlands national
parks t o close down.
Near some parks, there are al-
ready signs of strain.
outside Death Valley National
Park in Beatty, Nev. — population
1,010 — toilet paper and other
essentials were picked over at the
local family Dollar. Campgrounds
and other attractions there had
been closed o ver the weekend, but
visitors still flowed i nto the area to
erect tents and park campers in
the adjacent Amargosa Valley to
the east of the park.
“It’s a higher density than we’ve
ever seen outside the park,” said
Laura Cunningham, who is wor-
ried about the v irus taking hold in
her town, 70 miles from the near-
est hospital.
Last week, officials at Joshua
Tree National Park in California
had initially indicated the park’s
roads would be opened to motor-
ists. Hundreds drove from Los
Angeles and elsewhere Saturday
only to find the gates shut after a
last-minute announcement from
the park.
Parkgoers instead packed the
sides of the road going to Joshua
Tree’s w estern gate.
“Nobody has ever seen it like
that,” said Cody Hanford, who
lives just outside the park. “It
looked like a musical festival f or a
second.”
[email protected]
[email protected]are built for visitation.”
Thousands are going into Zion
near Las Vegas every day, Brengel
said. They gather at one of its
more popular lookouts, Angels
Landing, accessed by a demand-
ing hike up a narrow trail.
“our concern is that Interior is
practicing trial and error instead
of being proactive where they
know visitors are going to gather,”
Brengel said. The conservation as-
sociation supports closing crowd-
ed parks but favors waiving en-
trance fees to keep collectors safe.
officials don’t know if free en-
try led to more weekend visitors,
Picavet said.
Park officials announced mon-
day that a portion of the Angels
Landing trail was closed due to
weekend c rowding.
A t Point reyes National Sea-
shore, near San francisco, visitors
on Saturday descended on beach-
es and formed queues at trail-
heads. “It was kind of like watch-
ing people waiting for a Broadway
play,” said Gray Brechin, who
hiked a trail that morning. It was
closed by the end of the day.
In an angry letter to the Park
Service, provided by the Coalition
to Protect America’s National
Parks, an employee said restrict-
ing access after the fact might
come too late for visitors a nd park
personnel.
“our employees are fearful of
bringing this sickness into their
homes and threatening the lives
of the most high risk among us,”
the letter said. The coalition said
the writer spoke on the condition
of anonymity, fearing the loss of
his job.
Those who live near national
parks — and normally like seeing
out-of-towners arrive in droves toership at the highest levels of the
Department of Interior, and, I be-
lieve, the White House,” Stone
said.
The National Park Service said
in an email that “the health and
safety of... visitors, employees,
volunteers, and partners is our
number one priority” a nd that the
service is “taking extraordinary
steps to implement the latest
guidance from state and local au-
thorities” that promote social dis-
tance to slow the spread of the
coronavirus.
Park officials have temporarily
closed or partially shut 100 of the
419 sites in the system, including
the Statue of Liberty, Washington
monument, G olden Gate National
recreation Area and Yosemite. on
Tuesday, three more were added
to the list: Yellowstone, Grand
Te ton and the Great Smoky moun-
tains.
“The majority of parks have
suspended visitor services,” Pica-
vet wrote in the email. “However
park rangers remain on duty pro-
tecting the parks, and normal
rules, and regulations continue to
apply.”
Those precautions are unlikely
to keep visitors from coming into
close contact, said a lobbyist for a
group that works to protect na-
tional parks.
“many parks are designed in a
way to move visitors, keep them
on trails and keep them on roads,”
said Kristen Brengel, vice presi-
dent of government affairs for the
National Parks Conservation As-
sociation. “Parks inherently fun-
nel people to see overlooks and
waterfalls and rivers. People stop
at various points to view the won-
derful scenery. They’re more con-
ducive to people gathering. ParksBY DARRYL FEARS
AND DINO GRANDONITwo days before he cursed a
supervisor and quit the National
Park Service job he loved, Dustin
Stone arrived to work in a foul
mood. A decision by Interior Sec-
retary David Bernhardt to keep
national park sites open despite
the coronavirus outbreak left him
angry.
The virus hasn’t reached Skag-
way on the Alaskan panhandle
where Stone lives and worked at
the Klondike Gold rush National
Historical Park. But if it does, he
said, i t could be a disaster.
“I’ve lived here year-round
through eight flu seasons, and I’ve
seen how quickly an infection can
spread,” he said. “When one of us
gets sick, most of us get sick.”
There’s n o full-time doctor and n o
hospital in Skagway.
When it became clear that
Klondike Gold rush would not be
among the few sites allowed to
close and would continue hiring
seasonal workers from the Low-
er 48 to come to Skagway for the
spring and summer, Stone
snapped. He barked a few choice
words a nd stormed out.
As the Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention prepared to
issue new guidance a bout how
visitors should behave at more
than 300 park sites that remain
open, park employees expressed
concern about the spread of infec-
tion.
After thousands poured into
Grand Canyon National Park last
weekend, the park’s supervisor
submitted a request to close it,
according to a staffer at the park
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity for fear of being fired.
one park ranger had 600 “close
contacts” with visitors in a single
day at B right Angel Trail, the staff-
er said.
The request was approved by
the region that oversees Grand
Canyon and supported by both
the Navajo Nation and Coconino
County, t he park staffer said.
In a statement, national park
spokeswoman Alexandra Picavet
said, “No decision has been made
... about the G rand Canyon NP at
this time.”
on the day Stone quit, the ad-
ministration announced that
park entrance fees would be
waived so that Americans stuck at
home could enjoy the outdoors.
Some employees worried that the
decision could expose them — a nd
possibly their families — to infec-
tion.
“This is a political game being
played with people’s lives by lead-
National park crowds worry sta≠ers
nAtIonAl PArK serVICe
A photo shared on Twitter by Zion national Park in Utah shows groups of hikers on the popular Angels
Landing trail. The national Park service warned against hiking in groups during social distancing.Close contact with
visitors is increasing
exposure to infectionat h ome together, there could also
be a serious decline in burglaries,
since most residential burglaries
happen during the day, said
o’Donnell, who cautioned that
there is still a great deal of uncer-
tainty about how society, and po-
lice departments, will handle the
unfolding crisis.
“The whole thing is super fluid,
and there a re so many wild cards,”
he said, particularly because crim-
inal justice policy is often driven
by singular, high-profile crimes.
“People’s fears can change on a
dime.”
for now, the fear is focused
squarely on covid-19. on Thurs-
day, Cuomo announced that the
death toll in the state had risen to- By contrast, the number of
people murdered in New York City
all of last year was 319.
New York has the largest police
department in the country, but
even the NYPD may find itself
strained by the dual pressures of
their own officers getting sick, a nd
having to patrol mostly deserted
streets.
over 3 ,200 NYPD personnel are
out sick — t hree times the a verage.
of those, 236 have tested positive
for coronavirus, officials said.
Thursday night, officials an-
nounced the first NYPD death
from the coronavirus: Dennis
Dickson, a custodial staffer who
worked at police headquarters.
The pandemic has also sparked
concerns about jail and prison
inmates who may be sitting ducks
for the d isease. Already, data from
the city’s Department of Correc-
tion indicates that people being
held in their jails are contracting
coronavirus at a much higher rate
than the general population. That
has led criminal justice reform
advocates, including House Judi-
ciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler
(D-N.Y.), to urge federal jails to
release nonviolent defendants
quickly to save lives.
An inmate in the federal jail in
manhattan and one in the federal
lockup in Brooklyn have already
tested positive.
[email protected]
[email protected]Barrett reported from Washington.
John D. Harden and matt Zapotosky
contributed to this report.BY SHAYNA JACOBS
AND DEVLIN BARRETTnew york — The first weeks of
pandemic in the nation’s largest
city spurred a double-digit drop in
crime, as the bad guys seem to be
just as scared of the novel corona-
virus as everyone else.
Spring typically is a time for
crime to start rising, as warm
weather brings more people out-
side. But the covid-19 cases that
have struck New York harder than
anyplace else in the United States
seem to have kept many criminals
indoors, for now.
“In some sense, it’s like a giant
blizzard has hit and there’s 10 feet
of snow on the ground,” said Eu-
gene o’Donnell, a former New
York Police Department officer
who is now a professor a t the John
Jay College of Criminal Justice.
In the days before and after
Gov. Andrew m. Cuomo (D) or-
dered all nonessential business to
stop Sunday evening, crime fell
across many categories, including
burglary, assault and larceny, by
double-digit percentages, accord-
ing to week-by-week crime figures
from the NYPD.
Last week New York City re-
corded a single murder, c ompared
with eight the week before. Bur-
glaries and assaults were each
down about 18 percent compared
with the previous week. Judging
any single week’s crime data
against another is dicey because
small samples can make mislead-
ing short-term fluctuations look
like trends, but the immediate
impact of covid-19 seems to clear-
ly be a sharp drop in crime, not
just in New York but around the
country.
other data suggests that in
many cases, criminal suspects are
staying home. flock Safety, a com-
pa ny that sells license-plate-read-
er technology, said data from its
cameras in florida, California and
Te xas show a significant drop in
“hits” on stolen cars and cars be-
longing to people with outstand-
ing warrants. That drop closely
tracked the overall decline in cars
on the road, the company said.
“These are sharp declines of 70
and 60 percent o f vehicular traffic
in some places, and criminals, too,
are also sheltering in place, be-
cause no one wants to get sick. The
fact that we’re seeing less stolen
cars on the road is a pretty good
indicator that we’re seeing less
crime in those cities,” said flock
Safety chief executive Garrett
Langley.
With so many families stayingNYPD data shows sharp
decline in crime rates
Fear of contracting virus
appears to be pushing
potential criminals inside“In some sense, it’s like
a giant blizzard has hit
and there’s 10 feet of
snow on the ground.”
Eugene O’Donnell, former new York
Police Department officer and
professor at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice