 You're tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn LaBeirano and today is Tuesday, June 23rd and it happens to be the 25th episode of this here radio show. I'm sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic and the show airs live Tuesdays at noon and repeats at 5pm and also on Sundays and you can listen online anytime at KDRT.org. My guests today are Lois Richter, host of That's Life and co-host of the Davis Garden Show on KDRT and Don Shore, host of Jazz After Dark and co-host of the Davis Garden Show on KDRT and know they are not appearing together. Back to back interviews, Don is also the owner of Redwood Barn Nursery. We're going to talk about how quarantine has impacted them both personally and professionally. We are at 100 days since shelter in place was first implemented and it's been a while since I've shared some COVID numbers and it was kind of startling to look at the numbers yesterday and look at them again this morning and realize how much they're shooting up. Part of that of course is due to testing but unfortunately the deaths are not attributable to testing. Nationally the CDC reports 2,275,645 confirmed cases and 119,923 deaths. In California the Department of Public Health reports 178,054 cases, 5,515 deaths and by the way that's an increase of 4,230 new cases over the previous day. And in Yolo County Public Health reports 347 cases and 24 deaths and that's 17 new cases over yesterday. This is not over folks. Over the weekend the CDC reported more than 30,000 coronavirus cases, the highest daily total since May 1st. New cases across the country are rapidly surging especially in the south, the midwest and western states and officials are warning of clusters of infections among young people who are crowding buyers and parties with the highest rate of new infection among the 18 to 49 year old population. The surge in cases comes as many states are pursuing reopening due to economic concerns and the CDC is projecting deaths of up to 145,000 by July 11th. Locally Yolo Public Health announced changes to its COVID-19 dashboard which can be found at Yolo County.org. And now winters and the unincorporated areas are separated to each have their own filter by area location on the dashboard and with the increase of confirmed cases in the last two weeks the county says it's making this change to better coordinate and direct public outreach and education on the pervasiveness of COVID-19. In addition to the county's website which features links to all COVID-19 related info on the front page residents can also call Yolo 211 for resource information and you can also search Yolo County on Facebook and Twitter. And finally last week I mentioned Davis Downtown Business Association's sponsorship of the Davis Downtown communal art project which called for artists of all ages to participate in a community-wide art project focused on how we've all been coping with shelter in place and social distancing. So the deadline has passed, the art is in and the voting is open. So you are cordially invited to like all your favorites on the Davis Downtown Facebook page and I believe that is where all the voting is taking place not on their website. We're going to take a moment for music and we'll be back with our first interview. As I mentioned earlier Lois Richter is host of That's Life and co-host of the Davis Garden show on KDRT but she's also a talented artist and so much more here to chat with us about her own COVID-19 disruption and adaptation is the one the only Lois Richter welcome Lois. Well hello Autumn I'm so glad to be here. Good to see you. Usually I'm interviewing you. I know I know I was thinking about that the shoes on the other foot now so to speak how are you doing? We're doing fine. My husband and I have been home for what three months or so and very seldom going out an occasional doctor's appointment or the 6 a.m. nugget market senior time to go shopping once a month or so but other than that I'm mostly just here. Well good to hear that you're keeping well. So as you know I've been talking to all kinds of people about their experiences and information they need to convey during this COVID-19 pandemic and I was thinking about you. You're very involved in normal years with the Whole Earth Festival at UC Davis you're also very involved with the Davis Senior Center and not to mention your involvement here at KDRT and Davis Media Access so if you can think back what were your thoughts as everything started shutting down or being cancelled? Well we were heavy into preparations for the Whole Earth Festival which we start preparing in December and January and then it gets really busy in February and into March and then all of a sudden the university said well that's not going to happen and so oh and then classes were cancelled oh most of the people who are involved with the Whole Earth Festival are students and every year the student staff changes. I mean some people carry over from year to year but there's very few people with more than three years experience because it's undergrad and so that was a real difference mostly because I was no longer communicating with the vendors who were planning to come and set up at the festival and so a lot of emails and and all that stuff and figuring out all that stuff so all of a sudden boom it stopped but the staff decided that they wanted to do something and so they got together and they created a virtual Whole Earth Festival and I didn't have to do anything about that because there's no no craftspeople to coordinate so I just got to watch them do their thing and and that was it was it was inspiring to see how much they were able to carry on and do even though we couldn't meet in person and the festival didn't happen in person but it was sad yeah there's a lot of people who are who are friends who've been coming to that for a long time it started in 1970 and you know I've been I've been working on it for over 20 years so that was sad yeah that's the first one I haven't attended since 1985 by the way so a lot a lot of us have real history with it well they did the the virtual West was held on a thing called twitch which is a streaming site and there were four channels it was all you know but some of the things that happened there are also available on YouTube so if you went to Facebook you look for the Whole Earth Festival and you followed the links there you could probably find some of the stuff that happened that day it was on the the Saturdays that would have been festival weekend right so that was a big one but the more the even bigger one for me was when the senior center shut down and that's because I participate in an exercise class they're called fit for life it's Debbie Urnessy who is by the way the best physical trainer person she's so good and she takes care of us so well and she she studies senior bodies and just she's just great and all of a sudden we couldn't see her so we went from three times a week exercising to nada and it took a few weeks but she did figure out how to create an exercise program and have it online and so we were one of the first ones to do the zoom thing and now there are three times a week there's exercise program in fact she expanded it so she now is morning one and she has an afternoon one it's great it's really great in fact I think I like the zoom exercise better than the in-person exercise as far as the exercise program goes because I can see her all the time right and it's convenient place you in the room and and you know you're you can't see really well yeah you've also done a lot of things at the senior center over the years including genealogy classes and and art classes and art exhibits and so I know that's been a real central place in your life yeah and I can't go there anymore okay I can't go there anymore and and at the moment you can't come here either and I do want to talk about KDRT with you so you do two shows how how many years has it been that you and on shore have produced the Davis Garden show on KDRT how many years has the station been open 15 16 this fall 16 this fall you started at the very beginning yeah yeah yeah and and then I started doing my show too so and that was within within a few months and these are in in most times these are weekly shows so that's a real commitment to plan the contact the guest to have the the conversations and and to prepare so what you and go ahead yes and no because for the Davis Garden show Don shores the plant expert right and so he takes care of what questions what topics I mean I bring may bring in a question on then but mostly I'm there as the second voice and the person to chat with but he's the one who's who's reading that now for my own show of course I usually have a guest and I'll call someone up or have someone in the in the station and and that's changed but I don't actually do a lot of preparation I find the guests I get them to agree to be there and then we just sit down and talk so I'm not one who has to do a lot of work on my show which has actually been a blessing because when I for the five years that I was dealing with my mom I didn't have I could continue to do the show and it was okay yeah so in this situation it took me a while to figure out how to do something and so I did a just a couple of weeks ago I started and I did some some music shows now I'm doing interview shows over zoom I'm I'm think I'm up to speed I'm having a great time good so tell us about your most recent episode of that's life or one that's upcoming well the one that's going to be played on Thursday was an interview I did with Bob Bowen now he is a city of Davis employee he's public relations head and he's a historian in Davis too and so we started talking about what is what is happening to businesses in Davis what are some of the possibilities some of the plans some of the restrictions and we talked about that for a while and and as we're going along he's also bringing in the the historical things you know well this building used to be this and now it's that now everything and so it was interesting and then some of the new stuff that's happening like the new restrooms some of the art projects and then just personal stuff about about him and about Davis and it was fun to talk to him but then editing up that program into a radio show I took a lot longer normally I used to I just I'd sit down we'd be on the air for an hour that was it I'm done yeah but now you do the interview for an hour and you better have another extra 10 minutes just in case and then you have to edit and that takes hours and hours and hours to do so it's a lot for I'm spending a lot more time on catered stuff than I ever did because when we went in we just go in we wouldn't see anybody else working there I mean you'd say hi to you or hi to Jeff or something but it wasn't like we were we weren't socializing we weren't in the office we just went in and did the shows and left so it that one has been as as huge a change as the other things and then of course I'm a Quaker so we can't go to the Quaker meeting house and have meeting anymore so our meeting for worship is by zoom and I always thought that was hysterical a silent meeting but it works out okay as you can see people and and chat afterwards and but it's changed you can't get people hug you can't share food life is very different these days I was gonna say it's a good thing that you know you're you're very good with computers and the last my last question for you is I I saw somewhere that you're now offering zoom coaching for others so what does that look like yes that I had never heard of zoom until all this stuff shut down and then when I was helping Debbie figure out how to get her class going we tried a few different things and zoom seemed to work well and so then I you know you know me as soon as I have a problem I I read as much as I can I learn as much as I can I try to to get to a point where I can translate from jargon into human and so with Debbie's class which is all seniors there were a lot of folks who were not well I guess computer literate is not quite the right term anymore but they weren't really they're having trouble getting the zoom to work and so I ended up doing quite a few sessions of training for them for the genealogy club a lot of individuals helping them get on and things like that I recorded a basic training I haven't published it yet but yes I am available for giving private tutoring as well okay all right well I want to thank you for making time to chat and and letting me turn the tables on you because as you noted you have interviewed me many times over the years so this was good this was kind of fun to hear from you and I look forward to the time someday when I can see you in person again well there's always opportunities for example one could go birding with someone else staying ten feet apart and still have a really good time this is true this is true all right Lois Richter thank you take care bye bye we're gonna listen to music for just a minute before we take our next call all right my next guest is Don Shore Don is the other half of the Davis Garden show but he's also the host of Jazz After Dark here on KDRT and he is the owner of Redwood Barn Nursery which is adjacent to the DMA building so hey Don how you doing today doing well feels like spring is never going to end it's summer now thanks so much for coming on today I've known you for a long time but I don't actually know the story of how you got into radio and I think it predates catered is that true correct they used to drive across the Ocasway to sit in with and then for Dan Pratt on KFBK who does a major garden show there and did that first in 1989 and so and then was his regular fill-in host whenever he was traveling all the way into the early and mid 1990s and I also sit in with the gentleman who replaced him Fred Hoffman Farmer Fred who does that show as well as another one on KSTE okay I've seen you sometimes on Facebook reference that you're on the air with Farmer Fred growing with Farmer and then as Lois just mentioned the Davis Garden show started it was one of the earliest shows on KDRT that's right Lois had a TV show and I would be an occasional guest on that we chat about gardening things and along came this little radio station KDRT K dirt I mean gotta have a garden show on there and so she and I jumped in right from the start I'm pretty sure that was 2005 that we did the very first broadcast of the Davis Garden show and it was one or two missed each year you know for holidays we've done about 50 per year since 2005 that's a lot of content it is and you can find it at Davis Garden show.com they're all archived there they're all saved though all right and then Jazz After Dark is your wildly popular people love jazz and you have listeners in other countries you have listeners all over the place jazz fans are nuts and they're all over the world and we love them we yes it is fun to do that show because we do get comments from Australia and a gentleman who listens to us in Tokyo and so forth this little tiny radio station is broadcasting jazz all over right George Moore had been doing jazz here for a long time and he was retiring from that and so I decided to go ahead and step in in 2010 I think it was and I have done it ever since and because of the style of his show I kind of stuck to and prefer what I call 20th century jazz jazz that you're more familiar with and comfortable with not esoteric abstract kind of stuff that you know there's more and more what jazz critics like I like to do jazz for everybody and it's fun to do it's a great show I enjoy doing it and in normal times you bring your little dog scout you come in here and the show airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. my co-host yeah and and you do your show and as Lois just said you're producing from home so what's that process been like for you her comment is correct it takes longer even though it seems like it would be simpler although you don't have to do it all at once and in the past you could walk over your shows ready you're on the air 58 minutes later you're done it's in the can and you can go away now you sit there and you put it together using audacity and using audio hijack and various forms of software you can do it much more smoothly and you can do it over time but she is correct that we fiddle with it a lot we go back in where we realizing we're at 56 minutes instead of 58 and you can't have dead air so you have to you know pad that out it takes longer but as you get faster as you do it more you get faster at it and actually is kind of fun to do so and and you're doing it that's the thing you accomplish that task original content is on the air for jazz after dark and Davis Garden show which has been a different exercise in zoom yeah well we thank you for that so Redwood Barn nursery I don't think I've ever shared this with you but I remember the first time I met you I started working here at what we were then called Davis Community Television I'm gonna say it was the at the end of 1996 it's been a very very long time are we showing our age yeah and someone I forget who told me I was setting up for a show you have to go over to the nursery and you have to tell Don your borrowing plants so I walked in never met you and and said I need borrowed plants and you gave me a strange look but you said oh I said DC TV oh okay you're all right you're okay you pass yeah and so we've worked kind of next to each other years and years of shows at DC TV borrowed plants to for the stage that was great yeah we opened in 1981 so at the time we open we were literally on the edge of town this building that that the station is in had just been built basically the same year yeah I do remember when the post office at the corner of a fifth and pole line was was the absolute edge of town of course that's no longer the case so in Yolo County nurseries are considered essential businesses yes and that is because it was interesting I woke up one morning to find that six health commissioners in the Bay Area had closed all businesses my friends in the nursery business were shut down ordered to send their workers home and they were closed for the indefinite future so we promptly as did they contacted the County Health Officer to say is there any context in which we are an essential business in Yolo County the Health Officer's immediate reply was your agricultural you help people grow food and so on that basis we were continued considered essential home do-it-yourself stores to home improvement stores were also eventually or fairly shortly thereafter considered essential and we fit in that category things that people do at home to keep their houses and yards in order so in both those categories garden centers nurseries were considered essential don't mess with ag in Yolo County that's all I'm saying no and the nurseries in the Bay Area had to jump through a lot more hoops we did of course since we remained open have to completely change the way we did business and not only making it obviously safe for our staff and for people who did come in which was very few people at that point but we had to go to a delivery mode we became the Amazon of the garden business in the local area we did 18 deliveries one day I remember that 10 to 12 was typical 40 to 60 emails a day 50 to 100 phone calls a day 10 to 12 deliveries every single day seven days a week because everyone was at home yeah and we wanted as I said we want to help you garden and it's been as you know I've come here to the DMA building a couple times a week during this whole process it's been very easy to see how busy you are you're you're crowded some days now in Yolo County the onus is on businesses to enforce the mask law so yes it is so what's that like on a daily basis people are overwhelmingly in compliance here by comparison with other communities so that's been very fortunate we've had a little pushback on it I'm happy that it's the law because I can simply say that there there are counties where it wasn't and where business owners were having to try and do it on a voluntary basis they got pushed back we've had a few people grumble about it I get to hear everybody's opinion about it that's fine they walk in if they don't have a mask I have a few that I bought from the Davis Phoenix Coalition so I can hand them and say here you go wear this with pride and they're happy with that only one or two people have been really problematic about it social distancing has been a little more challenging six feet apart is hard to maintain when you're crowding in to grab that one tomato plant and we have to keep reminding people lots of signage out there but it is a safe place to shop garden centers have the advantage being fairly open in lots of room but it is something we have to keep on people about a little bit I made myself promise I'm not going to ask you about tomatoes is it time to plant tomatoes when is it time because I know you get that question you've told me you get that question incessantly you're around from about February 1st on yeah yeah yeah but I will say this most of us in the in the nursery industry were completely unprepared for what happened next which was literally a tidal wave of excuse me metaphorically a tidal wave of demand for vegetable plants everybody who even who had never garden before people who were casual gardeners and of course the serious gardeners everybody planted a vegetable garden this year and you've been talking about the concept of victory gardens in fact you wrote you wrote one of your enterprise columns on it recently so for those of you whom who may not know back during the I guess it was the period over to people were encouraged to plant victory gardens it was a catchy name but the point was with fears of disruption in the food supply chain everyone could have at least their own source of food right Americans are not accustomed to walk into the store and seeing no chicken which happened to me a couple of times you know so people did get it was a little panicky it was also people just seeking what I call agency over their own food supply we've always had that but we are accustomed to that happening in times of economic slow down and uptick in vegetable sales this was an overwhelming demand and it actually affected the supply chains all the way back to the seed vendors that bag good suppliers there was some really serious shortages for about two to four weeks good news you can always plant another crop so the growers did catch up but there was an amazing demand in April and into May and really still continuing and has the supply chain have the issues there kind of leveled out with the plants yes seeds no bad goods sort of so that's where we have no manure what a terrible problem to have there's a manure shorted in yellow County because cows aren't the cows are still producing and it's getting into the bags it's the problem right if you can't run a facility and you can't have workers and I could see where that would be a problem that was the first issue was the growers and the baggers were also told to send their employees home so they were quickly working with skeleton crews and so it's been an interesting spring to put it mildly yeah right well let's go back to talking about jazz after dark we have just a couple of minutes so it airs tonight at eight Tuesdays at 8 p.m. what's on top coming up tonight on jazz after dark there will be some early elephants Gerald less Paul Gigi Grice art farmer to its elements I love the names in jazz Chet Baker Zoot Sims Houston person and Tito pointe with oh yeah come over tonight on jazz after dark sounds good it's always a fun ride I do want to tell you that I get interesting mail because of you too I got a really sweet card from a woman in Austin Texas last week who said I all capital I love jazz after dark I listen from Austin every week and and again that's typical yeah it's a lot of fun so if you are someone who enjoys Don's programs thanks for tuning in to him all right I want to thank you very much for stepping up and and talking to us about your business and and your music and we wish you well great to talk to you Adam thanks thanks so much Don and to all of you as I said today was episode 25 which is hard for me to believe I've interviewed almost 50 people an average of two interviews per episode over the last three months and it's been informative and kind of a wild ride and I guess I'm going to keep doing this for a while so thank you for tuning in from the KTRT studio