Happy New Year! And warm wishes from the three small rooms that comprise my office and composing studio on the ninth floor of the Professional Arts Building in downtown Scranton, where I’ve been working almost exclusively since the outbreak of COVID-19 last March.

The pervasive mood of these coronavirus days brought to mind the photo on the right, one of my favorite images from The Sembrich Collection, dating from July, 1914. Not to compare our current crisis with the calamity of the Great War, but the emotion and pensive mood conveyed by this image seems to capture the uncertainty of our own pandemic times.