COVID UPDATE
Dear Families,
I wanted to let you know we are monitoring the coronavirus situation closely. We are working to ensure we meet the needs of families who are having services at Arlington while protecting you, and our staff. For the foreseeable future, Arlington Media is taking the following actions to mitigate the coronavirus’ impact on covering Arlington National Cemetery Services for families:
- We are reducing the fee down to our cost, $25.00, for live web-streaming the service to families that decide not to attend due to the outbreak.
- We will no longer meet with families in the Administration Building, or the Memorial Chapel, or the Old Post Chapel.
- We will text you when we are in position, normally about 45 minutes before the service start time.
- We will increase social distancing when meeting with families after a service, so no hand shaking or exchanging physical items, like photos or business cards.
Moving forward, some families have postponed their services rescheduling our coverage for later in the year. Other families have opted to have live web-streaming so they can view the service live without having to travel to the Washington, D.C. area. Our longstanding flexible and non-punitive cancellation policies will continue while we all work together during this difficult time.
Our hearts go out to everyone impacted by this worldwide crisis. If you have additional questions, please call me at (202) 536-3000.
Please take care of yourselves and each other,
Clifford
Sunday, March 15th, 2020
COVID Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, following CDC and Arlington policies, we are able to cover all services at Arlington with video, photography, or both. We can also live web-streaming services to those who are unable to attend.
No, according to Arlington Cemetery guidance, our staff covering a service do not count towards that limit.
The fee for web streaming is $95.00. Click here to learn more about live web-streaming
Yes, upon request and in coordination with your Arlington Representative we normally take group photos at the end of the service.
What we are doing to help our communities
The AP filed a story about Arlington photographer Jon, and his wife Jenny, who are 3D printing, and donating face masks to hospitals and first responders.
Patch.com did a story about Sandy raising money for local workers by taking covid-safe front porch photos.
porchphoto.com.
Arlington Media has some serious computing power, now being used to help fight COVID.
Processing four or five services a day in 4K and taking thousands of 25+ MP images, not only generates massive amounts of data, it takes a lot of CPU/GPU power to edit and deliver these videos and photos to our families.
Working with the Washington University of St. Louis’s foldingathome.org project, our currently idle computers, and thousands of other computers worldwide are working together to help researchers find answers to overcome the COVID pandemic.
The Folding@home project is currently the fastest exaFlop computing system, and Arlington Media is proud to be a small part of this system by contributing all our excess computing resources.