Good evening, Kibitzers! I think I spent more time on the nice purple Covid-19 box than I did on what is nominally the body of this diary, so, I guess, enjoy it all and I hope you can glean a few tips from the box!
This diary has zero to do with Proud Mary, btw, and I’d like you to know that I resisted adding the words after “wheel” to the title all the way up until 3 hours before posting time. At that point, I added Crashing Vor’s excellent New Orleans video to the end and that was it, I was powerless to stop typing.
In one of those YouTube wanderings that happen sometimes, I came across this remarkable dance.
The dancer is Angelica Bongiovonni, and the giant hoop is called a Cyr Wheel. It’s named after its developer, Daniel Cyr, a co-founder of Montreal circus-arts troupe Cirque Éloize. ("Éloize" is said to mean "heat lightning" in Acadian French.)
The scene in the video is from their show Cirkopolis, which is informed by the classic 1927 Fritz Lang film Metropolis.
(This is the trailer for a 2010 Metropolis restoration, just to show the visual style.)
I have to say that the Metropolis villain Rotwang, seen mad-scientisting above, has quite an Emilio Lizardo vibe.
Anyway! Other videos of, and concerning, Cirque Éloize performances can be found on their YT videos page. Here’s just one more: the troupe wanders Montréal in their own special way — you know, like in the before times when people just went places, only more fun to watch.
In Covid-19 news, it develops that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson are feeling much better. Or at least, she is.
Song she’s singing.
Our friend Crashing Vor posted part 1 of his in-progress New Orleans Covid documentary this afternoon. Title refers to New Orleans’ nickname, “The City That Care Forgot”. It’s always in order to go to YouTube and give him a thumbs-up.
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE MARIA 🌊 ⛈️
💥 AND 2020 EARTHQUAKES 💥
916 days since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico
on September 20, 2017.
Puerto Rico and USVI are still struggling to recover.
Now,a swarm of earthquakes has added to their misery.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI. Denise continues to collect resonant tweets on the subject, and post them in comments daily in the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup (APR) and twice weekly in the Black Kos diaries, to make them easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
Find links to help HERE (including earthquake relief).
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🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
Enormous bushfires burned 25.5 million acres in Australia during that continent’s summer. The fires forced widespread evacuations, destroying over 3,000 homes, and were large enough to generate their own weather, including fire tornadoes and dry lightning that set more fires. Over 1 billion (with a B) wild animals are now estimated to have died.
Find links to help HERE.
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🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
This piece from Wonkette is a pretty concise explainer about how climate change, overdevelopment, and greed are fueling California fires. (Spoiler: failure to rake the forest doesn’t figure into it.) Even your dumbest FB friend can probably get something out of it. Meanwhile, people are still struggling from the previous year’s fires, joined by victims of the 2019 fires.
Find links to help HERE.
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⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
Denise Oliver Velez posts what news there is on the Bahamas in the APR thread. This Black Kos thread has coverage of the scale of the damage.
Find links to help HERE.
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🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 VOTING BY MAIL: Some states (New Jersey is an example) don’t have vote-by-mail as their standard procedure, but issue absentee ballots with no questions asked. Now would be a good time to check into that for your state and those of your Democratic friends and relations — Google can help. In the case of NJ, one has to download, fill out, and mail in an application. I plan to switch over to automatically getting a mail-in ballot for every election from now on, which is one of the options here. No one who does not have to touch buttons in a voting booth should be doing so!
🌟 POSTCARDING: If you are looking for a way to help and can’t do things like canvassing or phoning, consider hand-writing postcards asking people to vote. These are reminders to likely Democratic voters. It’s easy because you’re given specific talking points from the campaign you’re working with, so you don’t have to think up what to say, and no one will be coming back at you with questions. And if you like to color, you can get creative decorating the cards. Note that you are responsible for buying postcards (and stamps if you don’t use pre-stamped ones.) Postcard stamps are 35 cents each; pre-stamped postcards from USPS are 39 cents each; two different pretty designs. If you can spend a little more, the two postcarding sites below sell their designs; or, searching the phrase “postcards to voters” on Amazon will show you many designs.
To get started:
🌟 PERSONALIZED LETTERS: Similarly, you can do more good than you might expect by writing personalized letters (from a template) to Democrats who are unlikely voters, adding a brief personal statement about why you VOTE EVERY TIME. Studies have shown this can boost turnout by enough to make a difference. As with postcards, you get names/addresses for these voters in targeted districts from the website, fill in the letters, address/stamp/fill the envelopes, but then, you hold them and mail them on Oct. 27, a week before election day! Note that, as with the postcards, you are responsible for buying envelopes, paper (no special paper required), and stamps. First class letter stamps are 55 cents each. (A new Gwen Ifill stamp just came out!)
For more info:
🌟 CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED, REPEAT REGULARLY, AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!! FIGHTING VOTER SUPPRESSION STARTS AT HOME!
- Many folks here have been surprised to find that their or a family member’s registration has mysteriously disappeared, even though it had been active. Don’t wait until too late to catch and correct this bullshit.
- HEADCOUNT.ORG will direct you to your state’s Department of State/Division of Elections (or similar) webpage, which is the horse’s mouth, as it were.
- Or, google something like “am I registered to vote” plus your state, and go to your state government’s page directly.
🌟 If you can do more, do it! These are just things you can do at home at 3 am. Some of us have the wherewithal to do more, and we should! No one is coming to save us. Act accordingly.
Remember we need the House and Senate, or no president will be able to help us. If your presidential candidate isn’t nominated, please find some downticket races to get excited about. We all need each other.
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