Good evening, Kibitzers! I heard from a friend on Sunday, who said she’d been quite shocked to receive two separate invitations to backyard barbecue parties for that weekend, here in New Jersey, from people she had, up to that point, believed to be sane and reasonably smart. They appeared to think that holding the large parties out in the yard made it fine.
Both she and I are extremely fortunate old white ladies, to have jobs we can do in our respective homes, and since we are both introverts, we’re pretty comfortable in here and not seeing a good reason to rush out and be an early adopter of breathing everyone else’s exhalations. (She’s having a harder time with this than I am, as she’s a pretty high-level amateur field hockey player. She said her team has Zoom practices, during which she participates in the drills by spreading a cheap outdoor carpet in her driveway and setting up tupperware containers in place of the cones.)
But I digress (as a regular practice). Early this spring, I recalled that my dad had done a thing one year during leaf-emerging season where he took a picture once a week out the back window. That series gave a good overview of how the trees leaf out. I’d love to find his series — I’m sure it’s here, but I’m also sure it’s on 35-mm slides, and so far, this has not been a long enough plague for me to be digitizing old slides. Instead, I decided to take my own series, and I present it below.
I started on Monday, April 6 — I’d been planning to do Sundays, but sometimes I was dodging around bad weather. It was a cool spring, so April didn’t show much movement.
The very earliest scrubby little trees are getting a haze of green flowers, these two weeks.
Starting to spread to the taller trees.
The morning of Sunday, May 3, already showed big progress from the previous week, and that morning was part of a very warm day. When I looked out the window the following morning, I could see it was time for another picture.
Monday, May 4, after one day of heat. POP!
Once the days get warmer, it takes off like it’s rolling downhill.
And here we are.
So, that’s the big excitement here — leaves! Anyone else? Everyone well?
I wanted to add some music, and I had something else entirely in mind (which I’ll post next week). But I realized that, what with June busting out all over and everything, I needed to ritually post Leslie Uggams’ famous live-TV performance on the Capitol lawn in Washington D.C. I can’t find a source for what year it took place (slksfca would probably know) but you can get a general idea from the look of the show and the fact that it was live AND sufficiently dependent on luck to allow a thing like this to happen. Ms. Uggams explains what went down, literally, in a much later interview at the end of the video. Bless her, what a professional.
Crashing Vor’s ongoing documentary about New Orleans in the time of Covid-19, When Care Remembered, is expected to return next week with a new episode. The YT playlist with all episodes so far is here, and here are his diaries in which the videos appeared. As a fill-in this week, he offers this short but moving dedication ceremony for the Jefferson Davis Memorial Doghouse (explanatory diary here).
Stay safe! 💙💙💙💙💙
🦠 COVID-19 🧫
I’m cutting this box way down, because we’re all familiar by now with the available information, such as it is. We know how to shelter in place; we’ve been doing it to give public health measures time to be implemented. Now, many of us are just waiting for some public health measures.
My past diaries list, where the older purple boxes still live.
Viruses on surfaces, from The Guardian.
This virus spread tracking site also has an excellent “wiki” page on virus information/misinformation, proper mask use, symptoms, etc. h/t eeff!
The Atlantic has listed their ongoing virus coverage here, and none is behind a paywall.
This excellent video explains clearly how viruses are killed by washing with soap. h/t Sara R!
CDC chart showing how to remove gloves properly to avoid contamination.
The lung exercises in this diary are still good for anyone, sick or not.
If you’d like some attractive handmade facemasks, here is a Paypal link to order a set made by Sara R and WInglion from various cotton quilt fabrics: $40 + $7.75 Priority Mail shipping for a set of 5. You can contact Sara R to discuss your preference in fabrics or special needs.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—A controversial new study suggests that the United States of America could benefit from having a President. The study has raised eyebrows by claiming that a President could be helpful in unifying a country and, in a best-case scenario, providing moral leadership. [snip]
In one of the study’s most radical proposals, it argues that a so-called Justice Department could include an Attorney General appointed by the President to uphold the rule of law.
“Additionally, a President, by scrupulously obeying the law himself, could set an example for the rest of the country,” the study claims. “As improbable as it might seem, citizens would look to the President as someone to admire and emulate in their daily lives.”…
— The Borowitz Report, at The New Yorker
If You’re Bored, Part a million:
- Make hummingbird feeders from soy sauce bottles — video.
- The Obamas interact with small children ::sigh:: — photo collage video
- If you worry that everyone at Harvard is studying full time to be an evil
genius idiot, you might like the work of HarvardTHUD, a student percussion group that plays pretty much anything one can percuss with. Here, they offer a Here Comes the Sun medley played on Boomwhackers.
- For NASA fans, their NASA JPL channel posts all kinds of interesting content. Here’s a recent video about how two astronauts upgraded the Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the ISS.
- The Frick Collection, a NYC museum/library based on the art collection of robber baron Henry Clay Frick and housed in his 5th Avenue mansion, is offering a weekly feature (live at 5 pm ET on Fridays, but viewable thereafter) called “Cocktails with a Curator”, in which a Frick curator discusses a work in the collection and also shares a cocktail recipe (the week’s recipe posted in advance). They run around 15-20 minutes. (See also the Frick’s “Travels with a Curator” series, posting Wednesdays at 5 pm ET.)
- List of 30 virtual tours of museums, zoos, aquariums, and theme parks.
- Tours of New York City museums.
- Samples of free art courses from the Museum of Modern Art.
- Free online drawing class from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Virtual-reality tours on YouTube of the Met’s impressive spaces.
- The Metropolitan Opera is still streaming operas daily. (They do not plan to re-open physically until the start of 2021.)
- For kids, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan will email you a fun activity every day — sign up at their website.
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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. 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 came out recently!) You can also buy pre-stamped business-size envelopes, also two designs.
For more info:
THESE MAIL PROJECTS ALSO HELP SUPPORT THE USPS, THE LATEST GOP TARGET!
🌟 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 you’re sad your presidential candidate wasn’t nominated (I was), please find some downticket races to get excited about. We all need each other.
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It’s been 986 days since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017. Yesterday began the THIRD hurricane season after Maria’s season. Full power has never been restored there, and many homes still have blue tarps for roofs. Earthquakes and now coronavirus have made recovery still harder. Sadly, this is the Trump model for handling any kind of disaster.
If you can help one of the organizations working to help the people of Puerto Rico or any of the subsequent disasters, please check out the diary of links.
⛈️ 🌊 💥 HURRICANE MARIA AND EARTHQUAKES 💥 🌊 ⛈️
🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
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