March 178th: 70 days until Election Day!
Good evening, Kibitzers! So many of us are under threat of some kind of disaster at the moment, it’s hard to know which direction to send worry in first! I hope everyone is safe this evening (and thereafter).
I don’t immediately remember how I got the Bob Dylan song I Shall Be Released stuck in my head. It’s been playing in there for some days now, and it’s all tangled up, I guess, with the idea of our potential release from the clutches of the person Chitown Kev quite rightly calls “The Damn Fool”, and all his evil minions. (That’s The Damn Fool’s minions; Chitown Kev is a lovely man and, if he has minions, they are surely not evil ones.)
So I just went on one of my periodic tears through YouTube, looking for different covers of this song, and there is no shortage. I put a collection of them below the fold. Perhaps you’ll enjoy them better than you would that bunch of mean crazy people shrieking to an empty hall at their “convention”. [Song lyrics HERE.]
The song lends itself to big jams and star-studded groups, and this performance from the 1978 film The Last Waltz is certainly the archetype. In addition to Bob Dylan and The Band, onstage were (in no particular order) Ringo Starr, Ronnie Wood, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Neil Diamond, Ronnie Hawkins, Van Morrison, Paul Butterfield, Eric Clapton, and Dr. John.
Bridge School Benefit shows, at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View CA, have yielded more than one star-fest. This 1999 performance features Neil Young, The Who, Pearl Jam, Sheryl Crow, and Emmylou Harris.
Here’s a performance from Farm Aid 2017, with Jack Johnson, Sheryl Crow, Jamey Johnson, and Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. A little more up-tempo, and with way more saxophone.
The Love Rocks NYC benefit is in support of iconic New York charity God’s Love We Deliver, which began in the 1980s delivering meals to AIDS patients and now serves other seriously ill people as well. At the inaugural show in the series, at the Beacon Theater in 2017, Jackson Browne was joined by Michael McDonald and the Blind Boys of Alabama.
I think I’m out of giant benefit shows, but I still have a few more good team-ups. I like the folkie-ish Avett Brothers, in part because they have a cello player who is not seated in a chair. Here, they are joined by Warren Haynes and are wise enough to give him plenty of time to solo (with the cello).
I bet you don’t even remember that Mama Cass Elliot had a TV show in 1969 — I confess I did not. She’s joined here by guests Joni Mitchell and Mary Travers.
And speaking of TV in 1969: The Smothers Brothers with guest Joan Baez.
Here’s the section of young artists I was not previously familiar with, but who do a good job!
First up, Rising Appalachia, performing in Oregon in 2018.
Ohio artist Jesse Powers has such a pretty voice!
Trevor Green brought his guitar to Zion National Park, to provide beautiful scenery while he picks.
Grace Potter performs here in a 2012 New Jersey concert in tribute to Levon Helm. I like the Hammond organ for the song.
Okay, back to more well-established musicians, some of whom didn’t have a suitable live performance on YouTube. Reggae artist and former Bob Marley backup singer Judy Mowatt, for instance.
Aaron Neville:
I was so excited to see there was a live Nina Simone performance of the song, but the sound was awful, barely audible. So we’re going with the studio track, because there is no question she has to be in here.
Back to live: Bobby McFerrin has a pretty original take on the song, as one would expect. With Atom String Quartet, 2013.
And Bette Midler has such an original take that, at first, you may feel you must have come to the wrong video. But hang on — this is just the kind of song she can sink her teeth into. This is from the 1980 concert film Divine Madness, of footage from her several 1979 concerts in Pasadena.
That really ought to have been the finale. But no one here is surprised I’m closing with the Jerry Garcia Band, right?
Stay safe! 💙💙💙💙💙
New video:
The Meidas Touch:
Really American:
Don Winslow: (It’s possible you may have to acknowledge once or twice that someone finds this “inappropriate” and you don’t mind.)
Rocky Mountain Mike:
Eleven Films:
So listen: all I know right now about helping this year’s California fire victims is the same thing we know every time about every disaster now: if we have a “FEMA”, it’s World Central Kitchen.
🦠 COVID-19 🧫
Flatten the Curve: How social distancing, hand-washing, and similar measures can help.
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.
NEW: Georgia Tech “Event Risk Assessment” map. Use the slider on the left to pick an event size, and it shows you, for every US county, the current % risk of having at least one Covid-positive person show up.
NEW: SciShow video discusses the latest information on asymptomatic infection.
New: MinutePhysics video explains how N95 masks work (it’s waaaay more subtle than you may think).
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!
And this one intelligently discusses the benefits of face masks.
If you know someone who feels wearing a mask is just too hard, maybe they need to see this.
The Washington Post offers video tips on dealing with common mask annoyances. h/t Sara R again!
New: Further discussion of masks, including some useful video and valuable tips, in Besame’s KosAbility diary.
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, see Sara’s diary here 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 (or other quantities at $8 each). You can contact Sara R to discuss your preference in fabrics or special needs.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—Calling it “hurtful and insulting,” Donald J. Trump on Friday said that Joe Biden’s pro-empathy speech at the Democratic National Convention was “deeply offensive” to the nation’s sociopaths.
Blasting Biden’s incendiary pro-compassion rhetoric, Trump said that the “roomful of sociopaths” with whom he watched the speech found it “alienating and divisive.” [...snip]
Calling Biden “a puppet of compassionate extremists,” he demanded that the former Vice-President apologize to every sociopath in the country. “Sociopaths have feelings, just not for other people,” he said.
— The Borowitz Report, at The New Yorker
If You’re Bored, Part a million:
- We’ve talked here before of opportunities to help museums and scientists with crowdsourced work, but this one is pret-ty cool: formerly enslaved people were not listed by name in the US Census until 1870, so their descendants have had a hard time learning of their families back further than that. Now, earlier handwritten records have been digitized, but The Freedmen’s Bureau Transcription Project at the Smithsonian is seeking remote volunteers to actually help transcribe these documents, so people can search this trove digitally. See today’s Black Kos for details!
- Make a snack: individual coffee-mug carrot cake microwaves in 1 minute, fits fine in those 11 oz. “So-and-so for President” mugs that don’t hold near enough coffee. See below the video for more such recipes.
- Live Mars rover cam — check out the neighborhood.
- Brewing beer at the Obama White House.
- Ukulele duet: Sultans of Swing. You might be surprised.
- Here’s Michelle Obama’s new podcast on Spotify. If you don’t have an account, you can sign up for a free preview “with occasional ads” (I have not done this, so cannot report).
- Online Arts: This list, kept current by DC Metro Theater Arts, is of arts organizations under their umbrella that are offering online performances or presentations. Although it’s all Washington DC area, cyberspace sneers at that sort of boundary.
- Samantha Bee has kindly provided information about cities that already have prominent “Defund the Police” movements, to help us contact city officials and urge them to do the right thing. There is also a link for the many of us who don’t live in such a city, to help us find contact info for our city officials just the same.
- Make hummingbird feeders from soy sauce bottles — video.
- 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.)
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🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 VOTING BY MAIL: NEW: FIVETHIRTYEIGHT HAS A NEW VOTING MAP, WHICH THEY ARE KEEPING UPDATED AS POLICIES CHANGE. GO THERE AND CLICK YOUR STATE, AND IT GIVES EXTENSIVE INFORMATION ON HOW TO VOTE THERE.
(Earlier material:) Please see this diary by “Postcards To Voters” founder TonyTheDemocrat about his stance on voting by mail. I found it pretty compelling.
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:
(Postcard v. letters: letters are to registered Dems who seldom vote, trying to persuade them voting is important. Postcards are to registered Dems likely to vote, giving them information on specific elections/candidates.)
THESE MAIL PROJECTS ALSO HELP SUPPORT THE USPS, THE LATEST GOP TARGET!
🌟 FOLLOW THE DIARIES OF Yosef 52: He posts at least once a day with tons of information and links to help us vote, get others out to vote, and support candidates, and if the last election was any guide, he will only jam in more and more info as time goes on. I highly recommend his work as a resource!
🌟 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/VP 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 has been 1,070 DAYS SINCE HURRICANE MARIA MADE LANDFALL IN PUERTO RICO ON SEPTEMBER 20, 2017. JUNE 1 BEGAN THE THIRD HURRICANE SEASON AFTER MARIA’S SEASON.
NOW, they’ve been hit by Isaias AND Laura, and they have even more damage to contend with.
Full power has never been restored there, and many homes still have blue tarps for roofs. Earthquakes (still!) and now coronavirus, the giant dust storm, AND a severe drought 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.
⛈️ 🌊 💥 HURRICANES AND EARTHQUAKES 💥 🌊 ⛈️
🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
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