Watching The Plot Against America on HBO almost a month after an attempted coup and after 4 years of a Trump presidency was a traumatic experience. And I couldn’t look away. David Simon knows how to make some great art.
“It can’t happen here? No, it is happening here!”
All bark and no bite makes Mario a nice young man you might want to introduce to your parents one day.
Last April, while the world was in lockdown and all the schools in Montana were closed, our school principal asked me if I would help him coordinate a school-wide music video project. At the time, there was a #DancingPrincipal challenge making its way across schools in Montana, and our principal thought it would be a fun project for our kids and our community to participate in as a distraction from the grim news crowding everyone’s psyche. I agreed and the above music video is the result of everyone’s efforts.
I gave the principal rough directions to send out in his email to everyone, but mostly, the kids and the parents had full creative control over what they shot. The result was, I think, amazing. I loved receiving everyone’s submissions, especially at a time when it had been weeks since I had seen any of them in person, and I had even more fun dropping each clip into my editing software and watching it in sync with the music. I finished editing the final project on Easter Sunday, and I posted it to our school Facebook page that day.
In the end, the reception was incredible. It has been watched over 14 thousand times, and it has hundreds of likes and shares. It was one of those things that made the early parts of the pandemic seem bright and hopeful, like things might not be as bad as they eventually became. I’m posting this now because I’m starting to feel that hope again. The world has never produced vaccines this effective this quickly, and even though there are multiple variants of the virus infecting people all over the world, it seems that these vaccines work against those, too. We have a president that actually believes in science and in the power of a functioning government, and it seems like his goal of getting 100 million people vaccinated in 100 days will not only be reached but surpassed.
I’ve had this dark cloud hanging over me for so long that I’m afraid of letting myself feel like this, but sometimes I just have to let go and let myself feel happy.
Winter vibes.
Made a detour on my way to work today.
Met some guys who planned a morning of ice fishing. It was 16° out, so I wished them luck.
Took a few photos of the sunrise and the mountains, got back into my Jeep, and drove to work. It was a very lovely morning.
I stopped taking photos, especially macro photos, and that has made me sad. I asked a friend the other day where all the bugs have gone, and she said there are no bugs during winter. So I looked it up on the internet: Where do insects go during winter? Thought this was cool.
Normal People on Hulu was just as good as the book, in its own way. I’m both in awe and in tears. It hits a melancholy note that reverberates throughout my current life’s circumstances. I love art like this so much.
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson should be required reading for everyone on the planet. The book is endlessly quotable, but this one jives with my current life philosophy:
Even the longest lived of our species spends but a blink of time in the span of human history. How dare anyone cause harm to another soul, curtail their life or life’s potential, when our lives are so short to begin with?
Highly highly recommended.
I’ve slept an average of just a few hours every night for the past week because of my noisy neighbors. After talking to them and my landlord on Thursday, things have settled down enough that I slept for almost 9 hours last night. I needed it, and my heart needed it, too:
James Kochalka, via Austin Kleon:
It’s been my experience that if you’re a creative person, and you’re good at one thing, you’re probably good at another thing. If you’re good at drawing, you might be good at writing, too. If you’re good at writing, you might be good at playing music, too. If you’re good at playing music, you might be good at pottery. If you’re good at playing guitar, you might be a good dancer! In order to create, there’s some little thing you have to let happen inside yourself, of just letting yourself be free. If you can turn that little switch on inside yourself in one medium, you can probably do it in another medium.
I agree with this, but I want to add that it doesn’t just happen. You do have to work for it, but I firmly believe that if you’re not having fun during the journey, then you won’t enjoy the destination.
Page 33 of 90