Gina Harris's Blog, page 61

Music bloggery

I have been doing daily songs for about seven years. 

There was a definitely a holiday run around Valentine's Day 2012. Then (if I remember correctly) after doing some Halloween songs in 2013 I decided to keep going. I was reviewing bands then, so the daily songs gave me a way to highlight those bands, as well as exploring other themes, like Muppet Month or Opera-ctober. 

For a long time I tried to never repeat. This was easier before the first computer crash, when I lost the notes I had been keeping of which songs had been used. Still, I could often remember that certain songs had definitely been used. 

As various things started happening -- which definitely includes the dual fundraisers in June and Christmas in July and #RememberSeptember, but also various life and political events that demanded certain songs -- I did start repeating.

I feel like that has opened the door for review, and at a good time for doing it. Part of this transition is knowing what I have learned, and knowing what to keep. Also, I am still not quite ready to start doing new reviews yet.

My plan is to start reviewing old blog posts, for band reviews and for book reviews.

One of my lost files (which I have had to give up on recovering), was a spreadsheet that kept track of the bands I'd reviewed, including how many different bands there were. However, I only had the name, the number, and whether I'd seen them live.

Well, I also mostly kept track of whether the review happened because they followed me on Twitter, or if someone had recommended them, or because they were playing with a band I wanted to see for other reasons. I will remember some of those, and sometimes it will be mentioned in the review, but I may not always know.

However, I always felt there should be other information there and never quite figured out what other information. The best web link for them? Definitely. What other bands would be similar? Maybe. Where they are from? Often surprisingly complicated. Whether or not they were any good? Umm, if they weren't I tried to not say it that way, but it could be valuable information.

Now, though, now I am going to figure it out, and I am going to rebuild that spreadsheet.

I do have a new one that lists the bands I want to review and where I have kind of tracked numbers. Fortunately, I had remembered when I hit 600, and I was still reviewing then. Therefore, I can give you some numbers.

My last album review was for Chris Barron, whom I also interviewed.  That was in April 2020, before everything started falling apart. Since I had reviewed his music before, that did not change the total number of bands reviewed. That number was 651 with the Bowie Alumni.

Since then, eleven bands have followed me, and therefore must be reviewed. Some bands I know have new albums that I want to review. There's another 65 bands that I am interested in checking out for one reason or another. 

That sounds like a lot, but I was doing about 100 a year before. I don't know if I will get there again, but I am going to review these bands! Sooner or later! (Should I review English Beat?)

Since going through the reviews means I will be going through blog posts anyway, I will go through the various reading lists, and make some notes on which books were most interesting or most helpful, and what stands out.

The Friday blogs will be going over sections of my reviews. Some of that will be the actual bands reviewed, but there were other projects, like going through the material on "Greatest Guitar" songs or the Nothing Feels Good book. Some musicians held different significance. The posts will go over that review period, highlight key songs from it, and the daily songs will come from there. So that will be all repeats, but also all of the best and some really good stuff. 

After going through that, I will renew my commitment to including a wide variety of songs and finding new ones, but it will be a little more relaxed too. A good song can stand up to multiple plays.

Fair warning, that will take about four months.

Thursday posts may contain information on books or movies or other things that come up.

I may skip some weeks. Or, if there are too many songs, I may need to post about some review sections twice. If there are that many great songs, there are probably enough things to say to fill two posts.

I have accepted the uncertainty, and am excited for what is ahead, even knowing that there will be some complications.

Bloggery (and some bookery)

I have worked through feelings about the possibility of not being able to finish some things you start. It has not completely resolved the way that uncertainty can inhibit some goal setting. For example, even if I want more dancing in my life, I do not currently have a plan to incorporate it. 

Of course, you are never doing everything at once. If something goes on a break, that doesn't mean it wasn't important while it lasted, nor that it can't come back. In the moment you have to trust in what you do know, in your heart and your head.

Currently the answer for all of those political things I want to write about and keep stumbling on is to put them on hold. It stings, but I am also sure it is right. 

It is not because we finally upgraded our executive branch; there will be plenty to say about that. 

It is more the feeling that a lot of what I can say about that won't matter as much as what others will say, or what I could say about other things.

My skill set has been clarifying things for people who already pretty much get things right. It's nice, but not vital. 

I frequently see people who are getting things very wrong. Explanations and well-reasoned responses spring to mind so quickly, but I have given some of those explanations and they do not make a difference. That is not the best use of my time.

Here is some political advice from me (clearance, I guess): there is so much work to do in repairing harm that arguing with people who have chosen outrageous lies and white supremacy over the most basic decency is not going to be the best use of anyone's time. Focus your efforts on voter enfranchisement and advocacy and fighting income inequality. Focus on reading books by diverse authors and enjoying art by diverse artists. 

It has been very fashionable to say that the two main parties are the same, but that is demonstrably untrue. This administration can be worked with and that is wonderful. That's where we focus. Not winning over Trump voters. Not proving how reasonable we can be to conservatives. 

The thing is, for everything that I am passionate about -- permaculture for healing the earth, Universal Basic Income for giving people real choices about their work, health care -- there are people who know more about it. I can post what they write, with comments and endorsements, rather than writing blog posts. Since most of my social media contacts are liberals (Facebook) and progressives (Twitter), if I mainly post about things that make you face discomfort about your investment in white supremacy, I can annoy and edify everyone in 2021 without a single blog post. Dream big!

My feeling is that I need to finish my current rounds of economic and post 2016 election reading, which seems to be about 23 books. At that point, I hope I will be able to move further into understanding that theme I have in my head: De-corporatize. De-capitalize. De-colonize. That will start with reading some Fanon, Foucault, and Mbembe. After that, I don't know, but that's a fair sight down the road. It gives time for other things to resolve. 

Until then, I will be writing about emotional issues and healing. That is an area where I may know more than anyone else, at least on the topic of checking out library books and giving yourself homework from them, and in fact getting better from it. 

It's a plan.

But it's a plan that only takes in Monday through Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thursday. What will that hold?

The return of the selfies?

The other thing I started feeling pretty sure of is that I need to do #365feministselfie again.

It did not seem like a great idea, if for no other reason than that I was so relieved to be done with it the last time. Frankly, I'm glad I didn't have to capture any images of myself on some of the days that came after.

It's quaint now to remember how terrible a year we thought 2019 was, until 2020. It makes me a little nervous about the relief we have felt getting into 2021.

If this next year is as hard or harder, do I really want to be broadcasting the images of how it is grinding me down? My full humanity includes my suffering, but I would rather share the good parts. It's more fun. I would rather have less suffering going forward.

I was thinking that maybe I could take photos daily, but then only post them weekly. Melissa McEwan was a big influence on me for #365feministselfie, and that was how she did it. 

There has also been a thought (which I will go into more tomorrow) that perhaps I should post more pet pictures and flower pictures and more things to spread brightness.

I was thinking about that, and then I got the bright idea that maybe instead of using my digital camera and having to upload daily, that maybe I should install Instagram on my phone and post there.

I cannot get the app installed on my phone. 

That may be my lack of skill with technology, but also I did not successfully log in to the Instagram page first, because I don't remember what password I used. I thought a simple password reset via the Instagram page on my PC (which I am pretty good at using) would resolve that, but the button for resetting the password is grayed out.

I suspect that with enough effort and asking around I could manage it, but I am not sufficiently invested. 

I also thought that perhaps I could use Facebook on my phone, just for selfies. I worried about turning into one of those people with their faces constantly in their phone, but I am pretty good at leaving my phone in my purse in the other room. It believed I could manage.

I know my Facebook password -- that wasn't the problem -- but I couldn't make that work on my phone either.

At that point I decided I was probably better off just using my old method. Now the pictures won't upload.

I started on my birthday, Sunday. That way, I will have completed 365 days right as I am turning 50. Wouldn't it make more sense to document that year? Maybe I will; who knows? For now I have two photos trapped on my camera. My computer refuses to recognize the various upload attempts.

I believe this is a cable problem. My computer is dying again, so I can't rule out other issues, but I am pretty sure it's the cable. I can test that more, but given the knowledge that this computer is on its last legs, and remember how devastating that hard drive crash three years ago was, current efforts are focusing on data backups.

So maybe the first selfies posted will happen a week at a time because that will be when I first manage an upload. I would be fine with that.

If that gets me into a weekly pattern, then theoretically if terrible things happen I will have a gap between showing it on my face and posting that face to the internet.

I hope there is joy too.

For all of us.

Moving into 2021: What I know

I kept going back to last Monday's post and how messy it felt. 

Ultimately it was trying to do too much. Most of it was about the things that I don't know yet and the frustration that comes with that. However, there was a section of information that I know very well mixed in with it; that was just in the wrong place.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2021/01/mourning-with-those-who-mourn.html

Taking care of that felt good, but also it reminded me that there are things that I do know, and that can be a focus.

The surest thing I know about how I need to be different going forward is that I am still weird about taking credit for things and I need to get over that. 

No matter how much I have improved in being able to recognize my strengths and weaknesses, it's still weird to acknowledge those strengths to another person. That it just social conditioning. 

Well, it is also habit, but it is habit because of social conditioning. 

Another thing that has become pretty clear is that I have gotten many strong messages not to conform, which will be more important in other posts. For now, I need to give up worrying that if I say "Thank you" when someone tells me something good about me, that they will think I have a big head. If that was a real concern of theirs they would probably refrain from giving me the compliment or load it up with some kind of negation. 

In addition, if someone thanks me for something I did, I need to say "You're welcome" instead of trying to convince them that this thing I did for them didn't matter. What if that carries the message that they don't matter that much? Could stressing the lack of effort imply that they would not have been worth effort? I don't want to do that.

So, this is kind of for me, but may equally be for other people. Somehow we have gotten things twisted up where it is only allowed to know how you are bad, and not how you are good. That is especially for women, though not exclusively. 

Let my "nope" be resounding. NOPE!

I admit it is still weird for me when people say I am nice or kind or have a good heart, because sometimes I can feel so impatient and mean. There is still some value in generally not acting on that.

Possibly another thing that helps here is that I have done some exercises in forgiveness and meditation. I have also contacted a few people where I felt some guilt over things that I said or didn't say. 

It appears that I have not done a lot of harm over the course of my life. I'm sure there are things I didn't realize (I still participate in capitalism), but I have tried pretty consistently to be kind and ethical and responsible, and I am grateful for that. It takes some weight off.

There is still a lot of uncertainty and one thing that I think I know I should do, but for which I am encountering technical difficulty. 

That does give me some clarity about my next two blog posts.

My 2020: Displaced

My first two posts in this series were (I thought) pretty well organized. Even though both covered a fair amount of ground, they were each about one thing.

Monday's post? Not so much. Last week's posts were about things that I do mostly understand now, and this week is about things that I am still figuring out.

Take me writing: I knew that I had a problem when a Twitter friend asked where to find my novels. I did show her, but I also tried to talk her out of reading them, which I believe I did successfully. She seemed willing to buy them, and I was like, "Oh, don't do that."

My saving grace is that I didn't actually say that they were bad, and I don't think that they are. I believe that they are mostly good, if not amazing. However, I don't know where they fit.

They are definitely not literary fiction, and I don't care about that because most of that has no appeal for me. There's a big market for YA, but my characters are aged a bit past that. If you are looking at an older market, my novels are probably too short. (Though they are not a bad length for YA, which is often short unless you have a magical savior narrative; those books can get pretty thick.)

There is a market for short erotic fiction, and that could especially work for the vampire series, but it would be highly inappropriate for the singles ward series, and not really appropriate for me. I totally could write very hot prose if I wanted to, I am sure, but that doesn't feel like the right fit.

(Not to mention that everything is through Amazon now, even some of the tools that previously were not, and I have some ethical concerns about that.)

So I am not quite sure where my books fit from a marketing perspective, and I find that also reflects my concerns about their writer.

After spending four years as a broke care giver, I actually did expect to have some issues adjusting. It was much more consuming than a regular job, and yes, I surrendered bits of my identity along the way. 

I mean, I am definitely still me, but parts of me had gone dormant. It hasn't been great for confidence.

I still believe things will turn out, but I am still frustrated that I don't know how. Realistically those first three months without a job were probably necessary. It worried me when my applications weren't getting any responses, but now that I have had some interviews I can see that I have been able to display some energy and personality that was not available earlier. 

If that delay had a purpose, maybe this one does as well, though not knowing what it is lets me second-guess everything I do.

What I have been able to remember, though, is that you can't always do everything at once, no matter how much of it is good, or could be.

If I am not reviewing music and interviewing people now, at least I have done it, and I am glad for those experiences. I hope I get there again.

I also look forward to having money again. If love of money is not the root of all evil (that is probably more the love of power, and love of money ties into that), lack of money can still be a great source of stress.

I would be very happy to not ever have that stress again.

But also... https://smile.amazon.com/Gina-Harris/e/B00OC0N218

My 2020: Reorientation

The ironic thing about learning that Mom is really into dancing now is that shortly before that happened I found myself thinking that I wanted to dance.

I'm sure it was part of a greater desire for fun, but it was strange that dancing was what came to mind; it had been such a long time. 

It's possible that giving up the music reviews was a factor, in that I missed connecting with music. However, maybe how long it had been since I'd danced was the point.

One of my great joys after I turned 14 was church dances, once a month at the Beaverton Stake Center. My last two terms of college I took Ballroom dancing, and loved it. I never saw the tape of my final (a tango), but I was told that I did something with my shoulder that embodied elegance and grace. That is one of the better compliments I have gotten.  Also, remember those ward talent shows where I performed stand up comedy? I also choreographed three different dance numbers. (There was almost a fourth, but we had creative differences.)

If even longtime readers don't know about my enjoyment of dancing, well, I had lost touch with it myself. Letting go of things that were for me had been a key feature of my life.

There are different factors that fit into that, but what I really need to write about is losing myself and depression. They were not the same thing, but they sure didn't help each other.

I have definitely been depressed. 

I've been reluctant to say that, feeling like it would be taking something away from those people who have brain chemistry working against them. Being sad isn't the same as being depressed, I know.

Now I worry that when we focus on brain chemistry and medication for that, we are not paying enough attention to the life circumstances that may be negatively affecting the brain chemistry. I worry that there are people being helped some by medication that could be helped even more by therapy, yes, but also things like living wages and fair housing and an equal and supportive society.

Yes, I see that medication is simpler.

After college I didn't have anyone to do ballroom dancing with. I could have gotten into line dancing, probably, but that was rife with country music. Sure, popular music had gone downhill, but I wasn't that desperate. Dancing just became less of an option, but there were still other things to do.

What mattered more over time was the increase in responsibility and decrease in support, which also was a big factor just as I as graduating from college.

So as money became worse and my mother needed more, this was over a pretty long time period, but it made a difference. It made a difference in how well I cared for myself, and how much leisure or recreation I could find, and it did in how I valued myself because of how I was prioritizing other needs over mine. It certainly did after the layoff, because how could I have a right to prioritize myself when I wasn't even earning money? Income is the surest sign of virtue in a capitalist society.

Here are some things that were important about that:

I knew I was doing the right thing in focusing on caring for my mother. It was impressed strongly on me at the start, there were many confirmations during, and the fact that no matter how hard it was that we never lost the house or went hungry... all of that confirmed for me that I was doing the right thing.There were grace notes here and there that sustained me at different times. I noticed these things, and our survival, and I practiced gratitude for that.I took lots of training and participated in a study about support for caregivers so I was very aware of the things to do and watch out for.
I will not deny that it took some effort, but I did work out respite with my sisters, and my cousins on my mother's side have been endlessly supportive emotionally, even if they have not been able to help physically.
I had good friends who remembered me and regularly checked on me.

Despite all of that, I was depressed. I had many things pressing down on me, and getting out from under them felt impossible. 

I wasn't able to pray it away, despite praying a lot. 

It is wonderful finding these parts of myself again, where I am laughing naturally, or singing again. I haven't broken into a dance number, but yeah, I kind of forgot that I used to sing a lot more.

I don't know if it would have been possible for me in my circumstances to do better. Like, could I have remembered to sing more, and to keep doing things for myself, with no other changes in circumstances, just me being more conscientious? I don't know. There is a limit to how much anyone can do.

Now, if we imagine that more equal and supportive world, with better health care and Universal Basic Income, I know I could have done better than that. Whether that would mean that I would still have a 401K or that I would not need one, I am not sure, but I could go for either. Could my A1C not have gone up two points? Because that would have been nice. Not having gone into foreclosure twice would have been awesome.

It is wonderful to find myself being kind of cheerful again, and terrible that what I needed to be cheerful was my mother out of the house. 

Knowing that I was doing the right thing, and that I am still trying to, is good and I would not be doing well without that, but nonetheless there has been damage to my health and credit rating but probably not so much my social life... there is a lot that needs to be rebuilt.

Part of that is even figuring out what I am supposed to be doing now, and can reasonably manage to do. 

For all of those years doing customer service and document processing, the dream was always to be a paid writer. I have written a lot, and the odds of earning money for it have gone way down. I am not even sure that I am good at it now, whereas I was relatively sure before. But beyond that, even if that's what I want to do, how do I get paid? Because I don't think I can bear working in a call center again.

Job hunting is a cruel and discouraging process.

The encouraging thing is I still like myself, at the end of it all. I was too exhausted to remember that for a while after, but I see that again.

What do I do with that, precisely? 

Having been led thus far, I have to believe that a way will appear.

My 2020: Compensating

I tried posting yesterday; there is a long draft that may be two separate posts or something. 

Then today I thought there was no way I could post, because the already terrible state of the world increased, and even with signs of hope how could I think of anything else?

Funny thing about that, though, is that one of the big problems I have been needing to grapple with is that I can get really stalled on doing things if I am not sure I can finish them. 

That was a part of the issue I mentioned with distraction in the last post, where there are so many things that need addressing, and I won't be able to do it all, or even finish this one, and I get stuck on that.

Somehow, being overwhelmed by this world's rapid and psychotic pace may be a very appropriate topic for today.

My shrinking capacity for writing wasn't just a political/police brutality/global pandemic thing either. It started with taking care of Mom through changing needs. There was a time when there was a two hour block of television that she would watch pretty reliably. That gave me a chance to get things done. I used to be able to depend on her spending some time on housework every day. The quality was going down, but it still made her happy, and then she was less interested and also the quality went down to where I was starting to worry about bacteria spread. That not only took away one of her activities; it added to mine. 

I did feel that before, but everything got worse in 2020. That was probably the combination of her decline and the accursed presidency fanning the flames of the racism and white supremacy this country and its police force were built on and then politicizing the global pandemic so that people would willingly spread instead of fighting it, turning the modern Republican party into a more obvious death cult than it has ever been before, though really it's been in the works since at least Goldwater, if not Thurmond.

That all of those other things were still in place after Mom was moved into care probably did not help with my dealing with all of the built-up exhaustion and depression, but I was never just going to spring back, regardless.

(That's what I was trying to write about yesterday, but I am apparently not yet able to write concisely and helpfully about it.)

I definitely read more slowly than I wanted to in 2020. I blogged less. I stopped reviewing bands. Those were all losses. I did get a few interviews for the blog and I loved doing that, but I couldn't keep up with it either.

At the same time, I can look back and see that while doing less I was also making it more meaningful. 

I swear it wasn't deliberate. I combined a double fundraiser with the daily songs because I felt bad about Blues Fest being canceled, and I knew that there was more than one charity where funds were needed. 

Knowing there were far more than two charities needing help is what led to Christmas in July songs and highlighting service opportunities with that, and it was during that July that I started envisioning #RememberSeptember.

And then we sent a lot of people Christmas cards.

It was all merely responding to perceived needs, and that aggregating. The daily songs were the only thing I could stay really committed to, but they also became more.

Speaking of not being able to finish things, after Trump's inauguration I started reading things that I thought were relevant. I made a list. I was going to become so educated on how we got here, and then I was going to blog about these things and help other people understand and we were going to do better!

Initially, I think I started with about 31 books in mind. I have read at least 51 that I count for that, plus a lot of supplemental other sections that add up to at least another 51 books, and there are at least 16 more books not yet read that are specifically part of that list, plus some concepts to spend some more time on. 

I am not done learning. I blogged some things, but certainly not everything that I hoped and meant to.

However, Biden won, as did Warnock and Ossoff, and I don't think an armed mob breaking into the Capitol with a shocking lack of restraint by the police will be able to change that. We're not where I want us to be as a country, but I was not going to be the one to get us there, really. I know my posts help some people, but those people are usually already thinking pretty clearly.

I guess that gives a double lesson for this year. One (which I sort of already knew but maybe I still fight it sometimes) is that thinking you know how things are going to turn out is pretty delusional. There are so many possibilities, and so many other actors. That lack of clarity and control doesn't mean you don't have choices, and it means making good choices is even more important. It is still a source of frustration, at least for me.

The second lesson, then, is closely related, and that you need to let it go. If something would be a good thing to finish, it may very well be a good thing to start, even with no guarantees.

This is hard for the blogger who tends to envision content in 3- and 6-part series, but if the way I learn these things is in connected but separate books, then a blog post that focuses on one concept can still be a good thing, even if the posts on related concepts don't ever get written (or don't get written until several months later). 

In 2020 I have learned better how to accept my shortcomings, because there has been no hiding from them.

My 2020: the biggest change

I haven't posted here for a month and a half.

(Georgia! Vote Warnock and Ossoff!)

A big part of my silence (and I still have several half starts in my drafts folder to prove it) is that regardless of whatever felt important to write about, there were always new developments coming in. There were new new facets to the previously considered topics and completely new topics and there was very little that was not critically important.

2020 was just a lot, you know?

Also, realistically I was still recovering from care-giving and depression. I tried to perform like I was recovered too soon, especially because I had a hard time admitting my actual level of impairment.

Nonetheless, a lot happened. I am proud of a lot of it. I want to build on top of it. I am still sorting it out.

2020 actually started out fairly well for me. I was finally getting paid for caring for my mother. It was 22 hours a week pay for what was realistically more like... well it wasn't a full 168 hours per week, because she was pretty good about sleeping through the night, and we had worked out respite where I was getting out for at least 6 hours a week.

I'm not saying the compensation was great, but I was suddenly able to replace shoes that were falling apart, or to go see a movie (cruel joke oncoming, but until a little into March, that was great). It was a huge thing. 

Just before going out ground to a halt, I had a great night out with a friend. We went to dinner and the staff was offering us things off the menu, and free dessert, and then at the concert we had great seats and talked to one of the musicians after; it was really cool! And I paid for dinner because she has been buying me dinner for four years! Amazing.

Then things went full pandemic. Respite choices became severely limited, right along with ways to amuse and distract my mother. That probably did not cause the next devolution, even if it didn't help. There have been changes and downgrades all along this ride, but she did lose her attachment to this house and these family members, and even these pets, and then she needed a lot more stimulation. It was time to look at memory care.

Yes, "I" was memory care. What do I say? We put her into a home? This was a home too. It just didn't meet her needs anymore. 

That has been a hard thing. There are two things that make me extremely grateful.

One is that there was absolute clarity. As strongly as I knew that I need to stop job hunting and focus on caring for her in 2016, that is how much I knew that it was time to get her into care. Even a week before, someone asked me about that and it wasn't the right thing to do. Then it was. It happened that we found an opening that has been wonderful for her quickly.

Now, quickly means that we got her moved in about six weeks, with some questions and scrambling for solutions, but I know many people have had a harder time. We were blessed.

It turns out that me briefly getting paychecks was nice, but the most important part of that was having gotten Mom onto Medicaid, which was required for reimbursed care. It meant that we could afford a memory care facility, which otherwise would have been impossible. 

Seriously, at other times we had talked about the feasibility of me going back to work and using that income to pay for care; I have never had any job that would pay that much. Given their expenses, it's not that the price is wrong. This place is great and she is doing well there. But it is a growing need that will be out of the reach of many. We need better systems.

Speaking of those systems, one issue with writing about myself has been fear of doing more than hinting obliquely at any changes in income or household. I was filling out reams of paperwork trying to keep everyone safe and with a roof over our heads. It felt like any shift in balance would throw us to the wolves. I repeat, we need better systems.

So that has been the biggest change, and one that I could never have predicted. I had truly thought that the next change would be Mom's death. I had done research and made notes so that when that happened I would know what to do and be able to handle it. 

Somehow, I am no longer caring for her, and yet she is alive and happy. She is dancing all the time, because of exercise classes and happy hours, but we didn't even know that was her inclination. That was a change in her too, but it seems like a good one.

Another vision I'd had was that perhaps if we did move her into care, I would feel like I should visit all the time, so there would be a regular job and then visiting would be like a second one. Instead, we can't really visit, but it seems to be better that way. 

It will change again, too. There will be more things that hurt along the way. Still, after all the agonizing that there could be something never envisioned, and better... how did that even happen?

Of course that means I am no longer getting paid, and so I am trying to re-enter the workforce during a pandemic. It's a challenge, but we've survived a few of those.

Next things next: Georgia Senate Runoff

I totally get anyone who is concerned with Trump not conceding the election, despite being significantly outvoted popularly and electorally. The court packing he did is an issue, on multiple levels. However, at this point it seems most likely that there will be a successful transition of power, and then a huge mess to clean up.

There are many things to talk about for that cleanup, but there is something that can be done before January 20th to help improve cleanup operations, and that comes down to the Georgia Senate Runoff.

Many of the issues we have had - with conservative court packing and with holding up relief bills - are strongly rooted in Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's devoted obstruction of all that is good. Rush through an unqualified hack in the place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg less than a month before an election after refusing to seat Merrick Garland because an election was a year away? Sure! Do it while holding up relief packages, minimum wage increases, and voting rights protections? Love it!

But what if McConnell did not lead a majority?

Republicans currently have fifty seats in the Senate. January 5th can determine whether that becomes a majority of 52, or a tie with 50 Democrats and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.

It is important to understand the role that voter suppression has played in Georgia politics. Biden's electoral win in Georgia is largely a result of increased voter registrations, and voters' commitment to showing up early and staying in the lines no matter how long. Olivia Pearson, a volunteer who was giving people rides to polling locations, was arrested on trespassing charges for doing so.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/11/georgia-black-voting-rights-olivia-pearson.html

No, it is not technically illegal to give people rides to the polls, but there are still people who will arrest you for it.

In fact, this runoff election is a product of laws that were designed to keep election winners white, but it is an opportunity now, and can be a great thing.

Next steps for this key election are getting out the votes. That includes registering voters whose eighteenth birthdays fall between the registration deadline for the November 3rd election, and the registration deadline for the January 5th election.

It includes phone banking, text banking, and sending postcards to voters to remind them that this election is happening, it is important, and their voice matters.

And all campaigns can use money.

Georgia voters needing absentee ballots can request them at https://ballotrequest.sos.ga.gov/.

Here is a link with many donation options. Please focus on the candidates' own sites, or sites like Fair Fight Georgia. The Lincoln Project does not need your money:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90572782/how-to-donate-to-the-georgia-senate-runoff-election-7-ways-to-help-the-races-before-january

This may be the easiest site for donation: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/georgiasenate

Here are two links with volunteering opportunities. You have choices:

https://politicalcharge.org/2020/11/11/how-to-help-win-the-2-georgia-senate-runoff-elections/ 

https://lifehacker.com/how-you-can-impact-the-georgia-senate-runoff-election-1845620812?

I personally am thrilled that text banking is a thing, and that phone banking is not the only option. For older voters, phone calls or post cards are probably going to be preferred. That's okay; there are many people to reach, and many ways to reach out to them.

Which way works for you?

Related links: 

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/stacey-abrams-voter-suppression-effort-made-difference-georgia/story?id=74146679

Recalibrating

I meant to post yesterday. 

Actually, I meant to do a lot of things yesterday, some of which got done and some did not. Things came up that I needed to deal with, so I did.

I knew what I wanted to post, and I thought I could do that today. It turns out that after Thursday I will have more to say on that. It is probably better that my plans were disrupted.

For the blog, I am being pulled in two different directions.

The things that came up were related to my job hunt. It is important to respond to those, but also, once I am working that is going to take time. I am not sure what level of blogging frequency I will be able to maintain. I have worked full time and blogged daily before, but I was younger, and not as broken down.

Obviously, I could adjust my schedule, posting less frequently but still regularly. I don't know enough at this time to figure that out.

Also - completely counterintuitively - I feel a strong need to start doing interviews again. These would not necessarily be musician interviews, as I am not reviewing music again yet.

That idea comes more from how so many news sources - especially the New York Times, but not exclusively - keep wanting to hear from Trump voters over and over again, especially when that demographic is so persistently white. There are more people who voted for Biden, and more who voted for Clinton, and frankly, I find them a lot more interesting. They may not have all conquered the internalized structural racism, but there's a level of embracing required for Trump support that I find repugnant, and I do not believe consistently elevating them is the answer for any decent question.

The first problem with this is that it would be adding complication when I am having a hard time keeping up with what I am already doing. It does sound a lot like something I would do though.

The other issue is that I don't have that many readers. I had more when I was posting more regularly. So yes, sure, let's bring other people into it so that 27 people can see what they have to say!

I do believe it's important, but I question how much difference my efforts would make. Again, doing it anyway does sound a lot like me.

For the record, what I was going to post about yesterday was political, not job-related. 

Other than blogging, most of the things I had planned were outdoors and weather-related, trying to get them done before the rain started. I meant to do a lot more garden clean-up, but then found it was time to harvest the potatoes. Other tasks will have to wait.

Here is a picture of some super fresh potatoes.