I’ll be running my Sandy Spring open mic which will be a mix of optimism, pessimism, activism and capitalism. Tis my Life. I definitely started them because I miss running these platforms for other people but I’ve grown worried that I still should be holding off because of COVID, or simply because maybe we’re really in the wrong space, place and time. I still believe they do positive things in any given community and my featured artist this evening certainly uses his platform as a way to rant about things that should be known (if not necessarily communicate and convince about things that should be known). I’m definitely currently still running it because I’m paid to do so. My optimism got it started, my pessimism means I’m worried. My activism says it should keep going if possible and capitalism is allowing me to do so. Reshuffle those various charm and strange-like attraction and repulsion type forces and you explain a lot of the world.
Yesterday we went and picked up our Christmas tree. I Love the smell, the act, the tradition, but I’m a little too lazy to go through the full process of going and cutting one down. We spend more and more on the things every year as markets drive the prices up and somewhere in the distant past I feel like I remember handing a man in a flannel shirt an additional twenty as a tip, thinking I was generously doubling my outlay. We brought it home, wiggled it into place to the ongoing consternation of the cat, spiraled lights around it, argued with a dead bulb. Argued with a blinking bulb. Finally got a steadily lit, non-blinking, 100% ON strand of lights glittering in the branches and started in on the ornaments.
Most were held up to Prince for his approval (he seems MUCH more interested in this process than he has been in previous years) and most have relatively recent provenance. Part of sci-fi collections or strange tour purchases. Octopuses and Star Wars figures figure heavily into the the gestalt of the tree, but we’re not stringent in our nerdery and bring in old ornaments that have History to them (my mother brought over a glass orb my grandmother had given me for my first Christmas, 46 years ago) and there are strange, hand-made crafted Wizard of Oz ornaments and there are a fair number of musical instruments…
Point of order, yes, we KNOW most all of our “cellos” are violins – the REAL question is – did the people who gifted them know? Accordions share branches with Ewoks and Krampuses chase princesses and adorning the top and looking down at it all, soon to be surrounded by succulent frogs, Grogu sees all.
Optimism and capitalism let me afford all of this, pessimism knows I’m buying into religious imagery that I do not believe in, activism? I buy local? Mostly? Who knows.
I’ve written up #GivingTuesday posts after spotting a number of similar things floating around from other non-profits (ilyAIMY, of course is NOT a non-profit but Institute of Musical Traditions is). At the last second (nearly 3 hours after they’d gone Live with it – fundmatching began at 8am) I noticed some posts about donation-matching from Meta (Facebook) and did some quick reading. Optimism says at least they’re doing SOME good. Capitalism makes me pessimistic so I read the fine print. They’ll provide matching funds for the first $2 million in donations, then they’ll add 10% to all donations for the next $6 million. So – a total of $8 million will be donated by Facebook which … some people may think sounds like a lot, and truly it’s better than nothing… I don’t question that. It’s even more than the $7 million in “matching” funds they gave out last year…
However, reading further those $7 million in funds were disbursed by 8.01am last year and I can’t imagine they lasted any longer this morning. Doing some quick math they were making nearly 10 million dollars every HOUR last year so they’d made their money back about 45 minutes later and since this year they’re making closer to 13.3 million every hour they’d made their money back in 36 minutes.
That… is… madness.
Optimism has its limits, pessimism too. Activism doesn’t scale. Only capitalism scales.
Love my tree though.
The Spring Open Mic w Robb Mapou, Kate Buckholdt, Ethan Mendick, Stephen Hunt, featured artist Juels Bland, Jeff Herbert, Susan Rodgers, Corey and Jay Stearn.
