artsyhonker / Kathryn @artsyhonker@sonomu.club

Found out yesterday that a friend from church was found dead in her flat. She'd had what she thought was a cold and stayed home, then stopped returning calls. Vicar went round to check on her, had to get police to break in. We don't know of any next of kin but if she has any they'll be in Australia. Church was basically her family. She was incredibly welcoming to me and it made a difference.

Of your charity, pray for the repose of the soul of Ramona Adams.

Fear not to enter his courts in the slenderness
of the poor wealth thou wouldst reckon as thine:
truth in its beauty, and love in its tenderness,
these are the offerings to lay on his shrine.

OK, transcription largely done, just waffling around in MuseScore so it will be readable by humans who aren't me.

I am so tired.

Soup kitchen at church has served 4000 meals (and the food parcels to go with them) since start of March lockdown.

Kyrie eleison.

Nine Lessons and Carols from my church is at 18.00 GMT on YouTube.

This is not Carols from King's, this is what our small community can put together during a very difficult year.

https://youtu.be/wzfSabRFaG4

Next task: record my reading, and supply lyrics for music, for my church's online carol service. I stayed up very late last night messing around with multi-track stuff.

Testing a thing.

Viva Voce today. 16.00 BST.

Currently alternating between worry and calm, which is probably fine.

Save your "I won't vote for an imperfect candidate" ideological preciousness for some time when perfect candidates are available, eh?

Elections are absolutely about choosing the lesser of two evils, and you aren't morally compromised by seeing that practical compromise and engaging with it to try to get the least-bad option.

Purity culture is bullshit.

And yeah, climate change keeps going, and is the most urgent problem.

But probably the most effective thing *anyone* can do about that right now in the US is work to ensure Trump doesn't get re-elected. Those of us not in the US can help support that too.

That does, in fact, make the rest of 2020 pretty important. There is, in fact, a way to make 2021 be probably better, on balance, and it is a very 2020-focused effort.

People aren't all "let's just try and get through 2020" because they believe 2021 will be magically better, they're doing it because they are overwhelmed and need to mentally parcel out the time to remain functional. People do this all the time. Sometimes I have to do it day by day. I do consider the longer term, but I can only meaningfully plan what I can do *today*.

You aren't saying anything profound, unknown or kind with your "it's not just about 2020!" hot takes.

national borders are racist

Very gently trying to get bck into "real life" after submitting my PhD thesis.

Can't get too stuck in just yet, as I've still got the viva voce to go (probably end of October).

Simultaneously feeling quite a bit of freedom and quite a bit of overwhelm. I've put off *so many* shiny things that I want to do, I don't quite know where to start. And I'm way behind on general life maintenance stuff.

But please save your outrage about governments giving companies money to create jobs and the jobs not being as many as you think they should be.

Giving 500 people a job for a month is next to useless: nobody gets back on their feet in that time, it just puts off the inevitable. Giving 56 people a job for 108 months is likely to make a real difference to those people.

That's not me being a Tory (I'm really, really not), it's just arithmetic.

Now, personally, I think a better way for a government to boost the economy is to just... give people the money directly, or maybe create the jobs directly. I don't really care that much whether it's in welfare payments, or spending on infrastructure, or one-off booster payments, or what.

But this only really works if people will then spend that money in ways that boost the economy. This is hard to ensure, especially in a recession when people avoid risks.