COVID-19 Journal: Day 80

Around the world in 80 days. I think writing this thing for 80 days straight is the only thing I've done for 80 days straight apart from eat breakfast for... ever?

My cat rolled in dirt today:


You can see that he's collected dust efficiently since he was small:

Napping

Today I discovered the work of Paul Rucker via Honor Harger. He also goes by @blackcellist on Twitter. He's a visual artist, composer, musician and TED Fellow. He also collects objects of slavery. I would like to meet him. I can only imagine the work he's done to build his collection about slavery and the KKK. Such objects of hate and power.

Here's a lecture Mr. Rucker gave at TED 2018 in Vancouver. It's an intense seven minutes and amazing work.



In 2015, he made one of those robes every week. You can see the camouflage one in the background there, to which he says: "Racism has the power to hide. And when it hides, it's kept safe."

Photo by Ryan Stephenson
The silhouette of a KKK robe is unmistakable, with its ominous, hooded outline. It’s a stark reminder of one of the ugliest parts of America’s past — a past that has been bubbling to the surface again in recent years. That’s why multimedia artist Paul Rucker decided to create more than 80 of those garments, using nontraditional fabrics and an artisan’s craftsmanship. 

An artist’s slavery relics and reimagined KKK robes show us the reality of systemic racism 
He's changing what's "normal". I fucking hate normal. It can be so dangerous. Psychopaths like the Mumbling Cheeto Fascist can do damage in normal. Like when they have absolutely no factual basis to accuse a 75 year old peace activist, Martin Gugino, of being an Antifa plant to justify cops knocking him to the ground and putting him in intensive care last week. (Antifa is short for anti-fascist.)

He's the fucking president.