Thanks to POPO participant Linda Clifton, I learned about an essay by George Saunders in The New Yorker:

A key paragraph for me:

Are you keeping records of the e-mails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living? It’s all important. Fifty years from now, people the age you are now won’t believe this ever happened (or will do the sort of eye roll we all do when someone tells us something about some crazy thing that happened in 1970.) What will convince that future kid is what you are able to write about this, and what you’re able to write about it will depend on how much sharp attention you are paying now, and what records you keep.

This is part of why we launched our annual Poetry Postcard Fest (POPO) early. In fifty years who  is going to believe that a Fox News affiliate in Cleveland, Ohio, had a feature like:

Hopefully in 50 years there will not be a TV network like Fox News, which uses demagoguery to sew division and create profits out of human misery, but I digress. These are the kinds of things happening during this unprecedented Shelter-in-Place era. TV stations seeing as their duty to remind us WHAT DAY OF THE WEEK IT IS. Hopefully this is a gag to you and you have rituals which are keeping you sane. You might even be able to use this time to make changes in your life cognizant of the suffering happening in our world. Two tabs still active on my browser on COVID-19 are:

https://covidactnow.org/

https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-us-maps-and-cases/

And what better way to get into a groove with one’s deep self by writing as much as possible? 31 postcards before August 31 is quite possible and you can get access to folks seeking to write more than that via POPO. 218 people have joined us so far by registering at Brown Paper Tickets. It’s a huge thing you can do for your own writing practice, your own sanity and for the little 26 year old non-profit org that dreamed all this up, not knowing that someday it would be one of the few literary festivals that would not be canceled due to a pandemic.  https://appf14.brownpapertickets.com/ It is SPLAB‘s largest annual fundraiser and if you can’t participate, maybe you know someone who might be interested. And in fifty years when someone doesn’t believe you, whip out a poetry postcard sent to you from a stranger.

May you & yours be well.