Please don't just pass them by and stare

Still off-kilter. Still cold and grey. I hate dreaming about people I know who do not behave like themselves in waking life. Have some links.

1. Joan Baez effectively retired in 2018. She just recorded herself performing "Hello in There" for John and Fiona Prine, the songwriter who is critically ill with coronavirus and his wife who has it also. So I cried the whole way through.

2. Courtesy of the same friend who provided the wholesome weasel content: Lego Bazalgette. Please check out the entire blog; the footnote on Lego Horatius at the Bridge is a thing of beauty and I had honestly never expected to see one Lego Chartist Rising, much less two. "This scene was built by James Pegrum because he wanted to build a mammoth."

3. I really respect this story for being funny even before the neodymium gets up anybody's nose: "I accidentally invented a necklace that buzzes continuously unless you move your hand close to your face."

4. I never saw the relevant episode of Doctor Who, but this job application is indeed magnificent.

5. I find this poem haunting: Joseph Fasano, "St. Vitus' Dance." ". . . the body gone mad in the last blaze / of being here, the body blossoming into music."

What is there to drink with just minimal risk of blindness or death?

spatch and I went for a walk in the rain this evening just to get out of the house. I approve of the daffodils sprouting through the chain-link and the hyacinths I saw growing in various yards along with the small blue star-bells that seem to be Siberian squills. The cherry trees on our street are just starting to blossom; I'll have to go back for them tomorrow even if it's raining again. They have such a short season. It turned out to be a day for links, so have some more.

1. skygiants, an actual archivist, has weighed in on the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library and the Author's Guild. It is useful information.

2. Courtesy of phi: ancient Egyptian bread baked yesterday. Literally, by the guy who last year was culturing ancient Egyptian yeast. It looks great.

3. Thanks to this extremely impressive bassoon cover of "Toxic," I wound up seeing the original music video by Britney Spears for the first time in my life. It's like La Femme Nikita by John Woo. The thing that interests me about the song is how well it works as an instrumental. My actual favorite version is by the Surfrajettes.

4. I agree with all of the meta, but I also just enjoy the original appreciation of Roger from Disney's 101 Dalmatians (1961). Anyone who can throw a sweater around their shoulders in such debonair, wicked impersonation is worth hanging on to.

5. Sally Wiener Grotta tells her family story of the 1918 flu, the neighborhood sprecher, and her aunt Rose. I had never heard of the Jewish tradition of the sprecher, who talks back the dying. I like it a lot. I like the idea of all of us being the lifeline of words, talking one another back, holding on.