This Was Not a Surprise

That's a Facebook post of mine from January 24th.  I can't help but think how much better off we would all be if people in government had been as anxious as I was at that time.  Maybe they were all too burned out from the impeachment.  Maybe they were too busy trying to sort out the Democratic horse race.  Maybe they never read Station Eleven?  Somehow I found the bandwith to think about all of it.  Would that POTUS or Mitch McConnell or even Nanci Pelosi for that matter had.

This was 100% foreseeable.  The news was there in plain sight.  I'm not sure if this came to me through feeds or NPR or MSNBC.  Certainly not Facebook or Twitter.  It was probably my RSS Reader and the sources there.  So my intelligence gathering apparatus was up to it; we have to assume the national intelligence gathering machine was also up to the task.  It is a pretty sad state of affairs.

Today I sent out a new extra credit assignment to my students (all hunkered down at home and coming to class via Zoom).  The assignment gives one small assignment's worth of extra credit for each hour they spend doing home made PPE for health professionals.  I guess I should have given that assignment January 25th when we all had access to a costume shop and a scene shop rather than whatever gear we have at the house.  So my criticism should extend to myself I guess.

I emailed my Congressperson yesterday to remind him that theatre shops all over the country are out of work and that they have the fabrication capability to help here: sew masks and gowns, assemble face shields, maybe even put together more complicated gear.  It'd need some top down organization though.  Maybe a gap USITT or ESTA could help out with.

I keep seeing ads in my various feeds from entertainment companies: TAIT, Upstaging, ModTruss, Rosebrand all touting their ability to help out and ramp up quickly.  I hope someone besides me sees them. The work is happening.  While looking for stories for the Greenpage I do see articles about costume shops helping local hospitals.  I'll keep my eye out to see if it goes wider.