stuff and links

[topaz119]

The election madness continues, as we have both Senate seats in a run-off here, plus a hand count audit & probably a recount by the end of the week. The run-off isn't until the beginning of January so that's going to really drag on, but it's def better than having lost those seats.

Just think of me when your news provider of choice mentions the ongoing GOTV efforts, as my phone is blowing up with the texts and calls already and I can't see it easing off anytime soon.

Random links and things of interest:

I did FINALLY finish the Nicky/Joe pwp I started months ago only to have my brain insist on 12K words of emotional backstory first. Sexytimes happen at taste salt on the humid wind

Romancelandia (or at least the part of it that I hang out in) is running a fund-raiser to benefit several on-the-ground voting activist groups here in Georgia: Romancing the Runoff. It's a little overwhelming, but fun to browse through the many, many listings.

Linda Holmes of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour has once again taken one for the team and pulled together a Guide to 2020 Holiday Movies. (In related news, I finally broke down and watched my first one: Netflix's Operation: Christmas Drop, which was not bad on the usual scale of these sorts of things. It wasn't completely whitewashed; women were in positions of authority, both in and out of the military; no one had to be bad at their job for the holiday miracle to occur; there were no aggravating love triangles. (Also, our main couple had something of a Harry/Meghan vibe, like a non-royal AU, if that's your thing.)

After they immigrated from southern Italy, mother's family worked their way through the coal mines of early 20th C West Virginia and settled in the mountains, so while they're not who you think of when you think of Appalachia, that was where she and all of her (literal) 62 first cousins grew up and made their way through the American Dream. Even when she and my dad settled on the coast, she missed the mountains and loved John Denver's Country Roads (really. We played it at her funeral mass and if you don't think it takes a fair amount of stubbornness to get a Catholic priest to okay a pop song for a recessional, I am here to assure you that you are wrooooong.) Anyway. The song is a Big Thing in my family and I'd never seen this clip of JD and Johnny Cash singing a duet before it showed up on my tumblr feed.

Okay, back to the neverending To-Do list--be good to yourselves, it's going to be a long winter...

Comments

[corvidology]

That duet clip is amazing! Thanks for sharing it.

[topaz119]

I can't believe I've never seen it before, but it really is amazing.

[lilacsigil]

Playing John Denver at a Catholic funeral is amazing! There was a rebellion here in Australia when they banned Catholic priests from playing football team songs at funerals, but even then people were willing to compromise on pop songs. That must have been some work on your part!

[topaz119]

I guess her priest really did know her well, plus my brother and I were totally stumped about what else to play for the recessional. Even my auntie didn't have anything else and all the standard suggestions were just so draggy and awful. So, after 30 minutes of people throwing out suggestions and my brother finding the song on his phone and the two of us looking more and more horrified (she fought a long time, she lived through a list of medical conditions that is scary to contemplate, she carried on after my dad died (and they'd been together since they were 21), we wanted to *celebrate* her, not go out with a dirge) they finally gave in and the organist found a very nice arrangement.

Though the *real* thing we snuck in under the covers was the sticker of the logo of their (her and my dad's) favorite football team that my brother had managed to slap onto the side of the dual urn she'd picked out when we'd interred my dad's ashes. So we're back at the same funeral directors and my brother is saying to the guy who's coordinating everything, "yeah, so when you take the urn out of the columbarium, can you make sure the front of it is all that Father Pat sees? 'Cause there's a Steelers logo on the back now..."

The guy was a star and Father Pat never caught a glimpse and all was well...

(sorry about the book I just wrote about my parents' funerals...)