Marla Felcher

Good News from the Resistance: Last week I participated in a 9-person Zoom call. Our faces appeared on the screen in a 3 x 3 matrix, three heads across, three down. The set-up seemed vaguely familiar – where had I seen that image before?  Suddenly it came rushing back: We looked like the set of the 1960’s TV game show Hollywood Squares. In the show, nine mostly B-list celebrities sat behind desks arranged in a 3 x 3 matrix — just like Zoom! —  and answered questions posed by host Peter Marshall. I loved that show, particularly the actor featured in the all-important middle square, the famously snarky Paul Lynde. Don’t ask me what happened during my Zoom call – I spent most of it burrowing down the Hollywood Squares Wiki rabbit hole.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about “the good ‘ole days” — as I left my empty milk bottles on the porch for the delivery guy to pick up, mail-ordered Charles Chips to my mother, baked cookies for the first time in 30+ years (with my hand-held Hamilton Beach mixer, circa 1979), and searched (unsuccessfully) for yeast to bake bread.

With the country on lockdown, many of my fellow Baby Boomers have been catapulted back in time: Family meals have made a comeback; old-fashioned hobbies like puzzles, board games, gardening and sewing are seeing a significant uptick; we’re playing (socially-distanced) Bingo with our neighbors; we’re turning to our screens for exercise classes, like we once did with Jack LaLanne; sidewalk chalk art is flourishing; we’re checking in with our distant parents and grandparents more often, teaching them new skills like FaceTime (Note: I love this woman. She’s not my mother, who’s been in isolation for a month, but she’s damn close!) and Zoom; neighborhoods are organizing scavenger hunts for kids. Icing on the cake? The Beatles released a new single.

The Greatest Generation  also may be experiencing a bit of déjá vu; Mutual Aid societies — created to provide safety nets for our most vulnerable citizens when the government shirks its responsibility — have been resurrected; modern day Rosie the Riveters are answering the call to make face masks for front-line healthcare workers.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not longing to return to the idealized days of WWII or June and Ward Cleaver. Just sayin’ …  when this nightmare is over, let’s hope we have the wisdom to hang onto what’s good.

Yes, there’s more Good News from the Resistance:

• Say hallelujah! for Michelle Obama’s comeback
• Call this toll-free number to hear what these kids are saying to grandma and grandpa
• Give it up for this Creative Family Vacation
• Figure out how to make this cake
• Chuckle when you understand, “If you can see the peen, we need more space between.”
• Know that Barack Obama broke the Internet
• Wonder what Indianan Mike Pence would have done if he’d been on this Zoom call
• Root for these sea turtles
• Cheer for 93-year old Badass Olive Veronesi
• Take Action: Are you getting a stimulus check? If so, consider doing this: #ShareMyCheck

Sign Up. Show Up. Never Give Up. 

Read more Welcome Back to the Good ‘ole Days

Good News from the Resistance: You’d think that someone who writes a blog called Good News would have a helluva time coming up with content the week she panic-bought frozen spinach, honey peanut butter, and green curry paste, and went to three stores in search of out-of-stock toilet paper. Yes, I wake up most mornings with a feeling of dread. Yes, before I get out of bed I check the New York Times to see if the world has come to an end, or if Mitch is feeling feverish. But then something happens: I read my Facebook feed, and I’m reminded how friggin’ clever my “Friends” are. My will to face another day of lockdown returns.

What did you do Week 1 of the Acknowledged Apocalypse?

My highlights: 1) Whispered in my dog’s ear that mummy and daddy have been vegetarian for 30 years, therefore it is highly unlikely that we’ll eat her if the food system completely crumbles and we run out of tofu and beans, 2) bought an iRobot Roomba and followed it around the house for an hour, giving it helpful feedback like, “bitch, you missed that corner!,” 3) got all judgey with my husband when, after teaching his first on-line class he opened a bottle of wine at 4 p.m. — then soon after I read a stranger’s Facebook post confessing she’d been starting at 3:15, which prompted a generous pour and apologetic bottoms up!, 4) practiced making dinner using only frozen food and canned items (I had a refrigerator full of fresh produce), just to see if I could do it, then spiraled into a self-loathing depression when I cheated and added fresh parsley. I’m fine. Really.

We’ve been training for this for decades. Remember all the moaning we did about the evils of the Internet and social media? Take it all back! Thanks to a burst of rapid-fire creativity and technical know-how, we can now live our best lives without leaving the house.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, there is a panoply of on-line activities for kids like story time, drawing lessons, home-schooling, and joke books; there are DIY pantry recipes, live-streamed cooking lessons, meditation and yoga classes, opera, too many concerts to keep up with, museum tours, Broadway musicals, and stunning dance performances.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, if you’re locked-down in Italy you can watch Pornhub for free, if you’re sheltering-in-place in the U.S. you can get fresh food delivered more ways than you ever imagined, and if you act quickly, you can get  Passover in a Box (Seders will be cancelled because of a plague. Isn’t it ironic?). With more time to cook, we can be inspired any time of the day by Julia Child. Sunflower Farm has shown us the calming power of goats, and it’s reassuring to know how to make a DIY face mask.

Thanks to the Internet and social media, we know that the Field Museum in Chicago let a dinosaur run free, and the aquarium let the penguins out. Already there’s an excellent resource on How to Plague. We know that drive-in movies will be making a comeback, Major League Baseball has a heart, neighborhoods are creating Kindness Committees, Care-Mongering and Mutual Aid Networks, that good samaritans with 3-D printers are making respirator parts and so are glassblowers. People are replacing books with food in their Little Free Libraries, and San Franciscans are signing up to send meals to overworked medical clinicians.

Here’s what I also know: What we’re living through is horrible. And in the 3+ years I’ve been writing Good News, there has never been too much Good News to fit into an issue — until now. The seemingly boundless creativity and kindness of our fellow humans is awe-inspiring. Yes, we can do this.

Now, about Mitch: If he does get sick, I plan to start a campaign urging everyone to mail Get Well (Not!) cards, offering our Thoughts and Prayers. You in?

Yes, there’s lot of FUNNY Good News from the Resistance:

• Cheer for the teachers who are learning how to teach on-line
• Read the first lines of famous poems revised for the Age of Coronavirus
• Watch what happens when Trevor Noah sings from his balcony in NYC
• Listen to the Liberal Redneck’s dispatch from isolation
• Chuckle at the first lines of famous novels that have been rewritten for Social Distancing
• Choose your favorite Quarantine Tweet
• See if you can watch this video and not cry (even if you never liked The Carpenters)
• Give to No Kid Hungry to help get food to kids who normally get it in school. And avoid these items when you are in a food store.

Sign Up. Show Up. Never Give Up. 

Read more Ode to Social Media

Good News from the Resistance: Just when we thought the Orange Grifter could no longer surprise us with his mendacious ineptitude, he was presented with a problem he could not Tweet away.  (Though he tried). The Grifter’s cheerleaders were out in full-force, running with his head-in-the-sand message. Matt Full-of-Hot Air Gaetz (R-FL) made light of the pandemic by wearing a gas mask on the House floor as he voted for a virus-fighting appropriation bill. Kellyanne “Truthy” Conway said the virus was “being contained.” And Fox continues to do a bang-up job convincing its viewers that COVID-19 is a liberal hoax. Which led a friend of mine to muse, “Maybe this will become a Republican disease.”

Maybe.

Gas-Mask Gaetz is now in self-quarantine after shaking the hand of a virus-positive man at the Conservative Political Action Conference; Ivanka, Kellyanne and William Barr met recently with a newly virus-positive Australian official (I wonder if they shook hands or bumped elbows?), and a Brazilian official who partied with the Grifter and Praise Jesus! Pence at Mar-a-Lago last weekend has it, too. Could that have anything to do with the sudden about-face, state-of-emergency declaration?

The Good News? State and local governments, the private sector, and those of us who do not rely on Sean Hannity or Kellyanne for our news got to work well before the Grifter came to his senses, filling the gaping lacuna created by the federal government’s “it’s only a cold” attitude.

The Icing-on-the-Cake Good News? Humor and creativity keep breaking through. As in:

Tired of singing Happy Birthday to You (twice) while washing your hands? Here are 10 more awesome songs that will do the trick. Or better yet, use this easy tool to learn how to wash along to your favorite tune (I used “All Along the Watchtower.” It’s fun!).

Play “Working from Home During a Pandemic Bingo!”

Learn new ways to say hello! that don’t involve cooties.

Read a TrumPoem.

And before you go off to wash your hands after reading this on your germ-laden laptop or phone, consider all of the happy dog news that continues in the midst of our national nightmare:

Canadian service dogs watched a live musical as part of their training; monks made a stray an “honorary friar” (he looks so cute in his little friar outfit!); a vet is providing free care to the pets of homeless people; a kid is making bow ties for shelter dogs to help them get adopted; Bailey, a very good dog, ate the whole burrito.

Stay safe, wash your hands, and continue to seek Good News.

Yes, there’s even more Good News from the Resistance:

• Know that it’s okay to eat Blue Bell ice cream again
• Applaud for this Delaware barber-principal
• Wonder what you’d do if your 8-year old won this at a hockey tournament
• Buy this soap
• Support this ski industry idea
• Learn these fun facts about your potato chips
• Thank the (GOP) Senate for saying no to Cruella DeVos
• Chuckle over Stella McCartney’s runway cows
• Make a donation to an arts or cultural organization that’s had to close its doors

Sign Up. Show Up. Never Give Up. 

Read more Yes, We Found Good News

Good News from the Resistance: Lately I’ve been thinking about my all-time favorite Saturday Night Live character, Father Guido Sarducci, the chain-smoking priest. Father Guido created a Five-Minute University, an education concept I bet Cruella DeVos could get behind. The idea was simple: In 5 minutes, students learned everything they would remember five years after graduating from a 4-year university. Economics: Supply and demand. Spanish: ¿Como está usted? Business: Buy low, sell for more. Spring Break: 20 seconds under a sun lamp, and a Dixie cup full of orange juice. Tuition: $20.

In 1976 — about when I was watching Father Guido on SNL — I was taking an Organizational Behavior class. Here’s all I remember:

Performance = Motivation x Ability

Translation: Performing well at anything is a function of how motivated you are to get the job done, and how capable you are at the task. Lazy (motivation = 0) geniuses are not productive. No matter how motivated you are to finish a work project one night, if you splash tea on your computer keyboard, the screen goes black and you can’t fix it (ability = 0), your project will remain unfinished.

The Good News? The sky’s the limit when you are 100% committed to achieving your goal, and you’ve got the smarts and ability to stick with it. Which is where we are right now.

Never has our motivation been higher to oust an Occupant of the White House. And never have we been so well organized to get the job done.

Highly Motivated Voters x Well-Organized Voters = Ousting the Grifter-in-Chief

Highly Motivated Voters x Well-Organized Voters = Flipping the Senate

Yes, Iowa was an embarrassment. Yes, there is (at this point) a void in party leadership. N.H. did little to calm our fears.  And yet. On-the-ground grassroots organizers aren’t being hamstrung by the mess at the top. They’re running full-speed ahead, fueled by three years of the Grifter-in-Chief’s antics.

So get off that sofa, stop reading all of the Chicken Little, click-maximizing news, and heed the motivating words of Shinedown’s hit song, “Get Up“:

I’m on the bright side of being hellbent
So take  it from me, you’re not the only one
Who can’t see straight

If you were ever in doubt
Don’t sell yourself short … 
Hard to move mountains when you’re paralyzed.

Get up, get up
Get a move on!

There are dozens of organizations, represented by thousands of organized groups in every Congressional District and state, that are educating and registering voters, getting out the vote, and building infrastructure that will ensure we have the ability to win the White House, flip the Senate, and keep the House. Fear-mongering sells clicks, not reports of organized citizens knocking on doors and registering new voters.

One thing is certain: You-Know-Who will continue to provide our motivation. It’s up to us to use our tenacity and smarts to get him out of our lives. ¡Sí, se puede, people! Get up!

Here’s what you can do to create more Good News from the Resistance:

• Use Swing Left’s laundry list of tasks to decide how you will help win 2020
• Get Angry, Then Get Even with an Indivisible chapter near you
• Join She the People in organizing women of color to beat The-Occupant-of-the-WH
• Apply for Organizing Corps 2020’s Bootcamp (or send your kid)
• Pay someone’s fine in Florida so they can vote
• Support Voto Latino’s effort to register Latinx community members to vote
• Work with Stacey Abrams to fight voter suppression
• Invest in the Big 5 Battleground Fund with the Movement Voter Project
• Back Mi Familia Vota in its work to educate, register, and engage Latino voters
• Inspire 7+ million voters to turn out with Move On’s Our America for All campaign
• Use MobileAmerica to find a volunteer event near you

Sign Up. Show Up. Never Give Up. 

Read more On the Bright Side of Hellbent

Good News from the Resistance: Lately we’ve been bombarded with a rash of public apologies. So many opportunities for hanging-close-to-the-surface attitudes to be laid bare, so many ways to backtrack. Thankfully, American Greetings has created a useful, step-by-step roadmap, Apology Messages. The card company’s guide provides custom mea culpas. Did you offend a friend, lover, co-worker, or boss? No matter who you’ve insulted or pissed off, they’ve got you covered. American Greetings, listen up! Given our political milieu, I’m quite certain there’s money to be made in a new line of cards, Political Apology Messages. Here are just a few, lifted from recent events. Effective, or not? You be the judge.

How to apologize to Blacks and Latinos for stopping, frisking, and locking them up. “I was wrong. And I am sorry.”

How to apologize to the American People if you are the National Archives, and you have airbrushed photos from the 2017 Women’s March, to remove images of “offensive posters.” “We made a mistake.”

How to apologize to a Black Congresswoman whose anti-white supremacy MLK Day speech you called “a rant,” if you are a white Republican governor. “The governor agreed with Congresswoman Pressley’s remarks today and believes her speech was moving.”

How to apologize to wheelchair users for charging them $25,000 for a $16 train ticket. “We apologize for their inconvenience as we have been working through how to serve their travel needs.” 

How to apologize to your political rival if you are running for president, and one of your surrogates writes an Op-Ed accusing him of having “a big corruption problem.” “It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way. And I’m sorry that that op-ed appeared.”

How to apologize to a newly elected Latina city councilor after getting outed for leaving a message on her voicemail that started, “Let me tell you something you bigot, you fascist, you criminal….” “I’m a hothead sometimes. I am not a hateful person… You’re going to make a difference. Whether I agree with you or disagree with you.” 

How to not apologize to your husband if he’s the Treasury Secretary who’s just insulted Greta, whom you adore. “I stand by Greta.”

The Good News? Hateful comments and bad behaviors are being called out – and the perpetrators feel the need (for whatever reason) to apologize. Yes, there’s more Good News from the Resistance:

• Cheer for these homeless women who fought for housing –  and won
• Buy one of these for your dog instead of a cone
• Wish you’d been part of this conga in Cuba
• See the best airport reunion, ever
• Thank Ireland for these 22 million trees
• Clap for this big-hearted 6-year old
• Think about these activist kids at Davos the next time world events depress you
• Know that if Sandusky, Ohio can do this, so can the rest of the country
• Get an Instagram account if you don’t have one – to follow Michelle
• Take Action: Let’s Flip the Senate and Emasculate Mitch.

Sign Up. Show Up. Never Give Up. 

Read more How to Apologize