Mike Novotny said, “Light when you’re not used to it, hurts.” It rained a lot this week. Today, on my morning jog, the fog had lifted, and it was cool and sunny.

Happy Friday, and welcome to another edition of Release Radar. A place where I talk about all the new music in my feed.

[embedded content]

My favorite track this week is “Tape,” by Starchild & The New Romantic with Toro y Moi. It’s a super chill jam for the summer, something that I think the boys over at MiS would really appreciate. The nice part is the length, it clocks in at a speedy 02:30:00.

[embedded content]

This sparse ballad, anchored on just a keyboard, by Zola Jesus feels apocalyptic. It’s beautiful for a morning jog in the streets; with masks on.

[embedded content]

I’m a fan of The Hunna, and it’s nice to see them try new things. From last Friday’s rocker to this week’s two-minute love song. I’m loving the shorter songs these days. There’s a time and a place for a 6-minute jam.

[embedded content]

Oh boy, new Boy Pablo? Man, he picks up right where he left off, channeling Pheonix in the best ways possible. “Hey Girl” is pure pop. Get ready to sing along, and bop your head.

Soulwax is in my radar with a track that ushers in contemplation, while Clean Bandit offers up some clean fun with their remix of The Killers “Caution.” The original version of “Caution” is one of my favorite singles this year.

[embedded content]

Many moons ago I saw Prof open for Murs, and he was interesting, to say the least. His energy on stage was manic, and his flow was really tight. His subject matter was sexually explicit, and things haven’t changed on his latest single, “Outside Baby.” Don’t we all want an outside baby? Sometimes it would be fun. Btw, is this the new “Me So Horny?”

[embedded content]

Speaking of Murs, the man returns again with “Flowers For People Under The Stairs.” I can’t say enough good things about this guy, he just does rap right. Great beats and stories for days.

Jimmy Buffet returns with more island music, and HAIM is back with “I Know Alone.” These three women are putting together one heck of an album, and I can’t wait to hear the songs side-by-side.

[embedded content]

The hardest working, most versatile, artist is back again this week with “Don’t You Know By Now.” I swear he has been in my #RADAR for two months straight now. I’ve written over and over about his talents and once again I’m blown away by his artistry. His live show was even more impressive. Folks, don’t sleep on this man.

[embedded content]

So you know how we do here every week, here’s your jazz cold cut. Kim Cypher gives us “Water From An Ancient Well.” Keep drinking, ya’ll.

Subscribe to my blog below.

City announces pilot projects to provide relief to local businesses through expanded outdoor dining space and recreational activities

Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot today joined Commissioners Gia Biagi and Rosa Escareno from the Chicago Departments of Transportation (CDOT) and Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) to announce Chicago’s ‘Our Streets’ plan.

The plan is designed to open and convert residential streets and commercial corridors for alternative uses. Specifically the two uses outlined here:

• One, to accommodate outdoor dining.
• Two, to provide Chicagoans with additional transportation options and space for outside recreational activities.

The six pilot streets are:

• Chatham: 75^th Street from Calumet Avenue to Indiana Avenue
• Lakeview: Broadway from Belmont Avenue to Diversey Parkway
• Little Village: 26^th Street from Central Park to Harding Avenue
• Rush & Division: Rush Street from Oak Street to Cedar Street 
• Near West Side: Taylor Street from Loomis Street to Ashland Avenue
• West Loop: Randolph Street from Expressway no further than Elizabeth Street

The areas were selected based according to location, proximity to local businesses and residents along with taking into consideration the ease of walking, biking and impact to traffic.

The roads in the designated areas will be closed to thru traffic during specified hours. During these hours restaurants will be allowed to move tables and chairs into the streets to accommodate additional capacity.

After the initial pilots have launched, the City will evaluate the potential to expand programming to other areas in the City.

“As our City looks to move into the next phase of our reopening framework, it is essential that we take additional steps to protect the health and safety of Chicagoans as they visit local businesses and travel throughout the city,” said Mayor Lightfoot. “This vision to reimagine some of Chicago’s residential streets and key restaurant corridors allows for increased social distancing and adherence to public health guidance as we begin the gradual reopening of our great city. In coming days and weeks, I look forward to expanding these pilot projects citywide with input from the public and local stakeholders.”

Subscribe to Show Me Chicago by email

If you would like to keep in touch with what’s happening in Chicago, like us on Facebook or subscribe to Show Me Chicago by email. To subscribe, type your email address in the box below and click the “create subscription” button. Our list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Aren’t you sick of politicians calling down “science” on the heads of anyone who disagrees with their politicalization of the coronavirus pandemic to justify their poisonous economic lockdowns.

It brings to mind a similar scenario: In the 1970s, Chicago began installing high-pressure sodium streetlights that “science” told us would be disastrous.

A campaign was launched to halt the installation of the orange-colored lights because, the “science” said they could practically lead to the deforestation of Chicago. The glow, “science” told us,  would screw up the day and night rhythms of trees, making trees think that it’s still daylight when it was nighttime. As a result, the trees would struggle to keep growing and die–on a massive scale.

Didn’t happen. The “science” was wrong.

But now that the city now is replacing those same sodium bulbs with LED lights that more resemble daylight, the “science” is warning of new dangers, wouldn’t you know. 

Not just science, but a “growing body of science”–the cliche deployed to demonstrate that this is oh-so-ever-more-serious stuff. As WBEZ (naturally) reported,

But critics say this isn’t a bright idea — or maybe too bright of an idea? — and they point to a growing body of science showing links between some LED lights and health and environmental problems.

Among them (of course) was confusing the trees, making them think night was day. (Read here, the ((politicized)) American Medical Association’s chilling list of harm that will befall people, animals and plants.)

Scientific certainty today is taking a beating because of its many failures in the battle against coronavirus. Those failures have led to the economic devastation that fell on many more millions of Americans than on those who have fallen victim to COVID-19.

Saying that the epidemiologists blew it is an understatement. Millions have not died of it. Hospitals were not crushed under the COVID-19 burden; instead uncounted millions were spent to build additional beds that never came close to being filled. Meanwhile, people needing surgeries and other “elective” procedures didn’t get them.

Masks wouldn’t do anything we were initially told. Then we were told that everyone must wear them. The Centers for Disease Control first warned that we could get the virus from touching surfaces; then, well, not so much. The World Health Organization first assured us the infection wouldn’t travel from human to human; then it warned that it was the only way could travel.

Maybe or maybe not the virus originated in a filthy Chinese food market. Scientists can’t agree on whether a rebound of the disease will be evidence that the drastic shutdowns worked or that the “heard immunity” has been reached.

Etc.

As a story in the Washington Post observed:

In this pandemic, we’re swimming in statistics, trends, models, projections, infection rates, death tolls….

Scientists are still trying to understand the virus they call SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease covid-19. Basic questions are not fully answered: How deadly is this virus? How contagious? Are there different strains with different clinical outcomes? Why does SARS-CoV-2 create a devastating disease in some people while leaving others without symptoms or even knowledge that they were infected?

I haven’t eaten anything that hasn’t come out of a grocery store in the neighborhood since March 13.  Late that day, I stopped at Whole Foods on my way home, and bought the only two things left in the produce department:  a big container of cut up assorted fresh fruit,  And a bag of small limes.

Everyone knew what was coming.

Although, except for the produce department, the store had a pretty good assortment of everything else.  And I stocked up for the weekend.  And waited in a long line to check out.  And then I walked home, down Roosevelt Road with my daughter.

And that was the end of life as I knew it.  Although I didn’t know it yet.

From then on, we shopped at Trader Joe’s and Jewel when we had to, but I dreaded the ordeal of being with so many other people in those stores who could breathe on me and kill me.  Until we started wearing masks.  And my own breathing in of my own carbon dioxide now makes me feel like I’m killing myself.

On the bright side, the floors and counters and shelves (and at Walgreen’s, too, which I go to on Senior Citizen Day) are so clean you could eat off them.  (I’m hoping when the virus finally dissipates and disappears that such cleanliness continues.)

I get wobbly with anxiety.  How many times can you say, “This is unbelievable, what’s happening here, I’ve never seen anything like it,” and yet it keeps happening, with different tones and tenors, from the mayor and the governor and the president and the doctors and all the experts on all the news shows.  And no one could have imagined this–althought, I keep getting excerpts from movies that people send me on Facebook from years ago that could have happened yesterday at the latest news conference.  So someone knew something.  Someone knew this could happen.  In Hollywood, at least.

Come to think of it, I should have imagined it myself.  I have a Master’s degree in Public Health, for God’s sake.  But when I got that degree in 1972, communicable disease had gone out of fashion.  The lifestyle-caused diseases were what was happening and our course of study concentrated on those; communicable disease was studied as history.   Like psychology students today study Freud.

I haven’t used my dishwasher this much since long lost periods in my life requited it:  like when I was a young mother and when I was into entertaining.   My house hasn’t been without a cleaning person for decades. But it is now for the last two months-plus.

When I suddenly ran out of dishwasher detergent (not toilet paper, though) and couldn’t use that appliance for two days until I gathered the energy to go to the store, I invested in something new:  the only thing Jewel had for the moment to put in the dishwasher, two boxes of pods were left on an empty shelf, and I invested in one of them.  And, boy do they get the dishes clean! I love them, and I feel very modern.  Is it too frivolous to say that this was something nice to come out of a pandemic?

Speaking of which, I have a new pandemic hazmat ritual regarding ATM machines.  To protect my hands from the door handle and the machines themselves.  And my own contaminated card when it comes out of the slot. I like the one at Michigan and Van Buren because pressing the screen there can be done with a glove.

Every day, or course, I feel certain that I have the symptoms.  Mostly when I study the Illinois case count and the death toll, which I do all the time, the same way I study election polls of all kinds and from all places.  It’s my favorite hobby.

I am in wonder as to who these people are, thousands of them a day, who have it.  And what got them to have a test?  And where they are from?  Do I know any of them?  Do they go my grocery stores and ATMs?  And what does it feel like to be hospitalized at McCormick Place?  Is anyone actually hospitalized at McCormick Place?  Do the ones who die know they are going to?

My comfort?  That the Hankses seemed to do fine.  I called them canaries in the coal mine even before Tom called them canaries in the coal mine when he hosted the first SNL at home show.  From his home.

Adam Schlesinger, 52, wasn’t so lucky.  So I dwell on him, and convince myself that he must have had underlying conditions.  Why else would he have fared so poorly?

I hear second and third hand about people’s grandmothers (like Michael Che’s), aunts and uncles and spouses who have it, who had it.   And I keep worrying and fix my mask.  With uncontaminated hands, I hope.

I’ve gotten used to all of this.

I love seeing everyone in their own home doing the news and the talk shows; I love that most of them have scraggly hair and pale makeup-free faces like I do.  Their previous vanity vanished like the rest of our old lives. I love seeing that most of the stars and the news people and the politicians have fairly  modest homes as they sit in front of their bookcases, their framed prints, their family photos and their lovely flower-filled vases.  And I love seeing their kitchens.

The most  garish thing I’ve seen was Nancy Pelosi’s garish spread of ice cream.  However, wanting to see what all the fuss was about, I went out and spent $68 on five pints, which I ate pretty fast.  (And it was good.)

I have loved being entertained by music and dance performances and all on my computer.   Many of which I have learned about from my step-daughter, who seems to know about all those things.  And plays and movies and tributes and fundraisers streaming, too.  I have to make my own libations and victuals but I’m stocked so I don’t mind.   And I love my great array of Hulu, Netflix, ESPN,  all the Cable channels, Prime and stacks and stacks of DVDs and books.  I lack for nothing.

And Zoom.  Will anyone ever forget zoom and how it made life so livable in a new and different way?  We  never heard of it. Now it’s our best friend. Because that’s where our friends are:  Our board meeting, our book clubs, our film groups, our lectures, our dance companies, the dancers dancing around in their own homes.

And I love seeing the pale faces, scraggly hair and modest homes of strangers at these meetings, too.  I find myself watching interesting fixtures in the backgrounds, interesting angles in which their faces present from their screens, some people looking so professional, the way their heads fit in the screens like talking heads.  While others look like their heads are swirling like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.

Then there are the  aimless walks I take every day.  Pushing myself to get 10,000 steps in to maintain my fitness, such as it is.  (Along with yoga tapes, etc.)  But I never do.  And I worry if that fact itself makes me more vulnerable to Covid-19?  Circling the neighborhood with nowhere to go.

But they are walks in which I reminisce about the last 26 years in the neighborhood, since building my house there on top of an old  railroad yard (before that, in the 1800s, it was a neighborhood like the one I live in now). I walk past my past.  My friendships, the people I knew, and still know and all that happened in a quarter-century.  Of which there was a lot:  deaths, suicides, break-ups, move-ins, move-outs, groups that formed for gardening, book reading, maintaining the parks, improving the schools and so on and so on.

And then I pepper it all with the tapes in my head of Drs. Fauci and Birx and the politicians and the dissenters who think it’s a hoax, that punctuate that life of memories that I am passing, while I play a tape of the aforementioned inconsistencies, dueling studies, and the latest theories about the drugs, and the debut of the vaccine.  And whether the Chinese did this to the world on purpose?

Not to mention, will the coronavirus disappear quickly, within months, like the first SARS virus did?

We’re all in this together!  I hear it all day long from all directions.  Yes, the entire globe of people, we are all in this together.

And when it dissipates, we’ll  be free again to go places and run ourselves ragged, and get in our 10,000 steps, and I can visit my 93-year-old mother who is safe at home as we speak, and I won’t have to contmepalge all that we contemplate now.

And we will be different when we get back to what we were before.  We will marvel at our very essence.  At the scourge of an invisible speck.  And a new dishwasher pod, too.

Type your email address in the box and click the “create subscription” button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Hecky Powell died this week, a victim of the Coronavirus. He wasn’t nationally famous, although he probably could have been. However, in and around the area of Evanston, Chicago’s closest northern suburb and a complex city in its own right, he was famous. In fact, Hecky, in his passing, had this posted on a sign outside his eponymous restaurant, “If Evanston had a king … To a guy who lifted so many. We love you Hecky!”. Despite the “king” reference, the beauty of Hecky Powell had nothing to do with the trappings of royalty, the regal world, or wealth, but rather, it was in the nature of a man who gave to others while expecting nothing back besides an honest day’s work and the value of your word.

I wasn’t Hecky’s close friend. I wasn’t his business partner or fellow congregant. But, I am an Evanstonian by upbringing and as a graduate of Evanston Township High School, still a Wildkit at heart. I did serve with Hecky on the Evanston-Skokie District 65 School Board for four years. I didn’t really “know” Hecky until we were school board colleagues, but like many people in and around Chicago, you felt like you knew him well if all you ever did was walk into Hecky’s Barbecue on Green Bay Road (re-named Hecky Powell Way in 2014) and ordered a “large tip, extra order of fries with sauce on the side.”

Before I talk about the man and his impact on me, can I talk about the barbecue for just a minute? As an Evanston person, I was somewhat “raised” on barbecue through Hecky’s. As the son of a German-born Jew, my concept of barbecue before Hecky’s was hot dogs on the grill and some fall-off-the-bone stuff you get at restaurants or steak houses claiming how good their ribs are. Ten years ago, I moved to the south side of Chicago and started visiting the more well-known and “famous” barbecue spots in Chicago. Sorry to my south side neighbors, your stuff is just not that good. You guys are trying, but it can’t approach Hecky’s.

Hecky’s ribs have that perfect effect where the meat grips the bone just enough to make you do a little bit of work before it drops into your mouth. Similarly, the rib tips are in a class of their own compared   to any of the other pretenders out here. Sitting in a white Styrofoam box, perched on top of a piece of white bread and seasoned crinkle cut fries, a large order of tips can last you 3 days if you’re smart. If you’re not, you will sleep very well with all that pile of pork laying in your happy belly.

I’m not just recounting my barbecue memories either. After moving south ten years ago, I continued to make the hour plus drive to Evanston on a regular basis to pick up my tips and to try, but often fail to avoid eating all the fries on my way back home.

I called Hecky a few years ago when my wife started hosting an annual event in Grant Park to see if I could somehow get his food as part of her menu. I asked him if he could deliver that far, he responded, “Sh*t, I’ll deliver to LA if they’re gonna pay.” Needless to say, the food arrived right on time every year and people started asking if she’d have “that barbecue” before confirming their attendance.

All of the barbecue talk is to help me say that even if I hadn’t gotten to know Hecky through our work on the school board, his death would have saddened me considerably, as both an Evanston person and a customer.

Other than the barbecue, there is something about the man that is making me sit in my home and wonder why, a week after his passing, I can’t shake the tragic image of a death too soon. Maybe it was his view of the world that, despite being a black man, was eminently color-free; maybe it was his enviable ability to articulate an opinion or view without worrying about the inevitable blowback; or maybe it was either or both of these things together with a passion for something that could be shared with and used to nurture others.

That “thing” that Hecky had which many of us strive for all our lives was a work ethic at the highest level. He used to talk about it all the time. Not his own, but the lack of it in others. Many times, we’d have conversations that would start out on some form of school board-related matter and inevitably lapse into someone’s or some group’s lack of willingness to work hard. Most of us would internalize that issue and squawk or bitch about it when the feeling arose. I was one of them, complaining to Hecky when someone in my office failed to come to work or complete a project as requested. “It’s that work ethic John,” he’d say. “People just don’t want to work anymore.”

Hecky didn’t waste time complaining. He did something about it. Among other things he did that benefitted others and paved their way for a positive future was founding the Evanston Work Ethic Program, which provides paid internships, mentorships, training and tuition stipends to local students going into tech or trade fields after high school. In fact, it was common to see young people learning how to work hard and how to face the public as employees at Hecky’s Barbecue.

The community will miss Hecky Powell. A lot. I saw today that his son Jason has re-opened the restaurant. That’s a good thing. Even though I’ll be back for my large tips, extra side of fries with sauce on the side, I’m going to really miss Hecky’s smiling face across the counter. That warm feeling when you walk into a place is all too rare, but for those who’ve been there, they’ll know — It’s the Sauce.

It happened again this morning. It happens every morning. The ominous thuds on the doorstep. The whump whump of objects thrown against concrete. An engine revs then accelerates outside. Again the dreaded question: What the heck did I order this time?

To paraphrase a current game on social media, following are five items I may have ordered online during the pandemic. Please guess the one I did not order:

(1) One hundred pounds of bird seed and a squirrel gazebo

(2) Facial scrub the consistency of baby poop made of mud from France

(3) Four thousand individual paper towels originally intended for gas station restrooms

(4) An aluminum flying tiger

(5) Socks shaped like dinosaurs

I bet you guessed right! I bought everything. In my defense, I had to buy the facial scrub to qualify for a 2.2 ounce hand sanitizer from YikesWhatsThat.com. The gas station paper towels, four-thousand to a carton, were the only ones I could find. When not being used for hand sanitizing, they are good for Origami (I can fold and crease them into a life-sized Anthony Fauci in twenty seconds and he even looks realistically horrified). I can’t explain the flying tiger.

What stands between me and the endless trance of online consumerist mayhem? Only the perspective and wisdom of Chicago’s comedians. Profound thanks to the comedians who kindly give me their time, insight, humor, energy and strength as we make our way through these times.

Presenting with much gratitude the Second Convening of the growing COVID Council of Comedians: Denise Medina, Jan Slavin, Ray Chao, Pat Tomasulo, Kat Herskovic, Sean Flannery.

This week’s question: During the quarantine, did you buy or acquire anything that you wouldn’t have otherwise or that surprised you? (It could be a purchase, new talent, attitude, habit or anything!)

PAT TOMASULO: I bought podcast gear (watch for my new podcast sometime in June). I’ve also grown my hair to near afro-level length and volume. It’s like I’m a chubby 12 year old from Jersey all over again.

Watch Pat on the WGN Morning News and follow him: pattomasulo.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Pat and Amy Tomasulo have raised over $ 1.75 million dollars for the Facial Pain Research Foundation. Their annual gala fundraiser Laugh Your Face Off is on September 12, 2020.

DENISE MEDINA: I can tell you the craziest thing I bought was not one, but TWO strawberry shortcake ice cream bars from the ice cream truck at $3.50 EACH when I could go to Meijer and buy a box of 6 for $4.19 !!!

Ugh, this went against my thrifty sensibilities and I love a great deal, but I figured this truck was a local small business and maybe my purchase is helping to support a family, or even an individual business owner. Months ago I would have been cursing these prices and this ice cream cartel!

More about Denise here. Denise was also kind enough to speak with me here.

JAN SLAVIN: I’ve used my ukelele for years in my stand up and kids’ music classes, but never went beyond my 3 basic chords of C, F and G7. Yep, that’s all I’ve used. I somehow managed to fool people into thinking I was playing pretty well. Or maybe not. Anyway, it’s worked for me. But now I’ve got the time to try to play a little better and expand my repertoire.

I bought a book. A really big book with 365 songs, which implies a song a day but that’s not how I’m using it as some of the songs are really duds. I mean, I already know I’m not going to play “Go Down Moses” or “The Marines Hymn”. And I’m staying away from “It’s A Small World” because that’s an ear worm I don’t need while sheltering in place, god help me.

So I’ve made my way through the book a couple of times and now I have some favorites. “Yes Sir,  That’s My Baby” (can you ever forget Jason Robards playing that in “A Thousand Clowns”?), “Rainbow Connection” and “Imagine” are my current go-tos.  Of course, I could always “play” these before with my fake chords but now I’m really getting more music out of them. Playing in different keys makes me feel really cool, like I know what I’m doing though basically I am just reading little chord charts.

I’m focusing on the chords and don’t give a shit about my strumming which would be annoying to professionals but screw ’em. I mean give an old lady a break. Is YOUR grandmother learning the ukelele??? No, I didn’t think so.

It’s really too bad I sliced the hell out of my left index finger last winter and had to have stitches. My fingertip didn’t heal properly and so I have no feeling in it. It’s an important finger. But this puts me in the arena with amazing, challenged musicians like Stevie Wonder (blind) and Beethoven (deaf), so yeah, I’m a hero.

So here I sit, in my pajamas, Skinny Pop bag at my side, playing some new tunes very, very slowly, and I feel pretty good about it. Some of the chords are real bitches and I will have to learn to cheat by singing over them but I got a peaceful, easy feeling.

Best of all, I’ve started to call it an “Ook” instead of a “Yuke” and that really puts me up there with the pros. I’ll continue with this until I can finally get back up on a stage because I’m not sure any of this will be retained. In the meantime, just call me “Israel Janakawiwo’ole”.

More about Jan here. Jan was also kind enough to speak with me here.

KAT HERSKOVIC:  I’m actually very excited about my big quarantine purchase! When the lockdown began, I started doing hand embroidery as a way to de-stress and because I love the look of embroidered clothing. But it took sooooooo long to complete just a few simple projects from my growing list of things that I wanted to embroider. So I gathered as much stuff that I could possibly sell online and on Facebook marketplace and quickly came up with enough money to purchase an embroidery machine and I LOVE it! Not only can I make my son all the race car, excavator, and garbage truck t-shirts he wants, but I am also in the process of opening an online shop of upcycled clothing and accessories!

My comedy website is katisthebomb.com and my soon-to-be online shop is Neurotique Boutique (NeurotiqueBoutique.com)

SEAN FLANNERY:  Late last year, my wife signed us up for WHO GIVES A CRAP, which is a service that mails you eco-friendly bamboo toilet paper. It has a smaller carbon footprint and they donate a percentage of their profits to create modern toilets and plumbing in needful countries.

We get the first enormous, box from WHO GIVES A CRAP in February of this year and my wife explains what it is and what they stand for.

“What do you think?”, she asks.

“It sounds like a great way for rich people to buy toilet paper”.

My kids say I bring up that we are not rich about ten times a day. I told them my dad couldn’t finish a sentence without saying that, so this is generational progress.

A month after that first box was received, toilet paper sells for more than cocaine online and half the city is waiting overnight at the grocery story, like it’s Black Friday, for the right to buy one roll on shipment day and we get a letter from WHO GIVES A CRAP that basically says, “So, as you have prob noticed: things are crazy in the toilet paper world right now. But, no worries! We made a boat load of bamboo toilet paper and we are going to keep shipping all your toilet paper each month, on time and no price changes. After all, we are, WHO GIVES A CRAP!”

Without me realizing it, my wife essentially bought toilet paper futures and we are set for this pandemic. She is a genius. Sometimes it just takes me a month or two to catch up.

Follow Sean Flannery here.

RAY CHAO: I want to publicly apologize to anyone that I ever said “change is good” in response to losing a job, breaking up with a partner, or getting evicted. I was lying. But I’ve changed.

Just a few short months ago, like most people, I hated change. Sure, I would smile meekly and tell someone “change is good,” when a friend suffered a set-back or disappointment. But I didn’t mean it. And I certainly didn’t believe it.

But now, I am a believer. Change is good.

Collectively, I, you, and the world, have undergone “unprecedented changes” and are adapting to a “new normal.” (BTW, I’ve always hated those terms. Some things never change). What I have come to realize is that change is not bad, per se; but the fear of change is what made me avoid change. Moreover, the fear of change increases as you get older and become more set your ways. That’s why I only take the turquoise Nyquil (even during the day) because I don’t trust the orange Nyquil. And Nyquil is supposed to make you drowsy or it doesn’t work.

Similarly, change is not “hard.” It’s actually pretty easy. Think of all the changes I (we) have made in the past few weeks. The world has changed in the blink of an eye. And we changed because we had to. Ironically, the changes we have made are not that scary in of themselves, but the real fear is what would happen if we did not change.

Up till now, I am the type of person that orders the same meal at my favorite restaurant. Every time. Why? Not so much because I really, really like that meal, but because I am afraid that if I order something new, I will hate it. That’s why I can’t wait for restaurants to open again so I can go to my favorite restaurant and read the entire menu and order something new. And I’m pretty sure it will be delicious.

Change is good.

More about Ray here. Ray was also kind enough to speak with me here. He recently wrote about legal issues related to pets on the PetsBest blog here.

Howdy all! My name is Jessi and I have been reviewing media and other things for over ten years now. I started writing for my school paper the Independent at Northeastern Il University and moved onto writing for a couple different blogs and websites. Now i am off on my own and seeing what the media world has to offer! I will be reviewing mainly video games, but also movies, conventions, events, and whatever else i can get! So check me out and get a chick’s spin on things! You might be surprised!!

NASA and SpaceX are launching the first crewed mission to the International Space Station aboard a Crew Dragon spacecraft on a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission, a demo flight, is meant to validate the crew transport systems that were tested on the initial unmanned crew demo launch. Following a weather delay, NASA and SpaceX will attempt to launch again on Saturday, May 30th at 2:22 pm CDT.

Complete coverage of the launch will be provided by both NASA and SpaceX. NASA coverage begins at 10 am CDT on NASA TV, via livestream at NASA.gov, and on the agency’s YouTube channel. SpaceX coverage begins around 10:22 am CDT on the company’s website.

Nine minutes after launch, the first stage of the Falcon 9 will attempt a barge landing on SpaceX’s Of Course I Still Love You. Following the landing of the first stage, Crew Dragon will deploy from the second stage and the nosecone sequence will begin.

NASA coverage will continue after the launch as the crew reaches orbit and begins chasing the International Space Station for docking. During this 24 hour period, Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken will verify the spacecraft systems and monitor the autonomous docking system.

Crew Dragon will arrive at the International Space Station about 20 hours after launch. Docking, hatch opening, and a welcome ceremony for the crew will be broadcast on the agency’s media channel and online platforms on Sunday, May 31st beginning at 9:29 CDT.