""Now its your turn to record history as its happening. The [Wisconsin Historical] Society is actively documenting the impact of COVID-19..."

"... on Wisconsin and the world. Our tradition of balancing the collection of artifacts and material with personal experiences is a critical part of this process. Just like the soldiers in 1861, it is your documentation of your experience living during the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine that will allow the Society to share history with people living 100 years from now. Every story is important. The Society is seeking individuals and organizations from all walks of life, different backgrounds and cultures. Perspectives from a retired couple or school-aged child are just as important as those from front-line health care workers. Teachers or supervisors could also make this an engaging group project!"

From The Wisconsin Historical Society.

Just like the soldiers in 1861?

In 1861, Wisconsin Historical Society founder Lyman Draper asked soldiers stationed at Camp Randall in Madison, Wisconsin to help document the Civil War by keeping a diary. After the war, those diaries were mailed back to the Society, where today they are regarded as one of the most valuable collections in the Society’s archives.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ryan writes:

Because staying home all day watching Netflix is just like the Civil War.

Commenter Ryan suggests a fantastic drawing game!

From the comments thread on the first post of today:

If you have kids try this game that I came up with by accident about 10 years ago: get their yearbook and draw someone, and then give them the drawing and the yearbook and see if they can figure it out. It's a fun game! We were playing last night and even cynical high school kids love it.

Even without kids! This is a great game and great as a drawing project.

You just need something to draw. Once, years ago, I came across an ad that had a collection of photos of smiling realtors. I still have those drawings somewhere, but I got really inspired trying to capture what felt to me like the insanity of their smiling. I wrote statements of their inner thoughts, explaining those facial expressions.

So that's a variation of Ryan's game — which I love as a game. Pick a face to draw, exaggerate the expression, and write out an imagined statement that somehow goes with that face. A way to do that with another person is for both to draw the same face and then see how differently you interpreted it.

Another thing I used to do — often with another person — is to watch some TV talking heads show — the news or whatever — and pause the TV on some interesting facial expression and draw the face. Add a snippet of what that face said, and feel free to make it as absurd and out of context as you like. Now, it's timeless art!

Big Structural Mom Energy.

I'm reading "My dream candidate exists – and her name is Elizabeth Warren/She’s overcome misogyny, billionaires’ wrath, and media smears to get to the front of the race, and she brings a special brand of Big Structural Mom Energy" by Rebecca Solnit (in The Guardian):

What I call Big Structural Mom Energy could also be called radical compassion. It lies in the homey delivery and quality of attention she brings to, for example, the young queer woman in Iowa she encouraged and hugged earlier this month. Warren, who has said more about trans rights than any other candidate, has made her credo clear, over and over: that everyone matters, and matters equally, and that the systems that shape our lives should value, defend and give everyone opportunity equally. She got a lot of attention for her comic answer to the question about what she’d say to someone opposed to marriage equality, but after the laughter was over, she said something she’s said in many forms in her campaign: “To me, that is the heart of it. That was the basis of the faith that I grew up in, and it truly is about the preciousness of each and every life.”

I thought a lot about that term "Big Structural Mom Energy," which Google convinces me Solnit invented. Is there even such a thing as a "structural mom"? I'm picturing a large sculpture — a colossus. Or maybe a high-energy, strict disciplinarian character who's got her kids' schedule packed with enriching activities. Google convinces me that whatever sorts of moms there might be out there, "structural mom" is not the idiom.  But oddly enough, I am finding "structural energy." It comes up on websites offering alternative medicine, notably Rolfing.

Rolf claimed to have found an association between emotions and the soft tissue, writing "although rolfing is not primarily a psychotherapeutic approach to the problems of humans", it does constitute an "approach to the personality through the myofascial collagen components of the physical body". She claimed Rolfing could balance the mental and emotional aspects of subjects, and that "the amazing psychological changes that appeared in Rolfed individuals were completely unexpected."

Get us a President who can do that to the country. Go after the soft tissue and restructure the emotions. Rolf the body politic.

IN THE COMMENTS: Ryan say "Big Structural Mom Energy" is "an obvious play on Big Dick Energy." That's a term I saw fit to write about in June 2018 (because The Guardian — the same place that published Solnit's piece — had an article, "Big dick energy: what is it, who has it and should we really care?/It is a phrase that is ‘a thing’, according to the collective wisdom of the internet – but do you have BDE?").