Meaningful ways to fill your hours during a pandemic

How are you? I hope someone in your life is asking you that, sincerely. If not - tell me. 

Things are rough for so many people. People haven't paid rent in months because they don't have work. Small businesses are going out of business. Nonprofit art groups are folding. So many, many are struggling. 

Little Miss Privilege here has a home and someone paying her way, since she's under-employed. 

I wish I could help you financially. I can help you if you are feeling useless and bored:

I hope you have made it a point to amplify science-based info, and if you haven't, I hope you will do so. Your voice online is important! You have a role to play right now: countering misinformation online. 

I regularly repost things from my county's health department. I comment positively on those posts as well, to counter all of the negative comments they get - and am pleased that my comments get far more likes than the conspiracy theorists trying to convince people that masks are oppressive and un-American. I also retweet @nursekelsey a lot: she's a trauma ICU nurse and provides regularly updates both about her work experences with COVID-19 patients and how she handles her home life - it's inspirational and the reality check I need. 

I also have been looking up services in my local community that help people with rent, with food or with mental health services, and sharing them on social media. Has it helped anyone? I don't know. But I know that info is needed - and I notice it gets reshared every time I do it. 

I also spend my days writing postcards and emails to elected officials, telling them to GIVE PEOPLE MONEY. And amplifying information about how to volunteer with food banks and Meals on Wheels, nonprofits that are desperate for volunteers. And trying not to get the 'Rona myself. 

I hope you got to see Jupiter and Saturn in one telescope shot, something we've never been able to do before and, if you are my age, won't be able to do again in our lifetime. If you didn't, look around for some other upcoming thing-to-see-in-the-skies. I live in a town where street lights abound and, yet, I still get some pretty good views of astronomical events, if it's not raining. Just throw something down on the ground, lay down and look up at the night sky for a while. Even just 30 minutes. It's amazing what you'll see. 

If you want to take a break from doom scrolling, I highly recommend transcribing some historical documents so you make them more searchable and accessible to everyone, particularly researchers. Some examples of efforts you can join: 

• Climate Cardinals. An international nonprofit working to translate climate change research and information, making the climate movement more accessible to those who don’t speak English. Here's the description of what volunteers do. 
   
• Colored Conventions, hosted at the University of Delaware. From 1830 until the 1890s, already free and once enslaved Black Americans came together in state and national political meetings in the USA called "Colored Conventions." Before the Civil War, they strategized about how to achieve educational, labor and legal justice at a moment when Black rights were constricting nationally and locally. After the Civil War, their numbers swelled as they continued to mobilize to ensure that Black citizenship rights and safety, Black labor rights and land, Black education and institutions would be protected under the law. Online volunteers transcribe newspaper accounts of these meetings,  to allow this historical records to be more easily accessible and searchable for students and scholars across disciplines and for community researchers interested in the history of activist church, civil rights, educational and entrepreneurial engagement. 
   
• DIY History is an online volunteering project from the University of Iowa’s Digital Library. Online volunteers transcribe digitized artifacts related to Iowa history so that they become searchable, allowing researchers to quickly seek out specific information, and general users to browse and enjoy the materials more easily. Scanned documents that need to be transcribed and tagged include diaries, letters and newspaper articles from war time and manuscripts related to early Iowa lives, social justice, fanzines, recipes and cookbooks. 
   
• FamilySearch. Transcribe scanned family records (census records, property deeds, marriage records, etc.). Tags: history, historical. 
   
• Old Weather project: online volunteers transcribe hand-written weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I; using old weather observations can help predict our climate's future. Tags: history, historical, climate, science. 
   
• Smithsonian Digital Volunteer program. The Smithsonian seeks to engage the public in making its collections more accessible. "We're working hand-in-hand with digital volunteers to transcribe historic documents and collection records to facilitate research and excite the learning in everyone." Transcription turns handwritten and typed documents into searchable and machine-readable resources, creating an incredibly valuable asset for art, history, literary and scientific researchers across the globe. From high school to graduate studies, transcription allows students to engage with primary source materials – a key part of the learning experience. Transcription preserves these historic documents for future generations. 
   
• The Freedom on the Move (FOTM) public database project at Cornell University is a major digital database effort to make the search of North American fugitive slave advertisements in newspapers from regional, state, and other collections from the 1700s and 1800s easy to search and the data easy to evaluate. Online volunteers add data tags to the screened entries and transcribe the ads. Here is an excellent article on about the database, from which Dr. Mitchell's quote is taken. 
   
• Indiana World War I Service Record Cards is a project by the Indiana Archives that engages online volunteers in transcribing service record cards that detail the military service of Indiana men and women who served in the armed forces at the time of World War I. It also goes by the name of Indiana Archives and Records Administration Virtual Volunteer Program. 
   
• Library of Congress By the People (crowd.loc.gov). Launched in the autumn of 2018 at the LOC's very first transcribe-a-thon and on the 155th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Online volunteers can transcribe, review and tag digitized images of manuscripts and typed materials from the Library’s collections. These transcriptions improve search, readability and access to handwritten and typed documents for those who are not fully sighted or cannot read the handwriting of the original documents. The site also offers a free guide (PDF) on How to host a transcribe-a-thon (PDF). Note: I wrote the LOC folks on Twitter about all you students wanting letters to confirm you are doing this service. They responded: That's awesome! We have a few spots on our "About" page explaining how to obtain service documentation. e-mailing us at crowd@loc.gov is the best way to get specifics. We provide verification for students all the time! 
   
• New York Public Library's collection of historic restaurant menus. If menus have been transcribed by other volunteers, then online volunteers can review transcriptions for errors, or can geotag the location of restaurants on a global map. 
   
• 1947 Partition Archive is "a grassroots, non-political, 100% volunteer run effort to document and preserve eye witness accounts from the partition of British India into present day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in 1947." Online volunteers can help with transcription of interviews (many interviews are in English), translation of interviews and other materials from/into Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Urdu, Sindhi, and English, video editing, online outreach or legal advice. Tags: history, historic. 
   
• New York Public Library building inspector transcriptions. Online volunteers are helping to annotate digitized insurance atlases that map the history of the city's buildings and streets. Online volunteers can help to draw and check borders of property lines and buildings, enter addresses written on the maps, classify colors, and find place names. "Imagine if maps had a magic switch that let you explore the geography of the past. The Library wants to do this for New York City, turning historical atlases into time machines. To do it we need to harvest all the fantastic detail from the original maps: building footprints, addresses, place names, construction materials etc. — clues that will help unlock a million stories. With this information organized and searchable, you can ask new kinds of questions about history. Peel back the layers of the city and replay its growth. 'Check in' to vanished establishments and meet their ghostly proprietors. Or discover related historical documents (newspapers, photographs, business directories…) linked by place and time." Tags: history, historic. 
   
• Royal British Columbia Museum Transcribe project (Canada). Online volunteers transcribe various collections from the museum, including diaries, government papers, and more. "The transcriptions you create will become searchable data, facilitating learning and research around the world. Whether you choose to transcribe one page, one hundred pages, or just browse our collections, you’re helping us share the stories that matter."  

If you are looking for something inspiring: watch Cosmos. If you have never seen the Cosmos reboot, you should. The second season is showing on Fox now, but if you've missed it, look online for the DVDs of the first season for sale. There are some affordable used ones out there, if money is an issue. I've cried watching almost every episode - it just gives me a feeling of hope and a feeling of being a part of EVERYTHING, in a good way. I hope you find it comforting as well. 

Take care of yourself. You can do this. All the best in 2021.