Look for the helpers

April 16, 2020 4:02 PM

33 Moments Where Friends, Family, And Total Strangers Had Each Other's Backs In This Pandemic (Buzzfeed listicle by Stephen LaConte)
posted by Johnny Wallflower (25 comments total)

So many of us are so good...

Such a shame we have people in power who are completely awful, and that they get so much attention...
posted by Windopaene at 4:29 PM on April 16, 2020 [9 favorites]

Always look for the helpers.
posted by lhauser at 5:05 PM on April 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

Watching everyone come together to help each other is really helping my mental health right now.
posted by bile and syntax at 5:07 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

This is the kind of content I need these days.
posted by SisterHavana at 5:20 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Needed this.
posted by PMdixon at 5:30 PM on April 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

I am kind of worried what the follow-up for the 90 year-old the pub delivered the keg for will be.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:51 PM on April 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks so much for sharing this!

If anyone hasn't been on YouTube lately, there are a lot of people doing fun and uplifting things. Many of the late night talk show hosts are posting videos from home and continuing to interview guests e.g., Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver. Several musicians are recording songs at home e.g., Barenaked Ladies, FarmAid did a live event from musicians' homes last weekend (search for "At Home With FarmAid"), Curt Smith of Tears for Fears recorded a lovely duet of Mad World with his daughter. A large group of comedians held an online charity event a few weeks ago - Comedy Gives Back Laugh Aid - that was several hours long with a lot of top names in the field. And John Krasinski started a whole new show: Some Good News.

(I'm particularly fond of Barenaked Ladies's "SelfieCamJam" version of Odds Are. I'm not a fan of BNL and I'm not familiar with their music but they're clearly very talented, very positive, and have a very appropriate song for these times.)
posted by ElKevbo at 5:58 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

Before I read this I'm bracing myself to sob uncontrollably.
posted by bendy at 6:08 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

I am kind of worried what the follow-up for the 90 year-old the pub delivered the keg for will be.

I know. They said the beer and snacks should last him a week, but they only gave him one keg and one carton of crisps. In the UK that's a couple of days supply at most.
posted by dazed_one at 6:12 PM on April 16, 2020 [14 favorites]

If anyone hasn't been on YouTube lately, there are a lot of people doing fun and uplifting things.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has been doing Songs from Home

Miss Coco Peru is doing Coco Thoughts While in Solitude which is basically her telling little entertaining stories from her life, in her Coco way.
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 6:18 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

And John Krasinski started a whole new show: Some Good News.

Oh, Some Good News has been adorable. He always starts out by spotlighting various gestures of kindness like this, or just "Hey here's some good thing that happened", and then ends with some big celebrity thing - his last episode saw him setting up a special treat for the staff at a Boston COVID-19 ward by bringing them all to Fenway Park and having them throw out "the first pitch of the season for 2020" (the BoSox also awarded the hospital staff four free lifetime season passes to take turns using).

The episode before last, he was responding to a Tweet from a woman whose daughter had just turned nine; she was supposed to have seen Hamilton for her birthday, but that closed, so she was consoling herself by watching Mary Poppins Returns. Well, Krasinski's wife was Mary Poppins, and Lin-Manuel Miranda was also in Mary Poppins with her, so they pulled some strings....
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:48 PM on April 16, 2020 [8 favorites]

You know what, I think this is the first time I've cried since all of this started. I honestly haven't needed to yet. Now I am, and it's with relief, because these kinds of things are happening. Still happening, of course, because they are always happening somewhere. What a nice way to end a day.

Also, the one about the gent who received a keg from his local pub is maybe my favorite just because it was so different from others on the list.
posted by Kitchen Witch at 6:55 PM on April 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Raul Malo of The Mavericks has been doing "Quarantunes". He is up to #17.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 7:06 PM on April 16, 2020

I truly hadn't expected to weep from reading this. Maybe it was the cumulative effect of all the kindness on display just building up an emotional well that needed to overflow out my eyes, but the one with the hospital workers with their faces taped on their torsos made me go "oh no, I didn't know I was going to cry" and then a couple more and I was struggling to continue to read through my tear-filled eyes.

Thank you for posting this. I'm not in a hard-hit area really (and our non-big curve is flattening because everyone is following social distancing and being generally respectful), and I'm "essential" and so my life is basically unchanged from before. But for so many others, and I read about it, and I wish them all to be doing well, and things like the incidents being related in this post just help me realize how much when it all boils down, people truly do love other people. Not just specific people, just people.

I'm still enough of a hippie-heart to truly believe that the pursuit of "all you need is love" as a fully-realized culture of the global humans is something to desire and work toward.

Thank you again.
posted by hippybear at 7:19 PM on April 16, 2020 [12 favorites]

The best thing to come out of all of this is that faced with unprecedented societal pressure, people mostly just... prioritize society and help each other or at least don’t actively harm each other.

I can’t help but think this is going to change post-apocalyptic fiction.
posted by Automocar at 8:33 PM on April 16, 2020 [6 favorites]

I was in the grocery store browsing yogurt yesterday and someone walked toward me and then stopped and I was sure to only pick up the cups I was going to buy, and we shared a nod as I walked away and he walked in, and it felt like an odd, never-before-experienced moment of connection.
posted by hippybear at 8:45 PM on April 16, 2020 [4 favorites]

My wife and I are healthcare workers who are all up in this thing. Not like, “bodies dropping all around us while we catch the virus“, but like “really fucking busy and our kids are getting just as neurotic as yours but we can’t spend time with them and we’re getting really sick of pizza delivery and oh shit no one has clean underwear.” I feel like I’m missing out on all the good TV and quality family time and catching up on exercise and home improvement that my neighbors are doing.

We’ve been recipients of small and large acts of kindness, including from Mefites — words of support, casseroles, an unexpected house cleaning, and, best of all, a really sweet college freshman who’s been watching the kids while she distance learns. I just want to say, in case you were debating what to do in your own social circles, everything, no matter how big or how small, really helps and is really appreciated. Healthcare, as I’ve written here many times, has been really thankless for many years and the gratitude has been overwhelming.

All the people I encounter and depend on who are still doing their jobs right now — the grocery clerks, the mail carriers (Hi mwhybark!), the guy who fixed my car when it wouldn’t start today, the pizza delivery person — I’ve been really conscious of how much their existence helps me to survive and I’ve been trying to express that whenever I am able. This is Thing #15 I’ve noticed and hope persists when this is all over.

Finally, I wanted to mention, one day last week my wife had a particularly bad day and this amazing woman who never asks for anything asked me if I would go get her favorite dish from her favorite restaurant here in Seattle. As I ordered on line to go pick it up, I noticed, with little fanfare, one of their options was:

Fremont Family Meal | Spicy pork with cashew mac salad and kale $0 (DF) This is free for those who need. We are all in this together and we would love to feed you. Any tips or donations will go directly to support Seattle hospitality industry workers. This is made possible with support from Niman Ranch.

And you don’t show up to a soup kitchen or go out back or anything. You stand in line 6 feet apart like all the rich yuppies and get your gourmet meal in a brown paper bag like everyone else. Hell yes, we are all in this together. In fact we have always been. In spite of the suffering and death, it’s a gift that we are being shown this now.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:10 PM on April 16, 2020 [36 favorites]

Fremont has a troll and a naked human powered solstice parade (not this year) and now a family meal. It truly is a good neighborhood to live in if you're in Seattle.
posted by hippybear at 9:15 PM on April 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

The most touching for me was the woman who made a friend by calling the wrong number of someone else who was also alone. So sweet.
posted by pangolin party at 5:27 AM on April 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

Before I read this I'm bracing myself to sob uncontrollably.

I should have just braced myself to fall down a fucking BuzzFeed rabbit hole of tweets and TicTacs that an advertiser carefully curated to make me feel better about COVID-19 which made me sob even more.
posted by bendy at 5:51 AM on April 17, 2020 [3 favorites]

Hi there dear MeFites, I am publishing a weekly email newsletter called Hope Notes so that folks have a place to turn for guaranteed good news and encouragement. It's free to subscribe, there's no catch, I'm not selling steak knives or Amway. Having one thing you can open without cringing feels important. (Holding my breath as I post this because I'm nervous about the self-link rules, so if I've made a faux pas, my apologies.)
posted by sockshaveholes at 5:53 AM on April 17, 2020 [8 favorites]

In the theme of “people pull together in a crisis and bias towards helping each other”, Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built In Hell looks at communities affected by disaster (New Orleans post Katrina, San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake, etc.) and how they come together in solidarity, and how that often runs at odds with the general narrative on panic and barely restrained mob savagery.
posted by bl1nk at 6:10 AM on April 17, 2020 [4 favorites]

No, I'm not crying because of a listicle ...
posted by nestor_makhno at 9:22 AM on April 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

sockshaveholes, your newsletter is great! The video you linked of the father and young daughter singing "You've Got A Friend In Me" is utterly adorable.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:50 PM on April 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

Mod note: One deleted; let's try to reserve these few happy threads for happy things, and keep the depressing things to other threads. A few replies deleted as well.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 3:53 PM on April 17, 2020 [5 favorites]