Playable Dolls and Whack-a-Mole

I'm so happy--I woke up and decided, "Time to take a break from social media". That is, from FB & IG, not blogging.
I put a note on FB inviting people to email me instead, and I instantly felt better.

If anything, I'd like to blog more than I am––to get my thoughts in some order, or, at any rate, just to record some of what's going on. Maybe I will now.
 
Blogging is a good medium for this time of corona. A friend who hasn't blogged in ten years mentioned she might fire up her blog again. I wonder if we'll see more of that.

II. Playable Doll Assemblage

Just now I went over to Susan Sanford's long-defunct blog, Art Spark Theatre, and looked at her still-active blogroll to see who's posting. I met a lot of blog friends there, back in the day.

Today I found a blog I don't think I've seen before:
Circles of Rain. 

I hope the blogger, Sarah, won't mind if I repost her awesome crocheted virus here. 

(I've sort of forgotten the etiquette---bloggers used to repost a lot... with attribution).

I'll post it small, as incentive to go look at her post about it.

I was very excited that Sarah also constructs dolls--like this recent one from things she finds on the Thames' shore.
 
I'm pretty new to the world of dolls, since Red Hair Girl came here only two summers ago. (Oh, no--it'll be three years this summer.)
I'm seeing a couple big areas of doll work: clothes design and action photography.

Much of the doll work I've seen is what I'd expect---people designing doll clothes--(some fantastic ones!)--and photographing dolls wearing them out and about. This is like an evolution of what I know from childhood of girls playing with dolls.

Then there are the action figures and minifigs (LEGO, etc) who turn up in "toy photography". Again, some astonishing work! They tend toward Marvel Comics, Star Wars, and those kinds of fantasy/action imagery.

Sarah makes... not sure what you'd call them... doll assemblage? "Art dolls"? (I don't like calling them "art" because they start to feel like "not toys"--you don't play with art. 
Hers seem to be playable:
in the post above, she's also made houses for dolls out of hollowed out books.

Anyway, I was inspired. I have a box of broken dolls and doll parts at work--wish I could get at them.
But in truth, I have more than enough to do with the girlettes. They have fun even if I'm not playing with them, but they like it when I do. And so do I.

II. Whack-a-Mole

So, I've been fuming since the beginning at the lack of preparedness I've seen in my city (Minneapolis) and the country at large, on the part of people whose job it was to BE PREPARED.
We knew this was coming sometime, right?

I'm not an avid news follower though, and I've wondered if I was missing something.
Sad to say, no.

I'm very sorry that I'm not missing something, but I was also glad (I mean, "glad to know I'm not crazy") to read this reality check from Terry Gross' interview with science-writer Ed Yong,
Link to transcript and radio: "Fighting COVID-19 Is Like 'Whack-A-Mole,' Says Writer Who Warned Of A Pandemic", April 1, 2020.

Yong says:

"Even though many people had warned about this for a long time, the underwhelming nature of America's response to this threat has really surprised even people who had been warning, who have been issuing alarms.

"There is a thing called the Global Health Security Index, which ranks different countries according to their levels of preparedness for pandemics, according to 140 different criteria based on regulations from the World Health Organization.

"And out of all the countries that were assessed, the United States has the highest score - 83.5, a solid B.
But if you look at how the country has actually reacted to the pandemic, I think we probably get something like an F.
"This nation that was meant to be the most prepared of all has really flubbed its response and I think in - to a degree that has shocked even the most alarmed or pessimistic people who I'd spoken to before in my earlier reporting."

Aaargh. Makes me so mad.