Aaron D. Ball

Oddly, as it turns out, the yellow QR code worked fine for at least one other person's phone, but we did get some of those printed with green instead.

We had a ridiculous amount of food come in given the short lead time* and the direct donations to Capital Area food bank alone had hit $15,000 by this evening and that campaign had only started Tuesday morning.

(This morning, about 48 hours after it was posted, it hit $10k. We did the math. That sounds like so much money doesn't it? SNAP serves 41 million people a month. $10k is 53 people worth. Or 3 seconds of the year. You'll hear that in the live stream below.)


Originally we had confirmed congressman Khanna, Beyer, and Raskin (who had literally a 17 min availability window) but then Khanna had to bail in the morning and Raskin had to bail near go time.

So the event speaking only really went for about half an hour and closed down and then Walkinshaw showed up like 10 min later so he ended up in the group photo op but wasn't on a live stream but I sent someone over to get some video with him I hope it happened.
Edit: he was interviewed by NBC4 and posted the group photo we invited him into over his protest of 'but I only just got here' on his Instagram (I do wish someone had gotten him a better one)


. MSN picked up Fox 5 DC's live stream of the shorter than expected but really good speaking segment . Which is especially good, because the person someone handed a phone to to live stream to Instagram was initially told hold it horizontal and was and then a bunch of people told him to hold it vertical so he changed it so the Instagram live stream is sideways.


Walkinshaw, a new rep from Virginia, didn't seem mad and was really nice and joined our group photo, the one guy in a suit surrounded by the rest of us in high vis, and holding one of the signs, too.

I noticed in some photos that someone posted on Blue sky that Beyer went and joined the crowd behind the speakers after he spoke.


I am especially happy about my part in making this happen.

I'm also pleased that I can see evidence of my process improvements, possibly in these Getty pictures and possibly in somebody else's I forget - things like I taped up a sign that was in amongst the food on one of the tables and it was my idea to use blue tape to identify the people who had just been introduced to the press as people willing to talk to them, and I was part of starting us sorting like with like from the beginning and as it came in.

David told me that anytime he mentioned me people told him how great I was.

It was just astonishing this came together so very quickly. I think the organizing chat started Monday evening. Thank goodness they were afraid that the weather wasn't good enough on Wednesday and moved it to today and thank goodness the weather suddenly got better today.

Long after everybody else was on their way out, a photographer for Somal News showed up. I cajoled the guy who started this to give her a quick snippet, and later this evening sent her some further pictures. I look forward to seeing the article. At one point she asked about what's the deal with fun food not ballrooms and I had to explain the whole Trump ballroom and a swing demolition and found this article which is kind of heartening


We then got back here, went to noise making, talked with some people there, went to all about burger and got chicken tenders (i think I managed to leave my whole soda there which is a little annoying, and boy howdy am I grateful that David was able to come and pick me up and help me get out this morning even though that was the afternoon because oh boy howdy was I scattered), and then I went inside the house and sat down on the floor for an hour making it rather look late to try and deliver something to Laurel but how to really nice conversation with Charles and Lisa for a while in establishing that and now sometimes it's 1:30 in the morning partly because I've continued looking at articles and finding pictures and stuff and stuff and stuff.


I really need to spend some time on life maintenance tomorrow.

I have zero idea what I'm going to do for halloween. There's a house dance I've been kind of meaning to go to in annandale, there's an Acro evening Jam in Columbia, and there's some movies outside and I don't know what to call it but it's sort of 4:00 on the beltway. I guess I have a couple options for clothing but I don't really have the energy.



*I think we sent five cars out split between the two food banks that were not Capital Area Food Bank. I keep kicking myself for not having thought to post to the big mutual Aid Facebook group or the welcome to DC Facebook group or my building link, but there were just so many moving parts and I thought of a little some of that and then didn't get to it in time. And who knows maybe walk in Shaw could have spoken if I had been a little faster at trying to track down additional speakers. But honestly, the food was basically there as bait for the media. If you're going to buy food yourself, that's much more for mutual Aid and community pantries - real food banks can buy food at the same prices grocery stores do; it's so much better to give them dollars to do so. Although yes there's a bunch of stuff that they're less likely to buy, like, say, multi packs of canned chicken from costco. And those that handle fresh at all that's entirely donations.

It won't work, and I shall be sad after making a large version of your flyer that is all about resources for furloughed feds and then I try accessing the QR and the orange one works and the yellow one (unsurprisingly) does not.


I'd offered to print a bunch on the way up to the food drive/rally, and I guess the really important part is that people can access the resource list, but the fact that the submission QR doesn't work and there's no website at all on here (nor a mention of which org it's from, but it might not be from a specific org? there are SO many different resource compilation documents going around) makes me loath to make a bunch of these if maybe she'll have a chance to get me something less pretty and more functional. 

Also I had the bright idea to print an 8.5x11 one pager 'what are we on about?' as 11x17 and that seems to have created a SURPRISING amount of work, and my few minutes before bed turned into an hour. 

:sigh: 

I guess the good thing about having gone downstairs and done this is she'll see my message in the morning and maybe be able to get someone (it's not her design file) to fix it in time to still print them. 

I keep planning to try to get a movement started to push back on how what DC called making the Streatery program permanent is really just going to kill them.  And I desperately need to sleep.  

But my face is burning and I've got no idea what's going on with that at all. If I wake up sick I shall be very cross.  Especially since I'm the one bringing the tarps.

This was supposed to do the click to embiggen but it's being weird and i really want to sleep. 

Hm. this can't be a symptom of food poisoning can it? Last couple days have been a "eat the things what need eating"

I am utterly boggled that 13% of Americans get food delivered DAILY.

Atlantic article aboutThe Innovation That Threatens Restaurant Culture

In 2024, nearly three out of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data provided to me by the National Restaurant Association, a trade group. The share of customers using delivery specifically, as opposed to picking up takeout or going to a drive-through, more than doubled from 2019 to 2024. In a recently released poll by the association, 41 percent of respondents said that delivery was “an essential part of their lifestyle.” For Millennials and Generation Z—the apex consumers of today, and of tomorrow too—it’s apparently even more essential: More than half of adults under 45 use delivery at least once a week, and 13 percent use it once a day. Five percent use it multiple times a day. But the delivery boom isn’t confined to young people or to urbanites: About one in eight Baby Boomers uses delivery once a week, and so does about one in five rural dwellers. We are a nation of order-inners. A world, really—earlier this year, DoorDash announced a deal to acquire the British delivery service Deliveroo for $3.86 billion; the new, combined company will have 50 million monthly active users, spread over more than 40 countries.

I very occasionally get pizza delivered.

I don't think I've gotten anything delivered if I'm alone since early pandemic. Even during high pandemic I tended to go there to pick stuff up. And I learned early on to maybe search on grubhub or even use the menu on grubhub but actually call the restaurant. (I did that with New Big Wong the night all the restaurants shut down. Because they didn't have their whole menu up on the website. )

Anyway, this is a memory: mom took me to the glass flower museum in Boston. And I sort of think I returned there with Joe in 2001 but we were getting sick at the time.

https://open.substack.com/pub/kirkgordon/p/the-age-of-silicon-began-long-ago?

I suppose I should get back to sleep.

I have things I really want to go to today in Manassas and Elkridge and Capitol Heights and argh.