When Life Hands You Lemons...

When life hands you lemons, make lemon drops. This is the Elevate Folk Podcast, and I'm your host, Chrissanne Long. And with me, as always, is Rob Arturi.

Well, not really with you this time, right?

So we've got to figure out— we had to figure out how to do this remotely, and I'm not really sure I like it because I can't see your facial expressions when I'm saying stupid things.

That's true. But you can still hear me laughing, so I guess that—

Well, make sure you laugh loud enough so I can hear you because I might just keep going.

That just makes it better. And I think we can all use a laugh or two right now. But at least thanks to technology, we can still do this.

Yeah, I'm excited that you found this solution. So it'll be cool to hear the next, the next, the next, the new normal for our podcasting efforts.

Gosh, I hope not. I don't like this. I miss my studio. But what are you gonna do? You have to follow the rules, I suppose, right?

Well, and I've had to sequester poor Craig into the other room because whenever he makes faces at me, it totally messes me up. So he's over there watching, uh, The Curse of Oak Island. Are you familiar with that show?

I am, I am not. I don't watch a lot of TV. I got all the kids, I just, I can't enjoy. I'm watching something, I want to like just focus on it, and with the kids running around like crazy, I, you know, I can't. So I don't, I don't watch a lot of TV. I managed to watch the, the Tiger King series. That was, yeah, that was special.

Let's not, let's not go there. I do want to say though, if you are a listener and you like The Curse of Oak Island, this This is Craig's birthday week, so if you've got some really cool Curse of Oak Island memes or jokes and you're friends with him on Facebook, shoot him some, some Curse of Oak Island love because he is totally enamored by that show. I don't understand it, but he loves it. And a couple of our friends make some comments that I am totally an outsider for.

Well, and, and if you like people watching and, uh, you get some sort of weird perverse amusement out of watching human train wrecks, then I would recommend the Tiger King.

I would, I would highly recommend staying away from that. I watched like 5 minutes of the first episode and I was done. So, um, let's, let's get into the show.

All right, so how, how are you faring during this whole, uh, this whole ordeal?

Well, sometime last week we made the decision to send all of our staff home with their, with their computers from the office, so they're working from home. Um, Craig and I continue to go into the office because I feel for my own psychological, um, safety. Actually, Craig probably needs me to maintain a level of normalcy. Um, I've— I need normalcy, so I need the habit of getting up in the morning, getting dressed, going to work. And so Craig and I are still working out of the office with the door closed to the public. But aside from that, um, we've spent a lot more time at the grocery store than I have spent in, in probably 6 months. We're not very good at grocery shopping planning, so, so thank goodness that Publix has remained open for us because we've had to go back a few times.

Yeah, and you know, I think it's worth noting some of the— I think this whole experience has kind of taught us about what really matters or who really matters and who doesn't. You know, I'm watching on, on social media, and people are still talking a little about politics and stuff like that, but there's a tremendous amount of personal sharing. So like, whether it's these silly post 5 movies that you always watch, or 20 things you didn't know about me, or whatever.

And sometimes I spy something yellow, right?

And I'm not really one to, to actually do some of those, but I'm seeing a lot of people posting more stuff about their own lives versus other people's lives, celebrities, this kind of stuff. And it really kind of reminds us that, like, what really matters and, and who really matters. When was the last time you thanked somebody for, you know, like, you were grateful for people working at a grocery store? About 2 hours ago, right? Well, before all of this, I mean, it's not something that, uh, and, you know, everybody works hard and, and, you know, we don't have to go around patting everybody on the back But sometimes it's good to kind of reset our priorities and kind of gain some perspective. You know, there's a lot of young people out there, especially who they don't earn a lot of money, but they're showing up to work, they're bagging groceries, they're scanning stuff at the checkout counter, they're slicing cold cuts in the deli. These are not high-wage jobs, but they're considered essential. And these people are showing up for work, right? And, you know, many of them might be glad that they actually still have jobs. But, you know, I was at Publix yesterday, and they did put up some protection for the clerks.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, the deli counter is somewhat of a barrier and stuff. But these people are not— they don't have all kinds of, you know, personal protective equipment. And you don't know, you know, I give, I give a lot of credit to people who are working during this time. So if you're out and about, they seem to be maintaining— they're still, still keeping up their public's cheerfulness even during this time, which is truly commendable. But make sure, you know, you give them a, you know, thank them for, for what they're doing. Because like you said, I mean, thank, thank goodness that they're there, because yeah, what else would we do?

Well, and I think for me, I, you know, like I said, I, I need to maintain a sense of normalcy. I've mentioned before, you know, I, I, if I crawl up in the bed, I won't get back out. So I I've got to make sure that I can keep seeing what's today, living for the moment, living for the day, and happy that I am blessed to be able to say that. But, you know, I smile, you know, I smile, I say hi. Like you said, when was the last time you said thank you to your Publix workers or your, you know, whoever it is, your clerk, your checkout person? One of the other areas of normalcy for me is, you know, the morning coffee run and we love our Dixieland 7-Eleven. We stop there every morning on our way to work. And Nancy and Donna and Dan and Earl and those guys are there every single day and smiling. And I'm happy to see them, and they're probably not so happy to see me, but they, like you said, they're showing up and they're doing their jobs and they're there for us. So definitely want to let everyone know that if you're showing up for work and people are needing your services, We appreciate you during this time because I don't know where we would be without you.

We would be hungry. We would be in chaos.

Yeah, we would. We are kind of in chaos, but we'd be a lot hungrier in the chaos. I made a joke the other day to Craig. I said, you know, remember when you went to college and everyone referenced the freshman 15? Well, now we've got the COVID-19. So 4 extra pounds for this period of time, probably allotted.

Yeah, but at least the Freshman 15 was over your entire freshman year. This is like a, uh, you know, eating, uh, eating whatever, right? Um, but you know, another, another thing that had a note that I wanted to, uh, to talk about were, um, well, two, two things, and they're kind of still somewhat related, I guess. The first is the transit workers The Citrus Connection employees, specifically the bus drivers, bus drivers, yep, that are trapped inside of, you know, this vehicle with people coming in and coming out. And, you know, you don't know what anybody's got, and they're showing up and they're doing it as long as they can do it safely. They're cleaning their buses every night. I mean, I've, you know, we had Tom Phillips, the executive director, on the podcast, and I've been following some of what he's been posting, and these people really— their job is important because we can thank the grocery store workers and a lot of these other, you know, like the 7-Eleven workers, but we forget that the people that work in a lot of those what are now considered essential jobs, many of them rely on public transit. And without those bus drivers, those people can't get to work. And you know, you may be able to, to order Uber Eats, but it's going to be real hard, if not impossible, to get Uber right now, right? So, you know, there, there are little things I think we just take for granted, especially if you're— if you've never ridden the bus, if you've never been on one of those buses and you really don't have a need for it, it doesn't seem like it's relevant to you or that it affects you. But it's all part of the, uh, of our society, of that, that machine.

And I think we're all more acutely aware of how everything else affects us today. You know, we're— like you said, taking for granted is kind of the regular, the norm. And now a new normal is we're becoming more aware of the things that we haven't been aware of, and we're paying more attention to things that we didn't stop and consider before. And I think that's an important win if we're looking for making lemon drops or lemonade out of situations. It's putting some perspective for a lot of us, and I'm grateful for that. I am in a moment where I think of Tom Phillips and the workers and his leadership, and I think of Bob Donahue, who we also had on the show, and his leadership as the city kind of had some challenges with making decisions about the parks.

Yeah, that—

It was, you know, I don't want to get into that. I want to get into the staff. People who took the directives from the leadership that said, we're going to do this, and were able to mobilize and overnight pretty much have things in place that were decided, um, you know, 24 hours before.

Yeah. And if you, you know, think about it like this, it's real easy to sit back and say, what is the city doing with this? Parks, are they open? Are they closed? Are they open? Are they closed? Is this trail open? That one's not. And all of this that's going on. And, you know, there may be a time we revisit this and we assess it. Now is not that time. But imagine this, as frustrating as it might be for you as a citizen, imagine working in that department and having to take orders from the city commission and go in and actually implement these things back and forth, etc. And they did it. They did it without question. They did it quickly. And, you know, those are the things that, though, in my opinion, they're the, they're the troops, they're the soldiers, and you, you cannot fault them for what you believe is good or bad direction from the generals. You have to appraise them on their adherence to the orders that they were given.

Yeah.

And then they went into a situation that wasn't necessarily ideal, uh, and they did it. And, and they're among others, you know. Of course we're grateful for police, fire, EMS, our healthcare workers.

And not definitely saying, of course, not to diminish that at all by saying, of Of course, we're— but, you know, I think the challenge we have as citizens is we do not have to come in contact or see the work of these individuals on the day-to-day basis. I mean, we hear a siren when the police or the fire go by. We, you know, we're glad that when we go to the hospital, there's somebody there to care for us. But to know in a time like this that there's no reprieve, There's no break, there's no, hey, you know, oh, I'm a nonessential business, so I'm just gonna stay at home. Not that we wanna stay at home, but these people have to show up every day right now, and that is something, that is no small feat.

It really isn't, and the way that I look at this is we may not appreciate our public servants and our nurses and LPNs enough in our regular lives, but they certainly get more appreciation than municipal workers, than bus drivers, than, uh, you know, checkout clerks and things like that. But it's a situation like this where, like you said, we get that perspective where we realize, hey, yeah, of course, police, fire, and all these people, they're important, but we know that they're important, right? We know what life— because we can understand that if those people were gone, If there were no nurses and doctors tomorrow, if there were no firemen, no EMTs, no police tomorrow, we know that that would be very, very bad. But few of us have taken the time to consider what would be like if they're just— the buses stopped running, if the, uh, if, if Publix was closed because they had nobody to work inside, what would you do? And it, it really does give us that unique perspective that maybe some of this stuff is more important in our daily lives, and it— maybe it's important 365 days a year. So, you know, I'm not saying we're going to go around again just carrying out the checkout clerks up on our shoulders every day, uh, like Rudy, but I think that maybe some of it does kind of last a little bit where we remember, uh, I guess the type of people who are really important, that maybe the, the Hollywood celebrities and the types of people that we normally idolize Maybe when push comes to shove, they really aren't as important as that 17-year-old clerk staring at you, you know, asking you about your day at Publix.

So I'm really glad you said that about Rudy, because that is a really excellent point that you didn't even, I think, intend to make. But you— but when you said it, I was like, oh yes, absolutely. So Sean Astin is Rudy in the movie Rudy in, what, 1993, I think. Is that right? Yeah, I think so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds all right.

Something like that. And it's one of my favorite movies. And Rudy is a nonessential player, right? He is somebody who is just basically beat up on for the sake of all of the starters to be able to get better at their game. And at the end of the movie, the reality shifts. And everyone sees how valuable Rudy has been because he was the encourager. He was the one that would never stop. He was the one that would never give up. And I think that's where we are right now. We need that spirit of Rudy in our day-to-day lives because we've got to refuse to quit even whatever, whatever happens in the next 60, 90, 180 days. It doesn't. Really matter as long as we can continue to fight the good fight, right? I mean, that's kind of where— what I thought of when you brought up Rudy. And, you know, it's like we need to lift up our public employees and our bus drivers and our parks and rec people who are doing the work that nobody else can do. But we can't stop celebrating these smaller, lesser-known individuals because it just becomes the new normal. Because the old normal was like we didn't pay attention to them. We have to maintain this. I think, as long as we can, because we're not going to get through it any other way.

Exactly, exactly. And you know, you realize the funny part of that analogy though is that even in that game, the, in the last game where he eventually plays in the movie, it wasn't necessarily essential in winning the game. It wasn't some cliché thing like that where he scores the winning, winning goal. But what it showed was that it he was essential to that team every other day, uh, in addition. Yeah, and probably more essential right now, like, majorly, majorly all over goosebumps.

So, you know, by golly, if you haven't watched Rudy in a while, this might be the time to do it because we know you got the time, right? You have the time, and it's a great inspirational show.

It, it really is. It's a It is a good movie and not, and not super cliché. I don't like some of those, those types of movies where it's so cliché, you know, the, um, you know, you know the ending and that sort of thing, right? But it's a really— so because it's a true story.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I love those are the ones that'll get me every single time. If it says based on true events, I'm in, and I will probably be the one blubbering by the end.

Um, so, you know, people are coping with this because, yes, we, we, we definitely— we wanted to take some time and to talk about our gratitude for those people who are, are important and working so hard. But there are also a lot of people who are suffering, right? Maybe they have lost their income, maybe they've already lost their business, maybe they're on the precipice of losing everything. Um, but if that's the case, um, some of them are really hard up, uh, others are just kind of coping with being stuck at home with their spouse and kids 24/7 for weeks at a time, which can be, uh, uh, difficult, right? Uh, we'll just use a nice word. Of course, not me. Not my—

my wife is wonderful and my kids are angels working together, living together, you know, since, you know I don't know, 10, 12 years ago. So this is nothing new for us other than the fact that we're going grocery shopping a lot more.

Uh, yeah, right. Um, but I, you know, there's, uh, the Lakeland Drinks group has been posting, uh, I want to give a shout out to Lakeland Drinks for posting, uh, drinking selfies before it was trendy, right? Because now it's all over Facebook. That's apparently alcohol is one of the ways people are coping, right?

Pre-coronavirus, uh, you know, shutdowns, there was this, this awesome group for, for people who enjoyed a beverage now and then.

Exactly. And now it's all over Facebook, right?

You know, um, I taught my mom Zoom today because we're having a family reunion, a virtual family reunion tonight, and I needed her to at least be able to make sure she could use it. And we started chatting and she said, yeah, Bucky, your brother, my brother, um, Says he's drinking a little earlier than he used to. So with 4 daughters at home, I'm sure that that's probably a common courtesy.

Yeah, I did that last night with some friends on Zoom. Just catching up.

How are you faring with the 3 kids at the house and just all of the craziness you've usually got going on?

Yeah, yeah. It's a challenge because we're both still working. So my wife works from home normally, um, but between school and everything else, it's a little bit more manageable. Now it's really tough with, with 3 kids, um, but we're making it work. You know, we're letting the kids are getting creative. One of them is now taking up residence in a walmart.com box that arrived the other day that he has, uh, I love building forts.

That's fun.

He has his own bedroom, but he built a fort out of a cardboard box. So it's awesome.

As I was driving home today, I saw a daughter and a son on a little scooter, and they have like two— they had a garage. They have a garage that has two garage doors and like a pole in between the two, like so it's two separate garage doors. One could be open and the other one can be closed, but they were both open and they were running. They were riding their scooters around in circles, and it was looking like the daughter was chasing the dad or the dad was chasing the daughter. I wasn't really sure because the circle was quite of a small circle. But, you know, it made me smile because, you know, these— this is probably just creative ways of trying to cope with the fact that it's Sunday and tomorrow is gonna be just like today, right?

I will say one thing. So one of the things that I've seen about this is the, the way that people are coming together in other ways, right? So like you said, you're going to do a virtual family reunion. I've spent more time, uh, talking to family, uh, via FaceTime, Zoom, and Skype, some of them, than I have in the past couple weeks than I have in years, which is kind of— which is really bad now that I say it out loud. But, um, but again, it does remind you of what— I guess those things are really, you know, really important. I know that I don't— I'm not a regular churchgoer, but I really like all of the virtual services that they're putting on and how quick these— the religious community was able to kind of pivot to still allow worshipers to have a place, to have somewhere to go and still be connected. You know, that said, I'm not a fan of that guy in Hillsborough County. I, I think that what he got arrested for, continuing regular church services. Well, you know, here's, here's my, my one piece, and I'll say, because I think I had a few conversations with people about this, and some people brought up like, you know, separation of church and state, religious liberty, that, that kind of thing. I'm a huge proponent of religious freedom, of freedom in general. But, you know, I've seen a lot of people having these conversations And what I don't like, and, and I hope this is just kind of a my, my two cents, maybe give some perspective. This is not a binary thing, right? There are a lot of examples in our regular lives, in the past, court cases and things, where there have been serious challenges to religious liberty. The idea that we are closing large gatherings, and large church gatherings being one of those, is a threat to religious liberty is just not true. It's not accurate because we're not just focusing on churches, we're focusing on everything. And the idea that church is somehow separate from the government, um, is, is also ludicrous in that the idea that the church doesn't have to follow any regulations, right? They still have to get a building permit when they build a church. You still have to have fire extinguishers, right? We do these things because they're to protect people. It's not, it's not about religious— it's not like, well, the mosque, mosques can stay open but the Baptist churches have to close. That would be ridiculous, and I'd be out there protesting too. But I think people are— some people are a little bit kind of, uh, on edge about religious freedom, and I get it. And I think we should all be, uh, be mindful of that. But we should also look and say, well, is this being applied across the board? And if it's not, then If it is, rather, then maybe that's not what this is. So I would hope that those out there who are making a stink about this, maybe instead of directing that out towards people and trying to create a political or a civil rights narrative out of this, maybe use that energy to bring new people in, people who would never want to get up in the morning and get dressed and go to your church even though you invited them 5 times. But maybe they'd be willing to watch a service online. And, you know, just out of curiosity, maybe this is a good time to do that. Yeah.

So I am super excited that you brought that up. And now I'm going to do a shout out for Brett Rickey. He's the pastor at Highland Park Church. And about a year ago, almost to the day, because Craig's birthday is tomorrow, and last year Craig asked me to go to church with him and I've been going ever since. And so we pivoted and started watching the live streaming services and about, I guess, 3 weeks ago, I sent a message to my mom with a link for her to join because I don't think that her church was doing live streaming and I was raised Catholic and so it's kind of not certain that my mom's gonna wanna embrace my church services at this point in time and yet she jumped right in and she's enjoyed the last 3 weeks with us and I think that those are the things, that's what I mean is finding that normalcy and continuing those patterns that we have used before this time and finding a way to make them work. And so, if your church isn't live streaming, I'm sure that you can find a church that would be a great message for you on Sunday, and especially as we're approaching the Easter season, I think it's just important that we keep whatever positive messages that we possibly can alive. And so, you know, shout out to Pastor Brett for continuing the message.

Amen. We'll leave it at that.

Yeah, for sure. So a couple of things that have happened over the past couple of weeks, some fun things, some celebrations. You know, I was, as Craig's birthday was approaching, I was thinking, really, you know, this is a, it would be tough to be a kid and celebrate a birthday. And A friend of mine, a friend, a friend of a great friend of Craig's and mine, Nicole Travis, who works for the city at the, in the community development office, her daughter turned 6 on the 2nd and she had to get creative and figure out how she was going to let her 6-year-old not have like a bummer of a birthday. And so she had huge yard signs and she arranged for all of Madison's friends to drive down the neighborhood in a like a little birthday parade. And they had a Zoom birthday party and they had ice cream cake. Cake, and they got to order whatever presents she had ordered. They did via Target's pickup. Uh, they did a virtual karate class, and I'm assuming that's probably with Karate Beyond with Jay Che, who was also a member of our, uh, a past guest on our show.

So we're just shouting out all past guests.

This is the show. Um, but it was really fun, and I thought, what a cool, creative way to take care of your little one and make sure that she knew how much she was loved. So Nicole, good job. And, and my comment on her post was, you know, that she won the Best Mom of the Pandemic award. And we wanted to find out, you know, hey Johnny, tell her what she's won. And it's a month of homeschooling just for you, Nicole. Get to stay home and take care of your little ones.

Well, I'll tell you, you know who really loves this, uh, this whole thing? Our pets. Oh, dogs especially. Maybe not cats, they kind of like their own space, but dogs are loving this. This is like heaven. I think we're— I think as depressed as humans are right now with everything that's going on, when all of this ends at some point, I think the dogs are going to go through a collective depression because it's like, you know, they're like, I love the new normal, this is great, keep it up. They never leave me, it's great. I haven't been that great in weeks.

There was a meme or something that was like, see, this is why I start chewing the furniture when you leave.

So have you— how are you doing on toilet paper? Have you managed to get to—

well, the good news is we have a guy.

Oh, that's right, that's right.

Hi! So hey, if we're doing shoutouts, let's shout out, um, ABC Coffee and Supplies, uh, services our office and brings us toilet paper, paper towels, soap, all of the things that we need on a regular basis. And, uh, so He had just made a delivery and then I called him back and said, "Can you make another one?" So I told some of the staff, you know, provisions are available, but limit 2 per customer.

Well, did you see that, I think it was 1961 was selling toilet paper for like 50 cents a roll if you really needed it? Like about a week ago or so. I think it's getting better 'cause there, you know, there was no supply chain issue with this stuff, right? It was just everybody bought it at once, so they were all out of it. But in all honesty, like, it's not, uh, really running out per se.

Yeah, well, let's take a minute to be— let's, let's talk about innovation for a second. Some of the, the companies— so I mentioned Jay, Jay and Karate Beyond. He's doing karate classes online. I'm not sure if he's using Zoom or how he's— what he's doing to deliver those.

I think so.

And so, I would love in the next couple of weeks for our main, like, call to action for our listeners is to send us examples of businesses or people who are being innovative and creative. A friend of mine, Jack Lohmann, he makes some kick-butt ribs. And I say butt because, you know, it's like pig fest kind of stuff. And he posted last week he was going to do some smoking and we practicing safe distancing. We ordered some and it was just a really nice treat to have some really good ribs cooked for us. There was a lot of, of thought about, you know, how do I keep my friends happy with, you know, really good ribs or pulled pork or— and I, I don't think he's experienced in the brisket department, so he's now he's going to start exploring in there. But yeah, I would love for our listeners to send us messages post links to things that people are doing so that we can, you know, mention those on, on future shows in the coming weeks, because we really want to make sure we stay positive and we keep focusing on the good things that are going on in the community at this time.

I agree. And good luck to your friend with the brisket, because I will tell you, I have spent an inordinate amount of money on brisket.

Do you have it mastered yet?

Well, every time that I think I do, The next one is lousy. And, you know, I'm my worst critic. You know, my in-laws end up getting a lot of our leftover brisket when I'm like, I'm not going to eat this now. No, it's not. It's not perfect. It's not my standards.

Let's pass it off to the in-laws.

Here's the $50 brisket. Here you go. Like, and they're incredibly grateful and happy and they offer to give me money for it. I'm like, no, you don't understand. The money won't make up for the pain that I spent an entire day on this and it didn't meet the standard I want. So, um, it is— it's tough. It's a really— it's a, it's a tricky thing.

So, um, I'll, I'll pass that on to him and let him know that he's off the hook if he doesn't want to get into it.

Yeah, that— just tread lightly because the other stuff, the ribs and the pork butts and the chicken thighs and stuff, uh, those are, are much more forgiving. Than brisket is.

So, so here's, here's another thought, just going back to the innovation and being creative and whatnot. I mean, we've— here's what I see a lot of, and here's what I'd like to see more of. I see a lot already of examples of innovation from other communities, right? So someone shared, I don't remember where— oh, they shared it into the Bridge Local Community Forum. I think it was our friend Brad. So shout out to Brad. Talking about a local game, what do you call them, an arcade that was going to deliver monthly, you know, for a month at a time, deliver like a pinball machine or a Galaga or a Pac-Man and let people rent them in their homes for a period of time because nobody's coming to their place and they can sanitize that and deliver it. And so what are we doing locally? I want to see examples locally of people doing some really cool things and thinking outside of the box. Not necessarily pulling examples from other communities, although that's always helpful because that's inspiration to us. But what are we doing that's different that is going to help our small businesses keep the lights on? Now, I, I don't know if you saw my video. Did you see my video, the Keep the Lights On video?

Yeah, I like that. I like that.

It was, it was just an inspiration I had last weekend, and it hasn't really taken off, although maybe it still will. Um, hashtag Keep the Lights On Small Business. And the idea is really just in solidarity, I don't know, the model of, of the, um, the Ice Bucket Challenge, right? You know, it's like call out 3 or 4 businesses and let them do their own video about how they're working to keep the lights on. And then you light a candle or turn on a light or do some fancy fun thing with your lights. But, um, you know, we're slow to adopt things from within, we're really fast to adopt things from other communities. So I'd love to change that narrative a little bit and see what we can do going forward with things like #KeepTheLightsOnSmallBusiness or any other things that local businesses are coming up with that we can support and get, get behind. One of the things I got behind really, really quickly was Ink Screen Printers. They were doing a shirt sale. So if you're a Bridge, if you're a listener and you follow Bridge Local and you want a Bridge Local t-shirt, You can get a Bridge Local t-shirt, and I'm not exactly sure where the link is, but I'm sure if you go to Ink Screen Printers, they've got all the shirts that they're selling for— to support the small businesses that are, that are out there. So Bridge is a small business. We're trying to also give t-shirts, you know, let, let some of our members of the community get their t-shirts as well, and I think that ends in the next couple of days.

Well, another one that I've really enjoyed is Union Hall. What they're doing. They're, you know, running the, the, uh, the live streams of the different artists, and you can tip them via PayPal and Venmo and stuff.

Yeah.

Um, I had posted on Facebook the other day, I was watching, uh, uh, Dan, uh, I never— is it Signore?

Yeah, Signore.

Signore. Signore. Okay, just sounds like the G should be silent, but I don't know. Um, then it would be Signore, but well, like a, like a, like a European N, like Signore, you know.

No, it's Signor.

I'm wondering. Signor. Okay.

I'm still waiting for Dan to play the song, by the way. So he has 4— let's see, today's the 5th, so he has 15 days to play my wedding song. And I keep badgering him because I'm not gonna stop because he was supposed to figure out how to play My True Companion by Mark Kahn. And he ended up last year, he was playing at our wedding but he wasn't able— he hadn't figured out how to play the song yet. So I told him he had a year until my anniversary. So one more time, Dan. Time.

Uh, you know you got time.

Um, but I, I got time, right?

I had— I— so I had put it up onto, uh, we have one of those smart TVs in the living room, so I just AirPlay it up on there. So it was like a live stream on, on my you know, big television of Union Hall and just great music. It's, it's a great time. It's— and it's like, you know, you can't always, um, you can't always make it out to those things, but, uh, I'm— part of me wonders if they shouldn't keep some of that going in the future.

Yeah, well, I love Sam's vision of what he's been doing and, um, been helping him try and figure out how to get some, some of those some of the technical pieces of that figured out. And it's been exciting to work with him, but the vision for him is to keep local music alive. And these musicians, right? Musicians and waitstaff and servers and bartenders, they're taking a huge hit. And so, his model is the live musicians come in, there's only 1 or 2 people in the place at the time, and there's a very distanced space between each visit. But he also gives 100% of the proceeds of the tip jar to the musician that day or that evening. And he's trying to go every night. You know, sometimes it's hard for him to find musicians every single solitary night. So I don't know that there's one every night, but you can follow Union Hall on Facebook. And it's really kind of like letting that music come into your home and Feeling that sense of community is pretty special. I'm really excited that Sam's keeping that live music message going, and he's also making Union Hall available for public service announcements. And he's had conversations with Mayor Mutz and Hans Lehmann from the fire department. No, from the police department. Hans Lehmann from the police department. And just, you know, I think that that's an example of great innovation. That's what I want to see more of. I hope that there's a lot of— a lot more examples coming our way.

I hope so too. I think it's a nice way of staying connected as a community. And but I think we should make it— make a point, like I was kind of going off what I was saying earlier about the church services. This is a great opportunity, even though you're stuck at home most of the time, to experience Almost said expose yourself to something.

We don't need exposure.

Yeah, yeah, don't do that. Uh, but to get exposed to something that you would not normally see— if you wouldn't make a point to drive across town to go to see a local band at Union Hall that you've never heard of, but now that band is playing— maybe you've never heard of, you know, heard Dan Signer play anywhere, but you see him and you go, wow, I really like that guy's music. Or the, you know, We Three Strings, who I had not heard yet, but I thought was awesome. And I can tell you that when all this is over, I'm gonna go and see a lot of these people live because I love live music. But if you don't know them, this is a great time to get that exposure. And that's why I think what Union Hall is doing is so important, because there may be dividends for all of this that will pay off after the fact that we're not even, you know, not even aware of yet. So I think, you know, to Sam and Union Hall and to all those artists, keep it going.

Well, it's fantastic. There's been also an upswing in others that are doing some live streaming. I know Swan Brewing has started doing some live streaming with their musicians. And, you know, the idea in my mind is, you know, on any given evening in a community like Lakeland, there are lots of things happening. And, you know, You can't have 10,000 people or 100,000 people in one place, you know, physically when you're trying, you know, it's like, okay, well, you can only, your capacity is only X, you know, only so much. So now we have the ability to kind of enjoy a smorgasbord of different experiences across the community for all of these places that are doing live streaming. And it would be great if someone could kind of gather them all and make it easy, but I know Swan Brewing is starting to do live streaming, Union Hall has been doing it. Again, if our listeners have examples of others that are doing live streaming, I mentioned the church, Highland Park is doing live streaming. I know that there are other churches doing live streaming, but again, this is the example of innovation as we are figuring out how to traverse this challenging time for ourselves.

Yeah. We're making it up as we go along, right? There's no rules here. There's no master plan. And I think that's what's so unnerving for a lot of people. That's why there's a lot of finger-pointing. I mean, both, you know, locally, all the way on up to the top. The truth is that maybe some of this we should have been more— we should have expected a lot more. What is the fallout from this economic self-induced coma that we're putting ourselves in here? What is it going to be like? Is it going to be worth it in the end? Is the cure going to be worse than the disease? Truth is nobody knows, right? We don't know, but it's— I did— it's a dynamic situation and everybody is doing the best they can to, to make it through. And I think we will. Um, I know that we will, but I think it's just a question of what we can learn.

Yeah, yeah, it's what we can learn and, and the ability for us to give one another grace. It might be a really great time for us to practice restraint so that if we have a moment where we disagree or we're not in congruence with someone else, that we don't necessarily need to step out and be vociferous about our thoughts. We can kind of, hey, maybe it's not important that I tell them that they're wrong in my opinion. But the other thing is, especially, you know, I'm spending a lot of time with the businesses in the community talking about the CARES Act and the Payroll Protection Program, and banks are onrolling. And I read a post today about how, what a fail it is. It launched on Friday. It's a brand new program. We had late updates that were made by the SBA. And all along the way, I'm looking at this going, Human beings run the SBA. Human beings run the US government. Human beings run the banks. So if we human beings want certain services and opportunities to be, you know, conveyed to us, we also need to recognize that human beings are responsible for ensuring that these programs get rolled out. So I would, I would encourage businesses who are looking for things like the Payroll Protection Program and other loan opportunities, to just practice patience and take some deep breaths and try to figure out ways that you can keep the lights on in spite of the fact that it might seem slow and it might seem that it's not happening fast enough.

Well, and everybody needs to understand too that if you can't pay the rent, then you can't pay the rent. The idea that you're going to lose everything, you know, today, that somebody's going to come and foreclose on your house tomorrow— I mean, there's there's literally a moratorium on it. But the truth is, with all of this, you can only do what you can do. And I think that it's important that people focus first on, on taking care of the needs of their family, making sure they've got food security, medicine, shelter, that sort of thing. If you can't pay your credit card payment, then don't pay your credit card payment. Now, if you can do something to make that payment, then do it. But if it means that you're going to be frantic and give yourself an ulcer or a stroke because you are just totally consumed with stress, then, you know, you're just gonna have to let some of it go and, and realize that things will work themselves out at some point in all of this. Everybody's gonna have to get caught up. This is a huge, uh, tumultuous time, and you have to prioritize and, and do what you can, do the important things, and do your best to keep things going. As much as you can, but if something has to give, then it has to give. But, uh, you know, these are very trying times, and if you're trying to hold it all together, um, you know, and you're coming up short, then you got to cut yourself some slack too.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, um, are we ready to wrap this one up?

I, I think we're— I think we're good. I think we've, we've hit all the points.

So I think I'm— I just want my last little thought here as I— as we wind down. For the show is we're here if you want to bounce some ideas off of us at Elevate Polk on Facebook. You know, Rob is, is really working hard on helping people get familiar with Zoom. So thank you for your help with the Bridge Local community, getting them acclimated. Like I said, I taught my mom how to use Zoom today. We're going to have that virtual family reunion later. There are so many different ways to help one another at this time, and I just want to encourage Maybe just after you listen to this episode, reach out to some of your friends and contacts and say, is there anything I can do to help you? And maybe make some suggestions like, I know how— I have a really good Bloody Mary recipe that I want to share, or I know how to use Zoom and I can help you, or I can come over and mow your yard. I mean, whatever it is that you might be able to help others with, this is the perfect time to reach out and support each other and just in solidarity as human beings stand together as we get through this crisis together.

I couldn't have said it any better from afar.

Wow, that's pretty awesome. I've never had a couldn't said it any better. So we'll wrap up today. Thanks for listening. And remember, we have a new episode each week. So be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And remember to leave us a review. We promise promise to read every one. You can always find all of our episodes at elevatepulp.com, and if there is something specific you want to hear about on an upcoming episode, reach out to us on Facebook at Elevate Pulp.