Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

My mother called a few hours ago to tell me that she will be getting the COVID-19 vaccine on Friday. They offered it to her because she's over 80 and will be at the clinic for something else, so they don't have to figure out how to get it to her, or ask her to make an extra trip. And because she lives in London, where they started vaccinating people a day or two ago.

Meanwhile, I am texting people on behalf of the Michigan department of health and human services, urging them to download a COVID exposure notification app. Which I can't do, because Massachusetts doesn't have one yet. Time to yell at the governor, maybe. (This isn't the only thing it would be worth yelling at him about, but I have to start somewhere. Except they don't even offer to take messages outside 9-5 business hours. Email, I guess. Feh.)

Mostly I've been doing "what animals are here" projects in various locations--right now it's mostly cheetahs of Namibia, because that almost never comes up with "nothing here," which may be useful but gets boring. Since I'm signed up, they keep emailing me about new projects.

A few days ago, it was African American Civil War Soldiers: they're digitizing enlistment/service records. At this point, they have scans and are transcribing them. I was reading the instructions, got as far as the "what is that letter?" link, and decided this is my project. They say "Reading 19th century handwriting is not easy, especially for those who did not learn cursive in school" and link to an alphabet page that is exactly the cursive I learned in school. Since I did, I'm qualified for this, so I'm doing a bit of transcription, while trying to be careful of my hands.