Backgrounds for Zoom, via The Public Domain Review

I've begun tinkering with this blog, as I ponder Learning To Share all over again.
It appears that currently I have the time.
Finding that many of the old sidebar links have 'gone to seed', some pruning,
some re-arranging and updating has yielded some fun new discoveries.
For example:

'Public Domain Backgrounds for Zoom', a free offering from The Public Domain Review
(which I found via the martin klasch blog).

(Find more backgrounds at the Public Domain Review blog page.)

This is a time when many people are learning more about video conferencing.
I know I've been doing a lot of compare and contrast 'test-drives'.
Playing with virtual backgrounds can be a fun thing to monkey with, especially if you have either the right blank space or a green screen available behind you when you appear on your webcam.

You can go to Zoom's virtual backgrounds support page to learn more about system requirements, set-up, trouble-shooting, and also how to make your own virtual backgrounds.

(That's where I discovered that my operating system is not up-to-date enough to support virtual backgrounds. Setting up actual, non-virtual 'backdrops' for my video calls has been fun, too.
I can recommend playing with that as you figure out how to best present yourself.)

John Prine Is In His Heaven

John Prine hit the road yesterday.

During the news of his hospitalization, there was a moment when he stabilized. I know I felt like maybe he could recover and one day resume his career, as he had heroically done a few times in the past, after bouts with cancer. But he succumbed to complications from COVID-19 and passed on April 7th, in Nashville. He was 73.

(Links to:)

- An obituary at Rolling Stone.

- A John Prine tribute at Esquire.com

So now we can wish him bon voyage, and stop worrying about his health. 

Prine himself worked to set our minds at ease on that score. 

Having had ample opportunity to face his own mortality, that wily John Prine had already crafted his plan. He shared it with us in his song 'When I Get To Heaven'...

➚ Via YouTube, John Prine performing 'When I Get To Heaven', from an episode of Austin City Limits that premiered  in October of 2018.

The studio version of the song was released on his final album, 'The Tree of Forgiveness' in April of 2018.

Thanks for sharing, John!
Thanks for all the music and light.
I know I'll miss knowing you're around, but I'm happy to know that you're out there enjoying yourself.






All of us are given the opportunity to build our own versions of heaven.
Whatever heaven each of us chooses.
We don't have to wait until our deaths to start enjoying it.
Have you started building yours? Look again.
Maybe you have and didn't realize - -?

"When I Get To Heaven"

When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand

Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand

Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band

Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?

And then I'm gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah, I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

'Cause this old man is goin' to town

Then as God as my witness, I'm gettin' back into show business

I'm gonna open up a nightclub called "The Tree of Forgiveness"

And forgive everybody ever done me any harm

Well, I might even invite a few choice critics, those syph'litic parasitics

Buy 'em a pint of Smithwick's and smother 'em with my charm

'Cause then I'm gonna get a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Yeah when I get to heaven, I'm gonna take that wristwatch off my arm

What are you gonna do with time after you've bought the farm?

And then I'm gonna go find my mom and dad, and good old brother Doug

Well I bet him and cousin Jackie are still cuttin' up a rug

I wanna see all my mama's sisters, 'cause that's where all the love starts

I miss 'em all like crazy, bless their little hearts

And I always will remember these words my daddy said

He said, "Buddy, when you're dead, you're a dead pecker-head"

I hope to prove him wrong... that is, when I get to heaven

'Cause I'm gonna have a cocktail: vodka and ginger ale

Yeah I'm gonna smoke a cigarette that's nine miles long

I'm gonna kiss that pretty girl on the tilt-a-whirl

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Yeah this old man is goin' to town

Source: AZLyrics
Songwriters: John E. Prine
When I Get to Heaven lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing

Meanwhile, in just another neighborhood...

From details about the 'Lockdown' in Ahmedabad, in yesterday's Times of India.