To Do 10.22.20

RECORD AND SHARE: Your shelter-in-place experience.

To reiterate, we’re living in unprecedented times. Consider photographing and writing a kind of quarantine diary, a history of your day-to-day life. Then after you have a couple of weeks logged – whether it’s photographs you took, paragraphs or journal entries you wrote or visual artwork you created – submit it to California State Libraries. They’re in the process of documenting this historic moment in a multimedia project called the Covid Diaries (coviddiaries.library.ca.gov). They’re particularly interested in submissions from marginalized populations, those who are usually pushed to the side in standard history books. Don’t feel up to sharing your experience with the entire state? Share your experience in a weekly gathering online among friends, or keep your eyes out for art exhibit submission calls like Marjorie Evans Gallery’s You Can’t Quarantine Creativity or Carl Cherry Center’s Art Sparks, which is still accepting submissions of photographs, poems and other mediums (carlcherrycenter.org).

SPOOK IT UP: without trick-or-treating for Halloween.

Hold your horses, kids and parents, this year’s Halloween is going to look very different as health officials strongly advise against trick-or-treating. Get creative with costumes, by all means, but consider participating in the festivities through safer ways, like the Arts Council for Monterey County’s Monster Bash No-Show Halloween Party (arts4mc.org/monster-bash). Donate a little bit of money to keep arts alive (as is the mission of the Arts Council) and receive a kid-friendly movie-streaming guide, Halloween fortunes and – if you donate $100 or more – gifts will be personally delivered by the nonprofit’s staff. For the grown-ups, Osio Theater is partnering up with the drive-in movie program at Monterey County Fair and Event Center. They have a whole slate of groundbreaking horror films in the lineup until Nov. 1, from Jordan Peele’s suburban horror movie Get Out to Tobe Hooper’s uber-creepy Poltergeist (osiotheater.org).

Participate: in the 2020 Election.

By the time this paper hits the press, it will already be too late to register to vote Nov. 3 (although you may still cast a provisional ballot). So hopefully, you already did that. Maybe you’ve already voted by mail, or at an early polling place. If you plan to vote live on Election Day, make a day of it and plan for when you hit the polls – pack some snacks, and maybe even bring a lawn chair and a parasol, download some movies or audiobooks – just in case you have to wait in line for a bit. Can’t vote or already voted? Danceand celebrate democracy. San Francisco-based dance company Smuin (which once upon a time frequented Sunset Center’s Carmel stage) launched Class for a Cause this year in lieu of in-person performances. Their next class is on Friday, Oct. 23 at 5:30pm, and it’s called “Democracy in Motion.” The seminar will use a “cast-your-ballot” system to create an original dance. Participants must register 30 minutes beforehand (smuinclasses.org) and pay $6-$20 (sliding scale). Proceeds benefit the League of Women Voters.