Author: OliviaWood

Beats By Dr. Seuss

My aunt has been facing the challenging task of teaching 4 and 5 year olds over Zoom. She’s found that storytime works pretty well digitally, but sometimes she also likes to send YouTube videos to her class (and their parents) for their enjoyment.

One example, which I also found delightful as an adult, is the YouTube channel of Wes Tank, who raps Dr. Seuss books over beats by Dr. Dre. In addition to presenting beloved stories in a different, fun way, this can also be a time (for older children, teenagers, and adults) to think about meter, rhythm, and rhyme in poetry and prose.

Check out his rendition of The Lorax below:

Listen to Wikipedia (as Music)

One thing I find very comforting to listen to is this amazing program that converts Wikipedia activity into calm bell and string sounds. There are also visualizations.

It’s called Hatnote, and you can listen to it here! If you see visuals but don’t hear sound, look for a button to unmute the page. If you don’t see anything, try altering the beginning of the URL from https to just http.

The program sounds a bell tone whenever someone adds to a Wikipedia page and a string pluck whenever someone deletes something from a page. The pitch is determined by the size of the edit. These sounds are also visualized as slowly expanding circles, labeled with the name of the page that was edited. A low string swell indicates that a new user has joined the Wikipedia community!

I’ve loved this page ever since I first discovered it, but I find it particularly soothing now, to listen and know that even with everything going on in the world–and perhaps especially BECAUSE of everything going on in the world, hundreds of people are still contributing to public knowledge in thousands of tiny ways, all the time. Makes me feel like part of a global community.

Live Streams of Cute Animals

Today’s Comforting Content comes at the recommendation of Sharanya Dutta, who teaches composition at Baruch College.

She’s been finding comfort in watching live feeds of animals in zoos and aquariums that are currently closed to the public. Watch the animals, swim, eat, sleep, play, and more.

Georgia Aquarium (includes ongoing streams for sea lions, otters, a beluga whale, jellyfish, alligators, and various species of fish)

Home Safaris with the Cincinnati Zoo 

The Cincinnati Zoo does a livestream from their Facebook page featuring a different animal every day at 3pm Eastern. You can also view the videos from past events on their YouTube channel, and the Home Safari page includes information and educational activities– if you live in a home with children, consider doing some of them together!

Welcome!

Welcome to Comforting Content for COVID Coping, the OpenLab Community Team’s project for providing space for the City Tech community to share and enjoy happy, wholesome, and otherwise soothing content.

The COVID-19 crisis is adding a multitude of additional stresses and challenges (physical, social, academic, physical, emotional, financial, and more) to our lives, and it can feel difficult to get away from our worries and the news. We hope our curated collection of animal photos, nature scenes, wholesome memes, and soothing music will bring some solace to you– and please submit your own Comforting Content!

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