School, 7 weeks in

It's been an unusually rough semester so far. I've got three sections of English 100, and, because of the virus, decided to divide each into three cohorts, so the students only come in one day per week and do the rest of their education online. Several things went wrong with that idea.

Each cohort was supposed to be five or six students, but it's been much more common for a group to be two or three. I didn't account for the football players who assume they don't have to do any work in the class, so in a normal semester the 9 a.m. group with 15 registered students would have been running with six or seven—pretty typical football player behavior. Instead, dividing the group so small, I got the tiny attendance. (And, to be fair, the concept of only coming to class one day per week totally confused two or three of them.)

Another sign of the grimness was that several students waited until week seven to even figure out textbooks, etc. Some of them still don't know how to submit papers. Out of 44 active students, something like a third are failing and five have submitted no work whatsoever. It's discouraging to a teacher. 

But there are signs of life. Half a dozen (including, unfortunately a couple who are failing because they don't submit work) are actually pretty good writers and interesting people, and the readings seem to be opening a few eyes. Maybe the semester isn't a total loss.

Has it been 4 1/2 months?

I've settled into a real routine here. Mornings I work on school stuff and afternoons (weather permitting) I try for a long bike ride beginning about 3 p.m. Today is very rainy and cold, so I'm staying in. Probably the same tomorrow.

I'm reflecting on how the quarantine has affected my apartment. I haven't had a visitor in a couple of years anyhow, which means I have very little incentive to clean or vacuum or anything like that. If I can find a place to sit and play on the computer, I'm fine. Purchasing is weird, though. We're not supposed to go out much, so I buy in volume. A year ago, I would never have had (for example) all that canned soup or all that pasta. Now I buy for at least a week or two. Besides that, some things are simply unavailable and others don't come in small packages any more. I really didn't want six rolls of paper towels, but that's the only way to buy them now. I ended up with five pounds of pancake mix, liked it so much that I bought another five when that got low. It's not available any more. Caught the last box of my favorite brand. I keep hoping for blueberry pancake syrup, so I will buy when it shows up. (I'm thinking of a bike ride on the trail near Orrville. Maybe I'll stop in at the Smucker's store and stock up on several bottles.) I don't know when I will ever see angel hair pasta again and my favorite brand of olive oil and balsamic vinegar is disappearing, so I'll stock up.

All of that is really minor stuff, though. I guess I can stay this way for a very long time, and, to tell the truth, when I do get out in public a bit (for example yesterday when I ventured into an antique store), I am pretty fearful. Stay behind the locked door.

Two weeks and counting

Been locked in for a solid two weeks now. The weather, as usual for Ohio, is grey, cool, and windy, though it's expected to zoom up into the 50s in a few days. I guess I'm getting used to things, but I'm having trouble adjusting to my future. Apparently, I will never again (or at least for a year or two) actually touch another person or be close enough physically to share a meal or a beer or cup of coffee. I never hear a voice that isn't a YouTube video, and I have no particular use for my own voice. These four rooms are my world.

Yesterday was a defeat/victory of sorts. I had the insane idea of recording a face-to-face video for my students—which led to about four hours of screaming frustration. I eventually gave up on the video, though at the end of the four hours or so I did get the buggy software to do its work. Now I'm so angry at the software that I doubt I will ever use it. (Wrote a message to the software company and got an "it's not our issue" response. In my reply I pointed out that I'm on the committee deciding whether to renew their license and I'm going to recommend against it.)

The world of education is full of computer programs that look great, have glowing testimonials, and simply don't work. There was the grammar handbook software at Akron which looked so good in the beta version, but their update (launched just as school began) did nothing whatsoever, resulting in that publisher being permanently banned from the Akron English department. There was Macmillan's Launchpad, which works beautifully for teachers, but not for students. Now Kaltura, which (on its good days) is a video-capture software with bells and whistles, but has a very unfriendly user interface and a company that does not answer end-user questions. They refer everything to our local IT people, who aren't really specialists.

Possibly the isolation is getting to me. I suspect that may be the case.

Lockdown

As of this afternoon, Ohio is on official semi-lockdown. With a few vivid exceptions, we're supposed to stay home for the next couple of weeks. I get the impression that even a trip such as the one I took this afternoon (a 38-mile drive in the country, but I never left the car) would be forbidden. Interestingly enough, however, trips to public parks (with bicycling specifically mentioned) are OK and so are trips to my office at the university, so long as I don't actually meet students.

I'm glad. Week after week in this small apartment will rot my mind. Today's journey was a big help, and the bicycle exemption is very welcome. I've got a very short time to pull the distance ed courses together, and I really prefer doing the talking head videos in my school office.

I still miss the gym though. It's too cold for the bike and I mainly sit in one spot (and accumulate aches) during these quarantine days.

Darwinian news about handwashing

I just read an article on Slate which points out—with impressive statistics and surveys—that Republicans are far less likely than Democrats to take the coronavirus threat seriously. They are less likely to avoid public places, less likely to do such things as wash their hands frequently, and less likely to sign up for vaccination if it were to become available. After the studies corrected for urban/rural bias, the proportions stayed the same. Same story with other extrinsic factors: after all the correction, something like 40% of Republicans think coronavirus is a problem, compared with 60% or more of Democrats.

People whose major news source was Fox News tended to disbelieve in the coronavirus threat, but even their numbers weren't quite as extreme as the numbers for the Republican Party. The most vivid statistical split was Trump supporters versus the rest of the country. And that makes sense. Trump supporters tend to believe that he's got a lock on all truth, and he's been very dismissive of the threat, a fountain of disinformation.

This feels like a Darwin Awards moment. Trump supporters, who tend to be much older than the population in general, do not believe in the threat posed by a disease that targets older people. Trump supporters were never the majority of the country (topping out somewhere near 17%) and this disease will disproportionately kill them off. I don't think this is a moment to sit on the sidelines with an evil grin and say "Aha!" but it does illustrate the point that sooner or later, all of us must deal with real facts, not with fantasy or conspiracy theory or the distortions of a leader who thinks he can spin his way out of anything in the news.

ESCAPE!!!

I finally got it through my head that the issue isn't keeping me behind a locked door or keeping me away from fresh air. It's keeping me away from people's coughs and sneezes. So I took a longish (6 mile) walk on the bike trail today.

How Sick am I?

The answer at the moment is "not very." Dry skin from hand-washing seems to be about it.

However, I find it difficult to avoid feeling like an absolute invalid, perhaps a plague victim, during the current panic.

• I'm an old guy, and family members seem to think that leaving my front door is suicide. I might as well just jump off a cliff.
• Just not supposed to go anywhere or do anything.
• When I sit in the same chair 24/7, I tend to get very achy, and by itself that makes me feel sick.
• I recently figured out that I must be lactose intolerant, so I'm trying very hard to watch what I eat. Looking at every label and saying, "Gee! I can't eat that either," doesn't really make me feel robust.
• Finally scheduled cataract surgery for my right eye. Reading everything with one eye closed to avoid the blurring doesn't make me feel young and robust either.

Add to all that the rather obvious fact that, in fact, if I escaped the apartment and went out, there would really be no place to go. And the fact that some of the things I would really like to have (orange juice in the morning, for example) really cannot be had because the hoarders cleaned out the store.

It's difficult to not feel like the sick one (and after all, the public health people tell us that it's prudent to act as if I am sick, so the few times I go somewhere, I address people from ten feet away). Unclean! Unclean!

I look at the weather report and it gives me hope that in a week or two, the temperature will soar above 50 degrees and the rain will stop. Then I'll get on the bike (hoping that I haven't lost much muscle mass from a month of enforced idleness) and stay ten meters away from any living human.

Schedule Stuff

I know that nursing home residents have a terrible time remembering what day it is. The problem isn't just a matter of senile dementia: When every day is exactly like every other day, they tend to blur. I'm feeling that too.

In my previous ("BV") days, there was a lot of structure. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I went to Ashland to teach my classes. Wednesday evening, I met with a group of Democrats at Phoenix Brewery to write postcards encouraging people to vote. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday were my gym days (and sometimes on Saturday). Almost every Saturday morning, I went to Panera Bread for a nice breakfast and spent some time there writing letters. And of course, church was a fixed point for every Sunday morning.

None of that is available any more.

On the larger calendar, my time was pretty structured too. Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Advent, Christmas, performances of Mid-Ohio Opera, and Ohio Heritage Days at Malabar Farm all provided mileposts as I moved through my year.

Everything I read says that we should prepare for the quarantine lock-down to go at least six months and maybe two years or more. No mileposts in that vagueness.

No wonder it's difficult to remember what day it is.

Things are no better on the micro level. In the "BV" days, I had to plan on being out of the apartment by 9:15 four days a week (easy schedule this year). That meant getting up promptly, showering, making breakfast, shaving, and getting dressed. And the need to be out of bed by 7:00 meant that the night before I had to be in bed by 10:30 or 11:00. My first class was done by 11 AM and the next one started at 1 PM, so lunch was pretty well nailed down too.

None of those daily schedule points exists any more. A single man, living alone in an apartment and avoiding all human contact, can realistically sleep and eat at any hour of the day. Shower, shave and brush my teeth? Why bother? I won't see anyone for several days.

This is all starting to sound rather grim and pathological. I think the only way to preserve sanity in this quarantine life is to come up with a schedule and stick to it very legalistically. Times for meals and for work. Strategies for physical exercise in the apartment (because in typical Ohio fashion the weather is predicted for rain and temperatures in the 40s for at least a couple of weeks).

Beginning the blog again in virus time

This blog has sat dormant for quite some time. I never really gave out the address, so there was no audience, and I figured out that using a fountain pen to write in a journal felt more therapeutic.

The corona virus changed all that. Suddenly everything that looks or feels like social interaction is deadly. I have no doubt that people in future generations will say to one another (from behind their surgical masks and being careful to stay two meters apart and in groups of 10 or fewer), "Gee! Did you guys actually go places together? Eat at restaurants? Attend concerts?" So I'm going to start documenting life, both before and after.

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Here's a Facebook post I did today. It's a good introduction to what I'm thinking.

I have no doubt that we will begin thinking of times "BV" and "AV" (Before Virus and After Virus). For me, the changeover began on March 11, when my boss emailed me to point out that the university's extremely toothless statement on our home page ("we're doing everything to protect students' health") really meant we would close classes down for two weeks. The process was completed (in my mind) yesterday when the governor closed all bars, restaurants, and theaters, the university announced that we would not have classes for the rest of the semester, and the bishop closed all our churches.

Apparently, there's no way to figure out how long these shutdowns will last, and Our Great Leader (because he hates all things done by Obama as well as anything that shows scientific knowledge) has fired all the people who can help us know. When there is a snow day, we know that things will be better in a couple of days, a week at the most. This era of closings and quarantines, so far as I have read, might last anywhere from six months to two years.

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Physical death isn't the only kind of death to fear. I assume we will survive all this, and we cannot let it kill our spirits.