Semester ending

Nobody but me ever sees this blog, and that's fine. Maybe I'll send a link to Melissa or Joel.

Got the second Covid vaccination a couple of weeks ago, and it went very well, as soon as I was officially able, I took off for the gym, and I'm very pleased with the results. The year of inactivity gave me a bulging belly and very soggy, flabby arms. Two and a half weeks of gymnasium, and I'm seeing visible results. Nice!

I started a blog for Grace Haven refugees, and after a couple of weeks with really great readership, it's dwindled to nothing. Oh well. Anyhow, one specific reflection was the weeks and weeks of counseling from people like Linda Kelso. There seem to be dozens of Ashland Seminary graduates with an MA in counseling. Looking at the Ashland curriculum, it's really just an introduction to the topic, and I'm aghast that these people thought they could help me work through chronic depression issues. I'm also sad that I never went to anyone else. Ashland really favors the now-disused Rogerian counseling model:

• Counselor: What brings you here today?
• Me: I'm sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Counselor: You're sad, lonely, and depressed.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: What do you think you could do about it?
• Me: Maybe I could try to find more friends.
• Counselor: Maybe you could try to find more friends.
• Me: Yup.
• Counselor: Well, our time's up for the day. That will be $100.

I figure I can do that with a pen and notebook, and not spend so much money. I found a very interesting YouTube discussion of the sources of depression—unresolved anger issues. I think I'll get out a pen and notebook and start working through those. That looks very promising.

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.

Finally getting in gear

This weekend I have a handful of papers to grade. (Will I get them done? Who knows?) Finally I'm getting out of the phase of doing continual overhead and setting up, so I can actually teach courses. Over the last two or three weeks, I have averaged something like 15 hours a week on plain old "overhead" tasks. (Making copies, trying to figure out the latest software glitch, revising courses to conform to the boss's last-second changes, etc.) That's, of course, in addition to 18 hours of actual in-class time per week.

My most vivid task at NCSC appears to be dealing now with all the students who approach me in a breathless panic:

• "MY CAR DIDN'T START THIS MORNING!!! ARE YOU GOING TO KICK ME OUT OF CLASS???"
• The assignment said to write about my reaction to the essay and I used "I" and "me" but the writing center said I did that all wrong. Am I going to fail the course?

I guess I should welcome this. It's quite a contrast to the football players' attitude that all they have to do is sign up for the class, look bored, and occasionally turn in a late paper and — because they are so incredibly valuable to the team — they will pass and get a diploma that will make them rich.

Still, it just wears me out. Apparently these students had teachers who didn't know how to teach or grade, so they picked on the most trivial secondary issues (The printer printed this on both sides of the paper. Will it fail?) instead of trying to actually teach content. Once again, I find that my main task is dealing with the psychological damage. And that's not even taking into account the bias in Freshman English courses toward course designs that flunk people. (Yes, I failed two last semester because they couldn't figure out the software necessary to submit an electronic portfolio. That's the way the course was written by my superiors.)

War on Coal

When I drive back to Washington, I go through the mountains of Pennsylvania, and I often see signs demanding that Obama stop his war on coal. (Our president must be a very busy man to do all the things the Ultra-Right accuses him of doing.) On the same journeys, I run through a lot of areas where we are fracking for natural gas.

The problem with coal is not that the president hates it. The problem is that it is (to quote someone who was writing about steam locomotives) an ugly, dirty fuel. People die to get it out of the ground. It needs to be transported in huge trains. When it's burned, it releases sulfur and mercury and a lot of soot. And finally, of course, it leaves ash which must be disposed. It corrodes its boilers and generally causes a mess. None of those problems occur with natural gas. Yes, the fracking process is questionable, but once the stuff is out of the ground, it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to live with than coal, not to mention less likely to injure the people who must live near the electric plants.

At the moment, we also are being told that Obama is making war on the fracking process. Is this the same as raising legitimate concerns about safety?

Now we have the Charleston, WV issue of a mystery chemical that's used to clean coal getting into the water supply. I'm just waiting to see how this one plays out. According to one source I read, this chemical is quite obscure and nobody knows what it does to people when it gets into the water supply. Given the far right's tendency to personalize everything and to make every problem the result of an evil decision on the part of the President, I suppose they will have him kicking a hole in the holding tank the chemical came from. But won't that boost the fortunes of natural gas?

No, the real war here is between an older, more problematic technology and a newer one that promises to be cheaper. That's all.

In spite of

One of my Facebook contacts posted one of his inevitable comments today about true patriots opposing taxation. I was about to call him to task on this, but I went to www.dictionary.com to look up the definition of "patriot." There it was, the second definition:

a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

That got me to thinking. So a true conservative patriot, by this usage, is someone who thinks the government of our country is evil. I guess in light of the the first definition

a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion

this means defending the actual land mass, or perhaps the assorted like-minded people, against the USA and the Constitution.

Perhaps I think too much, but again I remembered the Conservative Bible Project, a movement to use public opinion and crowd-sourcing (presumably from the right kind of people, not those evil liberals) to rescue the Bible from liberal bias. Presumably, Jesus will turn out to be an anti-government capitalist who favors hunkering down in one's fortress and accumulating weapons. We will discover that Jesus was actually on the side of the Pharisees, not of the woman caught in adultery. We will discover that the basic gospel message was all about accumulating wealth. And in the garden Peter will be commended for cutting off the man's ear.

It's simply a question of who is the boss. The true conservative says, "I, myself, am the boss, the standard of the Universe."

My Teaching Schedule

I am editing this in March, 2020, six years after it was originally posted. I had thought of deleting it, but it will stay. I kept it because it's a good record of the kind of teaching I was doing back then.

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My weekly schedule is finally nailed down, and very unlikely to change. I have added travel time to the times below, to show when I'm really unavailable for much of anything else (and it's worth noting that the big gap Monday and Wednesday afternoon is so awkward that I will probably find somewhere to hang out and do more school work).

• Monday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland; 4:00 to 7:15 @ NCSC
• Tuesday: 10:30 to 2:15 @ NCSC
• Wednesday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland; 4:00 to 7:15 @ NCSC
• Thursday: 10:30 to 2:15 @ NCSC
• Friday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland

There are Spring Breaks (which, of course, do not match up), and the whole thing is done by mid-May.

Survived the First Day

If you've never taught before, you don't know the odd variety of stage fright one gets before the first day. I've been doing this since 1995, and I'm still convinced it will all crash, that they will hate me, and so forth. Bring out the tar and feathers.

Actually, the second-semester class based on The Soloist went quite well, in spite of the 8 AM time slot. One gets a feel for these things, and the vibe in the room was a good one. I always assume that second-semester developmental classes will be the people who didn't make it the first time around; in fact, this one (as usual) has several non-traditional students. I like non-traditional students. They tend to be more mature and work harder. And they lack the arrogance that often characterizes freshmen who are highly gifted in non-academic areas (for example athletics).

The afternoon was spent at NCSC. Another thing non-teachers wouldn't realize is the incredible number of administrative details it takes to fire up a semester. They all got crammed into a very brief time because of the weather delay and because I picked up this last-second course. This is Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still not quite sure I'll have everything nailed down for the Monday start. Deep breaths. The last-second course is only eight students. We really could run that one as individual tutoring. The big groups are entirely figured out. Poor Tony in the copying department—I hit him hard with work today, about 1000 pages.

The next couple of days I'll still have my nose to the proverbial grindstone, trying to get that last course nailed down.

Right Wing Rants

I guess it's the cold weather that has everyone inside and playing on the Internet. And everyone is getting cabin fever—which brings out the worst us, especially in the right wing Facebook people, already a gang that can pick a fight over the most trivial comment.

Anyhow, so far:

• A friend posted a picture of an electric lineman (we used to call them "stump-jumpers"), and I made the comment that they are worth every penny we pay them. This (obviously) led to a right-wing blast saying that raising the minimum wage is a Very Bad Thing, implying that the poor stump-jumper either doesn't deserve all the money we pay him to climb that pole in sub-zero weather or that somehow his wage got cut when the guy at the McDonald's counter got more money.
• I made a comment about how wild things were at Kroger the day before the big freeze. Obviously this led to a rather elaborate thing about the government crashing. I should have seen that one coming.
• Slate magazine ran a picture of people making snowmen in Washington, DC. That led inexorably to a comment about how the cold snap is Obama's fault, followed by a response that all politicians are terrible.
• And, right on schedule, one of my Facebook contacts posted his weekly "everyone stockpile your guns and ammunition" posts. The government is about to fail, he says, so apparently we need to be ready to murder a lot of people.

I draw several conclusions from my two days indoors playing on the computer:

1. Ultra-conservatives are always in a terrible mood, always ready to pick fights. This is a special reason to fear their "everyone get your guns" strategy.
2. No innocent comment, jest, or observation is immune from being politicized, even if it requires a total change of subject.
3. Facebook posts are normally made in anger.
4. I was wise to set this blog so responses are always moderated.

Vestry

I've been nominated for the Vestry at St. Matthew's. Because we don't do run-off elections, it's 99% certain that I'll be elected.

I was pondering this turn of events. I've been at St. Matthew's for about three years, and I'm now being asked to help lead things. I've taught Confirmation classes, run the website, and organized the youth group. Next Sunday, I'll be one of the people who counts the offering and prepares the bank deposit. I was at my previous church from 1977 to about 2010, about 33 years, and I got to teach a Sunday school class and do the PowerPoint slides.

Now, to be fair, the role of the Vestry is fairly narrow in an Episcopal church. The priest is responsible for everything related to worship and for the spiritual formation of the members. The Vestry worries about more "secular" stuff. (What will we do about fixing the roof? Can we afford to hire a secretary? How are we going to resist the plea to hang sappy religious art all over the newly-painted walls of the Parish Hall?) Vestry members are elected for a three-year term and usually do most of their meetings after church on Sunday. By contrast, at my previous church, the elders serve for life (which usually amounts to seven or eight years before they quit and leave the church) and they are responsible for pretty much everything. They do a lot of micro-managing, including a lot of conflict resolution between church members, and they have to run every small group in the church. It's a lot of work, and I am not surprised that they get burnt out. Maybe I'm glad I was never called on for that task.

Anyhow, soon I won't be able to complain about what "those guys" have done because I will be one of "those guys."

Snow Day

Ashland University has (astonishingly) shut down on the first day of the semester. It's currently one degree above zero, snowing, and the wind is 30 mph. The temperature has dropped 15 degrees in the last hour.

I remember when the weather was much worse—we were under an ODOT "Red Alert" (severe snow/ice/drifting), which meant it was actually illegal to drive—and Ashland stayed open because it was OK to walk from the dorms. Kind of macho with other people's lives.

When I was a kid, I loved snow days. Staying home and eating cookies. Playing in the snow. Now there's not enough snow to play in (unless one lives near the lake) and the wind chill is actually life-threatening. And I'm still struggling to get my courses set up for NCSC. It's going to be a working vacation.

Once More to the Battlements

For the fourth time since Thanksgiving, I'm putting together a course. Ashland starts Monday, and their two are all ready except for the final copying. (I hope the weather breaks up enough to allow me to do that on Friday.) Same story for one of my NCSC courses, and I have an extra week to worry about them.

Then there's the new one. A teacher at NCSC took sick, so I got the course at the last second. It's a basic writing (developmental) course, and I only have six students. I might possibly pick up one or two more, but I doubt I will hit ten. I've never seen the textbook, and I can't get a copy until Monday. The textbook publisher needs assurances from the school that I really teach there if I am to get access to the teachers' website. Apparently an essential part of the course is the PLATO online learning software, but I cannot get into it because I'm not yet registered as a teacher (and presumably, I am supposed to construct an elaborate set of online exercises and tests for these six students). And apparently, nobody has developed anything resembling assignments for this course.

This is the point where I begin to say, "C'mon guys! Isn't this a LOT of overhead for six students?" And wouldn't it be nice, for once, to be an insider, not an outsider to the whole educational machine?

Level Up!

Yesterday at the Y, my computerized workout tracker said I became eligible for a T-shirt because I had achieved another level. (They keep track of how many times I lift something, and base the levels on that. I think I've lifted something like 15 million pounds, but in lots of 30 or 40 at a time.)

One of the employees congratulated me, with a big smile on his face. I commented that I would have gotten my T-shirt a lot earlier if I had recorded all of my bicycling, about 2000 miles last summer. His jaw dropped. Now you've got to imagine an incredibly huge guy with big solid arms and really amazing pectoral muscles being blown away by the idea of biking 2000 miles in a summer. I pointed out that it's not that hard. All you have to do is several 50-mile days a week. His eyes got even more bulgy (if that's possible). And of course, the Bishop's Bike Ride (five 50s back-to-back) helped the total.

I'm just not used to being treated like an athletic god.