You've all heard that old saw, "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" I've been thinking about that of late, especially cooped up here in quarantine. Not necessarily in the way you'd think, or perhaps in the way the aphorism is intended, but still. Bear with me.

See, one of the things we've been charged with doing as teachers is to remain connected on a personal level with our students. That means letting them see and hear us, via some form of live streaming. I even built a green screen for that--a piece of wood, some green paint, and viola. Movie magic. And my lovely wife (who strangely grows more and more beautiful and alluring every day I am with her--I think I am definitely getting the better end of this marital bargain of forced closeness) is quite fond of reality television, like those romance competitions or baking competitions or naked survival competitions. (I've long maintained that the show that needs to happen--or the two shows, really--is Mr. Everything (and Ms. Everything). It would be a show where contestants find love amid competitors, but these suitors also have to win cooking challenges, singing challenges, fitness challenges, trivia quiz challenges, survival challenges, house-flipping challenges, gold mining-, fishing-, tattooing-, drag queen exhibition-, and exotic cat wrangling-challenges. But I digress). She's always been fond of those, now that we're here together all the time, I guess I am seeing it more. Not important. But it gave rise to the following thoughts.

If someone achieves something, does it count if no one else sees it? 

Take my own hobby/side profession, for example. Writing. Now, writing is of course meant to be read. If I write something, and no one ever reads it, does it matter that I wrote it? I'd say no, it doesn't. Writing is performative, like acting or painting. Someone could argue that art doesn't need to exist for an audience, but that someone would not be me. 

But what about, say, meeting your true love in a huge mansion and winning him over against the attentions of a dozen or more women, a la The Bachelor (reverse the genders for the Bachelorette, a thoroughly unnecessary word). Does it count if no one sees it? Does it matter that you survived in the wilderness with nothing but a hunting knife, a pouch, a wireless microphone, a camera crew, a sound engineer, a director, an assistant director, an on-set medic, and a native consultant if no one else saw you do it?

I know many of my wonderful students are conducting themselves admirably during this quarantine, helping local food banks, donating to charity, and otherwise brightening the lives of others. And these young people are doing so in darkness and silence. No cameras, no Internet followers, nothing. Just the act itself. But I worry that in an increasingly performative culture, we have gotten to the point that the deed matters not unless it is witnessed.

And what follows?

Well, if an achievement only truly matters if an audience sees it, then, logically, the more people who see it the more it matters. Ergo, what matters isn't the deed itself as much as the size of the audience.

Does it matter more than you saved the life of a homeless woman--someone whose name you'll never know, and who doesn't even know of your actions--or that you created a cute TikTok video that was seen by millions? I know you're all saying "the life saving act matters more, of course," but are you sure?

We're thinking of reopening professional sports in the United States. Baseball, for example. But if we do it, we'd first do it with empty stadiums. So it would be just the game being played watched by fans at home, but still. The players would be alone.  Some folks have said "it's not the same! Fans are part of the game!" By that, I assume they mean fans in physical attendance. But where in the rules of baseball does it say "the game shall be observed by thousands of living human spectators in nearby physical presence." Isn't it enough that a batter hit a home run, even if no one sees it? Doesn't it still count in the game? 

For my students, think about all that you do just to impress a potential college versus all you do just because it's good to do. Think about all you do for an audience--not things that are inherently performative, like acting in a play or painting a picture--and ask yourself, "why does it matter that someone sees this?"

Yes, Dear Reader, I am very aware that by putting this in a blog post, I might be undermining my own message. But writing is performative, I maintain. Plus, no one reads this thing anyway.

​Be seeing you!

I don't have any children anymore.

That probably requires a bit of explanation.

Because of the necessary and wise step of converting schools from face-to-face learning into distance learning, I don't have physical contact with my students anymore. We meet twice a week (with a third office hours time) online, at which time we interact mostly by text. While I technically have students, and I interact with them, it's not even close to being the same. So in that sense, I've lost those children.

My daughter lives at home with us, but she's twenty-three years old and is a teacher herself, going through the same difficulties my wife and I are. She's a professional just like I am, so in that sense, she's not a child anymore.

My son turned twenty-one yesterday, which we celebrated under quarantine by ordering Mexican food and watching him take his first drink (a very strong margarita that he was not fond of). We also played Munchkin Quest--I secured the victory by flying under the radar for most of the game then with a masterful playing of cards won in the final round. In the morning, we'd awakened him with an air horn and streamers and balloons, and I made a big deal about "being a man" complete with stentorian declarations about What Men Do. It was a fun family time, but it also meant that James isn't a child anymore.

So you see, I don't have children anymore.

I wonder what it means that my dreams last night involved our Californian leader, Governor Newsom, announcing that because Covid-19 had ceased to spread and was on the retreat, we would be reopening schools in mid-May. I think that was a kind of wish-fulfillment that only a few months ago would have made no sense.

It's only now hitting me that I will not return to conventional work for many months--August is the soonest that this will happen, and there's no guarantee that August will be "normal," either. Worse, I'll have a new crop of students then, and the ones I have now will move on to their next grade. I've already suggested that we hold some kind of "reunion" when we get back, but it still won't be the same.

I am sad for my son, who had to celebrate his 21st birthday under these conditions (we'd long ago planned on going to Las Vegas to taste the fleshpots there, but of course, that plan was scuttled long ago), but he was much more philosophical than I. 

He said that yes, initially, he was disappointed that we are under quarantine and couldn't do anything outside the house, but he said that when he takes stock of what he actually has--two loving parents and a great sister--he is grateful.

My son has begun his career as an adult in the best possible way--he's a good man. I love him.

Be seeing you!

HereI don't throw around the word "prophetic" lightly.

But back on March 19th in "Coronavirus Chronicles #1," I mentioned that we were living in a version of 1984. More specifically, the part where the branch of the government called the Ministry of Truth spent its time altering records of the past so that they would more closely match up with governmental pronouncements in the present: if the government said on Monday that the chocolate ration was set to be increased from 10 grams to 15, then on Tuesday cut the ration from 10 grams to 8, the Ministry of Truth's job would be to go through newspapers and records to change Monday's announcement to something like, "we're going to raise the ration from 5 to 8" or somesuch. The goal was to change the records of the past so that the government was never wrong. 

On March 13th, I mentioned that this sort of thing was beginning to happen here in the U.S. with our federal government.

It's now April 3rd, and this happened:

Jared Kushner was inexplilcably at a Coronavirus Task Force briefing where he claimed the national stockpile of medical supplies was not meant to be used by the individual states of the union. Here's the exact quote: "And the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use." That's from the White House's transcript of the meeting. It's the government's own transcript.

Well, it turns out that the website for the governmental agency in charge of the medical stockpile said EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. So, in effect, Kushner got it wrong. He was wrong about what the stockpile was for.

Here's what the website originally said, prior to his comments: 

"Strategic National Stockpile is the nation's largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out. When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency. Organized for scalable response to a variety of public health threats, this repository contains enough supplies to respond to multiple large-scale emergencies simultaneously."

So far, this is just another example of the Trump administration being dead wrong on an issue. We've all come to expect that. Kushner said something that was wrong, and he was called out on it with actual quotes from the government's own website.

Then a funny thing happened. And by "funny," I mean "absolutely terrifyingly Orwellian." The government changed the website so that its wording matched Kushner's comments. 

Here's how the website reads now, after his comments:

​"The Strategic National Stockpile's role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available."

In other words, in order to make Kushner's comments be correct, they simply went back and changed the records. He who controls the past controls the present.

So, comrades, curl up in front of the telescreen, pour yourself a nice cupful of oily Victory gin (with cloves or without), participate in the Two Minutes Hate, and settle back secure in the knowledge that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Be seeing you!

I think this time I'll do some random thoughts, brought on by this crisis.

Is it just me, or is the recent complete about-face by Trump (in which he now says from 250,000 to 100,000 Americans will most likely die of the virus, as opposed to a few weeks ago when he said the number would soon be ZERO) just a change of tactics? I'll wager someone in his administration pointed out that if he estimates a really, really awful number of dead Americans, then a somewhat lower number actually dies, he can claim victory? For example, if he says 100,000 deaths, and in fact there are 75,000, he will claim he personally saved the lives of 25,000 people. It's a variation on the Big Brother/Ministry of Truth stuff I posted last time. 

Speaking of that, 100,000 people is a LOT OF PEOPLE. The terror attacks on 9/11 killed about 3,000 people (including those who succumbed to dust in the immediate aftermath, but not including those who died years later from medical issued that were likely related to the cleanup and rescue efforts). Our national landscape was changed almost overnight, and we are in many ways still feeling the effects. We went to war with a country (the wrong one, but still) as a result of 9/11. We created a new governmental agency (the department of Homeland Security). Life in America changed because of those 3,000 deaths. I lived through that time, and I can tell you that although I was never a fan of President Bush II, his response to the crisis was immeasurably superior to the current president's.

We got word today that we would not be returning to face-to-face school in California for the rest of the semester. We'd always kind of suspected that, but now it's official. Distance Learning has been a moderate success, but as many of my high-end students can attest, it's a struggle to maintain a semblance of self-discipline while at home. Before this crisis hit, I was talking to a friend at work and we were both agreeing that we don't like to take work home (as we left school at roughly 5:00) preferring instead to stay late at the site and finish it there. It was never a perfect curtain (I did work from home sometimes) but it was one we liked to pull when we could. Now, that is completely gone, and home is also work. That's a When Worlds Collide kind of feeling.

Having said that, I am growing increasingly uncomfortable with the self-congratulatory messages and images I'm seeing on Facebook regarding teaching. Sure, yeah, it's a little bit harder, but we all still have jobs and paychecks. I think about the millions (the number went past 6 million today) of people out of work because of the virus--people who did nothing wrong, who are good workers, who put in time and effort to their jobs--and I think maybe teachers ought to stay quiet and just do our jobs. Add to that the incredible efforts of everyone in the health and medical fields and maybe teachers should just quietly get on with their work.

I think it's important to look for hidden advantages in all this. For one, we all talk a lot in America about how we don't spend enough time with our families. Well, I'm spending a lot of time with mine, and it's honestly been wonderful. And it's not always "quality time," like they used to say as an excuse for spending small amounts of time. It's great big swaths of sloppy, unstructured quantity time. 

My dogs love it. That's a plus.

I'm learning more about video production (I built a green screen out of wood and paint and it works extremely well) than I ever thought I would, and it's been revitalizing to think in new ways about my curriculum and my craft. If necessity is the mother of invention, then this mother has been fertile.

I do worry about my parents. Both of them are severely compromised with many different health issues. We decided not to go visit them when this all started, out of an abundance of caution. I call often, but it's still not the same. Speaking of which, I think I'll call now. That's good advice to all of you--stop reading this and go tell someone important to you that you're thinking of them. 

​Be seeing you!