An Honest Reckoning of the Year

 Don't let others define your experience. Face it with unadulterated honesty, evaluate it on your own terms.

This may have been a nasty year for you. If you were sick, if you lost a loved one, or your livelihood, or your home, or your relationship -- like in any year, those should be grieved in your way as your psychology dictates. Get help if you need it and if you can!

This may have been merely an inconvenient year for you personally, and it should be given its due. Your working from home may have been a mildly traumatic change, with its partial isolation. You may have had to forego your favorite outings and events, change a vacation plan, missed a wedding or funeral. Not fun, but not a tragedy.

Some of you may have had a better year than normal, depending on your work or industry, or your home situation. Depending on your need for solitude or introversion, and your resources, and you might even feel a little "survivor's guilt" because you didn't suffer. You can deal with it, and if you did and need some assuaging, try giving until it hurts to an organization that helps those who did suffer greatly. Acknowledge that much of the country (world) has had an excruciating time, and allow them to grieve as they need to. Be a rock for others if you can, be an ear, a helping hand, an angel. Give blood if they let you.

But don't wail and gnash your teeth just because others are. That's their experience, and may not be yours. If you can feel some joy and share it with others, you bring them up a little. Seeing the universal irony and even humor in this crazy predicament is not a sin. Taking your life in stride is a viable defense against the dark forces. But for Pete's sake, feel your own authentic feelings and deal with your own reality.

Note to Colleagues about The Pandemic

 Hola, Amigos. It's Friday night and I'm catching up on my news. I read this article in The Atlantic. It made me feel better about the struggles we've been working through as educators, but it makes me feel a little sick thinking about what our healthcare workers are going through right now. 

I've been through some long military exercises in a previous life, when I was young and full of energy, and that was tough in a lot of ways, but it was also relatively finite. This prolonged campaign treating Covid, and the surge that's very possibly lurking around the corner looks pretty miserable for us, but utterly horrendous for the doctors and nurses who are facing workloads that make ours pale by comparison. I know I'm spending way more time prepping and trying to connect with students online. And I presume most of us are in the same boat, but the 24 and 36(!) hour shifts of these medical professionals is humbling. My sister is a family practitioner in North Dakota and they are sinking.

I'm not sure exactly why I felt the need to share this...just that it feels really important. It makes me a little grateful that I'm able to continue working and serving students the best I can without the existential crisis facing the healthcare workers. It reminds me my students may have doctors and nurses in their homes and they're going to be feeling it in their families (not as bad in San Diego as some places, but potentially here, and certainly more than me!). And it makes me understand the need to not become part of this growing problem by opening too early or being careless myself.

I'll be moving on to some escapist literature and/or TV later in the weekend, but for now, I owe it to those who might have to treat me one day to understand and appreciate the scope of what they're dealing with. 

Kindness and love in your heart

 Kindness is the love in your heart being expressed out in the world. Having love in your heart is the best feeling in the world, and expressing it (through action, of course) increases the feeling of love in your heart. It begets itself, it reproduces in others like a virus, it is a great goodness. One person can infect a lot of others. Be your own little patient zero of a love epidemic by practicing maximum kindness!

2020

Some cosmic Charlotte is weaving the words, "Some Year" into her web. Someone else is calling it the Anus Miserables (sic). And of course, comets are mythical harbingers of doom. Let's hope this one was just a little late rather than on time. And in my lifetime, this is the biggest and brightest comet. Because the events of biblical proportion are piling up. Plague. Locust (Africa and India). Flooding (China). Racial unrest. [The Killer Hornets weren't actually legit]. Sounds scary.

So, in our lives, we all have these crazy years where big things lead to major upheavals. And many of those have affected us individually more than this year has. A marriage and/or a first child, a life threatening disease or injury that takes us out of commission for an extended period of time. A religions epiphany that utterly upends things. Hitting bottom in an addiction and going through rehab and being sober. Lots of different ways our lives can be turned upside down. But collectively, this is "The Big One." Nothing has had this much of an impact in this little of a time on this many people, so that makes it unique. WWI and WW2, given the whole scope certainly rivals today, so far. As did, perhaps, the Great Depression. The pandemic of 1918-19? Not sure. But here we are, finding ourselves living through a historic moment. Enjoy it! Make it memorable! Deal with it! Embrace the suck, if in fact, your life is really sucking because of it (and many are, but many aren't). Mine, for example, is pretty chill, no major headaches so far, and I know that's a privilege and a gift.

Open Eyes, Change your World

It's not like I opened my eyes so much as you opened my eyes,
You kept them squinty in my younger days, reared in invisible homogeneity,
Maybe a little Charlie Pride and Jimmy in the background,
You gave me a brain that dug science, humans weren't that exciting then to me.

Out there in the middle up by Canada, with nothing but books and a little TV
And a movie or two to show me something different,
They didn't even let me watch Roots -- too young, doncha know
But for me, that little wasn't enough, I wasn't thoughtful enough about that stuff
Because I never had to be, it was all out there in a state far far away and long ago
Entertainment, ideas learned like a language that you don't use, faded fast,

In the few incidents I was forced to face it, that time in that bar in Mississippi
Or was it Alabama? Louisiana? It was easy to forget without skin in the game
Like a broken finger after it heals, no big deal and good enough after

You'd throw something a little spectacular now and again,
But erratic and sporadic wasn't enough to make me feel you, you know
Rodney King came and went, then you sent OJ and Trayvon, the others between,
The conversation would flow and ebb, as regular as a tide, rocking me to sleep?
Didn't really register long term because me and my life didn't have the bandwidth
No doubt at every moment I'd've answered the questions with the right answer,
But intellect is not emotive, and so it remained theoretical because privilege,
Which I didn't ask for or even know I had, intellectual empathy is a fallacy,
I brushed you off in favor of my favorite endeavors, education and science
I had no idea it was right there on the other side of a gossamer film until...
You were right there now, and with time and normal abrasion, it shredded,
I could see you right there, and still! it was like a slow boil and other things,
Always the distractions, albeit compelling ones like family, job, avocations.

But you maybe got impatient years later, and threw us all in a blender,
Tied me down with coronavirus with too much time on the laptop,
Grabbed my head, turned it left and said look at George Floyd now, motherfucker,
"See? Do you feel me now?"

And because Rona roughed us all up and pried me open a little, got vulner-able,
I felt it enough this time, with the time to sit with it at home not working so much,
And me, because you let me have some time with those people before,
Those people I love from my teaching days in high school in central San Diego
Knowing now that was another (reverse) privilege not everyone gets
But everyone of privilege deserves, just as every everyone deserves my privilege.

You finally opened my eyes and let it go into my head, and this time pass through
To the rest of me, the legs and arms, and that's why this time it's different for me,
Taking me fifty-odd years to see and feel what no one should have to feel and that
Thirteen point four percent of us grok by age ten, insofar as a ten year old (or less)
Can fathom four hundred years of oppression on a people
So easy to say, "400 years of oppression," but knowing it's made up of the daily,
Continual and inexorable moments of mistreatment, part of the air in America.
As much as I can see this part, it's beyond my ken, and what little I do,
Tells me this is my

Kid's Going to School

You remember that scene in the Titanic after it sank and the survivors (so far) are looking for a little flotsam to hang onto? It feels a little like that. And we're already tired. That's district and school staff trying to figure out how to open next year.

People who know kids best, and people who know what happened during the first stab at distance learning with their students' behavior, attitude and academic performance are going to try to figure out how best to have school this year.

They're teachers and school administrators and parents (teachers and administrators have their own kids in school, too, you know). And they know about running a school, although in the circumstances, they're just using their best judgment to navigate this newness. They also don't want to get sick with coronavirus. They don't want your kids to get it and take it home.

Based on that, and wanting to teach your kids the best they can, they're going to come up with some solutions (there are a million ways to do this). Most plans I've heard include more than one option for parents. If you think principals aren't stressed out of their minds and overwhelmed, guess again. We're ALL in over our heads, trying to find a lifeboat.

So, about that, chill out and do what you need to do for your family. Stay informed, your school/ district website for the latest. If your kid's (or kids') school(s) have a choice you can live with, take it. If you need to put your kid in a different school, or enroll them in a charter that matches your preferences, or home-school them, or or find a private school or something else that better suits their/your needs, then just do it and don't waste your time regretting or second-guessing yourself. There are no right answers here (just like life in general). There are just different choices. We all have different comfort levels for risk, and different situations at home. But, be thoughtful. You know your kids (ask them, listen to them, talk about it a lot) but you make the decision for the younger ones. Respect their struggles and needs and wants, but that doesn't mean you give in to unhealthy choices for them. Time to adult, again.

This won't be easy for anyone.

And if you change your mind when school starts, do what you can to change the your situation. How can you know now what it will actually be like when it starts? I don't.  Here's what won't help: shrill anger, blaming, wringing your hands and gnashing your teeth, despair, worry, ignorance. Here's what will: forbearance, fortitude, flexibility, knowledge, understanding, tolerance, grace, informed conviction, self care for you and your family.

You can make your voice known, participate in the planning if you can, network, discuss it with other parents, teachers, others. Don't let someone make you feel bad about your choice, but keep your mind open to other possibilities as you learn more.  And here's wishing you a dollop of good luck.

Joe Biden - Stop Talking. Start Walking.

Joe Biden, you want to be the President of the United States? Start acting like it. I heard your talk today. Talking is not enough. Convene your "commission to end racism and poverty" now. You don't need ------- permission to act; as an American, you can organization to do good. Just ------- do it.  And if you don't become the President, continue leading your commission. Bring together all those leaders hungry for a leader, people who ------- care: the NAACP, the Southern Poverty Law Center, ACLU, the Republicans for The Rule of Law, NAPO and IUPA, and more. They're doing their work in their areas, and it needs to continue. But you: bring them together, create the plan, execute the plan. The time for talking is past. The time for planning and acting is now. You want to be the President? Start acting like it. The one we have won't, and you're doing a lot of yakking. "Enough," you said. Why am I not hearing the news blabbing on about your outrageous moon-shot plan to end racism? Why am I not hearing the talking heads at Fox News mocking you for your Quixotic Manhattan Project effort to save the world? DO NOT WAIT until the election. The best election campaign is to stop wasting your breath and start doing something. You want to be the President and bring us together? Don't wait. Bring your party leaders together, reach across the ------- aisle and bring the Republicans to the table. Get Al Franken back in the game. Get Senators and Representatives of color in the room. How about your old friend from the White House back in the day? And the whites, too! Give me a call, I have some time on the weekends. Me and the kids can chip in. Break up into sub-committees of interest, create a ------------- action plan, and start acting! And don't give us ------- excuses about why you have to wait, don't tell us you're busy with a campaign and everything else.

Give people another reason to vote for you besides "you're not Trump."

And while you're at it, do the same thing for the #MeToo movement. I don't know if Tara Reade is a real thing, but if it WERE true, what would you do to make it better (because even if you really didn't do anything, that scenario is true way too often for way too many)? Do it. A person can have two projects. If you became President, you would have even more to do. Of course you can't solve it all in one fell swoop, but, ----- ------, start the first fell swoop. And make it fell. You can be a part of making America great in a way that we have never actually been (as a whole): how we treat the oppressed. (Is that the opposite of ball-cap MAGA?) LEAD NOW, ------------!  ------------- COURAGE or sit down!

Mental Disorders

Inspired from this article in Nature, posted by my friend, Randy.

In it, I came across the diagram below and it begs a few important questions that I'd need a medical health diagnostic expert to help me answer. First, having worked with a lot of autistic students over the years, and knowing that many experienced an elevated level of anxiety, why the very small linkage between those two disorders? Once someone was diagnosed with ASD, did they then attribute any anxiety to that disorder and so drop Anxiety? Same question with OCD? How are people with ASD not highly correlated with OCD which is prevalent among them?

Also, it makes sense that PTSD would not necessarily be closely related to any of the genetic dispositions since its root cause is mainly/primarily an event or situation that caused the trauma and was mostly causal, which would naturally not be a genetic marker.

Honey, Relax. We're all going to get it.

This virus will get to us all eventually. It's just who and when, which are both interesting questions.  Say you're old and vulnerable. Do we lower your odds enough so you can live to the fullest (if your current living status counts as that for you) before it eventually gets you and does you in (or not). Or, do you infect yourself NOW while you're just young enough to fend it off, hopefully, and then live a nice long resistant life after that? At what age are we most likely not to come out of it healthy? Does that matter? If you're my age (coming up on mid-50s), I'd say I want to be infected now because there's a good chance with my history, that I can come out of it OK. Yes, there's a risk that it'd kill me and I don't know what that is yet, because we're not able to test everyone yet. (Let's get on that by the way, so we can. And while we're at it, let's figure out the post-infection immunity situation -- do I become immune when I recover or what? Come ON! Again, I know that's going to be a function of testing everyone).  So threading that needle between those getting it, it's a crapshoot anyway. How long do you want to wait before you get sick? How much older? 1 year? 5 years? So far, it looks like we're not coming close in most areas to reaching anywhere near capacity in our ability to treat the disease with what we have or can get, should the situation escalate. How will the second wave look? Don't know. But will loosening (not removing) the quarantine put us on a better trajectory -- meaning more cases than we have not but still not enough to overtax our resources.

Second big picture: Why does not being able to do business (for small businesses) or work (for people) for 2 months totally blow the coop? Are we individually and are our institutions really that fragile that they cannot last 60 days of not working before they can't pay their bills? And what about the landlords. For those who are sucking off the juice of another, are they so overextended and living so far out of their means that they can't go 60 - 90 days without getting their rent from paying customers? What is going on in this country? What the hell? 

Trump, STFU about China paying for the Virus

OK, so you want China to pony up for their role in letting Coronavirus ravage the world. You want to defund the WHO for their part in not being perfect. Discounting the fact that you, personally and INDIVIDUALLY (with your sycophants), created the American Shitshow of pandemic response. Capital B-ULLSHIT! Everything that happened good in American was IN SPITE of  you, smart and proactive state leadership, contrarian staff members like Fauci, and others. Left to you, we would be even more fucked, you gargantuan festering parasite. Fuck you, motherfucker.

Because, take a left turn and we have another death angel staring us down, daring us to step over its line (an order of magnitude worse), and and there you go, forward amain. "I won't see your red line, ecotastrophe."  Across the board, motherfucker, you roll back programs that are designed to slow down the terraforming we're unwittingly (not meaning we don't know it's happening, but rather that we don't know all the collateral change we're wreaking upon the world) perpetrating. From adding poison to our water to reducing our emissions to decimating our force-multiplier status as world leader, you're fucking the world up the ass, with glee. What, you don't think American's are smart enough to figure out how to make a living and still prevent the premature death of the world? I believe it, you financial elitist.

You want to feign righteousness over one issue -- Coronavirus (in which you, yourself, own a controlling stock in its death rate),  and on the next issue over, even more destructive -- climate change -- you are the number one global desecrator.  Fuck that, you piece of shit.

Had we, as a nation over the last 4 years, acted with scientific integrity, and acted in accordance with the most likely scenarios given our limited knowledge of the future and our best models, then we would have the moral standing to ask others to do the same. But, on the contrary, we didn't. We, literally, did the opposite. Again, the governors of most states can legitimately act in the interest of our country in those regards because many of them have, indeed, maintained a science-based policy respecting what we know of coronavirus and climate change.

No one knows all the answers and no one knows the best thing to do. That has never stopped intelligent and diligent people from acting in the best long-term interest of the most of us. Balancing the economy Today and This Year with the long-term well being of America and the World, for Christ's sake (if you believe in that sort of thing), is important. When your vision extends to YOU and YOUR family and YOUR friends and YOUR moment, well, you're a short-sited egoist buffoon (not that there's anything wrong with that), and DAMMIT, you shouldn't be leading a nation that wants to last for a few more centuries, the former beacon on the hill for the rest of the world. No, you should be back in your little channel with your tiny people, becoming moderately wealthy while screwing over those who trust your sorry bullshit.

You good?

You still kickin' there in your domicile?

No one knew what it would be like when this started. So you're doing what you can. You're feeding your people and finding something to do. You need help? Get it -- reach out to friends who would like nothing more than an excuse to help out someone and feel good. Or even to acquaintances or Facebook friends. You need to get out? Go sit in your car, drive around the block. Take the kids sight seeing (disinfect the gas nozzle!).

Bored? Find a way to help others in any way you can.

It's going to be OK, and if it ain't, you'll deal with it. You've dealt with tough stuff before, and if not, this is your chance to join the rest of us who have. Life changing events happen all the time (marriage, divorce, accidents and sickness). Just not usually to all of us at the same time. And we get through it. Or not. Just do what you can today, learn from yesterday, and carry on.  It's not a problem. It's just life. Live it the best you can. 

Part of the New Normal when this thing is finished:

Conventional Wisdom says to have enough in savings to survive with no income for 6 months. Looks like we're going to actually take that advice seriously from now on. It's a good policy anyway, but this shows us that it's real.  For any given person, we wouldn't be surprised if something put us out of commission for a few months (back injury, car accident, cancer, etc.), but when something inflicts that imposition on the entire globe, wow. It shows us how important that policy really is.

Not just the money, but the plan -- how do I go about creating a "dormancy plan?" And do the rent collectors have an obligation to put something like that into their agreements from now on: In the case of a global pandemic, city-inundating hurricane or earthquake: Should the business need to be dormant more than one month due to a natural disaster affecting the entire (city/state/country), rent collection will be reduced to 10% after the first month up to 6 months. And of course, living within our means takes on more nuance. In a limited natural disaster, FEMA and the kindness of others can go a long way toward helping the victims get through it. But with everyone in a similar boat, well, we need to think hard about the processes and infrastructure to sustain us while we're debilitated. Schools systems, banks, homeowners, renters, all businesses, hospitals and clinics, utilities, everything! Let's learn our damn lesson on this one.

The Deep State

What the deep state means to Donald Trump and his cohort is the public servants who live by their oath (to support and defend the constitution) instead of being loyal to the person, Trump.

Fuck. That. Shit.

Loyalty to a person is one of the lowest principles. You can be supportive or a friend or a confidant, whatever, without supporting their vices.  Being loyal to someone doing the wrong thing takes you right down the wrong with them. Loyal in support of unethical behavior makes you an unethical sycophant. Are you afraid of losing power? Are you an approval seeker from the top dog? Fuck. That. Shit. You're nothing. Especially when you've seen that the loyalty is always one way. He will turn tail and abandon the loyal minions, scapegoat them, besmirch them, mock and belittle them the minute it's not politically popular. The minute they have a (almost always smarter) opinion than Trump.

Trump and the Christians

When someone doesn't espouse your values, you can forgive him and you can love him as Jesus instructed, but I'm pretty sure Jesus never said you should make him your leader and you should idolize him and give him vast amounts of power and let him be the spokesperson for your whole country. Or did he?

He's like a one man crusade to crucify the 10 commandments. It's like the "thou shalt not's" are his bucket-list. It's like he takes the words of Jesus and does the opposite: Love your enemy? I'll hate my friends!  Turn the other cheek? Hell no, redouble their slight! If a person asks for your shirt, give him your jacket as well. God forbid - exploit the poor, especially from countries of brown skinned people! Give to Caesar what is Ceasar's? You're not seeing my taxes because I've done everything I can to cheat.  Of course you can all go on and on.

The President is and should be the leader and role model for his people, and Trump is among the worst leaders and an absolutely terrible model to follow.