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Month: April 2020

Day 46: Snakes, Dogs, and Balls

Thursday 30 April 2020

Some years ago, there was a little flu epidemic here in the upstate. I'd forgotten all about it until I read the entry from the "Time Machine" widget at the bottom of the page.

Pandemic Education

I wrote,

Students come running into the classroom, desperate not to touch anything but the bottles of hand sanitizer that they’re most eagerly sharing amongst themselves. They sit down and put their hands in the air as if they’re being held up at gun point. They open doors with their feet and they laughingly refuse to touch the copies of Much Ado About Nothing we’ve been using in class.

A quick look around the room confirms my suspicions: I won’t be able to accomplish anything without dealing with this first.

That was 11 years ago now, and it seems so insignificant compared to what we're living now. Our flu outbreak affected a small part of the state; this viral reality is affecting the entire world. Magnify something and its significance seems often to increase exponentially like the curve of new cases in many places. That curve seems to have reached its summit in some areas. Everyone seems eager for that to be the reality, though. Do we have the maturity and self-control needed to keep the curve from turning back upwards again? I don't know.

Looking for the snake E and our neighbor saw

I know the kids have simply settled into the new rhythm and joke about it. The Girl is having an easier time than the Boy in some ways because she's in more constant contact with her friends through Facetime -- they sometimes just leave it on while they're doing other things, as if to have a companion near.

The Boy gets to see his friends daily with their whole-class Google Meet. (An aside: It's amazing the difference between elementary students and middle school students when it comes to these online meetings. When E's class meets, almost everyone is there; when my classes meet, almost no one is there. I suppose there's more parental involvement in the younger children's lives.) Still, that's hardly a substitute for their usual day together, which includes a bit of down-time to talk and of course recess.

Another entry from the nostalgia widget:

Almost May

I wrote,

My reaction over the years has changed. In the past, I was just trying to survive at this point in the year. Perhaps that was because of a lack of clear and clear-headed goals for students; maybe that was a result of my inexperience and ineffectiveness; possibly that was because I had some exceptionally challenging students. Or perhaps it was all that and more. At any rate, I find myself eager, after a short break, to begin again. A sufficient “short break” in this case would be about three weeks or so, but I’m fortunate that we get about four times that.

That short break I was referring to was a hypothetical three-week summer break before getting back to school. I was suggesting that perhaps the whole summer is necessary. Indeed, it's a luxury. But now -- we'll have a break from mid-March until mid-August, and even then, I doubt we'll get back to normal.

In the end, "normal" will have to shift. Our state superintendent is already talking about possibly going to school in shifts to maintain an appropriate distance. I'm assuming that would mean dividing the eighth-grade student body in half: group A goes Monday and Wednesday and group B goes Tuesday and Thursday. Friday? Who knows. Who knows anything at this point. It's odd that the longer this stretches out, the more the uncertainty in some sense.

Prayer

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Every day before every meal, Dad prays. He's done that for my entire life. Except for meals in restaurants, he has begun every meal with a prayer. And it's almost always the same prayer.

"Almighty, most great, and holy Father, we come before your throne..." Thus he begins -- the magic words. It's a good example of how some prayers seem to be automatic, without much or any thought at all. It just sounds reverent. "Almighty" and "most great" mean the same thing. If God is "almighty" he's definitely the "most great" being.

And why "most great" instead of "greatest"? It just sounds more -- I don't know. Old fashioned? (If that's the case, why not use "thee" and "thy" like so many do? "We thank thee for thy mercies" and that type of thing.)

Another thing he says that just confuses me: "Bless this food. Use it to nourish and strengthen us." Just what is this blessing? What does it accomplish? Is it healthier? Is it less fattening? Is it better tasting? And could a Christian differentiate between blessed and unblessed food?

The "use it to nourish and strengthen us" bit is especially confusing: is this a suggestion that, without these magic words, the food would merely sit in our bellies and pass through our colon without any effect at all? Isn't food digestion just a natural biological process that in no way depends upon anyone's will? I suppose there's the idea that God set in motion the laws that make all this happen, but even if that's the case, they continue running without him. Our bodies are going to get nourishment from food with or without the magic words.

Always after this bit about nourishing and strengthening us is this odd request: "Keep us in your holy and righteous name." What does it mean to keep someone in someone else's name? I suppose it's like in John 17:11, having somehow to do with protection "protect them by the power of your name," but that doesn't really make matters any clearer. How does the power of someone's name protect us? Only in the sense that the offending person is afraid of the protector's name, in other words, afraid of what the protector might do to them. In this case, what will the Christian god do? The days of Biblical smiting are long gone: he doesn't seem to do much of anything remotely as impressive.

Day 45: Checkers and Rain

Wednesday 29 April 2020

Day 44: Chess and the Mess

Tuesday 28 April 2020

“Daddy, let’s play chess!” Normally, I wouldn’t say no to this. I enjoy sharing chess with the kids, so when the Girl suggested we play this afternoon, I was more than willing. She went out on the deck, where Papa was taking his afternoon fresh air, and began setting up the board. And then I had the idea.

“Why don’t you ask Papa if he‘d like to play?” I suggested.

Papa used to be obsessed with chess. He taught me how to move the pieces and then nothing more. This was because, by the time I came along, he’d given up chess. It was taking over his life, he said. He was lying in bed thinking of lost games. I know that feeling. So I wasn’t sure if he would play a game with her. But of course, I knew he would — he’s not going to turn down his granddaughter.

It was an up and down game. I sat by them, reading Paul Auster’s The Locked Room, looking over every now and then to see how things were going. Papa was up; L was up; Papa was up; L was up. It was a very uneven game until the end, when L just fell apart.

During all this, E was Facetiming his best friend from school. They were talking about Pokemon, baseball cards, favorite cartoons — second-grader stuff. He’d suggested it to his friend while the whole class was having a Google Meet in the morning.

“E, do you have a question?”

“Yes! I want to ask N when he can Facetime because it’s been ridiculously long since the last time.” And so we set it up for this afternoon.

Once he came outside and saw the chess game, though, he wanted to play Papa.

Things didn’t go much better for him — Papa went undefeated today. Which was good for Papa.

In the evening, L decided she wanted to bake cookies and try a formula for homemade Playdough. One might think this is something that would thrill parents, but K and I have learned: the Girl is not the best cleaner. She talks fast, walks fast, and cleans fast, which means she cleans poorly. It’s a thirteen-year-old thing, I’m certain. Tonight was no different. So I called her back down to the kitchen and pointed out the little things she’d missed.

She fussed; she argued; she pouted. But in the end, she did it.

Day 43: Cooperation

Monday 27 April 2020

School in the morning.

Pierogi in the afternoon.

Games in the evening.

Day 42: The Sermon and the Wall

Sunday 26 April 2020

The Sermon

I went out for a walk this morning. It was sunny and warm, and everyone else was busy doing something, so I couldn't resist. Listening to The Brothers Karamazov as I walked, I heard an amplified voice over the reader's voice. Sometimes, when the conditions are just right, we hear the announcer at the local high school's football games. Of course, there are no such games now, and there wouldn't be any on a Sunday anyway. I paused the recording, stopped walking, and listened carefully. It took a moment, but I realized that it was a preacher delivering a Sunday morning message to the faithful as they sat in their cars. Drive-in church service.

As I walked a little further, I heard a little later furious honking coming from that direction, as if twenty or thirty cars were all randomly honking their horns. I took the earbuds out again and listened for some time.

Through the trees, I heard, "But we don't have to fear death! Christ Jesus has conquered death!" Fairly typical evangelical formulation. "Isn't that wonderful?" And then the horns began again, and I realized what was going on.

"They're honking their amens," I muttered to myself.

The Wall

The kids have taken the back corner of the house as their practice area: the Boy kicks his soccer ball against the wall; the Girl uses it for volleyball. They decided to use chalk to make some targets to practice accuracy.

The Girl had it all planned out. Colors, target shapes, everything. And then the Boy "messed it all up," using colors at random for no other reason than wanting to use that particular color. And so they cleaned it and began again.

Day 41: Cleaning

Saturday 25 April 2020

Day 40: In the Creek

Friday 24 April 2020

Day 39: Rain

Thursday 23 April 2020

It rained today. Almost the entire day. Being stuck at home is not that bad when we can go outside, but being stuck in the house makes for a long day. In the grand scheme of things, that’s a petty issue, I realize. But such was our reality today.

What’s more, E swears he’s tired of all the games. Sorry? “No!” Monopoly? “No!” Uno? “No!” He was up for chess, but one can hardly play three-person chess.

Well, it exists, but I’ve never played it, and we don’t have a board.

Day 38: Hybrid Walk

Wednesday 22 April 2020

This evening's walk was a hybrid: the kids wanted to go exploring; we wanted just a normal walk. So we began in the woods, then emerged in the adjacent neighborhood and headed back to the house the long way.

The Boy snapped pictures most of the way. And, somewhat predictably, the Girl, seeing E having all the fun, wanted to take a few pictures herself. Well, that sounds a little too cynical: she has expressed a slight interest in photography, but there is always that thirteen-year-old aspect to her that, well, I don't know. She's thirteen. That's really all we need to say.

On the way back, so much silliness. I can't remember the last time L, E, and K were so silly with each other, laughing at nonsense, making more nonsense just to make everyone laugh all the harder.

And Clover and I the only ones keeping things serious. Sort of.

We got back with time to spare before I had to start getting the Boy ready for bed. For our reading, we continued with what we've been slogging through for some time now: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's not that it's a bad book: E insists that Verne is a master of cliffhangers. But he does seem to get a little carried away with himself. For example, one chapter begins thusly:

The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, "the great sea" of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum" of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!

It's not a passage for a seven-year-old. "What's 'par excellence mean?" "Who were the Hebrews?" "What are Greeks?" "'Mare nostrum' -- what's that?" "What does 'embalmed' mean?"

The next chapter -- the very next chapter -- begins thusly:

The Atlantic! a vast sheet of water whose superficial area covers twenty-five millions of square miles, the length of which is nine thousand miles, with a mean breadth of two thousand seven hundred—an ocean whose parallel winding shores embrace an immense circumference, watered by the largest rivers of the world, the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Plata, the Orinoco, the Niger, the Senegal, the Elbe, the Loire, and the Rhine, which carry water from the most civilised, as well as from the most savage, countries! Magnificent field of water, incessantly ploughed by vessels of every nation, sheltered by the flags of every nation, and which terminates in those two terrible points so dreaded by mariners, Cape Horn and the Cape of Tempests.

"Jules, you're killing me!" I wanted to yell. But it did give us some laughs.

In truth, though, I've been skipping -- sometimes rather liberally. Take this passage from tonight's chapter, for example:

Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass. The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos, and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving. My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise in the shadow of some cavity. Millions of luminous spots shone brightly in the midst of the darkness. They were the eyes of giant crustacea crouched in their holes; giant lobsters setting themselves up like halberdiers, and moving their claws with the clicking sound of pincers; titanic crabs, pointed like a gun on its carriage; and frightful-looking poulps, interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.

That got cut to this:

Two hours after quitting the Nautilus we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant irradiation of the opposite slope. Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there. Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass.

I've determined that I'm not a fan of such novels, which seem to be nothing but a litany of adventures leading to -- to what? Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil want to escape, but thus far, there's been precious little talk of it and a lot of chatter about all the marvels Nemo is showing them.

Fortunately, the Boy agrees in part: we can do without all the descriptive flourishes -- let's get to the action. And through it so we can read something else. Perhaps Tom Sawyer?

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