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Notes from a Class

Friday 22 January 2021

It’s funny how much meaning a few notes scribbled on the board can have for a group of fourteen-year-olds and yet be completely incomprehensible to others — to other students, to other teachers, to other adults in general.

Below are the notes from today’s class. The scribbles don’t look like much, but to the kids with whom I’ve been working now for several months, they represent the last little bit (though critical bit) of guidance for a major writing assignment. These few words and abbreviations include notes about organization, notes about planning, notes about content, guidance for self-correction, potential problems and their solutions

We’ve developed our own shorthand, or own codes, or own abbreviations, as I do with every class every year. And it all moves the students toward writing that they would have found impressive a few months ago and now is their new-normal, their new standard.

It’s an honor to be a part of that growth, to play a small part in it.

Return II

Thursday 21 January 2021

I’ve sometimes wondered what would be the reaction in the Christian community if somehow some irrefutable proof surfaced that Jesus would never be coming back, that the second coming was all a pipe dream. Now, I know that no such proof is possible, and the events of recent weeks demonstrate all too clearly that irrefutable evidence can be refuted simply by a movement in the will, a forcible rejection of what is clearly and demonstrably true. We see that in the election; we see that in denial of climate change and evolution; we see that everywhere. But let’s just run this thought experiment: there’s somehow evidence that Jesus’s second coming will never happen, that the Christians, who have been predicting for 2,000 years now that Jesus is coming back “any day now,” were completely wrong. What might that look like?

I think we’re seeing it in real time now as Qanon conspiracy theorists grapple with the reality that none of Q’s theories have come true and that, with Biden now sworn in, they won’t come true.

One account on Reuters:

On Wednesday, they grappled with a harsh reality check: Trump had left office with no mass arrests or other victories against the supposed cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibal elites, especially Democrats, he was ostensibly fighting.

Instead, Democratic President Joseph Biden was calmly sworn into office, leaving legions of QAnon faithful struggling to make sense of what had transpired.

In one Telegram channel with more than 18,400 members, QAnon believers were split between those still urging others to ‘trust the plan’ and those saying they felt betrayed. “It’s obvious now we’ve been had. No plan, no Q, nothing,” wrote one user.

Some messages referenced theories that a coup was going to take place before the end of Inauguration Day. Others moved the goalposts again, speculating that Trump would be sworn into office on Mar. 4.

“Does anybody have any idea what we should be waiting for next or what the next move could be?” asked another user, who said they wanted to have a ‘big win’ and arrests made. (Source)

Two movements here: one, a return to reality; the other, a doubling-down, squirming deeper into the hole.

The BBC includes this:

Many reacted with shock and despair as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president.

“I just want to throw up,” said one in a popular chat on the Telegram messaging app. “I’m so sick of all the disinformation and false hope.”

Others insisted “the plan” had not failed, finding new theories to latch on to.

For weeks, QAnon followers had been promoting 20 January as a day of reckoning, when prominent Democrats and other elite “Satanic paedophiles” would be arrested and executed on the orders of President Trump.

The 65 days that led to chaos at the Capitol
What is QAnon?

But, as Mr Biden took his oath and no arrests were made, some in the QAnon community had an uncomfortable meeting with reality.

“It’s done and we were played,” wrote another. (Source)

Those who are doubling down are coming up with increasingly bizarre explanations of what’s going on:

Some of them just don’t even make any sense at all:

Some of them are waking up, though. One TikTok video, now viral, is supposedly from a Qanon woman who has come to her senses:

So, who else is feeling just a little silly? […] I went too far down the rabbit hole, now I’m back out again — and it nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? And who the f*** is Q? Who is it? Who is this person? Because none of it has come true, and I was just thinking — what if this person knows that none of this stuff is true and they’re just messing with people, like getting inside their heads.

The video is here:

So what does this tell us about Qanon and conspiracy theories? I feel like these reactions would mirror what would happen in our hypothetical proof of the non-return of Jesus. There would be some who would accept it — probably more liberal believers. For that matter, there are Christians liberal enough already to say that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, didn’t really ascend into heaven, won’t really return, but insist that that doesn’t really matter. “It’s all about the teachings!” they say, and then they paint this picture of Jesus who seems in some ways at odds with the Jesus in the Bible. (He certainly seemed to think he was coming back, so there’s that…)

Most believers would stick by their guns. Nothing — absolutely nothing — could convince them otherwise.

This leads to the thought that has plagued me for a few years now, a thought that ultimately pushed me back away from Christianity: If a belief is not falsifiable, if nothing counts against it, to what degree can we call it a rational idea?

This, in turn, leads to another thought I’ve had rattling around in my head for some time now: there are a lot of similarities between conspiracy theorists and religious believers. And in fact, I think an argument can be made that religion in general and Christianity, in particular, are, at heart, a gigantic, cosmic conspiracy theories.

Return

Wednesday 20 January 2021

One of the things I’m most looking forward to in the Biden administration is being able to go for days on end without giving a single thought to the president and what he’s doing. That’s how it’s always been, even with presidents I didn’t particularly like or agree with. I’ve always just assumed, “Well, he’s an adult. He’s a reasonable human being. How much do I possibly have to worry about something over which I have no control?”

The Tension Dials Up

Tuesday 19 January 2021

Act 3 scene 1 -- everything changes. The challenging becomes almost impossible. Romeo effectively erases any hope of any future with Juliet.

"Things are going to speed up from here on out," I tell the kiddos.

The End of the Season

Monday 18 January 2021

Part of it was laziness, but we’ll chalk it up to Polishness: we finally took down our Christmas tree today. We’d been meaning to do it for a couple of weeks, but we didn’t adequately work it into our schedule.

Or we can use K’s Polishness as an excuse: Poles always put their Christmas trees up later (sometimes, only a couple of days before Christmas) and take them down later.

The Boy and I chopped it up in the afternoon. “This is so satisfying,” he said. For us all, in different ways…

Dalton 2021 Day 2

Sunday 17 January 2021

Dalton 2021 Day 1

Saturday 16 January 2021

It's a different tournament this year. There are fewer courts this year: five instead of eight. This means fewer teams in the building, so fewer players, fewer parents -- reduced risk, in short.

They won their first two games in straight sets. They didn't have much problem with either team.

As often happens, though, the third team was a different story. Our girls (and single boy -- long story) lost the first set something like 25-22. Not a devastating loss, but a loss nonetheless.

They started the second set strong and before we knew it, our team was up 19-12. "Surely this is a done deal." Nope. They ended up losing 26-24, which means in the second half of the game, they were consistently outscored 2-1.

It's a question of experience, of gelling together as a team. It's only their second tournament, and many of the points they lost were from silly, unforced errors. They'll weed those out with time, with some experience.

And the Boy got his soccer uniform for the spring season.

Spendings

Friday 15 January 2021

The Boy loves to spend money. He has a million and one ideas about what he’s going to buy, and it changes from day to day. We protected his first communion money and steered him toward spending it on something useful: a new bike. However, his allowance is a different story.

This week, he decided he wanted to buy a prank kit. He spent $15 on kit that included

  • a whoopee cushion,
  • a small plastic finger that one pulls to create a sound that I think is supposed to sound like flatulence but instead sounds like just wildly chaotic noise;
  • slime, and
  • some kind of strange little bouncy rubber ball.

Four items that probably cost a total of $2 to make, and he paid $15 for it. K advised him that it was not the best way to spend his money. It was especially ill-advised since the last time he bought a whoopee cushion, it burst the first time he sat on it. (I always thought the idea was that someone else sat on it, but I guess I was wrong.)

Today, at dinner, he had an epiphany: “I wasted that money!” The realization caused great stress, but K reassured him: “If you learned a lesson from it, it’s money well spent.”

Celebrating 48

Thursday 14 January 2021

48

Wednesday 13 January 2021

Kwasnica, an evening run, a bit of time with the family — a simple turn of the calendar. And not much else to say.