My longtime pandemic journal continues with Part 13 (well, it feels like a long time, but it hasn't even been six months...). You can see some of my previous entries here and here.
What do I think about the new school year in these strange days, the 2020 US Presidential election, reading Frankenstein, the labor movement, and other things? Read on to find out!
And of course there's the real reason most of you are here: the memes! Enjoy!
Tues. 18 Aug. 2020
The first day of school went alright. I didn’t leave the house. I wouldn’t have taught on Mondays, anyway, so this is not that unusual, but I did a lot of work responding to discussion boards and emails and sending reminders about the weird circumstances of the semester that I normally wouldn’t have been doing.
I sent more reminders today: some that my “hybrid” course is not meeting in person at all the first two weeks, and one just now for my Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy class that rather amused me.
Here's a quick reminder because I realize it's confusing to have so many different types of classes right now:
This is a 100% asynchronous class. This means that we will not be meeting as a class on Zoom. [It's also a Greek-derived word: a (not) + syn (together) + chronos (time), so it means something like "not at the same time" or "untimely."]
If you can't get enough Zoom sessions, I will be having regular Zoom office hours every Wednesday from 3-5pm (I'll post that link tomorrow). I'm always happy to set up an appointment with you at other times.
I hope your first week is going alright. Take care!
I couldn’t resist the chance to do some etymology in an announcement about course modality, which is admittedly easier when you’re teaching ancient Greek stuff.
Synchronous online with scheduled Zoom sessions, asynchronous online without Zoom sessions, hybrid where the whole class meets at once, hybrid where half, a third, or a fourth of the class meets at once on a rotating schedule, hybrid that is 100% online for the first few weeks with some face-to-face meetings scheduled at some point in varying configurations in the future, some mysterious thing called “hyflex,” face-to-face classes that meet at regular times but with masks and social distancing, policies that make it so that all requirements can be met online even in hybrid or face-to-face classes, but in different ways depending on the professor and available technology…
… Gee, I can’t imagine why college students are confused right now.
Wed. 19 Aug. 2020
I’m about to have my first Zoom office hours of the semester. Let’s see if anyone shows up!
An hour and a half in, and nobody’s here yet. I have an outer space Zoom background, which makes me feel like the Star Child from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
One good thing about doing student intros in an online format: I can google their hometowns that I’ve never heard of instead of awkwardly asking them where it is in person.
Sun. 23 Aug. 2020
The first week went alright. No sign that we’re moving online yet, but that may happen quickly.
I’ve had a lot going on and haven’t taken a break for journaling. Maybe I’ll write more later.
I just asked for two black metal shelves for my new office (yes, for some reason we moved offices during a pandemic… don’t get me started). Anyway, maybe this is a sign that it’s time to listen to Black Metal.
Mon. 24 Aug. 2020
Today I had an interview for a local TV station in response to an op/ed written by a former student about mask usage on campus. Weird.
Later: a union meeting! And somewhere in there: responding to student discussion posts and running online classes.
Something I wrote in an announcement explaining the arcane attendance policy for my hybrid courses: “I know this is confusing, but we live in confusing times. Sorry.”
Yesterday I turned my really fun in-class activity on Plato’s Euthyphro into a PowerPoint. Not fun, but I still prefer doing that class totally online right now.
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| Weird. They just showed my FaceTime call with the reporter. |
They used a few short clips from my interview on TV. It was even weirder seeing myself on TV than it was hearing myself on the radio recently. (Check it out here.)
Tues. 25 Aug. 2020
I finally got around to reading this great piece by Eric Schwitzgebel that he posted on his blog last week.
I’m thinking my attraction to ancient skepticism is that is turns “philosophy that closes” into “philosophy that opens.” Unlike most modern skepticism (at least as typically understood by analytic philosophers), which is pretty much solidly in the closing camp, ancient skepticism turns the closing impulse on itself, leaving one more open to new ways of thinking and being, or at least less attached to any particular way of thinking. This might also explain why I simultaneously love the sort of opening you get in philosophical science fiction (think especially Ursula Le Guin here), but also the type of skepticism that at first looks combative and closing.
Wed. 26 Aug. 2020
One of the jarring things about the pandemic is that I read horrific things about a young white man murdering protestors in Wisconsin after police shot a Black man in the back and my university being 31st in the nation for number of COVID cases, but then I still have to answer emails about how to get rid of old books in my department office and set up Zoom office hours to talk about Plato. I can’t imagine what this is like for Black Americans on a regular basis.
It’s not entirely clear what happened, but a few days ago police in Kenosha, WI shot a Black man named Jacob Blake six or seven times in the back. Blake survived, but is paralyzed. Protests understandably ensued, and just as understandably there was some property destroyed. And predictably white men with guns showed up (besides the police, who were friendly toward them by some reports) to “protect” property.
This is all a sad, terrible example of how white supremacy is killing us (even white people: at least one of the people killed was white). Think about the legal and cultural structures that had to coalesce for a young white man to show up with a rifle to a protest against police brutality, murder people, and still not be in custody the following day, while a Black man who was trying to break up a domestic dispute was shot six or seven times in the back by a Kenosha police officer. And cue the media and many white people who are more concerned about property damage than human lives, especially Black ones.
Thurs. 27 Aug. 2020
I really hate online teaching, but I still think almost all teachers should be doing it right now.
What’s even worse is hybrid teaching. Just figuring out how that even works in a pandemic is exhausting and even worse, probably pointless in the long run.
Sat. 29 Aug. 2020
In the last couple days Beth and I watched Bill and Ted I and II to get ready for III! I was really excited about seeing this one in the theater, but seeing it at home on demand was a suitable substitute. I really, really loved it! See my review!
Sadly, just as I was watching the credits, beaming with delight, I saw that Chadwick Boseman had died of colon cancer at age 43.
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| RIP Chadwick Boseman |
Sun. 30 Aug. 2020
I start my face-to-face sections this week. I’m less worried about the classrooms than I am about students in the dorms or at social gatherings, but it’s awful that we were put in this situation in the first place.
Here’s what I said on social media when I posted this article about experiences of socially distanced campuses across the country.
We're putting everyone's health at risk for the alleged reason that we're providing a "college experience," but this experience is impossible to provide right now. And then many upper level administrators are going to blame students and attempt to turn faculty and staff against each other when these reopening plans inevitably fail.
In Dark Tower news, I finished Wolves of the Calla yesterday and wrote about it tonight. Onward to Song of Susannah!
Tues. 1 Sept. 2020
It’s September 1, which puts us right in the middle of the sweatiest time of the year in Chattanooga.
And UTC has called my bluff: I start my first face-to-face meetings in my hybrid class today. Honestly, I’m not much more worried about those meetings than I am about going to the grocery store, but I’m worried about students in their home and social lives. I still think it was a mistake to offer more than the absolutely essential face-to-face and hybrid classes this semester.
Our upper administration has said this is what students want (based, I think, on a survey done in May?), but I think there’s more they’re not telling us. I suspect we’re doing this more for financial and political reasons. Universities like UTC get a lot of their funding from tuition and room and board, and we are beholden to a state university system and Republican state government. Our administrators downplay or outright ignore both of these factors, and focus on reopening as if it’s an engineering problem or a customer service issue. It’s all about the how and never about the why.
Like I said before, the pandemic has been shining some harsh light on every fucked up thing about America, and our public universities are no exception. Every terrible thing about American higher education is now on full display: turning universities into landlords aiming to please “customers” with indoor waterparks and apartment-style dorms, political hostility (especially from Republicans) about the very idea of public education that gutted public funding in the last 40 years, putting more and more of the burden of funding higher education on individual students and families instead of recognizing it as collective public good, putting most of the burden of unsafe and precarious working conditions on those who are paid the least with the least power…
Afternoon update: My policies meant to dissuade students from attending in person may have worked too well in my first face-to-face meeting this morning: I only had one student (out of 12 in that group). We had a nice conversation. The building wasn’t too busy (I only saw one other class happening). If it’s going to just be one or two people, I might see about consolidating to meeting everyone on Thursday. My 5:00 section will probably have more people in it, just because that’s my business college honors section and I imagine there are more over-achievers. But we’ll see in a couple hours, I guess.
I have six out of eight for the 5:00 section. They’re part of a cohort model in the business college where they live together and take most of their classes together (something I agreed to do in the Before Times).
The students today were all very nice, but this is all very weird.
Thurs. 3 Sept. 2020
Attendance for the Thursday sections of my optional face-to-face meetings in my hybrid course: 10:50: 3 out of 13, 5:00: 4 out of 8. It's nice to interact with students in person, but doing so with Covid protocols is very strange.
I finished reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein again for my horror and philosophy class. Having read this several times now, I don't have much to add to my previous thoughts except the following. For all the bits about "playing God" and far more interesting themes about death and the human condition and whatnot, the core idea of the novel could also be summed up as: Victor is a huge jerk, and people die because of his jerkitude.
A couple things for my random thoughts collection tonight…
The fetishization of freedom and the dogma of personal choice above all else are literally killing us in the US.
There are so many examples from health care to guns to masks to vaccines, etc., but one example of the dogma of personal choice is the refrain that students should always have a choice about whether to have face-to-face classes during a pandemic as if they are consumers and universities are beholden to their personal choices… the customer is always right. In some contexts, it makes good pedagogical sense to respect students’ choices, but maybe not when their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their communities are at stake.
The favorite pastime of everyone on the left in the US seems to be “knowing what the Democrats should do.” This pastime will be more fun when Democrats have more power to do more things or alternatively, to disappoint you by not doing what you are sure they should do (and how dare they not do what any reasonable person such as yourself can see is obviously the right thing to do?). So, you should work to elect Democrats so you can better enjoy this time-honored pastime of the American left.
Last year I resolved not to discuss 2020 Presidential politics on social media. I’m still exhausted from 2016 (mostly from arguing with people on the left, but a couple libertarians, too). I was resolute through the early primary season, and then the pandemic sort of took care of most of the rest of the attention on the primary. But now that the Trump administration has doubled-down on racism as its major campaign strategy, we still have kids in cages and adults unnecessarily detained during a pandemic, Black people are still being killed by police and instead of working to address the problem the President is inciting further violence, the federal non-response to the pandemic has led to 190,000 US deaths (more than any other country) while Republicans refuse to work on an aid package and encourage “reopening” as if everything is fine, protestors against police brutality have been rounded up by unidentified government agents, the President is refusing to condemn a child who murdered protestors and who is part of an informal group of heavily armed radicals at the President’s indirect command to literally kill his enemies, the erosion of every sector of government (from judges to government agencies, even, apparently, the CDC during a goddamn pandemic for fuck’s sake), the deliberate undermining of the Post Office as a means of voter suppression (which is just on brand for Republicans lately… but, c’mon, the fucking Post Office! Jesus fucking Christ, Republicans! Have you no shame?), news story after tell-all book after bombshell interview that demonstrates that the President and current Republican leadership are morally bankrupt hucksters unfit for office, (I almost forgot to even mention that the President was impeached last year for soliciting the help of a foreign government to defeat Biden and obstructing Congress), the racist and sexist dog-whistles from Trump’s first campaign through this whole thing, the incitement of violence toward Americans (especially Black Americans), Brett Kavanaugh and the prospect of several more Trump appointees to the Supreme Court (threatening civil liberties and reproductive freedom), and the continuing drive into fascism (a word I do not use lightly, and yes, it could happen here)….
Given that Biden/Harris are for all practical purposes all that stand between this country and all of that… Jesus fucking Christ, people, what more do you need? Whether you think this is the lesser evil (and less evil is better than more evil!), fuck, even if you personally hate Joe Biden because he’s a DNC corporate shill or you have vague-but-probably-racist-and-sexist discomfort with Kamala Harris that makes you hyper critical of her or even if you have legitimate substantive policy differences with them or their voting records or whatever, even if Biden and Harris can’t single-handedly solve America’s deeper problems like racist police violence and systemic inequalities, even if they could accomplish nothing more than repairing a small fraction of the damage Trump has already done to the government and soul of our nation …
If the choice is Biden/Harris and other Democrats or at best a slide into our country becoming a shittier place for almost everybody without the last name Trump (a “shithole country” if you will, to quote the President deliberately out of context) and at worst a fucking nightmarish dystopia for everyone who isn’t a rich white nominally Christian man…
Like, I don’t see how this is even a choice, America. Jesus fucking Christ, vote for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Third party votes are nice in theory (I love the idea of a multi-party system), but in our actual political system as it exists in 2020 third party votes for President are at best a vain, pointless personal statement and at worst a means to the greater evil of Trump and the Republicans. And yes, the electoral college and gerrymandering are stupid, but that’s why we need massive turnout everywhere to overcome those structural advantages for Republicans.
Like it or not, Biden and Harris are the best hope we have of pushing back against the Republicans’ march into explicit white nationalism and avoiding the total fucking catastrophe of a second Trump term, a catastrophe from which—and as someone not prone to alarmism, I do not say this lightly—our country may never recover. Please vote.
Fri. 4 Sept. 2020
The numbers…
Worldwide
cases: 26, 547, 441
deaths: 847,431
USA
cases: 6, 338, 119
deaths: 191, 144
Hamilton County, TN
cases: 8, 190
deaths: 78
The number of Americans who have died from COVID-19 is now greater than the population of the city of Chattanooga.
Later… a backyard happy hour and a union labor day picnic, both masked and socially-distanced because those are the times we live in.
Sat. 5 Sept. 2020
I did a bit of relaxing today.
I teleported myself out of the mouth of a giant gnome-hungry worm and then shot lightning bolts from my finger while levitating ... was it a fever dream or D&D?
Mon. 7 Sept. 2020
It’s Labor Day! I don’t have the day off. We eliminated the holiday to condense the fall semester so we can send students home in November. I did do work today, but I tried not to do too much. I took a nice long walk down to the riverfront in downtown Chattanooga. Humidity was unusually low for this time of year (still plenty sweaty, but not unbearably so). As I walked I listened to some black metal (it was that kind of mood today), a new episode of the History of Africana Philosophy podcast (which should come in handy when I hopefully teach Africana Philosophy soon), and started the official Lovecraft Country podcast (I’ve been watching the HBO show and reading the book).
I’ve been a lot more involved in my union lately (United Campus Workers! Yay!). We’ve been a lot more active since the pandemic began. There are a lot of issues for workers on our campus and others right now. There were a lot of issues before, but the pandemic has a way of shedding some harsher light on them. Almost everybody I talk to is reporting higher stress and lower morale right now. Thinking of the big picture, I wonder if we might see more participation in the labor movement going forward now that the effects of mostly unchecked bosses and unorganized workers are as obvious as they’ve been in a long time. We’ll see.
If the last few years culminating in 2020 have taught me anything, though, it’s that you can’t put too much credence in your expectations about how things will turn out.
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