My pandemic journal continues with Part 14! It has been about six months since this all started, or in pandemic time, roughly 25 years.
As usual, I have spent the last month scouring the internet for the finest memes. You can also read about what I've been doing and thinking. But it's also okay to just browse the memes. Do what you gotta do. It's a pandemic.
And for the love of all that you hold dear, vote if you are eligible, my fellow Americans! Jesus fucking Christ, just vote. I don't even know what to say to convince you, but if this serves as a reminder, so be it. Just vote.
Tues. 8 Sept. 2020
Today and tomorrow I’ll be participating in the Scholar Strike for Racial Justice (info here and here).
I was canceling my face-to-face sessions today, anyway, in order to consolidate them with the Thursday sections, but this gives me extra reason to do so. I’m also not responding to all my emails and discussion posts and canceling my office hours. I shared the resources with my students, asking them to take some time to check them out.
Wed. 9 Sept. 2020
The Scholar Strike for Racial Justice continues today. I wrote this blog post.
I’ve been watching the videos on the YouTube channel. This talk from Dr. Mary Rambaran-Olm on “Medieval Studies, White Supremacy, and BLM” is an excellent example.
My colleague Dr. Devori Kimbro interviewed Dr. Rambaran-Olm in her podcast, so now I’m listening to the episode.
Later: a union meeting!
Thurs. 10 Sept. 2020
The union meeting was good. We set some specific priorities for the next few months.
Today a student had a specific issue with Canvas (it’s too boring to get into the specifics, but it revealed an inherent limitation in the system). It reminded me of the time in the spring of 2017 when I consciously decided that I would rely less on the course management system (in-person quizzes, hard-copy papers, in-class small group work with hand-written reports, etc.). I did this for various pedagogical reasons that seemed important at the time: basically I was alarmed that in-person classes were starting to feel too much like online classes. Fast forward to 2020. Joke’s on me, I guess.
Fri. 11 Sept. 2020
Today I prepped my class on Camus and Lovecraft for next week, and now I’m convinced that Lovecraftian absurdity is the perfect genre of horror and philosophy for our times.
The universe makes no sense, old plans are ruined, and doom lurks in the oceans and forests of the world threatening to consume us all while we fight an eldritch racist and his cultists.
Tues. 15 Sept. 2020
Last night I learned that an old friend has died. He was someone I knew in grad school, and we occasionally kept in touch in recent years. He was only in his 30’s.
I’m still processing this. Last night I enjoyed some Evan Williams bourbon and folk metal, both things he introduced me to.
Along with teaching Camus and thinking about absurdity this week, this friend’s death also has me thinking of another old friend I lost last year.
So, it’s a melancholy day for me, overcast with the remembrance of absent friends.
Wed. 16 Sept. 2020
The US officially hit 200,000 Covid deaths. Worldwide we’re getting close to a million. Here are the numbers.
Worldwide
Cases: 29,791,038
Deaths: 940,375
US
Cases: 6,790,576
Deaths: 200,287
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 8,967
Deaths: 87
Fri. 18 Sept. 2020
It’s been a long week. The news of my friend’s death has hit me pretty hard. The pandemic and racial injustice and everything continue to weigh on me as this bizarre, exhausting semester grinds on, and the upcoming election is starting to weigh on me more. I’m continuing to do what I can, and I’m trying to keep on keeping on, but it’s hard sometimes. <insert long, weary sigh>
Later…
Despite all that I went to a socially-distanced backyard book club with some friends tonight, which was great. But then we got the news that Ruth Bader Ginsberg died.
<another long, weary sigh>
I feel like I have more to say, but I lack the words or energy to say it. Good night.
Sun. 20 Sept. 2020
Today there was a walk in memory of my friend. The walk was in Ohio, but I did my own walk here in Chattanooga. It was a great day for a walk, and for remembering an absent friend. Honestly we hadn’t talked much the last couple years, but just knowing he was out there being his unique self was an odd sort of comfort. I’ll miss him.
It was nice to get out for a long walk. I went to the Walnut St. pedestrian bridge and then to the park by the river. It was the first non-rainy, non-steamy day in quite a while, so it was busy down there. I used to like being alone in crowds. Even though I usually tried to go to movie theaters and restaurants at off times, I liked going to things like street festivals and parks to be alone with others. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. I usually preferred not to. But just being around others let me skim off their energy.
But now being around people gives me a little anxiety. Being on that bridge and seeing crowds of people everywhere I turned in the park was honestly a little upsetting. How many of us are going to get social anxiety from this pandemic? And even weirder: what’s the deal with all those people who seem just fine right now?
As for movie theaters and restaurants, I still miss those but not as much as I thought. After I left for my walk today, I realized I had forgotten to each lunch before I left. Usually this would be solved by going to a restaurant while I was out (one that serves beer would be a plus). Today I found an outdoor shave ice truck that had hot dogs, so I could at least be outside 100 feet from the bar I where I would have had a beer and a bratwurst in the Before Times.
For some reason, course prep was especially heavy this week and took over a good chunk of my weekend. Online teaching is so much work. A while back I said online teaching required too much organization, but that’s not quite right. My in-person classes were plenty organized. I have notebooks full of notes, and I kept detailed agendas and assignments for every class period. But it was a more fluid, organic sort of organization. Today I realized that what I dislike about online teaching is that it is too rigid. The pedagogical need to plan everything in detail ahead of time and then program a clunky computer system to make sure every detail is properly connected according to counter-intuitive protocols makes the whole thing a lot more rigidly organized. And like a branch, being too rigid means it breaks more easily. (Maybe this is my deeper critique of most educational technology?)
One example the other day: I had to form groups in the system for an upcoming group film project, which required several communications with students to ask if they had preferences and then entering groups into a clunky, counter-intuitive system. In the Before Times, I just asked them to form groups in class after a few weeks of getting to know each other in person.
So at the end of this weekend, I feel exhausted. And to be honest, just sad. The pandemic, politics, and mortality have got me down lately. It’s my birthday next week, which is usually an excuse to celebrate, because life is short and you need all the chances to celebrate that you can get. But this year I don’t much feel like celebrating or planning anything. It’s not like I can invite friends to a bar or go out to eat or anything, anyway.
I’ll be fine eventually, and I’ll get going even if I’m not. But I’d be lying if I said everything was okay.
Tues. 22 Sept. 2020
Today is Voter Registration Day. My university has a page of resources. The deadline to register in TN is Oct. 5. I can’t really imagine why the deadline is so early, besides straight-up Republican voter suppression. But that’s what it is.
I hope my fellow Americans who are eligible will register to vote. And I hope they will vote. I hope they will vote for Democrats. And I hope they will donate to and/or volunteer for Democratic candidates. If Americans have lived through the last five years and don’t see that the Republicans are terrible and getting worse by the day, if they don’t see that, whether you like them or not, the Democrats are the only electoral means we have of stopping Republicans right now, and if they don’t see that for all their flaws past and present, many current Democratic policies are a step in the right direction … if they don’t see those things by now, I don’t think anything I can say will change anyone’s mind at this point. Besides, I’m still exhausted from arguing with people in 2016. And I suspect most people I know are going to vote for Democrats, anyway, if they vote at all. It’s a matter of turn-out at this point. I don’t see the point of arguing anymore. There is much, much more work beyond elections to be done, but elections are an important part of the fight. Please, please just vote for Democrats.
Wed. 23 Sept. 2020
This afternoon I took a little break to finish the last 50 pages of The Song of Susannah (Dark Tower Book 6). I love these books so much, and even more reading them again. Even though I’ve been doing a lot of work on evenings and weekends lately, I still felt a little guilty. But sometimes you just gotta follow the Beam.
Re-read review coming soon!
Anyway, now back to work, including Zoom office hours.
A few minutes later: It looks like only one of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor was charged, and he wasn’t charged for killing her, but for “reckless endangerment” of the apartment complex. Jesus fucking Christ, America.
Thurs. 24 Sept. 2020
I woke up this morning with the following thought about birthdays (since mine is coming up tomorrow).
Celebrating birthdays is part of my quiet, Sisyphean revolt against absurdity. Or to mix metaphors a bit (given my love of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series), it’s one way to push back against uncreation, revolting against the todash darkness…. Oh, Discordia!
Later… today we had our guest Wes, who is a studio librarian working with my class on their film projects, in class with some students in class and some participating via Zoom. It’s weird to deal with both simultaneously, but it was okay.
Later… remember in the 90’s when conspiracy theories were amusing eccentricities that provided fodder for fun episodes of The X-Files?
Sun. 27 Sept. 2020
My birthday was pretty decent all things considered. I wrote a post about it.
We ordered barbecue delivery and I got to chat with my sister and some friends on Zoom. I got lots of birthday wishes on Facebook, some email gift certificates, and a few cards. Beth got me a book and a cat piggy bank. Not a bad birthday considering, well, everything.
Yesterday was my union (United Campus Workers) state convention, which was online, of course.
Then there was a bear wandering around downtown Chattanooga, including the UTC campus right by the building where my office is. Unfortunately the authorities euthanized it later. RIP bear who was probably more confused than the humans.
Tues. 29 Sept. 2020
Today I had some time to work on some final copy edits of publications. This is a weird stage of the process, because it’s like , “Here’s a bunch of nit-picky suggested changes to this thing you wrote several years ago and probably completely forgot about and might disagree with if you bothered to think about it again. Due in three days. Good luck!”
Tonight is the first (of three?!) Presidential debates between Trump and Biden. Do I want to watch? I don’t know if I can. I’m definitely voting for Biden, and literally can’t understand how someone could be undecided at this point. Granted, these debates are mostly for show, but I’m not sure it’s a show I have any desire to watch. I hope Biden looks good and Trump looks bad to whoever needs to see that right now, but the idea that we’re doing something as normal and banal as a Presidential debate during these times with this President is a level of horror and cognitive dissonance I’m not sure I can handle right now.
I posted some of the previous paragraph on social media, and a friend suggested this article.
Yeah, this might be what I’m feeling. My country is in the middle of collapsing, and we’re having a banal debate-as-commercial-and-sporting-event. It feels odd. In a bad way. And I’m writing about it here for some reason.
Wed. 30 Sept. 2020
Beth was watching the debate, but I remembered I had an errand and some chores to do at that time. I still caught a bit of it. It was a shitshow. Trump constantly interrupted, and at one point he was given a chance to denounce the Proud Boys (a white supremacist organization), and instead instructed the group to “stand back and stand by.”
Terrifying stuff, but the one ray of hope for me is that a lot of social media and even mainstream media have recognized that this was not a normal debate and that Things Are Very Wrong. I still get the feeling from that article I mentioned yesterday that we are in the middle of a collapse and a lot of us are pretending everything is fine, but at least that pretense is getting harder to maintain for a lot of people.
And one of the homeless camps I visited during one of the food runs over the summer here in Chattanooga was demolished yesterday. This was a little community with a person I thought of as the unofficial mayor, who made sure everybody who lived there got the meals and water we brought. This has upset me a lot. I don’t pretend to have all the answers for homelessness, but treating people like human beings seems like a place to start. And most of us have trouble with that. Reading the comments on local news media sites did not help with my general opinion of my fellow Americans last night.
Later today I have a union meeting, where we are working on a campaign on our campus Covid response, and I might try to organize people to volunteer for some local campaigns. And the Community Control Now coalition to create a civilian oversight board for the Chattanooga police is almost ready to collect signatures to put an initiative on the ballot in March. And I will be donating more money to all the Democrats I can.
Is any of this enough? Probably not, but it all seems like the least I can do to push back a little bit against the ongoing collapse of my country.
I'm not saying people should give up. I'm not. I think our collapse is still reversable: People can vote, and do more than just voting. But we need to recognize where we are, and it is not good.
Speaking of collapse, here’s a report on one of the ingredients of that collapse. Note that we recently hit one million deaths worldwide.
Worldwide
Cases: 33,930,579
Deaths: 1,014,232
US
Cases: 7,412,124
Deaths: 211,078
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 9,774
Deaths: 95
Thurs. 1 Oct. 2020
Through a confluence of online group assignments this week, I may have made it so nobody shows up for my optional face-to-face sessions today. This isn't a bad outcome really. I guess the walk to campus will do me some good. We’ll see.
Later…
Looks like I was right. I also confirmed that all of the students did their weekly participation assignment online this week. This is actually encouraging because they need to get used to working in groups for their big film project and this shows they are able to do a small group work assignment together. I'm going to cancel my later session unless anybody wants to meet with me in person. Right now it's weirdly relaxing to do some work while sitting in a large empty classroom in a large mostly empty building.
Fri. 2 Oct. 2020
I guess the President and First Lady have COVID.
Some of the responses have shown me how much Trumpism and associated worldwide fascisms have done to poison our country. This will sound moralistic and finger-wagging in a way I don’t mean it to sound (why I probably won’t say anything on social media), but the way many people have wished the President to die from this terrible disease is a bit… inhumane. I’m not saying people should wish him well per se, but one of the reasons I consider myself to be on the political left is that, as the philosopher Judith Schklar put it, cruelty is the worst thing there is. It has been a bit demoralizing in recent years to see so many on the left adopt the same cruelty that has been emboldened by the right. Cruelty toward those who are cruel is still cruelty. (Edit later: Maybe “callous” is a better word for what I’m talking about than “cruelty,” since I’m talking more about an attitude than actions.)
Again, it’s not that I think people should rush to give special treatment to the President. It’s more than I think everyone should be given a bare minimum of humane regard (maybe this is something like the Confucian virtue of ren, humanity). The erosion of this is not so much a moral defect of individuals (hence, my lack of desire to finger-wag or moralize), but rather the symptom of the deeply sick society in which we live. (Edit later: Part of the reason I don’t want to blame people for wishing ill-will toward those who do them harm is that I don’t want to blame people from having an attitude that’s understandable from a purely causal-psychological point of view. My attention is really more on the larger society that makes this possible and likely).
Another such symptom is the fact that many people simply refuse to believe the President, immediately assuming that he must be lying for some political gain. My point is not that I know he’s telling the truth (I don’t!), but rather as a friend put it on Twitter, this shows how far our epistemic norms have eroded that a large segment of our population immediately assumes he’s lying. Again, this is a symptom of a sick society, not so much an individual failing.
So these two things—cruelty toward enemies and the erosion of epistemic norms—show, I worry, how deeply Trumpism and its ilk have poisoned our entire society, left, right, and center.
This is not about blaming individuals, or making me feel morally superior. A big part of the horror of the last few years has been realizing that I am a member of a society that is deeply ill and not being sure what to do about it.
In other news, we did our regular food run today. Others have a handle on the people from the camp that was demolished, but I might make some donations at drop-off sites for them.
Maybe it’s these little things, helping others, holding back against the waves of cruelty and distrust for just a little while, that can help until our society recovers from this sickness on a larger scale. That large scale recovery will take more than giving lunches to poor people. It will take what MLK called a revolution in values. But maybe those little things are one of many first small steps toward the creation of a healthy society. Don’t wait for the revolution to try to be a decent person, because people trying to be decent is how the revolution begins.
And because little of what I’ve said here will make sense or be received in the spirit in which it is intended given our current societal illness, I won’t post this on social media, which seems to be one of the transmission points of the poison that is making us sick. This also makes me sad. But I’m not giving up. Not yet.
Later: It has gotten to the time of year when some people are wearing sweaters and jackets, but I’m still wearing t-shirts and shorts. Every year this amuses me, but I think it may have more to do with the fact that I don’t get up early than anything else.
Sun. 4 Oct. 2020
Not a bad weekend.
Beth and I went to the outdoor patio at our favorite brewpub on Friday night. That’s the closest we’ve gotten to going to a bar since this pandemic started. It was kind of odd.
I finally contacted the campaigns and a colleague made some graphics to share online for our UCW endorsements. I shared some of the graphics online, and a few candidates shared it. I was retweeted by a few candidates, including Marquita Bradshaw, running for US Senate. Obviously I was hoping the candidates would approve, but somehow I’m surprised when stuff like this happens. Like, people actually notice stuff that I do? Weird.
Tomorrow I’m going to meet the other colleague who helped with endorsements to table on campus.
The endorsement process has been a lot of work. It’s something our small union group has always talked about doing, but this is the first time I managed to get my shit together to lead the effort. I’m glad it finally happened. It seems to be good for the campaigns, and it really gets UCW’s name out there.
I realize probably only one or two of the campaigns have much of a chance of winning (and one of those has a 100% chance because he’s running unopposed… my state house district is solidly Democratic, while most of the other districts in Tennessee … not so much). But we’ll see. I think my state senate district candidate has a decent chance, which would be awesome since his Republican opponent is awful.
Speaking of politics, the President is still in the hospital with COVID. And Saturday Night Live started again. What weird times we live in.
Today was the Black and Queer Liberation March as part of Chattanooga Pride Weekend. There were a couple religious nutjobs trying to disrupt the start of the march and then one asshole waving his Trump mask at us, but otherwise it was fine. Imagine what a world we could have if people could put their energy into being decent rather than being assholes.
I prepped the part of Plato’s Republic (Books 8 and 9) about how democracy turns into tyranny for class this week, which is interesting to contemplate as I encourage people to register to vote by Monday (the absurdly early due date for TN, a state that definitely actually wants people to vote… wink-wink… sigh). And I will be working more this month on election stuff, probably donating more, and encouraging people to vote. Obviously I feel differently about democracy than Plato did (democracy killed Socrates, after all), but that part of the Republic has been particularly chilling to read in the last few years in America.
Plato was wrong about a lot of things. Let’s hope he’s wrong about the relationship between democracy and tyranny as well.
Tues. 6 Oct. 2020
Today I had a quick Zoom meeting. Once I turned my camera on, I realized I had not showered or combed my hair. After the meeting was over I realized I was wearing my shirt inside out. Oh, pandemic.
Not only are the President and First Lady COVID positive, so are a few dozen White House personnel as well as several other government officials who were present at a ceremony for the President’s Supreme Court nominee the weekend before. Oh, pandemic.
Wed. 7 Oct. 2020
Today some Zoom meetings (a curriculum meeting, office hours, and a music event of Joe Hill’s songs sponsored by the union – the original Joe Hill, not Stephen King’s son).
Then it was the VP debate. Kamala Harris did a good job. Mike Pence reminded me why I think he’s actually much more evil than Trump (and reminded me that many people believe wholeheartedly in trickle-down economics but remain “unconvinced” about anthropogenic climate change… ugh.)
But the real winner of the debate (at least on social media) was a fly that landed on Pence’s head for a couple minutes in the middle of the debate. Weird.
Fri. 9 Oct. 2020
I did some Get Out the Vote phone banking for the union last night. I hope to do more to get out the vote soon.
Here’s something I posted on a friend’s post about how weird it is that “liberal” has become a pejorative in mainstream American politics. I found it amusing.
What if we started using "conservative" as a pejorative? I mean, I guess I already do, but what if that caught on? <insert negative campaign ad voice> "Mitch McConnell was voted the most *conservative* Senator pushing the radical *conservative* agenda of Lindsay Graham and Ted Cruz, forcing tickle-down economics and the erosion of reproductive freedom down our throats. *Conservative* Mitch McConnell: Bad for Kentucky, Bad for America."
Sat. 10 Oct. 2020
A slight lull in course prep (no new material in either class next week so students have time to work on larger projects) has given me this elusive thing people call a … “weekend” I think it’s called?
Sure, there’s plenty of other stuff I could be doing (responding to students’ discussion posts, work on an article, new course proposal, new major requirement proposal, reviewing tasks, work on syllabi/book orders for next semester, etc.)… but all that can wait until Monday.
There was supposed to be a rally here in Chattanooga for a state senate candidate this morning, but it got canceled due to rain. A bit of a relief honestly. I will definitely do more get-out-the-vote and volunteering in the next few weeks, but I need a little break this weekend. This semester has been… hard in ways I can’t quite articulate.
Also, some good news: the next Presidential debate was canceled because the President refused to do it virtually in light of his Covid diagnosis. The winner of the next debate: the American people.
Today the President is doing a rally at the White House addressing the crowd from the balcony of the Oval Office... totally unlike something a dictator would do, of course. Ugh.
I’ve started the last part of my Dark Tower re-read with Book 7. I love how just totally fucking weird that book is, and how it has so much going on it could almost be a self-contained story (almost, of course… it wouldn’t make much sense without the background of the previous books). Book 7 is to the series as Jupiter is to our solar system.
The latest numbers…
Worldwide
Cases: 37,254,936
Deaths: 1,074,541
US
Cases: 7,918,605
Deaths: 218,932
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 10,499
Deaths: 101
No comments:
Post a Comment