It has been a while since I posted Part 19 of my pandemic journal (March 23 to be precise). The last couple months have brought a lot of changes. Instead of a "new normal," I think we've reached "a different kind of weird." I'm fully vaccinated, my arm is healing (still not back to full range of motion), and I finished the semester. A lot of people are vaccinated here in the US (but rates are slowing down), there was a verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial, India has had a massive COVID surge, there are people (mostly Palestians) being killed in Israel/Palestine, and the CDC announced that fully vaccinated people don't have to wear masks even inside.
In addition to all that, I've been collecting a lot of memes for your enjoyment. So let's get to it.
Wed. 24 March 2021
Adventures in online teaching.
Me: Ten weeks of having office hours Wednesdays 3-5pm on Zoom as explained on the syllabus and weekly reminders in the Canvas announcements, the latest reminder posted mere hours ago…
Student email Wed. at 4pm: I can meet you at your office. What day and time?
To be clear, it’s a pandemic, and we’re all a bit scattered these days. I don’t mean to make fun of this student. I’ve done more scatter-brained things myself. Probably earlier today. I just find the whole situation amusing.
Thurs. 25 March 2021
Yesterday I took a walk without my sling. I don’t wear it around the house, but I have been wearing it when I go anywhere. So, I guess that’s a thing.
Now… to imagine leaving the house without a mask!
Some potential severe weather today. Luckily my plan is to stay home today (albeit in my second story duplex apartment that in the unlikely event of a tornado downtown would offer little protection). Hopefully everybody will be okay.
Snapshot of my day: Grading Indian philosophy exams in my “home office” (aka, the cats’ dining room) while listening to the Stranger Things soundtrack with severe thunderstorms looming outside.
Sometimes students are funny intentionally. Apparently you can attach pictures to short answers in Canvas, so a student attached funny memes and pictures to exam answers, which was a bright spot in the drudgery of grading.
Sat. 27 March 2021
I’m totally ready for people to stop getting sick and dying of COVID. I’m not 100% sure I’m completely ready to go back to going places and seeing people regularly.
I’ve been watching a lot of The Simpsons the last few months (both old and new). I have a lot of thoughts about this (some of those episodes are problematic and Homer is often a huge jerk), but here’s one thought that occurred to me the other day: for a few seconds in 1989, I must have wondered if Maggie was driving the car in the intro.
Sun. 28 March 2021
I’ve been thinking lately about the impending end(?) of the pandemic on the horizon sometime later this year (hopefully?).
(I made this entry into a separate blog post: "Well, I'm back": Frodo, Sam, and Life Toward the End of the Pandemic")
Tues. 30 March 2021
The trial of Derek Chauvin (the cop who murdered George Floyd last year) has begun. I watched a bit of it during lunch, and just listened to a 9-year-old kid questioned about witnessing George Floyd’s murder. Heartbreaking.
Thurs. 1 April 2021
I don't have any Zoom meetings scheduled today. Surely this is an April Fools' Day joke.
We have “Spring Holiday” tomorrow (I guess to cover Easter and Passover or whatever other spring holidays they may be… I prefer a generic “Spring Holiday” myself). My plan was to revise a book chapter today and do course prep tomorrow, but the idea of having a Friday off may be too strong. Maybe I will do course prep today and push back the revisions yet again.
Fri. 2 April 2021
I decided to do my course prep yesterday, but didn’t quite finish. But I’m going to take the day off, anyway, and lean into my recent life hack of just being late with everything and blaming it on the pandemic and my injury.
COVID numbers (new infections, hospitalizations, positivity rates, etc.) were going down recently, but there are worries we may have another spike as people become less vigilant. I’m glad that we have appointments for our second dose on April 11, which means we’ll be considered fully vaccinated around April 25.
Here are today’s numbers.
Worldwide
Cases: 130,454,882
Deaths: 2,844,289
US
Cases: 31,259,758
Deaths: 566,772
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 42,645
Deaths: 478
Later: I just drove the car for the first time since January. It gave my shoulder a bit of a workout (we have a manual transmission), but it was fine. I realized I didn’t miss driving. In recent years I’ve grown to be okay with long distance driving on open highways, but I’ve never been a fan of city driving. The traffic, the bad drivers, being hyper-responsive to a million things simultaneously, the responsibility of operating a deadly chunk of steel at high speeds amidst other chunks of deadly steel operated by poorly trained, distracted civilians… It’s too stressful. Walking has its own stresses (like breaking your arm on the sidewalk!), but I would still prefer to walk everywhere. Not driving for a few months makes me like it even less. But I hate making Beth drive me to the few places I have to go these days, so I guess it was a good thing to start doing again.
Sat. 3 April 2021
I took a long walk this afternoon that brought me downtown, which as is usually the case on a sunny Saturday afternoon, was busy with tourists and locals doing their thing. Seeing people out and about and doing things... kinda weirded me out. It’s not so much that I don’t think they should be out (although I’d like to see more mask usage in crowded outdoor areas), but getting used to people again is not going to be easy.
Sun. 4 April 2021
It’s Easter. It’s also the 53rd anniversary of MLK’s assassination. And Passover is ending.
Anyway, Easter doesn’t have the massive secular component of Christmas and it doesn’t map onto a long break in the academic calendar, so it’s often a day I forget about until people start talking about it a few days before. This is less judgey than it sounds, but Easter is a holiday that always reminds me how little sense Christianity makes to me. But to each one’s own, I guess. Christians who stick with the hippy love-thy-neighbor stuff can have zombie Jesus as long as I get delicious Easter candy out of it.
Speaking of which, should I go get candy today with a better selection or wait until tomorrow when it will be on sale? Luckily there’s a Walgreens nearby that’s never very crowded, which makes for a less anxious shopping experience. It has been a nice thing to have during the pandemic. And now I can even drive myself there. Or walk, if I want another long walk today.
(Edit later: I drove and bought full price Easter candy to do my part to stimulate the economy.)
Thurs. 8 April 2021
I woke up this morning after a somewhat fitful night of half sleep (nights I thought were over, but oh well…) with an idea to write a short story based on a Facebook comment in a Weird Al Facebook group. Weird. I think it will be called “Twineball Spacetime.”
I might try to do some creative writing over the summer. Some short stories and maybe even a longer project like a novella or (gasp) a novel. I don’t really have much hope of or interest in making writing a side hustle or (gasp) changing careers. I already have one job that required a lot of time and sacrifice in a highly competitive field. But it might be fun to publish a couple more things if I can (I had one in a niche online journal a couple years ago and have submitted a few things that have been rejected in the last couple years). Or honestly even just writing stuff for the fun of it would be worth it.
One issue I have with creative writing is similar to an issue I have with philosophical writing: I’m more interested in breaking or ignoring the “Rules of How to Write” than I am in following them. And in the case of creative writing, I don’t even really know the rules, having never formally studied creative writing, whereas in academic philosophy I learned most of the rules through academic immersion over a few decades and I’ve followed just barely enough of them to stumble through a career so far.
Anyway, now to figure out a plot for the wacky idea of this new story.
Also, tonight I’m doing a talk for our majors, alumni, and friends (on Zoom of course): “Think for yourself, Forget your Self: Ancient Buddhist advice for modern uncertainties.” Should be fun!
Later: I watched a few minutes of the Chauvin trial today. They’re examining a pulmonologist who is explaining in anatomical detail exactly how George Floyd was killed by having his chest and throat crushed between the street and Chauvin on his back. This trial is disturbing for me, but I can’t imagine what the trauma is like for Black Americans or for Floyd’s loved ones.
Fri. 9 April 2021
The event went well last night. (video here)
Also, students in my Africana Philosophy class made some memes based on MLK’s Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (see below)
Another thought lately: Taking a nap, taking a walk, and doing my physical therapy exercises have lately become the three essential parts of my daily activities. I’m okay with that.
Sun. 11 April 2021
Today we got our second dose of the Moderna vaccine, aka, the Dolly Parton vaccine.
Mon. 12 April 2021
A young Black man named Daunte Wright was killed by a police officer in Brooklyn Center, MN yesterday. This as the trial of Derek Chauvin continues in Minneapolis.
George Floyd was murdered six blocks from where my Grandma used to live. But I have another connection to yesterday’s events (I also used to live a mile or two from where Philando Castile was killed… I guess this happens when you’re from the Twin Cities).
I spent a lot of my childhood in Brooklyn Park, which is right next to Brooklyn Center, and frequently went back to the area to visit friends after moving away. Of the four or five times I’ve been stopped by police in my lifetime, two of them—the most egregiously abusive—were with the Brooklyn Center PD. When I was 17 or 18, cops outside a movie theater thought my friends and I had keyed a car, so they detained us and questioned us individually, letting us go after almost an hour. When I was 19 or 20 (around the same age as Wright when he was killed yesterday), I was pulled over because I looked like someone who had written a bad check at a gas station (this was a long time ago when writing a check at a gas station was a thing people did). I, being smartassedly bemused by the whole situation, agreed to go with a cop to the gas station, where the gas station employees immediately confirmed it wasn’t me. The cop brought me back to my car, never apologized for wasting about 45 minutes of my time, and advised that I change my college major to something useful. What a fucking asshole.
But the one thing I never did in either of these encounters: feared for my life. Because I am white.
Daunte Wright did not have that luxury with the Brooklyn Center PD yesterday. He was stopped for having air fresheners hanging too far down from the review mirror and for expired tabs. Apparently he called his mom during the stop, because Black men in America have a lot of reason to fear police at random traffic stops. And the cop who shot him claims she meant to fire a taser instead of a gun.
So now there are curfews in the Twin Cities again, less than a year after the curfews during the uprisings after George Floyd’s murder.
When does it stop?
Black lives matter. Daunte Wright’s life mattered.
A little later: And there was a shooting near a school in Knoxville today with at least one dead. Sigh.
Wed. 14 April 2021
Everything in the news the last few days has got me pretty down. I just want to shut out the world and read my Stephen King short story collection (The Bazaar of Bad Dreams) and take lots of naps. But I’ve got shit to do. Hopefully I’ll be able to direct some energy to doing something about it (a small start: a Facebook post based on my last entry that some people seemed to appreciate, and some discussion of Wright’s death in my Africana Philosophy course).
Hopefully I’ll get back to some sort of activism on that issue, but I’m wondering where the best place is to put my efforts. I’ve discovered in the last year that I’m not a hardcore, full-bore activist who can do a lot of the extreme extrovert work. Getting those signatures on the petition last year for a civilian oversight board took a lot out of me (the pandemic had a lot to do with it, but not all of it). It sounds pathetic, but if I’m being honest with myself, I’m still recovering from that as well as the work I put into the union.
Today may be my last physical therapy appointment. It depends what the surgeon tells me tomorrow. It’s weird to think the frequent medical appointment part of this injury might be over. The frequent PT exercises to regain range of motion in my arm will probably continue for most of the next year. I still can’t raise my right arm much above my shoulder. And there’s still a dull pain most of the time. It doesn’t keep me from doing anything (besides raising my arm much higher than my shoulder), but it’s annoying.
I was hoping to be able to brag that I didn’t have any side effects from the vaccine, but it did give me some fatigue the last couple days and some pain in my other arm near the injection site. So I had two sore arms for a while. Still 150% worth it.
There’s a pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine due to some blood clots in a very small number of people (six out of almost seven million vaccinated). One of my students got it and was worried, but I’m hoping it’s nothing serious. Jesus. The last thing we need is another thing to make people skiddish about getting vaccinated.
A comment I posted on a friend’s Facebook post about Minnesota. The other day I was looking at a map of places where high profile police shootings of Black men have happened in the Twin Cities, realizing I’m familiar with most of them.
Of all the places I've lived in many ways Minnesota is the most racist. And I live in Tennessee now. Minnesota racism is the racism of nice white ladies nervous about a person who "doesn't belong here" or white Democrats telling you to avoid "bad neighborhoods" (you know the ones) while living in deeply segregated neighborhoods created by decades of redlining and white flight... all with a smug sense of superiority that white folks in MN can't be as racist as those ignorant rednecks down south (don't get me started on the weirdness of otherwise progressive Northerners blatantly stereotyping an entire region...). The South has plenty of deeply entrenched racism (look at Georgia Republicans or the comments section of my local newspaper-yikes!), but there are also a lot of people working against racism down here. That white Minnesotan smug superiority combined with denial and "Minnesota Nice" makes it much harder to confront racism in Minnesota past and present. So sadly I'm not surprised there have been so many high profile police shootings in recent years in the Twin Cities. I hope white Minnesotans will do better. (Sorry for my mini-dissertation. Being a displaced white Minnesotan is a strange experience.)
The Earth in the year of our Lord 2021 is a vale of tears, but at least Walgreen’s had Golden Grahams and Honey Nut Cheerios on sale for $1.88 today. They even had a little discount Easter candy.
Fri. 16 April 2021
Yesterday it came to light that a 13-year-old boy was shot by police in Chicago a few weeks ago (the family asked to delay release of the footage). And last night there was another mass shooting in Indianapolis. What a fucking horrific country this is.
I found a tweet from Michele Norris that I’m feeling deeply this morning (see below). Sigh.
Sat. 17 April 2021
Today we had an outdoor union picnic meeting. It was kind of fun, but… I don’t know. Seeing people in person and doing things again and leaving the hours for hours at a time … am I ready for that? It’s probably safe, but most people were going mask-less most of the time. I wore mine the whole time except while eating. Yes, we were outside, but relatively close together. Am I the only one who thinks you should still wear a mask in that situation? Sometimes I feel like people believe the outdoors is totally safe, but I don’t know why.
Is it possible for anxiety to be translated into depressive feelings? Or maybe it’s the weight of everything, including the last week of news, getting to me?
This experience and my general malaise as of late made me post the following on social media:
As people start doing things in person again I feel like I should issue the following public service message: the last year has made me even weirder and more socially awkward than I already was, so if you see me in the next several months until whenever, please don't take it personally.
Sun. 18 April 2021
Today we played online games with a friend over Zoom. Fun times! And then I took a walk and a nap. Just need to do my PT exercises to hit my trifecta of daily activities.
A random thought: I’m thankful for the combination of pre-pandemic Ethan’s inability to say no and the glacial pace of academic publishing for making it look like I’ve been really productive on the research front in the last year.
Mon. 19 April 2021
I had what I think was just normal insomnia last night, not even related to shoulder pain. So that’s… good, I guess? I got up about 4am and worked on a blog post based on my Lord of the Rings analogy from a couple weeks ago about how coming out of the pandemic will be like the Hobbits returning to the Shire after saving Middle-Earth. Then I went back to bed about 6am. So yay for regular old insomnia.
This morning I started watching the Derek Chauvin trial with the prosecution’s closing statement. Jesus fucking Christ. If they don’t at least get this guy for manslaughter… I don’t know. It’s not so much that I’m philosophically on board with retributive justice (at some level I sincerely hope Chauvin could be part of a restorative justice solution), but it’s the sheer racism and hypocrisy of the whole thing. We just shouldn’t have the moral incongruity of another white cop getting away with this while Black people are killed without consequence. We need things to change.
I can’t imagine what it’s like for Black Americans to relive this racial trauma through this trial.
As MLK said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.” Like King, I don’t like riots, but I understand that they are sometimes unavoidable when people feel there’s no other recourse. We’ll see what happens with the jury. But if Chauvin goes free while Floyd was killed without a trial, I couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to burn this motherfucker down.
Later: After an afternoon meeting, I tuned back in to the trial and caught some of the defense’s closing statement. I listened for a while (a lot of talk of Chauvin doing what “a reasonable police officer would do” as if that’s not, depending on how you look at it, either flagrantly false or precisely the problem). But I felt like I should read Angela Davis and make an assignment for my Africana Philosophy students instead.
Tues. 20 April 2021
I just had my last synchronous class of the semester. Even amidst the hellscape of Pandemic Semester 2.5 and the weirdness of teaching online, there’s something a bit melancholy about the last day of class. Luckily I will have plenty of grading to console me in the next few weeks.
Breaking news: The Chauvin verdict is supposed to be announced in the next 30 minutes… on edge….
The jury found him guilty of all three charges: 2nd degree murder, 3rd degree murder, and manslaughter.
This is a relief no doubt. Yet finding someone guilty of murder who we all saw murder someone on video and whose own colleagues threw him under the bus is in reality a pretty minimal start. And I feel so much for Floyd’s family and all Black Americans. I can’t imagine what they’re going through. I have a lot more thoughts and feelings, but I’ll let them sit for a while.
Wed. 21 April 2021
Apparently right around the time the Chauvin verdict was announced yesterday, cops in Columbus, OH shot and killed a 16-year-old Black girl named Ma’Khia Bryant. Jesus fucking Christ, America.
Thurs. 22 April 2021
It’s Earth Day. The President says he will push for the US to reduce carbon output by 50% by 2030. Will that happen? Would it be enough if it did?
India is experiencing a huge COVID surge (the Modi government isn’t helping). The US has extra vaccines that for some reason we aren’t sending them.
Another Black person named Andrew Brown was killed by police yesterday, this time in North Carolina.
Now that it’s been almost two days, a few thoughts on the Chauvin verdict. (also a separate blog post)
Fri. 23 April 2021
I made my thoughts on the Chauvin verdict a blog post. I don’t know if anyone should care what I think about all this, but I felt the need to get that out there for whatever reason.
I have some things to do today: I need to make an exam and a study guide, I need to work on a presentation for an online conference next week, I need to figure out how to spend my “travel” funds after a year without travel (mostly on books, but maybe a comfy chair for my office), I need to work on revisions for a paper, etc. I’ll probably do some of this, but this semester and life in general have worn me down. It’s also a dreary grey day, perfect for long naps.
Sun. 25 April 2021
Today is our first day of being officially fully vaccinated. We considered going out somewhere to celebrate, but we didn’t feel like it. And that’s okay.
I did go for a walk, and only wore a mask for the part of the walk while I was on campus.
I took more pictures of “stairways to nowhere” that I walk by on my daily walks. I posted the photos on Facebook, and people seemed to like them. So maybe I’ll make a blog post. (Edit: I did so here).
Later I went to the grocery store, which I haven’t done in several months. I was going in person until about October or November, but I stopped when the COVID numbers started getting bad. And extra stopped when I broke my arm and wasn’t going anywhere. We’ve been getting grocery pick-up since then.
Anyway, it was fine. It wasn’t too busy. I only saw one jackass dude in the store without a mask.
Someone in the store caught my attention with “Dr. Mills?” It turned out to be one of my students in my asynchronous class. We have never met, and I have never seen her before. But she has been seeing me in videos since January! Weird, but it was nice to see her. She said she’s graduating, so I congratulated her.
Tues. 27 April 2021
I’m working on a talk for an online conference this weekend (the one that was supposed to be in Salt Lake City in April 2020).
I’m plugging way, but it’s hard to get super motivated. Maybe something to do with being burnt out by a life-altering pandemic for the last year? I guess we’ll never know.
I also stumbled on another review of my book (this one in Philosophy East and West). It’s somewhat sympathetic, but critical in the way people usually are about my whole line on “skepticism about philosophy”: I don’t do a good job of showing that such philosophers are skeptics in Sense A, which of course was never my claim as I tried carefully to explain a different kind of skepticism in Sense B (which admittedly cuts against the grain both historically and culturally so I expect resistance). Oh, well. I will probably come back to this work at some point, but I feel like I said what I wanted to say in the book, and if others don’t get it, there’s not much I can do. In the meantime, I have other ideas on the horizon!
There are new CDC guidelines out today about vaccinated people. One is that vaccinated people don’t need to wear a mask outdoors unless they’re in a crowd. I’m not sure this is significantly different, but it’s good to see something like this to encourage people to get vaccinated because it gives them the incentive of new things they can safely do.
The Tennessee Governor is lifting all restrictions and mask ordinances by the end of May, even overriding orders for local jurisdictions (except for the larger counties including here in Hamilton County, although we’ll be letting that expire). I hope this isn’t as bad of a decision as it sounds like. The history of the last year and this Governor don’t fill me with much hope.
Meanwhile the COVID crisis in India is intensifying. The US government is finally helping with supplies and vaccines, but the lack of leadership with the Modi government is also a factor (aside from general horribleness, Modi was having huge maskless public rallies as recently as a few weeks ago).
Thurs. 29 April 2021
I forgot to say that the other night (Tues.) we actually went to our old favorite brewpub (OddStory), where we used to go at least once or twice a month. We had a few beers and a pretzel. It was like living in a dream about the past.
It took us a few days post-being fully vaccinated to work up the nerve to do that. It didn’t cause a lot of anxiety, but it was just kinda weird. They were following restaurant mask protocol (masks unless you’re sitting down), which still doesn’t really make much sense, but at least we were fully vaccinated.
One weird “side effect” of being fully vaccinated: I get less angry at other people’s sloppy or nonexistent mask discipline. Not only am I vaccinated, but I figure maybe some of them are, too.
The other day I also went to campus. I had some library books to return, and figured I would finally get around to getting a pass to visit the library stacks. This is one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in months. As a confirmed bibliophile, just being around that many books is a soothing, delightful experience. I love being at home with my own books, but it was nice to visit the library books, too. I may go to a bookstore soon.
Campus is still a masks-everywhere situation, even outside (at least on my understanding, apparently not on many students’). But the county is ending its mask mandate. Businesses and institutions can enforce their own mask mandates. The county health department issued a carefully worded passive aggressive statement saying they would continue to encourage people to be careful and that the pandemic is not over. Luckily UTC will still be enforcing its own mask mandate into the foreseeable future. Apparently we will be resuming “normal operations” including normal room caps in the fall… but I’ll worry about that later.
I decided to take today off (mostly… had to send a few emails and make a department social media post), since I will be at an online conference most of this weekend. I finished my talk (“A Fleeting and Incomplete Tour of Impermanence, Non-Self, and Momentariness in Indian Buddhist Philosophy”) and I’m waiting for my students’ finals (not due until early next week), so I have the nice little lull between classes and finals that I usually get.
I will be resuming my physical therapy appointments this afternoon. I probably could have done so last week, but I kinda just needed a week off from medical appointments. Getting over my shoulder injury has been one thing that caused me to take it a little easier the last few months, but just having all those appointments is what pushed me into a different mode of life. I know PT will be worth it (my range of motion still needs work, but the pain is mostly gone). But it’s just… a lot. Now I have a little more understanding of why people with chronic health issues are so tired all the time.
I may also do some remote data entry for the police oversight coalition (preparing a report for a lawsuit against the election commission about incorrectly rejecting signatures on our petition last year). I’m also doing a little bit with the union, but honestly, after my burnout last year and my injury this year, I’m pretty sure extroverted 24/7 activism is not really my thing, or at least something I can only do sparingly. I deeply admire the activists I’ve met, but I just can’t keep up. I hope to contribute in other more behind-the-scenes ways.
Fri. 30 April 2021
Something I may post on social media.
Dear friends, We’ve all been going through a lot in the last year or so. Some of you I know have suffered significant losses, and others are dealing with things I don’t know about. Whatever you’re going through, I support you. Take care, and hang in there.
Sun. 2 May 2021
It’s my nephew Oliver’s fifth birthday today! I got to Facetime with him for a few minutes. And I’ll be seeing him soon when we’ll be meeting up in Indiana at the end of the month!
This weekend I’ve been participating in the History of Philosophy Society (HOPS) Conference, which was supposed to be in Salt Lake City in April 2020, but is now an online conference. My talk yesterday went alright (“A Fleeting and Incomplete Tour of Impermanence, Non-Self, and Momentariness in Indian Buddhist Philosophy”) and there has been some quality Plato and Spinoza content in the other talks.
This is my first full conference online. I’ve done a few talks online, but not a whole conference yet. It has been fun, but Zoom fatigue is real. It seems like a nice group (maybe a bit more continentally-oriented than I am, but welcoming nonetheless). Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go to this conference in person someday.
I found a source of places to donate to helping with the huge COVID surge in India right now. It’s just heartbreaking to read about.
Mon. 3 May 2021
Today I started grading finals, and my overriding interpretive principle is, "Meh. Close enough."
Tues. 4 May 2021
May the fourth be with you! Happy Star Wars day!
More finals grading today. And physical therapy. It was a rainy day, and I walked to therapy. I slipped on some mud on the sidewalk I didn’t see. Luckily I caught myself with the other foot. But how perfect would it be to reinjure myself walking home from physical therapy?
We went out to eat tonight, which was fine, but weird. I had this thought last week when I went to the bookstores I used to frequent in the Before Times: it’s weird that the world is still just there, or at least most of it. And probably most people outside of my little bubble have been going places all along through this whole thing.
Wed. 5 May 2021
I’m continuing to experiment with this activity called “going places.” It’s weird. I also forgot that sometimes other people can be kind of annoying. Like, who goes to a coffeeshop to talk loudly with other people while I’m trying to work? How rude… (but seriously, this is on me, not them. It’s just weird being out.)
But on the other hand, I just had to leave that coffeeshop due to something between minor annoyance and a minor panic attack. It was much busier and louder inside than I was expecting. Even in the Before Times, I tended to choose quieter, less crowed, less busy times and places. There happened to be a few loud groups near where I was sitting, and I had to sit there because my laptop was low on power and I needed the outlet.
Now I’m sitting in the nice quiet outside part of the Chattanooga Choo Choo (yes, it’s a thing!), trying to decide where to go next to get these exams graded.
Later…
Okay. I found a place closer to the building where the WiFi works, and got some more graded. Now I’m at one of the bars I used to visit on occasion (The Terminal) with one of my favorite local stouts. We’ve ordered food delivery from here a few times, but this is the first time I’ve been inside since the Before Times. Weird. But not too busy at least. And the beer is as good as I remember.
Fri. 7 May 2021
I just entered my final grades! Goodbye, spring semester 2021! You can break my shoulder during a pandemic, but you can't take away the fact that I'm still waiting on some incompletes I gave in December 2020, I'm behind on all my writing and editing projects, and I still need to finish unpacking the campus office I moved into in August 2020...
Later tonight: an in-person hangout with vaccinated friends. Weird.
Tues. 11 May 2021
I got all the incompletes taken care of, so I have been free. I also booked a trip to the Indiana Dunes (on Lake Michigan) with my sister and nephew for the end of the month. And Beth and I have a Florida beach trip in mid-June. It’s weird to be planning trips.
I’ve also done several in-person things, which is also weird. I think what’s weird is that it sort of feels like nothing changed, but a lot has changed.
I was at an outdoor event on campus (Arts and Sciences convocation) sitting in the middle of a socially distanced group of faculty and staff, and it was a bit too much. I had to move out to the periphery. But then a few people went to a patio for a drink, and that was mostly fine.
I think part of it is that having people nearby behind me is weird. I’ve felt this way at stores, too. I don’t know how to explain it. Maybe because I can sense that people are there, but I don’t know if they’re masked or what they’re doing?
Anyway, summer is starting off nicely. Just trying to relax for a few days before getting back to the things I’m supposed to be doing this summer. It has been an exhausting semester with my arm and the pandemic and everything.
Sun. 16 May 2021
Summer is still going nicely for me. It continues to be weird doing things, including this thing called a “party” last night. It was fun, but strange to be around people even if everybody was vaccinated and outside.
Also, the other day the CDC said that vaccinated people can mostly go back to normal (except on public transit, medical facilities, etc.), including not wearing masks inside. I’m honestly not sure how I feel about it. I mean, the science is pretty clear that the vaccine is extremely effective against both infection and transmission, so I’m not really worried about myself or other vaccinated people.
But I am worried about the larger public health effects. It seems like this is supposed to be an incentive to encourage people to get vaccinated (get vaccinated, go back to normal!). That might work for some people. If I hadn’t gotten around to getting vaccinated yet, it would motivate me.
But it could have the effect of just ending masks for everybody, including unvaccinated people. Anecdotally, I’ve already seen a lot less masking in public indoor spaces after we lifted the local county mask mandate at the end of April (here in our county with a less than 40% vaccination rate). There seem to be enough vaccine hesitant people that we were never going to get to herd immunity, anyway, so I’m not sure this latest announcement will have much effect in the long run. But I worry that irresponsible unvaccinated people will spread the virus to vulnerable people and prolong the pandemic.
I haven’t done this for a while. It seems like a good reminder that the pandemic isn’t over, whether here, in India, or a lot of the world.
Worldwide
Cases: 163,717,760
Deaths: 3,393,335
US
Cases: 33,715,951
Deaths: 600,147
Hamilton County, TN
Cases: 44,787
Deaths: 496
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