Another Beautiful Day in the Fort

I'm still having intermittent symptoms -- stabbing pains in my lower gut, mostly, along with queasiness and no appetite at all.

But no fever, no coughing, and no more body aches. So I'm going to call this one as "Not the rona."

Meanwhile it is another beautiful day here in the Fort. Maybe we can have a walk on the riverside trail this evening, if the kid ever wakes up. (He has taken to sleeping until mid-afternoon, unless he has a class, and why not?)

The little cat has taken to sleeping in the dog's cage (the crate we lock him in when we leave him alone in the house). The dog is bemused by this.

I am up to the L's in my quest to put all the books in the house in alphabetical order. Except the cook books. And Dr. Skull's music books. And the anthologies. Also I'm probably going to put the history books in a different section.

We have too many books. (Whenever I say this, Dr. Skull pretends confusion. "What's that? What language are you speaking? I don't understand!")

Not only have we not gotten our stimulus money, we have yet to receive the first of Dr. Skull's unemployment checks. Things are getting mighty tight here at the delagar household.

From the Nib:

New from @kendrawcandraw: We're all socialists in a crisis: https://t.co/Y03mLDiqfu pic.twitter.com/VJ2RvNMxk1

— The Nib ✒️ (@thenib) March 20, 2020

Spring in the Fort

Spring is emerging, despite the pandemic. Our yard at the new house is filled with violets, not to mention some sort of flower that is kind of like an iris? Purple and very pretty.

Hold on, let me google that.

Spiderwort

It's spiderwort, according to this site, and an invasive species. Well, still very pretty. I have daffodils, but they did not bloom.

The tree I have not identified in my yard -- it has a small round dark red/brown fruit with a hard pit -- was briefly covered with tiny white flowers. Now it is leafing out in brilliant new green. All the other trees are likewise sprouting new leaves. The colors are all very Easter-appropriate.

Meanwhile I am feeling much better after my root canal. I can even eat again!

The town is dead quiet. We had to take a flat tire in to get mended, and we were the only one at the tire shop. A local shop, Darrell's. Plenty of automotive repair guys were around, so I'm guessing the boss is keeping them employed; but the lot and the bays were empty.

We had to get the tire fixed because I ran over an abutment coming back from my root canal yesterday. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been driving.

Everyone here is still well. How's everyone on your end?

What Are We Doing at the End of the World?

My kid is having a hard time doing school work because, as he puts it, the world is ending.

I can relate. I'm having a hard time finishing my stupid novel (I have literally one scene left to write and I cannot write it), though the good news, I guess, is that I'm well up on my academic work because I use that as a way to kill time while I'm not writing the stupid novel.

We're also cooking a lot here. I am hunting for the perfect hush puppy recipe, and meanwhile cooking all the old favorites -- tuna casserole, chicken enchiladas, pancakes, stir fry, bagels, banana pudding, Dutch babies... every now and then the kid will say remember X? Remember how you used to cook X? Could we have X?



So I make X.

If you haven't read Naomi Kritzer's "So Much Cooking," now is the perfect time. It's about a woman running a food blog during a pandemic. Both wonderful and apropos.

I'm also reading so much. The public library letting us do curb-side pickups is keeping me in books, at least so far. I just started Emily St. John Mandel's new book, The Glass Hotel, which would normally be a seven-day book but which, thanks to the quarantine, I can apparently keep indefinitely. (In actual fact, though the return date on all my books is "whenevs," I can only have 25 out at a time, so I have to bring some back to get new ones.)

Emily St. John Mandel wrote Station Eleven, an excellent book about a pandemic and the world after the pandemic. I should do a post strictly on pandemic books.

I'm also listening to podcasts, which I never did before. My main ones are NPR's Science Friday and the BBC's book club. I listen at night, while I'm too tired to do anything else, and do jigsaw puzzled at the same time.

Long walks with the dog and the kid help keep me sane. The parks here are still open, and everyone keeps their distance. Also sometimes I just walk the neighborhood, though we don't have sidewalks, which given how busy some of the streets are around here (even now) makes that less enjoyable than it might be.

Also I sleep very late, though not as late as the kid does.

Also it's almost Passover. Even though we won't be able to have our usual tableful of guests -- our favorite part of Passover -- we're still looking forward to it, and getting ready for it. Dr. Skull is making chicken soup for the matzo ball soup, and we're planning the menu -- chicken and asparagus so far, plus a KFP cake which Dr. Skull has promised he will make.

What are all y'all doing?

Pandemic Update

According to the CDC, there are now 277, 205 cases in the USA, with 6, 593 deaths. UPDATE: Over 300, 000 cases as of 6:00 p.m.; over 8000 deaths.

That doesn't count the cases (like that of one of my co-workers) who have almost certainly got the disease, but who have not been tested, because we don't have enough tests; or the very mild cases which are being treated at home, and again not tested (because no tests).

A month ago we had 98 cases in the USA, just for comparison. A week ago we had 68, 440 cases.

And yet: we still have Covid-Denialists spreading lies and ignorance, and plenty of those who are determined to believe the lies.

Also, I see our incompetent president is, once again, pushing quack cures. I expect him to start touting forsythia as a treatment any moment.

(Here's an anecdote to ignorance, or at least a palate cleanser.)

Oh, and Rod takes a break from his attempts to be sane to screech about how persecuted Christians are, one more time.

Here in the delagar household, we're doing okay. No one is sick yet, everyone is keeping themselves engaged, almost all the work is getting done. I still hate on-line teaching, but I'm getting a little better at it.

Yikes

The mammoth US unemployment claims in their historical context. pic.twitter.com/UNDwhBMpZt

— Ben Riley-Smith (@benrileysmith) April 2, 2020

This will cheer you up tho

Day 12 Coronavirus lockdown, the movie, UP 🎈 pic.twitter.com/HLH8JdlAOs

— Carlos (@_sweet_bread) April 2, 2020

$$$ in the Pandemic

Here in the delagar household we are (so far) doing all right so far as income goes.

I am still getting paid, and Dr. Skull, who filed for unemployment, heard back from the Labor Board yesterday, saying he would get 40% of his salary. Not much, but enough to squeak through.

According to what I have read, that 40% will be supplemented by extra income for the next few months. That would help a lot.

Of course, we still have all the medical debt from my long illness (I am fine now!), but I will just pay the minimum on that until we see how the world goes.

How are all y'all doing?

The Academy in the Pandemic

We've moved as a university to pass/fail for student classes.

Sort of, anyway -- we give the students grades and then the students get to decide whether to keep these grades, changed them to P/F, or withdraw from the class entirely.

I kind of like this, and think maybe we should do it always, not just during the pandemic.

What do y'all think?

Teaching in the Pandemic

This is my second day of trying to teach my classes remotely.

I am not liking it, if anyone is curious.

So far I am using Slack and Google Classroom. I'm running the discussion boards asynchronously, and I'm giving students lots of room -- letting them turn work in late, and cutting some assignments.

For me, though, education is something that happens in person, face to face. I imagine we can have discussions via chat threads. It's not going to be what happens when we hold discussions in a classroom. I suppose I just have to get over wishing for that.

Also, some of my students are having problems with technology. We're a working class university, for the most part, so some of them don't have their own computers -- they use a parent's computer, or try to work on a phone, and were relying to some extent on the university's computer labs.

Now the labs are locked and the parents need their own computers because they're working remotely.

It's making me feel grumpy, I guess is the tl;dr.

On the other hand, no one at my house is sick yet, and so far as I know none of my students are either. Knock wood.

Life in the Pandemic

According to the CDC, this won't be over until July -- even then people will still be getting sick, but we'll have crested the wave, and will be flat again.

That's their best guess now.

Meanwhile, we are settling into social distancing, here at the delagar household.

Here is our schedule:

4:00 a.m. Dr Skull wakes. Feeds the cats. Settles in to write, or write music (with headphones on).

9:00 a.m. I get up. Feed the cats. Feed the dog. Make coffee. Settle in to write.

11:00 a.m. Dr. Skull emerges. Wonders if I want him to make bread. I say yes. Please make challah. (Alternative: Please make sour dough. Or nah, we're fine with bread.)

11:50 a.m. The kid gets up. Feeds the cats. Makes breakfast. (The kid is the only one who eats breakfast in our household.) Begins drawing.

1:00 p.m. I finish writing. Make lunch for me. Feed the cats. Read for awhile.

2:00 p.m. The kid has lunch. I begin working on teaching prep.

3:00 p.m. Dr. Skull put the bread in to bake. Feeds the cats.

4:00 p.m. The kid does schoolwork.

5:00 p.m. Dr. Skull emerges and makes himself dinner. Feeds the cats.

6:00 p.m. I make dinner for me and the kid.

7:00 p.m. The kid and I take the dog to walk at the park.

8:00 p.m. Rum o'clock. The kid draws, and talks to friends. I read and read and read. Dr. Skull goes to bed. Feeds the cats first.

1:00 a.m. I go to bed. Feed the cats first.

3:00 a.m. The kid goes to bed.

Interspersed among all of this, I do laundry, Dr. Skull does the dishes, we occasionally go out for groceries, or take the dog out into the yard. It's a quiet and pleasant life, and I am getting a lot of work done.

But every time someone gets a headache, or coughs, we have tiny little panic attacks. And going to the grocery, despite all the antiseptic wipes and handwashing we do, makes me very nervous.

I'll be glad when this is over.

Covid-19 in Arkansas

Our public schools have been closed for two weeks, and I finally convinced Dr. Skull that they weren't going to open on April 1 (which is the date the schools have put out for "re-evaluating" the closure).

He emailed the school board to ask if any provision was being made for subs. They told him to file for unemployment.

So yesterday he went and did that. (He tried to file online, first, but with about half the state trying to file, the website was overwhelmed.)

The unemployment office was swathed in plastic -- I guess to keep out the virus? Who knows? -- and there was a bin to drop his unemployment form in. Now we wait.

I'm guessing the Arkansas Governor's school isn't going to run this year either. He teaches there in the summer.

The kid is still home. We're going to keep him here through Passover at least, and then -- like the public schools -- re-evaluate. Meanwhile, he is working with his professors remotely. From eavesdropping on his sessions I have learned that kids today now call Covid-19 "the rona."

Today we have to drive him up to see his therapist. That should be fun.

As for me, I am fretting about teaching online. I've never actually done it, and my one attempt at learning Blackboard convinced me I never want to use that platform ever in my life.

I did attend a session at our university last week, meant to show those of us who hate Blackboard how to use Blackboard. Once again I walked away convinced I never want to ever use that platform ever in my life.

I've been using Google Classroom. Now I've figured out Slack, mostly. Between those two, I'm hoping I can get through the rest of the semester.

But oh my do I hate this. I love the classroom, the interaction between the students, the way we all, by talking together, reach bigger truths than we would on our own. Chatlines on slack and me posting notes on Google Classroom -- this is not going to be nearly as effective.

And it will be like 110% more boring.

But it's better than one to three percent of my students dying, obviously.

What else? I am still taking my nightly walks at the park along the Arkansas River. When this all started, I was the only one there, ever. Well, sometimes there would be one other person. But usually it was just me and the dog.

Each day, there have been more and more people out walking their kids and their dogs and themselves. Yesterday there were so many people there I had to park on the road instead of in the parking lot. One kid was there all alone on his bicycle, riding around and around and around the big loop.

If nothing else, the plague is giving people the leisure to exercise.

We all carefully stayed six feet from one another. Except my dog. He kept trying to rush up to the other dogs and make friends. I kept pulling him away again.

I'm still cooking so much more than I usually do. I made enchiladas yesterday, and am considering black beans, except it's probably too hot for that. Maybe potato soup.

What's going on where you are?