COVID's Forgotten Histories

My newest Substack is remembering the third anniversary of the pandemic and the uncomfortable histories we have consciously forgotten. That forgetfulness is very political in nature, motivated by those who refuse to believe that they owe even the smallest shred of social solidarity. 

Reflections On A Not Normal "Normal" School Year

The beginning of this school year held out the promise of being "normal," that ineffable thing so many of us have been craving (rightly or wrongly) since March of 2020. This year the Zoombots were taken out of my classroom, students who were absent no longer telecommuted in, and masks were even able to come off after awhile.

The masks were a reminder that everything hadn't changed back to "normal" of course. Not to mention that we had to go a week remote right after the winter holiday in the midst of the Omicron spike. Around that time plenty of students and colleagues had to quarantine as well. That at least was a major exception, rather than the rule.

Even now, with mask mandates gone and the latest COVID wave dying down, things aren't normal. In the first place, the experiences of students and teachers could not be erased overnight. It took time to get used to being in the same space together again. Students who had passed through important years of adolescent socialization in isolation were more likely to engage in anti-social behavior. The increased mental health struggles faced by students (and faculty, let's not forget) did not simply go away. The sequestering of the pandemic has shown up in smaller ways. Students used to come by my desk during free time to get guidance or even just to chat, that rarely happens now since we've all been conditioned to handle those things electronically. 

The extra work teachers had to do to adjust to the pandemic didn't stop either. Going back to full classrooms meant the third major change in my teaching practice in two years, and we were pretty tired to begin with. On top of that, we simply could not flip a switch and go back to the way things used to be. Students are still tired, the same demands that they could meet in 2019 are just too much in 2022. This has meant a lot of adjusting on the fly and extra work to make it happen. I always feel tired at the end of the school year, and this year I feel far more beat than after a "normal" school year.

Right now I want to start thinking about what we need to do in the next school year, because educators must come to grips with the reality that there is no going back to the old days. Our students have been fundamentally changed, and so have we. First and foremost, faculty and students need to meet each other halfway when it comes to expectations. Students, used to not paying attention during Zoom classes, need to find more focus in class and lean into face-to-face interactions. Faculty need to be much more aware of the mental load their students face and make curricular decisions accordingly. 

Essentially, we need to establish a new social contract in the classroom that accounts for what we have all been through. More than just about anyone else, teachers and students endured the harshest disruptions from the pandemic. No matter how "normal" things might look, that experience will continue to weigh on us, maybe forever. If we are able to have a better school year next year, we need to create a new normal that's humane for all involved.

Year Three of the Pandemic Begins With a Whimper

My resigned pandemic sadness theme song

Yesterday marked the second anniversary of 3/11/2020, the day the pandemic became truly "real" in the United States. I had long hoped that we would turn this anniversary into a day of reflection and remembrance, but yesterday hardly anyone seemed to notice. Sure there were op-eds in the major papers, but that was about it.

Much of this has to do with fatigue, certainly, but there's a more willful denialism at play here. Reflecting on the past and remembering the dead would just be an embarrassment to so many. Our authorities, who have completely failed to adequately respond to the moment, certainly don't want that discussed. The third of Americans who have elected to not even bother readjusting their lives of course have no interest in taking an anniversary like this seriously. Why start now? Republicans of all kinds don't want Trump's obvious malfeasance in this discussed, nor are Democrats willing to acknowledge how the Biden administration has not made good on its COVID promises (or its glaring failure to prepare for Omicron.)

Meanwhile, people keep dying. Cases are dropping and I myself am allowing myself more freedom, but well over a thousand people a day keep dying. The seven day daily average of deaths has not dipped below one thousand since early December, which was a few day blip of average deaths over a thousand going back to August 21st. For well over six months that daily average has been in the four figures the whole time apart from one week. 

I brought this up to one of my students this week, who had no idea. They were not particularly ignorant by any means, just reflecting how normalized this has all been. I am definitely glad that cases are so low. I am excited that my parents are visiting this week and that I am able to go out and do more things. However, I also know that nothing will be learned from this pandemic. Not one little thing. From gun violence to infant mortality to lead pipes to our broken health care system to the pandemic, life is cheap in America. I knew this before the pandemic, I just never knew the true enormity of it. 

The Lemonheads, "It's a Shame About Ray" (Track of the Week)

I've had the 1990s on my brain as of late. This is partially because I am reading Chuck Klosterman's book about the era, but mostly because I am finally able to listen to music of that era again without being emotionally overwhelmed. It's the decade where I truly came of age, going from 14 to 24, from child to adult. Every song contains a memory, which can make for unbearable listening. The thing is, I was a complete schmuck from the age of 14 to 24, and I don't like to be reminded of it. The traumas of the past six years have been so intense that those memories don't sting so much anymore. One silver lining of the river of shit we are currently wading through.

The Lemonheads were one of the minor bands of the 90s alt-rock explosion, one that did not get their full due because they were established before grunge and did not just ape the Seattle sound. I've been revisiting them, especially "It's a Shame About Ray." The album cover made me think it was a song about someone being run over by a car, but the song itself is more ambiguous than that. It certainly seems to be about a dead acquaintance (rather than a friend.) This is someone you might know but not intensely grieve over the way one does with close friends and family. Those of us still living and breathing can be a little callous in these situations, only capable of sighing and saying "that's a shame" before moving on with our fleeting lives. This is the arrogance of us the living, so disinclined to contemplate our mortality or for whom the bell truly tolls.

For that reason this has become one of my favorite songs to listen to when I brood about COVID. Two thousand people a day still die in a pandemic so many are anxious to declare "over." There doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop the onslaught. New days bring new stories, like someone I know losing his cousin to the virus last week. Our society seems to have learned nothing from this experience. It's a shame. 

Reading War and Peace in the Time of COVID

This Charlie Brown special was how I first learned of Tolstoy

When quarantine began in the middle of March, 2020, I decided to order a couple of long nineteenth century novels I had been meaning to read for years. I love those old classic doorstops, which considering their serialized nature are like literary versions of a Netflix series. The more characters, the more side plots, the more philosophizing, the better. The two novels in question were Middlemarch and War and Peace. I started on the former and got over two hundred pages in, mostly because the start of quarantine coincided with my spring break. Then came the transition to fully remote teaching, which was so taxing and brutal that I could not spare the mental capacity for Middlemarch.

Months later, in the summer of 2020, I dug out War and Peace from my bedside book stack, and couldn't get into it. The same thing happened the next summer. It begins in the world of noble salons and drawing rooms, not exactly the most engrossing thing for me.

Fast forward to last week. My wife gave me a bunch of great books for Christmas, including Ruth Scurr's recent book about Napoleon telling his life through his experience with gardens (trust me, it really works!) I got into a serious Napoleonic mood after reading it, and the only relevant book readily available to me was Tolstoy's tome. 

This time it clicked with me, and after three days I am 150 pages in, despite my tired old eyes straining to read the small print of the footnotes whenever the French dialogue is being translated. This was partly because my mind was in the right Napoleonic frame to appreciate the world Tolstoy was recreating. However, it was mostly because I saw a connection between that once foreign salon world and myself.

As the two year anniversary of quarantine approaches, I have been getting extremely vivid flashbacks to the earlier days of the pandemic. I am especially remembering its strange mesh of emotions. I was scared and mentally dislocated, but I was also optimistic and energized by the challenge ahead. I had no clue, of course, what really laid in store for me. I had no conception that the pandemic would still be affecting my life two years later, one year post vaccine. 

That's what Tolstoy is showing us with the salons and all their partying and gossip as war with Napoleon commences. The characters are preparing themselves for something they think is important, but they have no way of understanding just how momentous and life-altering the coming changes will be. They can only talk about it in the abstract before the brutal reality smacks them in the face. It feels good to dip into the past and find people like me being tossed on the waves of history desperately looking for a lifeboat. 

It's a shame that the epic social novel is a relic of the nineteenth century. I sometimes feel like the United States of the past six years would be great fodder for such a thing. While I know the present will always soon be the past, the recent years have felt more like living through history than any time in my life, including during the end of the Cold War and the years of the War on Terror. All that is solid melts into air nowadays, as a wise man of the nineteenth century once said. I increasingly feel like my individual will has zero bearing on my fate in a world being shaken by forces well beyond my control. Reading a masterful epic novel of the past makes those feelings more bearable. Maybe I will get to Middlemarch, too.

Quarantine Christmas

Today was the first Christmas day I have ever spent at home with only members of my own household. Even when I spent a year living abroad in Germany I trekked to my mom's cousin's house a couple of hours away. This wasn't by choice, of course. My daughters testing positive and the general omicron surge meant my parents were not able to fly our here as planned, and quarantine meant we could not be with my wife's parents. (We will get to see them in a couple of days.)

I've been fortunate to not catch COVID from my kids, and that they've pretty much been asymptomatic. This Christmas has been a kind of throwback to the early days of the pandemic, when everything was put on hold and the world outside of the four walls of my home seemed to disappear. Then as now this meant more time with my children, which I cherish. The demands of my job often make it difficult to get any quality time with them in the normal run of things. 

Christmas is a time of reflection, which is the kind of thing that can bring on the holiday blues. That's been particularly intense this year as I have been unable to celebrate it with my parents. That in itself is a reminder of how much has been lost over the last two years, and I've even been one of the the lucky ones. Friends of friends and relatives of friends have died from COVID but so far no one directly connected to me has (touches wood.) Nevertheless, I have missed out on a lot of time with my parents and sisters, and that weighs on me.

The Christmas reflection gets more intense from me as a teacher, since going from ten hour days of intense work to two weeks of break gives me whiplash. I get too much time to think, too much time to contemplate the scary state of the world today, too much time to get depressed. I read a recent medieval history at the start of break, and one of my takeaways is that I now get why people like St. Benedict just went out into the desert to live as isolated monks. Maybe this broken world just cannot be fixed. Christmas is the ultimate promise that somehow, some way the world can be set right, but I am not feeling that spirit this year.

Of course, I can't just quit everything, put on a brown robe, and move to the desert. It's not feasible, and more importantly, I don't really want to. Quarantine Christmas has reminded me that everything I need is right here in front of me. I will draw from it as much as I can in the coming months, since it's the only thing that gives me any kind of faith in the future. 

Searching For Hope In The Second COVID Christmas Season

This has been a rough week for me. My daughters' friend tested positive for COVID. My daughters are in quarantine (they just got their second shot) and tested negative on a rapid test after a positive result on a home test. (I guess the PCR will tell the tale in a couple of days.) My parents canceled their trip out to see us due to rising infections. One of my daughters asked us today if we will be in "COVID times" forever.

Back in January, when I got my first shot, I felt pretty confident it wouldn't be like this. Oh how wrong I was.

Last year I probably went a little too over the top with Christmas. We showered our daughters with gifts and drank and ate to our heart's content. It was a needed kernel of hope after months of death and fear. This year my thwarted expectations have left me feeling much less Christmas cheer. Due to quarantine it will be just us at home this year (with some time with my wife's family two days late.) 

It feels especially cruel because hope is the essence of Christmas. People talk about "keeping Christ in Christmas," and for me, lapsed Catholic that I am, this means the belief that this broken world can somehow be redeemed. After all that's why the shepherds rejoiced and the three kings followed the star to Bethlehem. It's the thing I am clinging too in my heart when my mind tells me the recent escalation of cases is a sign that we are in for another punishing winter of discontent. 

So I search for ways to find rays of hope. I'm planning on making Christmas cookies with kids, trying to repeat my mother's alchemy. I will try as hard as I can not to think of how she was supposed to be here this year, passing on her secrets to my daughters. We will watch our favorite Christmas movies together, and are working on a family play adapting A Christmas Carol. (I am told I get to play Scrooge!) I will remind myself that as horrible as COVID has been, it has given me so much more time with my children than I otherwise would have had. I truly cherish that time.

After all, Christmas is a yearly reminder of where we are at in life. You can't celebrate it without thinking about Christmases past, and where you are in relation to them. As trying and difficult as these past two years have been, they have forced me to take stock of what truly matters in life. We only have so much time and only so many Christmases. Despite my sadness and fear this Christmas season I just need to remind myself that it's a time to be cherished for what it brings that I never get to have in other parts of the year. I hope you and yours find some scraps of hope this holiday season. 

A Republic of Consumers

There's been a lot of talk lately about Biden's falling approval numbers corresponding with increases in gas prices and the general freakout over inflation. Some have expressed bewilderment, considering how much the economy is growing, wages are rising and jobless claims are shrinking. 

It might be confusing, unless you understand a simple fact: we live in a republic of consumers (apologies to Lizabeth Cohen.) 

Once upon a time the social contract may have revolved around a social safety net or human rights but those things are pretty immaterial to most Americans. What makes a successful polity in their eyes is maintaining the flow of cheap consumer goods and services. For at least the past forty years this has been at the heart of everything.Workers' wages have been stagnant, postindustrial and farming communities are falling apart, but you can still get almost anything you want for cheap at the local Wal-Mart. You might not have much, but you can still afford to go to a fast food restaurant and afford a hot meal made by others who have to serve you. The rise of globalization and consumer credit that accompanied the onset of neo-liberalism have made it possible for massive wealth and income inequalities to not lead to revolutionary change. 

Those on the left might find this to be a rather paltry reward, but talk to most workers and they've basically given up on any idea of solidarity. (Notice the recent, high profile failures to start unions at Amazon.) Things like universal basic incomes and free college are ephemeral, cheap gas and enough workers at the local Mickey Ds to keep the dining room open are not. 

In a lot of ways we have failed to understand what the last four decades and counting of neoliberalism have done to our mental geographies. Most people still hold fast to its basic tenet that there is no such thing as society. Billionaires like Elon Musk are treated like superhuman heroes. When the New York Times reported on the Build Back Better bill it only listed the price-tag in the headline, never bother to enumerate the bill's many benefits. 

Talk to even affluent moderate liberals in a suburb like mine and they will still bitch about property taxes and unions like they were Republicans. They might have a Black Lives Matter sign on their lawn and a Pride flag hanging in their window, but don't you dare integrate the schools or challenge exclusionary zoning. In a lot of ways, they are basically the same Rockefeller Republicans who lived here fifty years ago, old politics with a new party label on them. 

You may have noticed how the rise in prices (which is there but not as unprecedented as it is made out to be) has registered far more with the collective psyche than the deaths of 800,000 people from COVID. The fact is that a majority of Americans simply DO NOT CARE what happens to people they don't know as long as they are doing fine. If it wasn't someone in your family dying the pandemic might as well not even be happening in the minds of most people. Similarly, if animals are slaughtered inhumanely to make your cheeseburger or children are forced to work for pennies in sweatshops for your Wal-Mart duds it is immaterial. Hell, when the pandemic began prominent Republicans were basically calling on old people to sacrifice themselves to keep this economy the same. The small-r republican consumer is not interested in knowing that fast food workers are making a higher wage, they are mad that the help is not as plentiful as before. 

I am not sure where to go from here, but the assumption on the left that passing popular policies will result in political popularity does not seem to be holding true. I think that's because the most popular policy is the one polling firms never ask about: maintaining cheap consumer goods and services uber alles. To paraphrase Dune: the cheap crap must flow! It is now the job of progressive and leftist politics to figure out how to win in these circumstances, because failure is not an option. 

Now Be Thankful

We've reached the second COVID Thanksgiving, something I never would have anticipated back in March of 2020. I had the naive belief that if would just be a short, sharp outbreak and over in a month or so. Eighteen months later there's over 700,000 dead in America. More people have died this year than in 2020 and the infection rates are shooting up again as we head into winter. 

If I am thankful for anything this Thanksgiving it is the vaccine. I know I am not bulletproof, but I don't worry about dying or serious illness anymore. My kids just got their shots too, so the range of things I can do will open up some more. Because of the vaccine I am not looking at this winter with the same absolute dread I had last year. I knew last November that we were headed into the worst winter of my life, and I was right. 

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful because we are constantly reminded of the things that make us bitter and resentful. The vaccine, for example, has been blunted in its effectiveness by anti-vaxxers. I have probably spent up too much mental space in the last year on these choads. They're not going away, so I should at least be happy that so many people I love and care about are being protected by the vaccine.

I am feeling similarly about politics. The fact that the teaching of American history, which I do for a living, has become the primary focus of the right wing's hate has been demoralizing to say the least. But I can still be thankful that I teach at a school that supports teaching the country's actual history. The complacency and failures of liberals and the vigor and lack of restraint on the right scare and frustrate me, but I can at least be thankful that Donald Trump is no longer president. 

Just so you know, I have not had a lobotomy or religious experience or have turned into a kind of Pollyanna. It's more that the pandemic has taught me some new life habits. On the eve of the pandemic I was an emotional mess, overstressed and pulled into five different directions at once. The daily assaults on democracy and humanity by Trump filled me with both outrage and hopelessness. The pandemic forced me to buckle down and get to prioritizing the things that actually mattered, instead of engaging in constant emotional spasms. That wasn't going to help anyone.

So I guess above all I am thankful for the perspective I have gained recently, the kind of perspective I needed to mentally survive this difficult time. Part of that perspective involves appreciating what I do have in my wife and my children, in my students and colleagues, in my friends and family. The reality of death has never been more present, as well as the imperative that comes from the consciousness of death to lead a meaningful life. Here's hoping we make it to the next Thanksgiving with COVID behind us and a successful midterm election, and that we have the strength to make both happen. That's my Thanksgiving prayer. 

Back at the Record Fair (with playlist)

Sometimes I think back to life a year ago and it's hard for me to even remember how I managed to get through all of this with my sanity intact. In November of last year the wannabe despot president was disputing the election while the deadliest COVID wave was just sinking its teeth in without a vaccine in sight. Some days I would have only one or two students showing up to be in my classes in person, a sign that most people did not consider the commute I was making worth the risk. Months of cold, deadly winter followed.

I was faked out by the big drop in cases at the beginning of this summer, which was followed by Delta. Here in Jersey, however, we managed to avoid the worst, and with cases per 100,000 barely in double digits and kids getting their shots, I am going into this winter feeling far less discontented. 

What helps is the return of the parts of "normal" I never knew I was missing, like the annual record fair in my town. It wasn't just a time to troll for some tasty vinyl, but a way to see others I know in a different context, to strike up conversation and meet like-minded strangers. This time around I got to see a friend selling records but also the low-key pleasure of sharing a space with people of like interests. It's a small thing that the pandemic had taken from me, but an important one. Getting to go back made me more optimistic than just about anything short of getting that literal shot in my arm back in January.

So here's a weirdo playlist inspired by the records I found today:

Joe Jackson, "Steppin' Out"

I grew up in a small town, which meant the local Top 40 station was less concerned with market dominance than a big city one. The DJs could thus spin some of their favorite songs for years after they hit the charts. This is one I heard a lot after 1982, and I was all the better for it. The best Elvis Costello song that wasn't Elvis Costello, and full of the possibility of being out at night in a big city that's still new to you. I got the Night and Day album for three bucks from my friend's table. I saw it for ten at another one, so quite a steal.

Richard Thompson, "Tear Stained Letter"

I have been on a huge Richard Thompson kick recently, and finding Hand of Kindness for five bucks felt like the hand of grace touching my shoulder. This is the first track, combining exuberance with a sad tale, which is classic Thompson. 

Nick Lowe, "I Knew The Bride When She Used to Rock and Roll"

I was so psyched to see a copy of Live Stiffs for five bucks. I've been a huge Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe fan for years, and had been hoping to catch this document of them and their label mates in the sweaty small venues of England in 1977 at the moment when punk and new wave changed rock music forever. This song should replace plenty of schlocky shit that gets played at weddings year after year.

David Bowie, "Warszawa"

Well this was my big money find. David Bowie's music from 1976-1980 is among the most significant to me. Of all the albums of that era, Low is the one I cherish the most, the biggest reason for my tears when I heard about his death. He made the album while recovering from serious addiction and depression, and it has been a balm for me in my own "low" moments. This song, evoking Communist-era Warsaw, is among the most beautiful pieces of music ever made in my opinion. One of the rare times when I insist on getting something on vinyl that I've had in other formats for years.

Tangerine Dream, "Burning Bar"

Here was my prize obscure find. Tangerine Dream has been some of my crucial pandemic chill music. Thief is a film I have recently fell for, and the band and film are an amazing combination. It's really the Platonic form of the 80s action movie soundtrack, using electronic sounds when they were still experimental. This is the kind of stuff Bowie was drinking up in his Berlin years, so it's only appropriate to go for the source last. 

Vaccine Mandates Are A Force For Freedom

My Gen X freedom song

Back in late spring the country got way too complacent about COVID. Vaccines were out, cases were down to their lowest levels, time to party! Delta put an end to that right quick this summer.

That complacency was deadly. Nothing was being done to to push those not getting the vaccine to do so, the whole thing was being framed as a "personal choice." It was a ridiculous understanding, akin to saying it's my personal choice to drink six beers at the bar then get behind the wheel because I know my body and know how to hold my liquor. 

Now the mandates (in some parts of the country) are coming at last. My school already let me know earlier this summer that we were required to get vaccinated. Now with the Pfizer vaccine getting FDA approval New York City and New Jersey are mandating vaccines for teachers and school staff. Mandates are also coming at various other establishments and in the military.

I witnessed this first hand last week when I took a day to bum around Manhattan and ended my perambulations at Film Forum so I could see The Birds on the big screen. I had to show proof of vaccination, the first time this year anyone had ever asked to see my vaccination card. In that moment, I realized that vaccination mandates are about increasing freedom. I could go to the movies for the first time in a year and a half -one of my favorite things to do- with greatly reduced fear of contracting the virus. (I have two kids under 12 so I am more cautious than most vaccinated people.) I felt more free than I had at any time since March 11, 2020. 

You wouldn't know that by our public discourse, which is full of anti-vaxxers claiming they are freedom fighters. They are expressing a typically impoverished understanding of freedom common in America: the freedom not to do anything you don't like. This negative freedom is responsible for greatly restricting the freedom of others. Those who want unlimited access to guns make it so teachers like me must live with the possibility of school shootings. The businessman who doesn't want regulation doesn't care that the rest of us choke on his pollution. The anti-vaxxers do not think of all the people getting infected and dying as a result of their idea of "freedom." 

Vaccine mandates are a good way to illustrate positive freedom to the country. They will allow children the freedom to be able to go to school and not have their education interrupted. They will give restaurant workers the freedom to work without catching a potentially deadly disease. The more people get vaxxed, the more we will be able to go back doing all kinds of things that give us joy, from traveling to movies to worship to concerts to eating out. Bar, restaurant, hotel, and club owners will reap the benefits, too. 

I hope with this example of positive freedom that Americans might see its necessity in other areas. Universal health care, for example, would give people the freedom to switch jobs and go into business for themselves without worrying about losing access to medicine. Subsidized day care would give the parents the freedom to take on a wider range of jobs. Subsidized higher education would give young people the freedom to advance themselves without being shackled by debt, thus allowing them the freedom to buy homes and start families if they so choose. 

The pandemic has pushed Americans to reevaluate their lives. In many cases, they decided that they were over-valuing work in favor of other things that give life meaning. If that spirit can be combined with an appreciation of positive freedom, I might actually feel optimistic for once. 

COVID and the Texas Way

The news from Texas this week is grim. COVID numbers are spiking and hospitals are running out of beds. The governor, Greg Abbott, has put a call out for doctors and nurses from less overwhelmed states to come in and help.

And yet....

The same governor has been trying to prevent local governments and schools from enacting mask and vaccine mandates. It seems like complete madness, as if a sea captain's ship had a hole in it and he was refusing to let his sailors bail out the water engulfing the hold.

How to explain this contradiction, other than being the result of a fit of madness?

I lived in Texas for three years and some of my dearest friends reside there, so I still feel invested in the state I left ten years ago. (For example, I have traveled back a few times and even subscribe to Texas Monthly!) What we are seeing here is the typical outcome of the Texas Way.

Texas' economy is fundamentally extractionary. The state would be a giant, less fertile Alabama if not for its oil deposits. However, it doesn't just extract and use up resources, it extracts and uses up people. When I worked as a professor at a regional state university I was struck at how poorly prepared my students were compared to a similar institution where I had taught in Michigan. I soon discovered that the state had some of the lowest education outcomes in the country. Some of my students were aware that they had been shortchanged, and were in fact pretty mad about it.

Despite having low test scores and high drop out rates, the Texas economy attracts high tech industry. It does so with lots of land to build on, and with low taxes to lure in those companies. Those businesses then attract highly educated and skilled workers, who have been educated in other states (and countries) where the governments actually bothered to fund education. I noticed a situation (which I was actually a part of) where northern states with higher taxes created the skilled workers poached by Texas' low tax, anti-labor policies. If Texas had to rely on the products of its own education system there would be no technology hub in Austin.

When these skilled and educated workers arrive in Texas, however, they must live under the boot of a ridiculously reactionary state government, one that attacks trans kids, lights its hair on fire about "critical race theory," and currently bans local governments from mitigating COVID. The newcomers might generally be more progressive than "Texas natives" but their numbers keep a stranglehold on the political system. To get elected to state office you have to be a Republican, and to win the Republican primary you have to be the most awful troglodyte possible. 

Now is the time to note that Texas draws a labor pool from south of the border, one that doesn't get to vote in elections. The state's Democrats have also done a horrible job of outreach with those Latinos who are eligible to vote, too. They have spent a lot of time just assuming they will get those voters, and have failed miserably. They don't seem to have a plan, or even a nominee for governor next year.

Texas conservatives like Abbott are thus used to outsourcing the training and education of their laborers to other states, and to treat the poor already in Texas with complete contempt. That explains the contradiction between Abbott asking for outside nurses at fraying hospitals while refusing to let public schools mask up when private schools can. The Texas Way is deadly, from gun deaths to people freezing to death to COVID, but I don't see any signs of it changing.

Coming Home From the COVID Teaching Trenches

This song was one of my angsty quarantine survival mainstays

Vera Brittain's memoir Testament of Youth is most famous for the sections about her time as a nurse in the Great War. Not only did she witness several people die in that role, the war also took her brother, fiance, and one of her closest friends. Her book is harrowing proof of how war can traumatize those who don't hold a rifle or have their homes bombed. 

I have always been particularly struck by the way she recalled the announcement of the Armistice. She said people didn't say "the war is over" but "war is over." War had become their mode of being. Brittain herself was more stunned than jubilant, unable to forget that three people so important to her were never coming back and would never live in the peace she had to face by herself. 

As my school year is winding down I am having a very difficult time adjusting to life outside of the teaching trenches. I have basically been in crisis mode since the middle of March last year. Most of my summer "break" last year was spent preparing for this school year. The year itself brought untold stress and multiple moments where the rug was pulled out from under me. My children's school didn't open until early May, but on the way there were false starts and schedule changes that threw our lives into chaos. My own work gave me less than a week's notice to adjust to five days a week in person rather than two, at a time when my daughters' school was still closed. 

I got used to living a truly day to day existence where I could not count on anything being stable or secure. Out of the blue my wife or I might get a new directive from our jobs or our children's school, or news of COVID cases in our school or our daughters' child care facility. We might suddenly find out that we would need to eat thousands of dollars of new child care costs or that our child care would not be available that day. 

All through it I was working twice as hard as normal, frantically trying to keep everything together. Hybrid teaching was like swimming with twenty pound weights on my ankles. To not sink I just had to keep flailing myself forward until I made it to the shore. I did it all with the knowledge that despite my desperate toil it was not as good as what I would normally be able to provide my students.

Friday was graduation day at my school. I didn't stick around too long after because I was afraid of having an emotional breakdown in the parking lot in front of everybody. I have three days of meetings and a ceremony for last year's graduates left and I am almost happy for mundane meetings to give me something to do. Adjusting to life without the day to day bombs falling this summer is going to be hard. 

There doesn't seem to be much discussion of how educators have endured some bad shit this year and might be experiencing some emotional fallout this summer. I spent last summer in a constant state of worry and anticipation, never able to relax with the sword of Damocles that was the 2020-2021 school year hanging over my head. I had multiple anxiety attacks and by mid-August just wanted my break to be over so I could face the reality of the year instead of spiraling into fear.

I managed to survive the year, but I can honestly say it was worse than anticipated. Now that I am on the other end I don't know how to relax, my whole body just feels tense all of the time. Hell, that's why I am spending my Saturday night writing a blog post. I am so used to forward motion that rest is impossible. It's the law of emotional physics.

I have started to plan things with the understanding that I will need to be active or else likely fall into a crushing depression. In true dad fashion I am imaging home improvement, gardening and lawn projects. I have two different pieces of scholarly writing on the front burner and three or four essays I will be shopping to online outlets waiting to be written. We are planning on hitting the open road, but I am also looking to have as many local experiences as possible, too, from hiking to going to Mets games to outdoor Shakespeare to going down the Shore to the beach. I am planning on finally home brewing some beer. I will make even more pies and maybe learn to do cream pies next. I have a whole stack of summer reading on deck, too.

In past years I would worry I am making a ridiculous summer to do list, but this year it's a matter of spiritual survival. I hope the rest of my fellow educators can find ways to restore themselves after what we've been through. 

The Consolation of M*A*S*H

I have recently returned to an old ritual to help me weather the hard days at the end of the long road that's been teaching and parenting under COVID: watching M*A*S*H reruns. Instead of catching them in the late afternoon or late at night on the local CBS affiliate as I used to, I can binge to my heart's content on Hulu.

Some of the attraction is just pure comfort, like an old sweater or a family recipe. The sound of the theme song and the cast's distinctive voices is a kind of salve to my soul. Back in my Chicago days my friend and roomie Dave and I would watch the daily nighttime rerun for that reason. It was a great way to disengage and take a break from life for awhile.

Under COVID, however, the show's deeper meaning has become clearer and clearer. It is a show about people doing absolutely necessary work in disheartening conditions beyond their control. It is about doing that job when your bosses, coworkers, and general circumstances are conspiring against you in completely unpredictable ways. It is about maintaining your humanity and good humor when everything around you is broken.

I must admit, this is the feeling I had as a teacher-parent in the last fifteen months. I know my job is important, I know if must get done, but some days can just be completely agonizing. We have had so many instances this year of having our work or child care arrangements changed at the drop of a hat. At the height of the pandemic I pretty much stopped planning anything more than a day in advance because any plan was bound to get shattered. 

The characters on the show can never relax either, because a crisis is always ready to happen or a helicopter full of wounded is about to arrive. The downtime isn't really relaxation because they can never fully let their guard down. The still in Hawkeye's tent stays humming because booze is the only surefire escape. Let's just say I know a thing or two about this dynamic. 

Even though the members of the 4077th are supposed to be united in a common cause, they are riven by divisions and resentments. Despite the horror of the circumstances Frank Burns still does his power plays and members of the unit clash and snipe with each other. The experience of surviving this situation simultaneously draws some people together and pushes others apart. When the worst crises hit, however, they mostly find a way to get the job done. I will be diplomatic and say I understand this dynamic too. 

The same can be said of the ways that leadership behaves in M*A*S*H. Colonels Blake and later Potter are kind and understanding, but when any general or other outside bigwig appears they just end up causing problems and wasting people's time. The running character of intelligence officer Colonel Flagg does not not do anything other than antagonize the doctors and push them around. There are constant reminders that the doctors of the M*A*S*H unit are grunts whose life-saving labor is barely acknowledged by the powers that be. It is akin to how educators are often seen as an obstacle rather than a resource by their administrators. 

COVID for teacher-parents like myself has a been a kind of purgatory, much like the Korean War in M*A*S*H. You know someday it's going to end, but you have no clue when. You hope to get back to "normal," but you know deep down that normal is never coming back and that your experience has permanently altered who you are. The show's last episode was the most watched thing in television history when it aired in 1983, and not just because it was a popular show. Plenty of other shows have been more popular. There was something deeper going on there. The characters on the show meant something to the audience, who needed to see them finally escape and go home.

After all, that was not a foregone conclusion. The killing off of Colonel Blake has to be one of the most shocking moments in TV history. It was done because the show's creators wanted to remind everyone that this was indeed a war they were witnessing, and wars have casualties. I have been lucky this year not to lose anyone to COVID but at the height of the pandemic riding the train into school while all my white collar professional friends were at home I was keenly aware that my health and perhaps my life were on the line. 

So at the end of my work day, which usually involves passing out on the train at some point, and my post-work day of grading and answering emails, I put on M*A*S*H reruns. The theme song and opening credits, perhaps the most melancholy in television history, hit me like like a shot of spiritual novocaine. The credits are a reminder that the doctors are only stitching up wounded soldiers so they can get sent back into the line and shot again. There's no better metaphor for the necessity and futility of my daily life since March of 2020. 

One Too Many Mornings

This is my last full week of classes for the 2020-2021 school year and I look and feel like twenty miles of bad road. I didn't really have a summer last year, since most of my waking hours were consumed with anxiety, dread, and preparation for the coming school year. This has felt like the longest school year ever partially because it effectively began on the first day after the 2019-2020 school year ended.

I made myself an expert in all kinds of classroom technologies. I completely altered my practice. I learned how to teach students in person and distanced simultaneously. During my work days I was often also my children's teacher's aide, school cook, and janitor all rolled into one. There were plenty of left turns, like my wife and I needing to be in school when my daughters' school wasn't open, or getting less than a week's notice that I would need to be at school five days a week rather than two. It was fun to know at the drop of a hat that I was about to eat two thousand dollars worth of child care costs.

And through it all, all of the 14 hour days and stress freakouts and questioning why I didn't go to law school instead, I could not escape the thought that all this effort added up to a learning product that was inferior to what I could give my students in the Before Times. That thought, always in the back of my mind, has been soul crushing. Was all of this even worth it? Does anyone even care? Will anyone remember it when we go back to "normal"?

***

One of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs comes at the end of his Ghost of Tom Joad album, a kind of spiritual sequel to Nebraska. Like the earlier album, it contains searing indictments of America in the throes of neoliberalism and wracked by inequality, mostly set to spare accompaniment. The song is "My Best Was Never Good Enough," one of the great songs of defeat. He sarcastically spews a bunch of feel good cliches like "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" with the kind of contempt you never hear from the Boss. He taunts (with profanity!) these idiotic bromides that are used to get people to blame themselves for their misfortune. In the end, with the game rigged and the deck stacked, "my best was never good enough."

That's pretty much how I feel about this school year. All the toxic positivity told us that all of our efforts would pay off, that we would get through this together etc etc. It's all the usual bullshit. We worked our asses off, we sacrificed more than ever, and ended up just muddling through. It's been one too many mornings and a thousand miles behind, as the old Dylan song says. 

Please please dear God just get me through these last days of school so I can finally make it stop. 

COVID Forgetting

New cases and infections have dropped drastically here in New Jersey as vaccinations have gone up. My kids are back in school and more and more of my students are opting to come in. It feels like we have finally turned a corner.

As is natural in a traumatized people after months of fear and death, just about everyone is ready to forget all of this and move on with their lives. I understand the impulse, but I think it will continue to allow people who did some truly terrible things to get let off of the hook. 

We've been here before, of course. The traitors responsible for the Confederate rebellion and this country's deadliest war never faced punishment for their nefarious deeds. The slave labor camp masters still got to keep their land. After the civil rights movement only a smattering of the acts of horrific violence committed by the Klan and its allies in law enforcement were punished. Richard Nixon never spent a day jail for Watergate, George W Bush got to launder his image in retirement instead of facing war crimes charges. America is incapable of punishing its high malefactors of power because to do so would mean admitting that this nation is indeed not the land of the free and home of the brave.

We have already forgotten the how the last president's behavior cost hundreds of thousands of lives. He tried to pretend the virus wasn't happening, then promised a reopening in April of last year. He told people to inject bleach. He failed to create any kind of national policy, lazily giving responsibility to the states. He openly discussed denying aid to states with Democratic governors, forcing them to grovel while their people were dying. 

The whole time his rank and file conservative supporters have been repeating the same mantra: "it's not a big deal!" They have expressed far more consternation and anger over having to wear masks than the deaths of over 600,000 of their fellow Americans. Last March it was "this is no worse than the flu" and then it became "it only hurts those who are sick and old" to now basically ignoring the deaths. 

Well I do not aim to forget. I will never forget that when hundreds of people were dying every day here in New Jersey last spring there were conservatives complaining about "blue state bailouts" and the president making my governor humiliate himself to keep my fellow New Jerseyans alive. I may be capable of forgiving people I love when they stayed silent while my family and I were being endangered by the man they voted for. But I will not forget it. Never never never. 

I won't forget how the local school board and teacher's union heads completely failed to find a workable solution this year, delaying my children's return to the classroom to May 3. I won't forget the people who behaved irresponsibly during the winter surge, helping the virus infect more people because going to brunch was oh so important. I won't forget how many of my friends and acquaintances felt free to slag teachers to my face with the patronizing assumption that I was "one of the good ones." I won't forget how employers did absolutely nothing to consider the burdens of working parents with "essential" jobs, sticking us with unbelievable stress and painful financial costs. I won't forget the people who cared more about having to wear a mask than the piles of dead bodies all around them. I won't forget the colleagues who stayed at home even after they were vaccinated while I was commuting for three hours a day every damn day and eating thousands of dollars in child care costs and doing the extra labor of watching over their virtual classroom for them. 

I can forgive, and in many of these cases, I already have. But I will not forget. Not now, not ever.

But there are other things I won't forget. I won't forget how responsible and patient my children have been this last year under terrible circumstances. I won't forget the help we received from my in-laws, friends, and neighbors. I won't forget how hard most of my colleagues have worked to make hybrid and distance learning as close to what students are missing as possible. I won't forget the 98% of subway riders who have been willing to mask up. I won't forget the breaks and random acts of kindness I have received from my superiors at my job. Most of all, I won't forget the engagement and effort from my students, without which teaching in this way never would have been possible. 

We must remember the good and the bad, and resist the urge to look away. If not, we will never fix what's wrong or derive needed inspiration from what we did right. 

The Last Year Killed My Trust

I trust most other people as much as I trust the Joker right now

The last four years, and the last year in particular, have reduced my circle of trust considerably. I get the feeling this is not an uncommon thing.

Trump's ascendancy was bad enough. Conservatives I've long disagreed with but respected showed me that deep down they were indifferent (at best) to fascism as long as it delivered what they wanted. It's made me question my trust in them, and even my trust in my own ability to see people for who they are. I at least thought (naively) back in 2016 that Trump's behavior once he took power might alienate them, but they gleefully doubled down. All of the lawbreaking, racism, family separations, and hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths from COVID only strengthened their ardor. The naked attempt to overthrow democracy on January 6th and the weeks leading up to the insurrection was met with silence (at best) or obfuscations and what-aboutism. 

Despite all of that, COVID has eroded my trust in others far more. Every day I have commuted by train I have had to ride with people nose-hanging, chin-strapping, or outright refusing to wear masks. Every scroll through social media shows all the trips and visits and parties made with complete disinterest for the well-being of others. So many conversations reveal a lack of concern with the virus or even denial of its potency. Multiple people have told me of friends dying after contracting COVID, then sharply telling me "but that's NOT what killed them!" Others refuse to get vaccinated. 

More personally, I have to hear teachers being attacked and dragged by frustrated parents who don't even consider the effect these statements have on me. (This goes for social media and more direct convos.) 

All of this makes me feel like a sucker for trusting other people, and I was a distrustful person to begin with. I honestly don't know how I am going to be able to go through my day to day life in these circumstances. So much of quotidian existence relies on the trust that must be invested in others. I wonder sometimes if my standards are too high, if I am an insufferable killjoy, or more hypocritical than I realize. I don't think I am, but maybe you can correct me. Or maybe as a cishetero white guy I am having to confront something other people have been forced to reckon with far before this.

So far I have been leaning hard on the people I know can be trusted. They've been a rock for me in this. It just pains me to know that when this is all finally over I will be incapable of going through life the same way again. I am trying my best to forgive, but it seems impossible to forget. 

Spring Cleaning

My spring break has just begun and I have not felt this unburdened since August. Christmas break had its own unique stresses and it took place in the midst of the worst of the pandemic. Now I am fully vaccinated and the weather is improving. Just this weekend I converted my screened-in back porch from a winter storage space to a warm weather hangout spot. 

While doing so yesterday I couldn't help but to think of the last time I cleaned the porch. It was at the start of quarantine, and back then I told myself I would have to keep busy around the house as a way to keep from losing my mind. I didn't just tidy up the porch, I gave it a ridiculously deep cleaning well beyond my usual standards. At that stage of quarantine the enormity of the situation gave me a kind of manic energy that found its expression in some pretty unlikely ways.

A year later that spirit is pretty much gone. I'm tired, both in body and soul. My job and my life have become one constant triage with constant fires to put out. There was a sort of excitement of rising to the challenge last year when I would have to get up from my computer after teaching a Zoom class to get lunch on for my kids while frantically responding to students taking an asynchronous class. Now when I have to do this I wish so hard that it would just finally end. 

It's all become a blur, day after day of working 11 hours at my job while tutoring my children and cooking and cleaning through it all. Except for the two days a week that I have to ride the train into the city and come home after it's done dead on my feet and sometimes still needing to cajole my children into doing their homework.

My spring break couldn't come soon enough because I think I was getting close to the point of exhaustion. That's usually the case even during a normal school year. And like in those years the time from then to summer is the final stretch, a thought that sustains many a teacher through April. I am trying to use spring break not just to clean my house, but to clean out my mind too. Maybe some time sitting on my back porch will help with that.

Scott Walker, "It's Raining Today" (Track of the Week)

With the Covidversary upon us I am remembering where my head was a year ago at this time in that moment when it went from a nascent fear to reality. Quarantine was strangely fortuitous, since it came right as I was hitting a stress-induced breaking point. The crisis helped wipe the old crises off of my plate pretty fast. 

Last February and early March I was listening to a lot of orchestral pop music from the 1960s. I even made a playlist called "Sophisticated Dad Chill Commute" to listen to on my way home from work. I also happened to get really into Scott Walker (not the Wisconsin politician) at the time. His early records brought an avant-garde, poetic sensibility to the sweeping symphonic arrangements.

Last weekend, right before my second vaccination shot, I suddenly got back in the Scott Walker mood. Some of it was probably due to thinking about the anniversary and what it meant on the eve of my deliverance, but a lot was also just the eternal mood of late February and early March.

This is by far my least favorite time of the year. Winter keeps holding on, and what little exists of spring sometimes only comes in the form of heavy rains and howling winds. For me it also coincides with Lenten fasting. It is a time of painful anticipation before sunshine and, importantly for a teacher, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel of the school year. 

There is a dull ache forever in the background of my soul every March, and it sounds exactly like the buzzing strings of Scott Walker's "It's Raining Today." Last week I got to the city too early to line up for my shot, so I wandered around Central Park in the drizzle, listening to this song over and over again. 

It's fitting that quarantine began in March, the purgatory month. We have been in this purgatory for a year now. Every now and I then I can't imagine getting through this without losing my grip, and have to remind myself that spring is coming. In March you know it so close, but as for today, it's raining. 

Teachers Need Consideration, Too

From the beginning of the pandemic educators have been hearing a constant message that we need to be extra patient with our students, to be careful of workload, and to generally go out of our way to be even more understanding than usual when they are unable to complete their work.

And you know what? I 100% agree with this. I tried to have all this in mind in the Before Times, but I have taken it even more to heart in the last year. I have reduced the work I assign, willing to lose coverage to benefit my students' mental health. I have been less stingy in handing out good grades and a softer touch with suboptimal student work. Right now there are much bigger fish to fry than holding the line between a B+ and A-.

However, educators do not seem to be getting the same consideration. Teaching in a pandemic is inherently much harder, at least if you want your teaching to be good. It requires converting every single lesson into a new format, arranging all of the electronic platforms, and teaching over Zoom, which is like swimming with a twenty pound weight attached to your ankle. Teaching hybrid might give needed actual contact with students, but it is physically and mentally exhausting to be in real space and cyberspace simultaneously. 

I regularly pass out on the couch at the end of the day. I typically work 10-11 hour days during the week, with a few hours of work on the weekend, too. I am starting to see my own children wear out and struggle in virtual school, but by the time I am able to help them with their studies I have spent all of my energy. 

My family is doing all of this with an almost impossible hill to climb. While my children's school remains virtual and I go in twice a week to mine, my wife has to come in five days a week. You try to figure that out. Teacher-parents have basically been told to go jump in a lake by just about everyone. No government subsidies for child care, no coordination between school districts, no child care assistance from our employers. 

On top of all of this teachers are still going through the same evaluation process from their schools. They still have the same load of meetings. (How else will administrators be able to justify their existence, after all?) Sometimes they even get browbeaten for not talking more in meetings at the end of a ten hour day spent teaching over Zoom and juggling child care responsibilities. 

Our reward for all this work is going to be layoffs, pay cuts, and resentment from the public. The attacks on teachers unions are already back and you can't wade into a conversation about school reopenings without somebody shitting all over teachers. I personally think the science on the safety of re-opening is pretty clear but I won't join with local people trying to reopen the schools here because I am not going to make common cause with those who wish to destroy my family's livelihood. It's bad enough to be doing all this extra work in trying circumstances, being treated with contempt as a result is unbearable. 

So please, give us a break before we break.