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Friday

Friday / IU / television / video — Comments Off
13
Nov 20

To next week!

Ooooh, Friday the 13th. Are you spooked yet? It’s a time when silly little superstitions like that, given way to as flights of fancy in a simpler time, might be acknowledged. I wouldn’t have noticed it at all this year —

“Because time has no meaning?”

Well, sure, random interlocutor who has appeared in this bit of text even as I write it in the CMS, but that’s not what I meant.

“Because you don’t look at calendars anymore?”

Well … right, but, really, who does? And, anyway, what are you doing here, you made-up phantasm of a person I’ve created to fill yet a few more pixels on the page?

“I’m here to be spooky. Boooooooooooo!”

Yeah, that’s not going to work because, as a rule, I run a lot of lights around the house on Fridays to help create some energy and festiveness, so —

“OK, fine. May as well explain how you noticed today was Friday the 13th, oooooooooo!”

Right. Well. Anyway. The local talk station host mentioned it yesterday evening. He started in on the whole thing, as one does, and he got about a sentence into it, and you could hear it coming in his voice, when he stopped —

“Because it put him out of sorts?”

No.

“Because his electronics died? A byproduct of Friday the 13th gremlins?”

No.

“Because he — ”

He realized no one has any use for it right now.

“So he did some conspiracy theory stuff?”

No.

“Full moon?”

No. We’re not even close to a full moon right now, anyway.

“Then what did he do next?”

He talked about basketball.

Anyway, another week in the books, and we’re one week closer to the Thanksgiving break and some time off and then virtual learning and more work from home. And we’re going to make it.

I’ll say right here, I was skeptical of the whole thing. Bringing students back from all over the nation and points beyond? I’m no public health expert, of course, but it defied common sense. To some degree, as it turned out, doing all of this flew in the face of the best advice actual public health experts would provide. But the university put a robust system into place for its nine campuses and 100,000-plus students and all of its professionals and they’ve pulled it off. I was skeptical, but if you’d asked me to draw out a best case scenario this summer it would have been surpassed in every way. I’m pleased to be proven wrong.

Sure, some people got sick, but there were contingencies plans in place. It’s in no way authoritative or exhaustive, but I have heard of one student who was hospitalized with Covid-19. More often, those who did test positive were quarantined and worked their way back to health. I’ve heard a few anecdotal cases of long haulers, but hopefully they come through it OK and sooner than later. To bring back all of those people, though, and see it work as well as it did, even as the case counts are starting to tick up these last two weeks (while they’re surging throughout the state and the region) is something of a positive.

The moment the university brought students back in August they made them all get tested. Immediately, the university became the largest testing center in this state. I don’t know if they’ll share that tidbit on the campus tours, but the parking lot outside of Assembly Hall and the dozens, if not hundreds of people who worked it, are big players in the state’s Coronavirus history now. The university continued a testing pattern throughout the term that added more and more data to the system. It wasn’t perfect. Nothing is. On this campus alone there are 46,000 students in a normal term — probably a few less this fall — and they’re all human and that’s injecting a lot of chance and habit and decision making into the best-laid plans. This is why I was skeptical. There were some problematic instances. Greek Life had a few problems, some of which were simply structural. Other things, well, yeah, they’re college students. And we all remember being 19 and how wise and considered our decision making was at the time. A few things were more forehead-slappy, but ultimately, it all worked.

We have five more days to go, but we also have a dashboard that tells us the university did better than the community, in terms of percentages. Part of that goes to the aggressive and proactive approach the university took. And part of it, I think, has to be that you’re dealing with a set of people of a certain age who, by and large, are trained to do what’s asked of them. Also, the university laid down the law on that quickly and convincingly, and continues to do so. Anecdotally, I heard of more mask difficulties with faculty than students.

And so I was skeptical. All we have to do, I said in April, is account for and rewrite human habits for everyone. People want to be social. They tend to gather close together. They have no idea what six feet means — even when you say it several times. People hug and carry on and have a good time and basically do everything that an airborne communicable disease is ready to exploit.

But here we are. And it was tough and demanding and upsetting, sure. It’s been tiresome, but it has had its moments. Students, generally, did not have the experiences they’ve come to expect or envision. Compromises had to be made in that sense, but they got a world-class education and by-and-large. Also, the working student media had an entire year’s worth of content put before them without even trying. It’s a rare and weird thing. And coming to terms with that is a lesson of its own. The students, though, they helped keep each other safe. Problems aside, they did it.

So now we turn our attention to next week, the last week. The university is offering go-home tests to students, which makes sense. One assumes there will be some clear literature on what that means and doesn’t mean. Communication, as ever, has proven to be critical and difficult.

I was very pleased when I thought up the idea of go-home mitigation testing three or four weekends ago and then learned, the very next week, that it was going to be something the university offered. I, too, have learned to think like a public health expert, at least on this one obvious thing. (Who among us hasn’t tried to be an expert this year?) Today it occurred to me that whatever a student might have caught last this week is something they’ll take home with them at the end of next week. And, again, no public health expert, but I wonder if that’s something that could have been controlled for in some way. And I wonder if that’s something the actual experts tossed around this summer when they were making all these plans.

Anyway, five more days of classes. Just four more days on campus for me, and it’s really a wind down week, anyway, given the general feel of things right now. By this time next week I’ll have oversaturated my hands for the last time for a while, I can wear fewer masks and I won’t have to maintain two separate laundry systems for around-the-house-clothes and cootie-clothes. I’ll still work and do all of the Zoom meetings that life can throw at me, but I won’t need a complete decontamination procedure at the door.

Have some sports television my students produced last night. Long on football, which, it turns out, Indiana might be good at:

And you know what we’re good at? Talking? They talked Masters, because it’s November in Augusta, too. This was a well-done program if you like hitting little white balls with elongated sticks.

And you? And your weekend? What’s in store? Anything new? Nothing new here. It’ll be very similar to every weekend since March. But, suddenly, it feels like it won’t be the same, but its own change of pace. Weekends are so often about what’s on the other side of them. And if that applies to weekends it should apply to weeks too. And what applies to the other side of next week is a welcome change. Nothing superstitious about that.

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6
Nov 20

Finally, the weekend

It was a lovely day at the end of a long week and I managed to wrap everything up at the office in good time. I had an interview with a public health professional, and that’ll be a podcast next week. And then I went for a walk in the woods.

Look! Woods!

I managed to scrape my leg, so it was a successful walk in the woods!

The important thing about it all was that I was in the woods in a t-shirt and shorts in November. It was a special treat and there’s no way to properly sing its praises or otherwise appreciate it.

I found a big oak branch just resting among the leaf clutter and claimed it for my own. It was still fairly fresh tree litter. Still almost green. I might try my hand at carving a spoon or bowl out of it. Because anything worth doing is worth doing in hardwood.

So I peeled away the bark, cut up the branch and sanded away the inner bark and cambium layer. You know, the easy part. Now I just have to play around with carving it.

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30
Oct 20

In the caldron boil and bake

Met three witches this morning. Not the double, double toil and trouble sort, but three members of the local coven.

What, you don’t have one of those where you are? You better google that.

The morning show was in the studio this morning and they brought in three nice local ladies who told their story and cast a protection circle and talked about one of their other coven-mate’s almanac of the witching life. You can apparently purchase it on Amazon, or pick it up at the library. I don’t believe they said the name of the book, however. The witches whiffed on the sales pitch.

One of the show’s co-hosts asked, inquisitively and curiously and politely, “How has this helped you do good in the world?”

The woman says “It’s helped me stay sober for 15 years.” All the answers that followed may or may not have been immaterial.

Elsewhere, judging high school news programs, emails, Zoom meetings, and so on.

It was a surprisingly sunny day, however. And after spending most of it under the warm embrace of fluorescent lights I enjoyed the walk to the car so much I walked a block beyond where I parked. This is what happens when you impulsively change your parking habits on a Friday morning.

But it let me see these leaves:

I suppose I was too busy wondering what I would do with my evening. There was no late night in the studio. No errands to run. No workouts to work out. What a wonderful feeling!

So I took a shower and started the laundry and we went on a walk around the neighborhood. Saw these trees:

And now the weekend is here. Full of so much possibility. And it will be exactly like every weekend since March, but still! The possibility! The freedom! The sleeping in! The fewer obligations! The laundry!

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23
Oct 20

Almost Old Home Friday

Up and in the general direction of ’em this morning. It was alarm that I didn’t want to hear this morning, and, fortunately, it wasn’t cold. Because if it had been cold I would have found a reason to stay in bed and go back to sleep, or wherever you go when you feel guilty about not getting up.

So I got up, feeling not guilty at all, and generally pleased with being right on time. And that it wasn’t cold.

I tried raspberry jelly on my toast, which was a first. I’ve decided to swap to a simple toast breakfast, and then had the further decision to branch out into the fruit preservative world. I’m a strawberry or apple guy, but there’s no reason I can’t try other things. Other things not including orange marmalade, which is disappointing and bad.

That was the memory I had at the grocery store on Monday: orange marmalade is just about the only orange product I can categorize as offensive. I’d waited until there was no one on the bread aisle — which is, I assume, how everyone is shopping these days — so that I could stand along among the jellies and ponder my options. My first observation: there are a few options, but not as many I’d imagined. There’s grape, no thanks. Strawberry, sure. I picked up a raspberry to try, and a blackberry flavor. There are a few combination offerings, generally those last three in various combinations. There was nothing exotic, however, at our giant, giant grocery store. The second observation was that you can’t pick up any jelly in a small sample size. If I don’t like blackberry I’m stuck with a fair amount of it for a good long while.

I also had an apple and peanut butter to make it a truly indulgent morning. Then I went to the office and waited until it was time to go into the studio. I watched Michael and Julianna and their crew and guests produce an episode of the morning show.

I’m a big fan of the events calendar.

And Lydia dropped in for a visit. She was one of the people that willed this show into existence in 2016 and 2017. We made them work for it, bringing this show to life, and it was worth it. She co-hosted the show for two years before she graduated. And they won some big awards in that time.

Lydia, who is one of those people who can do anything amazingly well pretty much the first time, is on her way to becoming a big shot at Adidas’ corporate offices. She does digital publishing, and nothing surprises me.

We sent that photo to the woman she created and co-hosted the show with. She hosts a prominent celebrity-entertainment show on YouTube these days. So they ran this show and now one lives in Oregon and the other is in Los Angeles.

And I’m in a place where we’re gearing up for the next four months of dreariness, where tonight’s barbecue is a rare treat, rather than a staple. (It wasn’t even good.)

But at least I got to try new a new jelly?

Friday / IU / photo — Comments Off
16
Oct 20

My favorite leaves, my favorites leave

Quite day on campus. Fridays were always a little slow, in the Before Times. You’d occasionally have a meeting or two, maybe a production or three, but we don’t run a lot of classes on Fridays for various scheduling reasons.

But now, in the During Times, our building is all that much more quiet. Most people aren’t even working in the building, after all. So I sat in my little office and had a little Zoom meeting and ran through a little round of emails and a little To Do list and another Zoom meeting and wondered about how the day was lovely, and I was indoors.

The day was lovely. At the end of it, at the end of the week, the walk to the car and the regular beginning of the unloading into the weekend was also lovely. The sun was at just the right angle. The leaves still just the right degree of chipper to create a nice little glow …

That blurry bunch of leaves, that’s the sort of memory we keep. Falling leaves and fallen leaves and they blur together, first on the edges, then in the middle, just like a bad television flashback sequence.

You think about that, not about what the rest of it means. About what’s here — later, what was there — and not what’s not.

The weekend? The weekend will be nothing special. Spectacular in its normalness. Normal in its spectacularness. Unvarying in its events. Nothing special. Perfectly special. Perfectly normal.