The Dump Days of Summer

Aug 17

Three hours. Well, two hours and fifty-five minutes. I suspect this nap will last precisely as long as it takes for me to finish this sentence. Eliot has been in this wild routine of waking up between 3 and 4 am. Before you offer any parenting tips, let me tell you that we’ve tried many of them. If you’re offering, make sure it’s excellent and doesn’t involve “letting him cry.” We are firmly in the “we can’t stomach his crying” camp. Some days are better than others, recently. However, for reasons unclear, we put him down for a nap today 2 hours and 56 minutes ago, and wouldn’t you know it: he’s still asleep.

We’re going to let it ride and hope that he is catching up on all the sleep he has missed in the past six days.

Us? Well, I took a nap for an hour (nothing like taking your daily nap at 8am), and Leen is watching some show about makeup on Netflix. The joys of parenthood! What have you missed since I last sat down to take a writing dump?

Let me fill you in on some things.

Employment update: As mentioned last time, I took a position working at a school. It’s a bit of a far cry from the work I’ve been doing for the past five years, but I think it’ll suit me. I am working at a charter school in a northern suburb of Minneapolis. The school is called Northwest Passage High School, and it focuses on experiential and project-based learning. It is the school where I did my student teaching in 2011 and began my teaching career as a long term sub in 2012.

The ethos of NWPHS is really all about relationship building and letting students explore their interests and take control of their educational journey. The teachers at the school are there to guide students on said journey.

I took this picture in 2012

I think I planned to use it when I announced I had a job, but I did that last time and I failed to use this photo. Good thing I can go back to the well and use it this time around!

Despite working in one of the most rigorous academic programs on earth for the past five years, I always carried the idea of letting students lead the way and using relationship and rapport building to drive the most successful results. I won’t bore you too much with my educational philosophy, but it’s my theory that students learn better from people they trust and respect than they do from people they fear or loathe. I think there are outliers— teachers who can achieve results in spite of student’s attitudes towards them— but for the most part, I think you get more flies with honey. Why you’d ever want to catch flies is beyond me, but I don’t write the adages, I just use them. How does this apply to education and the position I’m taking? My goal is to try and work with students at the school as they pitch and complete projects, which in turn nets them credits towards graduation. There is a saying in teacher college that teachers should aspire to be more guides on the side than sages on the stage. This position definitely fulfills that requirement. Where I was in charge of picking texts and leading discussions, I now will let students pick, find, and follow their passions. Then help develop work around them that count towards graduation credits.

There is also a saying that goes: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

In this metaphor, I can guarantee you that the guy in the white trunks had a perfect plan heading into the fight. And then: BAM

There’s always a difference between what teachers plan in August and the realities of September. Ask me how this plan is working in a few weeks.

For those wondering: “Are you going back to school?”

I think the answer is “sort of.” The school seems to be hellbent on Hybrid learning (despite Harvard epidemiologists saying that’s a bad idea!). So we are calling all of our students to propose two plans for them. Students can either chose to do hybrid (two days on campus, three days off) or full distance (self-explanatory). In terms of my ask, well, I’ll be on campus when my students are and at home when they are not. So it seems as of today, I’ll do 2 days at school and the rest of the time at home. Though you take a look through your preferred news source, you should see how well reopening is going in many locations around the country.

I feel that I’ll be teaching fully distanced by no later than October when the Governor steps in and mandates we close schools again. I am just not sure I see the worth in risking anyone getting this disease to spend time in a building when everyone is only going to be worried about getting infected. Seems more like a When not an If situation. But time will tell. I head into the building the week of the 24th for our first week of in-service, and school starts the Tuesday after Labor Day. I’ll keep you posted.

What else is happening in my world?

My pivot to woodworking continues. I haven’t actually started refurbishing anything. However, at the hardware store last week, I purchased some wood glue, and I have some woodworking clamps in an Amazon shopping cart for when the time is right. I’ve been told I need a functional space to begin these sorts of projects (tables, chairs), so I hope that the house hunt delivers something with ample space for me to pursue this new pseudo passion. I think my hands are too soft, and I ought to learn how to make things, and I don’t just mean cakes and banana breads (though I do make those very well). Otherwise, it’s business as usual here. We spend our hours at the beck and call of an adorable 10-month old who has added two more teeth this week (six total) and is discovering the use of his quads and hamstrings to stand up on anything properly baby-heighted. That house search, in addition to woodworking space, will need to be baby-proofing friendly.

And now, the dumps.

When I started writing again in March, it was nearly impossible to find stories that weren't COVID-related. Months later, that basically remains true, but I've decided to lean into it and turn this into space to wade into some COVID-related news if you are wholly tuned out and want my views instead of Chris Cuomo's.
Here are two stories, one from NPR, the other from Harvard Gazette about the varieties of testing available, and the pains of trying to "get a test before seeing family."
My parents are, understandably, itching to visit their grandchild; however, with the fears of Covid, we have been hesitant to welcome them here. We fear that we could expose them to the disease, or that they could expose us! The thing about the disease is that you really can't know where it is or who has it. We've debated having them take a test before they come, but there are flaws in this plan. As the NPR piece notes, our current testing model's problem is that it only offers a snapshot of infection at a pinpointed moment in history. Take a test on Monday, but only exposed on Sunday? You'll test Negative. Take a test on Wednesday, traveling on Friday? What if your results aren't back yet?

The Harvard story presents an alternative to searching for a vaccine that seems far safer than signing up to get the shady Russian vaccine they supposedly have ready. The high costs and slow turnaround of the current model mean that testing is the most useful method of prevention. Instead, Harvard professor Michael Mina proposes paper-strip testing that identifies whether or not you are contagious on that day. If you are: you stay home. Think of it as a pregnancy test for COVID.

This test can be produced for under a dollar and would effectively replace the need for a vaccine.

Sounds pretty good, no? So what’s the holdup? Regulatory issues. Right now, this type of test faces hurdles with the FDA’s standards of accuracy. Three companies have already produced the test and could roll them out, but at the moment, they have no reason to do so because they are technically illegal in the American market place. Mina suggests that producing billions of these tests for daily use would slow the spread of the disease and cost way less than the second wave of financial support that Congress has debated for weeks. I just listened to a podcast with him, where he suggested that countries that do not face the same FDA restrictions have already reached out to him. He expects to see this test piloted in one of those countries.

2. In the category of: “more bad news,” it seems you can’t open any social media or read too far into a newspaper without coming across a story about the end of the USPS. This is troubling because if asked to rank things that excited Leen about moving to the USA, mail and the USPS would have easily been in the top 25. We take it for granted, the ability to get mail delivered to us at our address, but let me tell you, in Qatar, in 2020, they were having a hard time getting people to acknowledge and use their addresses. Qatar’s government was threatening fines for individuals who did not register and use their given addresses. I am sure you have at least cursory knowledge of the perils the USPS faces, but perhaps you are far less aware of the USPS’s history in the country. National Geographic documents its tumultuous past here, and through the read, you’ll learn that this is not the first time that the USPS future has been in doubt.

The Post Office or mail service was created out of a sense of nationalism. It was seen as a way of connecting the country —from the cities in the north to the homesteads in the west and everything in between. Famous Frenchmen Alexis De Tocqueville traveled around the country in a mail cart and saw how effective these men were at spreading the news and uniting the nation, one parcel at a time. As he saw it, the post office was the only entity with the organizational capability to circulate information of public significance that was essential to sustain America’s bold experiment with democracy. The oft-quoted “motto” of the USPS is, in fact, no motto at all, just an inscription above a Post Office in New York City. The quote, attributed to Greek historian Herodotus, has nothing to do with the guy who drops off my energy bill or delivers wedding invites to the former resident of this apartment. Instead, that quote is actually a reference to the Persians. They, unbeknownst to me, had apparently an excellent mail service in the 4th Century BCE. Don’t tell that to the President, otherwise, he will work faster to defund.

The story is an interesting read. It tracks the story through Washington and Franklin up through the battles with email and FedEx, basically to 2020. It should be noted, and it’s not stated here, but I saw it on Twitter, so it must be true. The USPS delivers more mail/packages every 16 days than FedEx or UPS does in a year. Save the post office. Buy some stamps or a t-shirt. Read more here.

3. It has rarely been my intention to break the news, but more, my goal to spread information. Some of you may find this next story a bit boring. I used to make it a habit to predict who I thought was going to “win” the Vice Presidential nomination. I have Dumps from years past where I track the horse race like it’s some metric that’s going to actually impact the election. I have wised up in the last few years, caring less about the race and more about the outcome. Biden selected Kamala Harris, the odds on favorite for the past few months recently, and it will likely make little difference.

Find me an undecided voter who now, because of her selection, will say: Biden is my guy!

Regardless, I do like to read the machinations behind decision-making. So, the NYT story about how Joe came to select Kamala is interesting. For my personal sake, most of note is the fear that the Biden campaign had with Tammy Duckworth’s history. Duckworth, born in Thailand to an American father and Thai mother, was effectively eliminated from consideration for fear that there would be a few states where she might be barred from appearing on the ballot due to her status of being born abroad. I guess this means that Eliot, while American, will have a hard time being Vice President because America is full of xenophobic dickholes, and scared politicians who won’t even take the chance to fight them. If Biden liked her so much, he should have picked her. Instead, the xenophobes won.

I think Harris is a fine choice, but there is undoubtedly a case for a more progressive candidate to have been the selection. And then, I remember that it doesn’t really matter one way or the other. For what it’s worth: Fox News is having a tough time with the Harris pick too. They paint her as both too harsh on crime (the “Kamala is a cop” refrain) and also so liberal as to want to abolish the police. The brain trust at Fox also has Judge Jeanine Pirro suggesting that come November, Biden won’t even be on the ticket because “something is going to happen.”

One thing is for sure, if you take a look at betting odds for 2024, Harris is the likely favorite to be the Democratic candidate. Tucker Carlson is my guess for her opponent. Things to look forward to. If you’re so inclined, you can read it here: Biden-Harris

**We appreciate all the mail you bring!**

4. A friend of mine told me that one of the things he enjoys reading the Dumps is that in one paragraph, I am drinking a gin and tonic; the next, I am sipping on coffee three days later. The dump is not a snapshot of a moment but rather a collection of opportunities I have to sit down and write about something I have seen, read, heard, or experienced in the last few days. The day of Eliot’s long nap was nearly a week ago. Last night, he woke up at 11:30 wailing, and at 3:30 wailing. We went for a really long walk at 6:50, and now, it’s just after 9:15, and I was supposed to have a meeting, but someone canceled. Yesterday as I was putting what I thought was the finishing touches on this piece, I fell down a rabbit hole. It sidetracked my writing and editing. I will share the story that sent me down this hole and offer a cautionary tale with it.

Twinsthenewtrend is a set of twins from Indiana who listen to songs, ostensibly for the first time, and react. For the most part, these are songs that you or I have heard dozens of times, but for these twenty-one-year-olds remain totally foreign. The recommendations come from the comments on their other videos. As I went through the archives, it was funny to see the guys hoping to get to their first 1000 followers or their first 10000. They now have close to 500,000 subscribers to this channel, and they try to listen to a new song every few days. I read about them here in a piece from the New Yorker, but honestly, you can skip the story and jump directly into the videos. It is sometimes hard to fathom two guys, aged 21, never hearing a song like “Hey Ya,” but here they are reacting to it. Some of my favorites from yesterday’s deep dive included: The Fugees “Ready or Not,” Dolly Parton “Jolene,” Radiohead “Creep.” They bring joy to hearing songs you like, and you can watch them react to things you have taken for granted in songs. Hope you enjoy it nearly as much as I did.

Some of you only get this far into your readings to see photos of my adorable son. I get it. One of my friends the other day told me they liked Eliot more than they like me, and you know what, I get it. Here are some photos and videos that document what we’ve been up to in the last few weeks.