It was my second week back at my school. We’ve been training for virtual teaching. Sipping from a fire hose of instruction. We offer both and it’s overwhelming situation. Children start Monday and our numbers are 60% in school.
Thank you not only for current updates but educating me along the way! A colleague who gets her news from talk radio, started about how unfair the wealth tax would be. Well let me tell you about the wealth tax under Eisenhower! Then she moved on to why we shouldn’t give enough unemployment to make it more profitable to stay home. Tee hee hee! By the end of the argument, I suggested she become better informed about the issues. I recommend you and Robert Reich for starters!
Back to my measly research to figure out how in Texas the AG Paxton, and TEA’s Mike Morath, as well as Gov Abbott have forced schools open in a fatal pandemic. I hope I make it! I haven’t seen my daughter since Christmas, she’s in Queens. And my son is going with me to get my will and power of attorney notarized today. All to teach elementary art.
Keep it coming! I need to hear rational intelligent information! 💙
Thank you for "taking up oxygen", as Heather says, and educating your colleague on the subject of wealth tax and unemployment. You are an educator of all ages. Stay safe and be well💙
A lifelong friend I’ve known since I was 3! Posted a chart of all the things Democrats want to take away from Republicans. I said no that’s not true. This is just spreading fear and I don’t know one Democrat that has asked for any of these things. He said no one has ever been so rude to tell him he’s wrong. Well let me be the first and I’m a teacher it’s my job! 😆. I wish I could say more especially at work but it’s considered bad form to express political opinions in a school. Ridiculous! Time educate! 💙
I agree with your comments. After reading them, I thought perhaps I would share the experience of my own family. The following is from a letter I sent to a local candidate for office in our Texas House after she asked for my views on school reopening here in Texas.
One of my daughters is both head of the guidance department and an assistant director for a charter school in Orlando, FL. Her school is a K through 12 school for children with various learning and emotional challenges. She is also a class advisor for the high school students. When the virus first arose in China now almost a year ago, even before its spread to the U.S., her school began preparations for the potential eventuality of a need to go to remote learning. As you can imagine with many of the children in the school who are “one the spectrum” to one degree or another, remote learning can be particularly challenging for the students, teachers, and the parents as well. They developed and tested detailed plans, shared those early with the parents explaining carefully the procedures for the various contingencies, and getting buy-in from everyone well before the need to actually implement remote learning. Every child had access to broadband internet, even if it required scholarship funding to make certain it was available. Every child was provided an iPad and they practiced remote learning procedures in classrooms prior to actually needing to implement those procedures. They even provided evening classes to prepare the parents as well. Once it became obvious that they would need to switch from in-person classes to remote learning the transition was relatively smooth and successful. They actually became a case study for how to do remote learning for other schools and were featured on the local news for how they prepared and how parents, teachers, and students were doing with it all.
So, now with the approach of a new school year just starting and with Florida still in the throes of the Coronavirus and with significant outbreaks and hot spots, you would think her school would be well prepared. And they are. However, because Florida has the same type of weak Republican leadership and a Republican governor trying to please Trump, they now are mandated to return to in-person schooling with no ability to opt collectively as a school, or even individually for families preferring remote learning. Students, parents, and teachers are all very concerned and feel this is a failure on the part of the state's leaders. Most local school districts and schools were not given an option. A number of teachers have resigned or retired. Some families have opted for homeschooling out of fear. My daughter and the other administrators and teachers are doing their best for the kids and families. But no one, no one is happy or feels safe. They all feel as if they are walking through a live minefield. This did not have to happen. They were as well prepared for excellence in remote learning as they could possibly be in order to provide an excellent learning experience for the kids and safety for all. They were literally a case study in how to do remote learning well.
This is what Republican leadership brings to families in its efforts to please the narcissist in chief in the White House.
So, how do I feel about this issue? Yes, my family's most personal experience is with the same type of weak leadership but in our case, it is a Republican governor in a different state, Florida. But the story here is not much different. I do not have a close touch with how well prepared schools are here in Texas for remote learning or to provide a safe return experience. But, I sense they are not nearly well enough prepared. There simply has not been enough time or money available to do it well. It would appear from what I can see there has also not been enough thought and planning.
Our children’s education, health, and safety have to be among the most important responsibilities of the government and our leaders.
No way am I an expert on art, but since we've been on this roller-coaster ride, I have been thinking more than ever art and music are so important for these times. Good luck, Denise!
And a reminder that those of us who give our lives and souls to provide that art to the people who need it in these times (especially in my discipline of theatre/ music) are struggling mightily now because we cannot do what we live for: perform live. Performing organisations of every stripe, from professional down to local amateur groups, artists who provide what so many people yearn for now, many of these organisations the world over are in very dire financial straits. Not only have our sources of revenue been totally shut down--and I fear many many will not survive--but we can't do what we have spent our lives working for, starving for, training for, sacrificing for...what we LOVE most: being onstage in front of YOU giving our all. We can't do that, and it's killing us. We're trying our best to adapt and there are some creative ways some are managing to still get their art out there, but know how badly we R-E-A-L-L-Y want to be able to do this live. Theatre companies, opera companies, ballet companies the world over, all of us are desperately wanting to be able to get back to our livelihoods. People NEED art, in all its disciplines, right now more than ever and it pains us that we can't provide that LIVE. Let's just hope that we can survive all this intact and we as performing artists can get back to doing what we love and know best.
“Science will get us out of this, Art will get us through it!” Mo Willems.
I usually spend a big part of my summer in New York with my daughter going to art museums and we always go to Shakespeare in the Park. If you know of a charity to help fund the arts could you give the link? I can’t give big but I give what I can! 💙
There is a reason why we find paintings and artwork from the distant reaches of the past on cave walls and not accounting spreadsheets. We do need art. We always have.
And I would often ask my students, budding singers and/or actors: "Why art?" What is it? Why is it? Why do we need it? Think in the broadest, most basic ways. I like to play the 6-year-old asking imponderable questions to get people back to basics. (I think most parents can attest to children sometimes asking questions that defy easy answers, eh?) I would always tell them that part of becoming an artist is coming to a basic understanding of why it is we do what we do. It can help put a neophyte artist on a path to developing into a mature artist. You have to light that fire that will spur them onward. Again, I may have quoted this before, but my philosophy in teaching in my field was best summed up in this quote by Plutarch: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
Reminds me of seeing a piece about musicians performing in a European airport with strict public health limits—audience of one person at a time seated 20 feet away.
Art feeds the soul. As we figure out how to sustain it and do it safely, we also have the dilemma of our pre-pandemic notions about how too much screen time is unhealthy.
Thanks! Don’t see myself as an essential worker. I think we’re seen as managers of the child warehouse. I told my colleague the rich don’t make their money. If they did we wouldn’t need to be back at work!
Poisoning. Tax returns. Q-anon. Fasting as a donation strategy. DeJoy, USPS, and dead baby chickens. Ravaged Iowa with no help for homeowners or farmers. Double hurricanes in the gulf for the first time in recorded history. California burning down. And all this is a "quiet" news day. Not long ago any ONE of these would have been front page headlines. Now, with the firehose flow of bad news that we are living with, most of us are so overwhelmed that we can just barely register that each new thing truly is as awful as it sounds. And please, dear God, don't forget that we now have almost 180,000 dead Americans. In less than a year. We are traumatized as a country, as a people. We must pull together as one nation to get through this or surely we are lost.
I agree that we are all traumatized by the daily onslaught of horrible news. But seeing the list you provided, I understand why some of my friends no longer read the news. Just too crazy making!
Mother nature is distinctly unhappy with one of its species it would seem. Perhaps she has an immune system to protect herself from invasive infections!
There was a margarine commercial back in the 1960s, where a woman representing Mother Nature is presented with some bread with the margarine on it and rhapsodized at her 'wonderful butter'. When told it wasn't her butter, but said margarine, she flew into a rage, caused lightning to strike, and said, ominously, "It's not NICE to fool Mother Nature!!" Who remembers that commercial?
Wow! I really must be losing it. First, I thought the commercial was almost a decade earlier, and I sure don't remember an elephant. I seem to remember bunnies! Thanks for posting, Nancy.
I think about it often. It's as though she's saying 'You don't get it, do you? You just keep barreling through your days wreaking havoc, selfishly ignoring the beauty and fragility of the world around you. Well I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it any longer!'
Agree! I love when people say, "Save the planet!" Yes, we are damaging it (to say nothing of the plant and animals species we've wiped out), but in the long run, in a face-off between Earth and humans, Earth will win. What makes humans think for even a moment that they are mightier than nature? The virus is showing us the answer to that question even now. Are we getting it?
I've said something similar before, but not as a joke - that the virus could be nature's way of ridding itself of this human 'infestation' that is threatening it's existence.
Funny you should mention it. When I wake at 3am for my nightly trip down the hall, I check my phone for the time, as an excuse to check what's happened since retiring the night before. And look! 3 hours later and I am still here. Ugh!
If they haven't ...given current worries...maybe they should! I am just finishing Timthy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom and he has significantly increased my worries
I would like to read this and plan to order it as soon as I am finished with my current reading backlog. What is your biggest takeaway from this book? What do you think the most important message is that it conveys?
I’ve let everything I know about healthy sleep fall by the wayside because the news is so compelling, as is this group’s commentary. “Do as I say, not as I do” on this one!
That said, I do hope Heather takes a break this weekend!
I think the infection can be better described as neoliberal capitalism... human societies have lived in balance with the planet for many thousands of years.
Indeed they did before the economy, population and "science took off in Eurpope 500 or so years ago driving the forces that put an end to that harmony.
No sympathy necessary, though it is appreciated. I am well versed in sleep hygiene and understand about screen use and you are absolutely correct. I’ve tried to create a personal ‘rule’ that I don’t look at email or social media after dinner. It has helped but I broke that rule last night and ended up awake for much later than I should have been. The news does, indeed, provide fodder for nightmares.
Funny thing...last night (or should I saw this morning around 6am, when after 3 hours of obsessively reading everything I could find on what matters*, (and I am a pretty fast reader!?) I fell asleep and had a crazy dream with HCR in it!?n whoa...not so much garlic before bed tonight!!!
As the Earth has demonstrated repeatedly over the course of geologic history it adapts and survives incredible changes and disasters. It simply evolves. Life however, despite Darwin’s theory of evolution, has a far more difficult time adapting to those changes. Species disappear or diminish significantly and are replaced by others more in harmony with the new conditions.
Each time I hear the cry of “Save the Planet,” I remind those crying out that it is actually not the planet that is endangered, but the life that inhabits it, including us ... people.
Not for the first time recently, I'm forced to face how much the various systems we've come to rely on, depend on everything working 'just right'. Heather's description of the lack of prisoner-firefighters is but one example. It's like watching a giant Jinga tower have pieces removed in real time, only those pieces are bits of our lives foundations.
From the destruction of political norms forcing us to realize how much our system of governance relies on the decency and integrity of our fellows, to the distribution of our food supplies, medicine, etc., all of it is being highlighted as fragile and interconnected.
Yes, over recent decades, our systems of caring have been stretched too thin by "cost cutting" which brought to the extremes we now live with, means one person doing the job of two people, being paid half as much, and with no back up or margin of safety.
Thanks Heather for the news and providing a forum for conversation. As a scientist involved in COVID public health outreach, I want to offer a heads-up to your readers that smoke from forest fires (and other forms of air pollution) have been documented to increase the risks of morbidity and mortality from viral infections including COVID-19. The mechanism is that the tiny airborne particles interfere with innate immune protection against viral infections. Technical details (open access-free download) can be found at the following link. Please feel free to share. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00232/full
As a longtime resident of South Florida, I've experienced many hurricanes, and as my dad was a pilot (got his license in 1936) I grew up with a bit of a weather eye. There are a couple of excellent meteorologists I follow in Miami; they are predicting that the tropical depression, Laura, is not likely to become a hurricane. Not only has it never really organized due to dry air and wind shear, it looks like it will travel directly over the three largest islands in the Caribbean. I feel for the folks in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba, but they've been through far worse! Hard to believe Hispaniola has 10,000-foot mountains, which tear up a storm. By the time Laura emerges into the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday-Monday from passing over Cuba, it may not even have the juice to reform as a tropical storm. We have been spared so far this season due to the Saharan dust damping down the Atlantic. But there's plenty of time left in The Season! Anyway, hope my weather guessers are right...because one never knows about hurricanes...
You might also want to check out Tropical Tidbits. Levy is a PhD student at U of F (I think that's the correct school) and provides amazingly detailed weather analysis.
The fires in Northern California are about the destroy the Napa Valley California wine industry. These are coming on top of the fires two years ago that nearly wiped out the region. (fortunately TJ's "Two Buck Chuck" comes from the central valley, no fires there)
McSally's as good a politician as she was a fighter pilot. I know two A-10 pilots who were around her, they told me the only reason she wasn't grounded for technical incompetence as a pilot was her threat to get the AF "bad publicity" for firing a woman pilot. Of course, once she made Colonel and got into Wing leadership, incompetence in the cockpit was expected (the days of wing leaders leading from a cockpit in the front of the formation ended with Korea).
Expectations are really low for the GOP convention. The convention website looks like it was designed by a teenager who TikTok won't be hiring as an influencer, Their "announced guests" include one-hit draft dodging entertainment wonder Ted Nugent and his machine guns, "F" list talent Scott Baiao, who's got the time to go there now after the "movie" he's starring in, produced by Pure Pix (the fundiescum who got busted for copyright infringement for releasing DVDs of movies cut to "G" ratings) got shut down for not following the production requirements for shooting a movie during the Pandemic, and those two gun-wielding ambulance chasers from St. Louis. But then, no entertainer with any talent has ever been a Republican to begin with.
I figure I'll be able to finish "A Very Stable Genius" and get through Rachel Maddow's "Blowout" with the cable news blackout this week.
Ouch. You managed multiple paragraphs on "environmental catastrophes" without mentioning the words "climate change." You probably assume that all your readers understand the connection! But we have to pound it in, because many people don't make the connection, or understand the need to act fast and decisively (witness the DNC backing off on stopping fossil fuel subsidies.)
My Republican friend snorts at how the phrase "global warming" has been changed to "climate change" to make it sound less "liberal" and that summers are no hotter than they ever were. I didn't say anything, but maybe at some point I'll mention that neither term refers so much to whether we humans can feel that summers any hotter than years before but more to the melting of ice caps and venerable glaciers, and that polar bears, for instance, are losing their habitats because of such melting. These are conditions that we non-scientists do not see or feel but are exactly indications of global warming.
If we do not commence soon to take better care of our environment, we may all be attending protests and still crying out "I can't breathe," but for an entirely different reason.
Almost 30 years ago I wrote an school paper (last year of school before uni) about the Greenhouse Effect as was most people called it back then. I'm glad no one told me then that 30 years later there would still be push back and that so very little would have been done...
I don’t think people out of work care about globalwarmingclimatechange. I want to make all the necessary changes too, but am I selfish in wanting people to not lose their jobs in doing this? I would love to change over quickly and wisely.
The really nasty politics era was mainly ushered in by (another) Georgian, Newt Gingrich. Reagan, in a way, paved the way for the likes of Gingrich, who then in turn begat (fill in the space). The GOP has been in a slow steady decline for decades and we're now seeing just how low it is in danger of going. This Qanon crap is spreading like a cancer and it is remarkable, indeed scary, how many people latch on to such stuff. Talk about "sheeple"! I do feel that Ms Greene, another Georgian (we DO seem to breed them, don't we??) and her ilk, are going to hasten the end of the Republican party and will surely pave the way to its consignment to the political wilderness for a long time. I just wish we could get to that point NOW, rather then having to live through it all. Voting in massive numbers on November 3rd will certainly be a start.
For what it's worth, my mom, soon to be 97, and one of the old style Reagan/Poppy Bush Republicans, is absolutely horrified by what has happened/is happening to the party. She has said on more than one occasion, "they're going to pay for this dearly...they're just plain nuts." She won't be voting (hasn't since McCain in '08 and she detested Palin) because of where they're headed. I think she's not the only one. She's not fond of Biden (even as a 97-year-old, she thinks he's too old!), though she does agree with most of what he's for, so she'll sit this one out.
My uncle, who died 4 years ago at age 86, was a professional Republican politician until he achieved his life long ambition to become a judge. He told me that he had voted for Barack Obama because the idea of Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the Presidency over-rode his party preferences.
I was so offended that of all the talented women they could have chosen, the picked Sarah Palin. They hate women so much, they picked someone so unfit for the VP position and would be least likely to be viable to run for President.
Nah...she is just kind of content to sit it all out now. I know she really likes the Obamas, and was less enamored of Clinton--she still doesn't think a woman should be President, which I'm sure in her case is a generational thing...I'm workin' on her!--but I think she does like what she has seen and heard of Harris. She's been voting Republican for so long (since 1948), I think the idea of voting for a Democrat, even if she likes them, is almost unthinkable!
On of the weather disasters getting almost no attention outside the immediate affected area is a 25,000-acre fire in far western Colorado. Thus fire is difficult to fight because of the rugged terrain.
Heather, thanks for the update on Martha McSally. It is very painful to watch her endless TV ad attacks on Mark Kelly in Arizona. Fact checking quickly points out that these are lies and ridiculous distortions of the truth. And Mark Kelly never shoots back. His ads are all about the issues and his plans to address them. Whether he will be a good Senator or not, we don't know yet, but I am clear that he will at least be an honorable one. That would be a great start in the Senate. Certainly what I would expect from an Astronaut and the husband of our beloved Gabby Giffords.
Thank you for leading with the environment. We refuse to learn. On the subject of QAnon, I have noticed that most Republican attacks are projection, and we've certainly seen pedophilia.
Heather, as always, thanks for the concise round up for the day. Interesting in that there are so many facets of unrest in the country today, so many fires to put out, literally.
Hoping this is the Holy Spirit’s way of slapping us silly for those who did not vote in 2016–“see, this is what you get if you don’t participate.” Trouble is, the rest of us get it,too.
I'm sure there is no significance to this but it seems strange that the City of Chauvin, LA, targeted as the first-ever site of a double hurricane, shares the same name as the police officer Chauvin who was charged with the murder of George Floyd.
With the possibility of two hurricanes this week of the Republican National Convention, we may see rain on the outdoor events like Melania's speech in the Rose Garden and DT's nomination speech on the South lawn. Makes one think of the Bible verse Psalm 2:4 "He who sits in Heaven laughs." Isn't it delicious that the climate crisis may rain on DTs parade?
It was my second week back at my school. We’ve been training for virtual teaching. Sipping from a fire hose of instruction. We offer both and it’s overwhelming situation. Children start Monday and our numbers are 60% in school.
Thank you not only for current updates but educating me along the way! A colleague who gets her news from talk radio, started about how unfair the wealth tax would be. Well let me tell you about the wealth tax under Eisenhower! Then she moved on to why we shouldn’t give enough unemployment to make it more profitable to stay home. Tee hee hee! By the end of the argument, I suggested she become better informed about the issues. I recommend you and Robert Reich for starters!
Back to my measly research to figure out how in Texas the AG Paxton, and TEA’s Mike Morath, as well as Gov Abbott have forced schools open in a fatal pandemic. I hope I make it! I haven’t seen my daughter since Christmas, she’s in Queens. And my son is going with me to get my will and power of attorney notarized today. All to teach elementary art.
Keep it coming! I need to hear rational intelligent information! 💙
Thank you for "taking up oxygen", as Heather says, and educating your colleague on the subject of wealth tax and unemployment. You are an educator of all ages. Stay safe and be well💙
A lifelong friend I’ve known since I was 3! Posted a chart of all the things Democrats want to take away from Republicans. I said no that’s not true. This is just spreading fear and I don’t know one Democrat that has asked for any of these things. He said no one has ever been so rude to tell him he’s wrong. Well let me be the first and I’m a teacher it’s my job! 😆. I wish I could say more especially at work but it’s considered bad form to express political opinions in a school. Ridiculous! Time educate! 💙
Amen to that!
I agree with your comments. After reading them, I thought perhaps I would share the experience of my own family. The following is from a letter I sent to a local candidate for office in our Texas House after she asked for my views on school reopening here in Texas.
_____________________________________________________________________
One of my daughters is both head of the guidance department and an assistant director for a charter school in Orlando, FL. Her school is a K through 12 school for children with various learning and emotional challenges. She is also a class advisor for the high school students. When the virus first arose in China now almost a year ago, even before its spread to the U.S., her school began preparations for the potential eventuality of a need to go to remote learning. As you can imagine with many of the children in the school who are “one the spectrum” to one degree or another, remote learning can be particularly challenging for the students, teachers, and the parents as well. They developed and tested detailed plans, shared those early with the parents explaining carefully the procedures for the various contingencies, and getting buy-in from everyone well before the need to actually implement remote learning. Every child had access to broadband internet, even if it required scholarship funding to make certain it was available. Every child was provided an iPad and they practiced remote learning procedures in classrooms prior to actually needing to implement those procedures. They even provided evening classes to prepare the parents as well. Once it became obvious that they would need to switch from in-person classes to remote learning the transition was relatively smooth and successful. They actually became a case study for how to do remote learning for other schools and were featured on the local news for how they prepared and how parents, teachers, and students were doing with it all.
So, now with the approach of a new school year just starting and with Florida still in the throes of the Coronavirus and with significant outbreaks and hot spots, you would think her school would be well prepared. And they are. However, because Florida has the same type of weak Republican leadership and a Republican governor trying to please Trump, they now are mandated to return to in-person schooling with no ability to opt collectively as a school, or even individually for families preferring remote learning. Students, parents, and teachers are all very concerned and feel this is a failure on the part of the state's leaders. Most local school districts and schools were not given an option. A number of teachers have resigned or retired. Some families have opted for homeschooling out of fear. My daughter and the other administrators and teachers are doing their best for the kids and families. But no one, no one is happy or feels safe. They all feel as if they are walking through a live minefield. This did not have to happen. They were as well prepared for excellence in remote learning as they could possibly be in order to provide an excellent learning experience for the kids and safety for all. They were literally a case study in how to do remote learning well.
This is what Republican leadership brings to families in its efforts to please the narcissist in chief in the White House.
So, how do I feel about this issue? Yes, my family's most personal experience is with the same type of weak leadership but in our case, it is a Republican governor in a different state, Florida. But the story here is not much different. I do not have a close touch with how well prepared schools are here in Texas for remote learning or to provide a safe return experience. But, I sense they are not nearly well enough prepared. There simply has not been enough time or money available to do it well. It would appear from what I can see there has also not been enough thought and planning.
Our children’s education, health, and safety have to be among the most important responsibilities of the government and our leaders.
No way am I an expert on art, but since we've been on this roller-coaster ride, I have been thinking more than ever art and music are so important for these times. Good luck, Denise!
And a reminder that those of us who give our lives and souls to provide that art to the people who need it in these times (especially in my discipline of theatre/ music) are struggling mightily now because we cannot do what we live for: perform live. Performing organisations of every stripe, from professional down to local amateur groups, artists who provide what so many people yearn for now, many of these organisations the world over are in very dire financial straits. Not only have our sources of revenue been totally shut down--and I fear many many will not survive--but we can't do what we have spent our lives working for, starving for, training for, sacrificing for...what we LOVE most: being onstage in front of YOU giving our all. We can't do that, and it's killing us. We're trying our best to adapt and there are some creative ways some are managing to still get their art out there, but know how badly we R-E-A-L-L-Y want to be able to do this live. Theatre companies, opera companies, ballet companies the world over, all of us are desperately wanting to be able to get back to our livelihoods. People NEED art, in all its disciplines, right now more than ever and it pains us that we can't provide that LIVE. Let's just hope that we can survive all this intact and we as performing artists can get back to doing what we love and know best.
“Science will get us out of this, Art will get us through it!” Mo Willems.
I usually spend a big part of my summer in New York with my daughter going to art museums and we always go to Shakespeare in the Park. If you know of a charity to help fund the arts could you give the link? I can’t give big but I give what I can! 💙
There is a reason why we find paintings and artwork from the distant reaches of the past on cave walls and not accounting spreadsheets. We do need art. We always have.
And I would often ask my students, budding singers and/or actors: "Why art?" What is it? Why is it? Why do we need it? Think in the broadest, most basic ways. I like to play the 6-year-old asking imponderable questions to get people back to basics. (I think most parents can attest to children sometimes asking questions that defy easy answers, eh?) I would always tell them that part of becoming an artist is coming to a basic understanding of why it is we do what we do. It can help put a neophyte artist on a path to developing into a mature artist. You have to light that fire that will spur them onward. Again, I may have quoted this before, but my philosophy in teaching in my field was best summed up in this quote by Plutarch: "The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled."
If you have access to the NYT, this article from today illustrates my point. Live music IS better!
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/arts/music/classical-music-jack-quartet.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20200822
I gasped (in a good way) when I saw the photos...the audience, the artists!
Reminds me of seeing a piece about musicians performing in a European airport with strict public health limits—audience of one person at a time seated 20 feet away.
Art feeds the soul. As we figure out how to sustain it and do it safely, we also have the dilemma of our pre-pandemic notions about how too much screen time is unhealthy.
Of course live music is better - just not better enough to warrant killing the musicians and/or the audience.
Thanks! Teaching art is best job ever! This year is going to be so different. Especially since teachers just want to get out alive. Not kidding!
Wishing all teachers and As well as all essential workers all good health. Thank you.
Thanks! Don’t see myself as an essential worker. I think we’re seen as managers of the child warehouse. I told my colleague the rich don’t make their money. If they did we wouldn’t need to be back at work!
Poisoning. Tax returns. Q-anon. Fasting as a donation strategy. DeJoy, USPS, and dead baby chickens. Ravaged Iowa with no help for homeowners or farmers. Double hurricanes in the gulf for the first time in recorded history. California burning down. And all this is a "quiet" news day. Not long ago any ONE of these would have been front page headlines. Now, with the firehose flow of bad news that we are living with, most of us are so overwhelmed that we can just barely register that each new thing truly is as awful as it sounds. And please, dear God, don't forget that we now have almost 180,000 dead Americans. In less than a year. We are traumatized as a country, as a people. We must pull together as one nation to get through this or surely we are lost.
I agree that we are all traumatized by the daily onslaught of horrible news. But seeing the list you provided, I understand why some of my friends no longer read the news. Just too crazy making!
Mother nature is distinctly unhappy with one of its species it would seem. Perhaps she has an immune system to protect herself from invasive infections!
There was a margarine commercial back in the 1960s, where a woman representing Mother Nature is presented with some bread with the margarine on it and rhapsodized at her 'wonderful butter'. When told it wasn't her butter, but said margarine, she flew into a rage, caused lightning to strike, and said, ominously, "It's not NICE to fool Mother Nature!!" Who remembers that commercial?
I've thought of it often in succeeding years.
Everything is better with Blue Bonnet, on it.
Was it a Blue Bonnet ad? I don't remember the brand - so maybe advertising isn't all it's cracked up to be? LOL
No, I just looked it up. It was Chiffon!
So much for long term memory being the last to go............hrrrmph
I've channeled that commercial lots of times over the years!
Sandra, Thanks for posting.
I didn’t live in the US in the 70s -, so hadn’t seen it.
“It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature!"
(Chiffon Margarine - Commercial, 1977)
Dena Dietrich as Mother Nature
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijVijP-CDVI
Wow! I really must be losing it. First, I thought the commercial was almost a decade earlier, and I sure don't remember an elephant. I seem to remember bunnies! Thanks for posting, Nancy.
I think that came in the 1970s. But yup, I do remember it!
I think about it often. It's as though she's saying 'You don't get it, do you? You just keep barreling through your days wreaking havoc, selfishly ignoring the beauty and fragility of the world around you. Well I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it any longer!'
Yes, Mother Nature will survive, we as human beings will not. She will heal herself.
Agree! I love when people say, "Save the planet!" Yes, we are damaging it (to say nothing of the plant and animals species we've wiped out), but in the long run, in a face-off between Earth and humans, Earth will win. What makes humans think for even a moment that they are mightier than nature? The virus is showing us the answer to that question even now. Are we getting it?
Yes. There's a reason I've chosen not to have children...
I've said something similar before, but not as a joke - that the virus could be nature's way of ridding itself of this human 'infestation' that is threatening it's existence.
It wasn't a joke!
My apologies! I misinterpreted. 4:18 am my time, blaming it on the fact that I should be sleeping instead of obsessively reading news!
As a side note - I genuinely wonder if others have as much trouble sleeping these days as I do.
Funny you should mention it. When I wake at 3am for my nightly trip down the hall, I check my phone for the time, as an excuse to check what's happened since retiring the night before. And look! 3 hours later and I am still here. Ugh!
If they haven't ...given current worries...maybe they should! I am just finishing Timthy Snyder's The Road to Unfreedom and he has significantly increased my worries
Feel free to give book recs anytime. This is one of my main sources for new titles.
I would like to read this and plan to order it as soon as I am finished with my current reading backlog. What is your biggest takeaway from this book? What do you think the most important message is that it conveys?
Absolutely! I was awake at 2:15 this morning reading news under the covers.
Is that the adult version of the kid who’s been put to bed but gets a flashlight and reads under the covers? ☺️
Yes.
I’ve let everything I know about healthy sleep fall by the wayside because the news is so compelling, as is this group’s commentary. “Do as I say, not as I do” on this one!
That said, I do hope Heather takes a break this weekend!
The invasive infection that i was talking about was not Covid 19 etc but us!
I think the infection can be better described as neoliberal capitalism... human societies have lived in balance with the planet for many thousands of years.
Indeed they did before the economy, population and "science took off in Eurpope 500 or so years ago driving the forces that put an end to that harmony.
Yes, agreed! That’s what I meant by “human ‘infestation’”.
Flood, famine, war and disease.....
The 7 plagues of Egypt ? Or the 4 horsemen of Apocalypse?
All my sympathies go to you...but screens have a deleterious effect on your sleep as well as providing material for nightmares.
No sympathy necessary, though it is appreciated. I am well versed in sleep hygiene and understand about screen use and you are absolutely correct. I’ve tried to create a personal ‘rule’ that I don’t look at email or social media after dinner. It has helped but I broke that rule last night and ended up awake for much later than I should have been. The news does, indeed, provide fodder for nightmares.
Funny thing...last night (or should I saw this morning around 6am, when after 3 hours of obsessively reading everything I could find on what matters*, (and I am a pretty fast reader!?) I fell asleep and had a crazy dream with HCR in it!?n whoa...not so much garlic before bed tonight!!!
Oh dear yes... I know all too well 😕
As the Earth has demonstrated repeatedly over the course of geologic history it adapts and survives incredible changes and disasters. It simply evolves. Life however, despite Darwin’s theory of evolution, has a far more difficult time adapting to those changes. Species disappear or diminish significantly and are replaced by others more in harmony with the new conditions.
Each time I hear the cry of “Save the Planet,” I remind those crying out that it is actually not the planet that is endangered, but the life that inhabits it, including us ... people.
It's auto-correction which happens with most systems we observe.
The mostly panned 2008 Shyamalan movie "The Happening" had that theme. Perhaps COVID-19 is an immune response of Nature.
Not for the first time recently, I'm forced to face how much the various systems we've come to rely on, depend on everything working 'just right'. Heather's description of the lack of prisoner-firefighters is but one example. It's like watching a giant Jinga tower have pieces removed in real time, only those pieces are bits of our lives foundations.
From the destruction of political norms forcing us to realize how much our system of governance relies on the decency and integrity of our fellows, to the distribution of our food supplies, medicine, etc., all of it is being highlighted as fragile and interconnected.
“Jinga tower”, absolutely perfect visualization.
Yes, over recent decades, our systems of caring have been stretched too thin by "cost cutting" which brought to the extremes we now live with, means one person doing the job of two people, being paid half as much, and with no back up or margin of safety.
Bingo in re jenga tower. That has been my visual for this admin from the git go.
Thanks Heather for the news and providing a forum for conversation. As a scientist involved in COVID public health outreach, I want to offer a heads-up to your readers that smoke from forest fires (and other forms of air pollution) have been documented to increase the risks of morbidity and mortality from viral infections including COVID-19. The mechanism is that the tiny airborne particles interfere with innate immune protection against viral infections. Technical details (open access-free download) can be found at the following link. Please feel free to share. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00232/full
Thank you for this, Mardi. Will share.
As a longtime resident of South Florida, I've experienced many hurricanes, and as my dad was a pilot (got his license in 1936) I grew up with a bit of a weather eye. There are a couple of excellent meteorologists I follow in Miami; they are predicting that the tropical depression, Laura, is not likely to become a hurricane. Not only has it never really organized due to dry air and wind shear, it looks like it will travel directly over the three largest islands in the Caribbean. I feel for the folks in Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, and Cuba, but they've been through far worse! Hard to believe Hispaniola has 10,000-foot mountains, which tear up a storm. By the time Laura emerges into the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday-Monday from passing over Cuba, it may not even have the juice to reform as a tropical storm. We have been spared so far this season due to the Saharan dust damping down the Atlantic. But there's plenty of time left in The Season! Anyway, hope my weather guessers are right...because one never knows about hurricanes...
You might also want to check out Tropical Tidbits. Levy is a PhD student at U of F (I think that's the correct school) and provides amazingly detailed weather analysis.
Here’s an up and coming weather geek who agrees:
https://twitter.com/matthewcappucci/status/1297005479776997376?s=21
Wow, you sure know your stuff!
I totally lied: [Levy has] been tracking tropical cyclones closely since 2002, and [has] a Ph.D. in meteorology from Florida State University.
https://www.tropicaltidbits.com
I hope they don’t materialize !
The fires in Northern California are about the destroy the Napa Valley California wine industry. These are coming on top of the fires two years ago that nearly wiped out the region. (fortunately TJ's "Two Buck Chuck" comes from the central valley, no fires there)
McSally's as good a politician as she was a fighter pilot. I know two A-10 pilots who were around her, they told me the only reason she wasn't grounded for technical incompetence as a pilot was her threat to get the AF "bad publicity" for firing a woman pilot. Of course, once she made Colonel and got into Wing leadership, incompetence in the cockpit was expected (the days of wing leaders leading from a cockpit in the front of the formation ended with Korea).
Expectations are really low for the GOP convention. The convention website looks like it was designed by a teenager who TikTok won't be hiring as an influencer, Their "announced guests" include one-hit draft dodging entertainment wonder Ted Nugent and his machine guns, "F" list talent Scott Baiao, who's got the time to go there now after the "movie" he's starring in, produced by Pure Pix (the fundiescum who got busted for copyright infringement for releasing DVDs of movies cut to "G" ratings) got shut down for not following the production requirements for shooting a movie during the Pandemic, and those two gun-wielding ambulance chasers from St. Louis. But then, no entertainer with any talent has ever been a Republican to begin with.
I figure I'll be able to finish "A Very Stable Genius" and get through Rachel Maddow's "Blowout" with the cable news blackout this week.
Read them both. They are very good.
Charles in Charge? Scraping the bottom of the actor barrel
Ouch. You managed multiple paragraphs on "environmental catastrophes" without mentioning the words "climate change." You probably assume that all your readers understand the connection! But we have to pound it in, because many people don't make the connection, or understand the need to act fast and decisively (witness the DNC backing off on stopping fossil fuel subsidies.)
My Republican friend snorts at how the phrase "global warming" has been changed to "climate change" to make it sound less "liberal" and that summers are no hotter than they ever were. I didn't say anything, but maybe at some point I'll mention that neither term refers so much to whether we humans can feel that summers any hotter than years before but more to the melting of ice caps and venerable glaciers, and that polar bears, for instance, are losing their habitats because of such melting. These are conditions that we non-scientists do not see or feel but are exactly indications of global warming.
Its anthropogenic atmospheric chemistry change, to be precise.
If we do not commence soon to take better care of our environment, we may all be attending protests and still crying out "I can't breathe," but for an entirely different reason.
The original phrase was indeed global warming. Deniers of human agency substituted 'climate change'. You are right about the science.
Almost 30 years ago I wrote an school paper (last year of school before uni) about the Greenhouse Effect as was most people called it back then. I'm glad no one told me then that 30 years later there would still be push back and that so very little would have been done...
I don’t think people out of work care about globalwarmingclimatechange. I want to make all the necessary changes too, but am I selfish in wanting people to not lose their jobs in doing this? I would love to change over quickly and wisely.
The successful election of a QAnon lunatic makes me think Republicanism is now in the late stage of a serious political syphilis infection.
It started with Reagan, who put a pleasant face on it, and it’s now terminal with Trump at the helm.
The really nasty politics era was mainly ushered in by (another) Georgian, Newt Gingrich. Reagan, in a way, paved the way for the likes of Gingrich, who then in turn begat (fill in the space). The GOP has been in a slow steady decline for decades and we're now seeing just how low it is in danger of going. This Qanon crap is spreading like a cancer and it is remarkable, indeed scary, how many people latch on to such stuff. Talk about "sheeple"! I do feel that Ms Greene, another Georgian (we DO seem to breed them, don't we??) and her ilk, are going to hasten the end of the Republican party and will surely pave the way to its consignment to the political wilderness for a long time. I just wish we could get to that point NOW, rather then having to live through it all. Voting in massive numbers on November 3rd will certainly be a start.
For what it's worth, my mom, soon to be 97, and one of the old style Reagan/Poppy Bush Republicans, is absolutely horrified by what has happened/is happening to the party. She has said on more than one occasion, "they're going to pay for this dearly...they're just plain nuts." She won't be voting (hasn't since McCain in '08 and she detested Palin) because of where they're headed. I think she's not the only one. She's not fond of Biden (even as a 97-year-old, she thinks he's too old!), though she does agree with most of what he's for, so she'll sit this one out.
My uncle, who died 4 years ago at age 86, was a professional Republican politician until he achieved his life long ambition to become a judge. He told me that he had voted for Barack Obama because the idea of Sarah Palin one heartbeat away from the Presidency over-rode his party preferences.
I was so offended that of all the talented women they could have chosen, the picked Sarah Palin. They hate women so much, they picked someone so unfit for the VP position and would be least likely to be viable to run for President.
Darn, your mom can’t make them pay dearly by casting a vote for the one she agrees with, instead of sitting it out? Without the votes, they don’t pay.
Nah...she is just kind of content to sit it all out now. I know she really likes the Obamas, and was less enamored of Clinton--she still doesn't think a woman should be President, which I'm sure in her case is a generational thing...I'm workin' on her!--but I think she does like what she has seen and heard of Harris. She's been voting Republican for so long (since 1948), I think the idea of voting for a Democrat, even if she likes them, is almost unthinkable!
On of the weather disasters getting almost no attention outside the immediate affected area is a 25,000-acre fire in far western Colorado. Thus fire is difficult to fight because of the rugged terrain.
https://coloradosun.com/2020/08/19/grizzly-creek-fire-threatening-colorado-river-western-water/?mc_cid=c14b523759&mc_eid=dd6296ca41
Heather, thanks for the update on Martha McSally. It is very painful to watch her endless TV ad attacks on Mark Kelly in Arizona. Fact checking quickly points out that these are lies and ridiculous distortions of the truth. And Mark Kelly never shoots back. His ads are all about the issues and his plans to address them. Whether he will be a good Senator or not, we don't know yet, but I am clear that he will at least be an honorable one. That would be a great start in the Senate. Certainly what I would expect from an Astronaut and the husband of our beloved Gabby Giffords.
Thank you for leading with the environment. We refuse to learn. On the subject of QAnon, I have noticed that most Republican attacks are projection, and we've certainly seen pedophilia.
The environment ought to be our prime topic of concern.
Heather, as always, thanks for the concise round up for the day. Interesting in that there are so many facets of unrest in the country today, so many fires to put out, literally.
Hoping this is the Holy Spirit’s way of slapping us silly for those who did not vote in 2016–“see, this is what you get if you don’t participate.” Trouble is, the rest of us get it,too.
Hilary Clinton should have started her speech with I told you so!
Not helping all those farmers in Iowa will do wonders for the Republican vote turnout in November.
I'm sure there is no significance to this but it seems strange that the City of Chauvin, LA, targeted as the first-ever site of a double hurricane, shares the same name as the police officer Chauvin who was charged with the murder of George Floyd.
With the possibility of two hurricanes this week of the Republican National Convention, we may see rain on the outdoor events like Melania's speech in the Rose Garden and DT's nomination speech on the South lawn. Makes one think of the Bible verse Psalm 2:4 "He who sits in Heaven laughs." Isn't it delicious that the climate crisis may rain on DTs parade?