If you need a cure for the pandemic/election blues, put the new Tom Petty reissue Wildflowers & All the Rest on shuffle and let the fifty-four (!) tracks wash over you . . . the original album is a masterpiece, and this sprawling, epic, and intimate collection of live tracks and demos, songs that were intended for another album and outtakes will take you to another world . . . another planet really, where Petty still lives and things are a whole lot mellower.
It Is Friday, Right?
This week has been a black hole of endless parent-teacher phone conferences, college recommendations, online training, tech support-- my device had a number of rogue apps on it, digitizing the curriculum, and soccer (but I did get some positive feedback: a couple administrative notes in my mailbox telling me to stop signing-in and signing-out at the same time . . . I sent a couple more irate emails-- which is becoming de rigeur for me this year-- and I was told that this is for building safety and security . . . so then I went to sign out at the end of the day like a good citizen-- though we haven't had to do this in my twenty-five years of teaching . . . and I learned that we don't have to sign out this week because of parent/teacher conferences!)
Much to the Chagrin of Our Beloved Leader
The migrant caravan disappeared, but the coronavirus didn't (although, to the chagrin of the Democrats, neither did QAnon . . . and it seems a number of Latino men are buying the inane narrative that Donald Trump-- the last bastion of manliness-- is bravely battling a ring of coastal-elite pedophiles . . . I wish I made that last bit up . . . but wow).
One For the Rollerbladers! Booyah!
Big news if you like to rollerblade and you live in Highland Park: they paved South Adelaide . . . I live on Valentine, which was paved a couple of years ago and is still smooth, so now-- aside from one bumpy hairpin curve, I have a contiguous 1.2 miles of smoothly paved rolling hills connected to my driveway . . . which is pretty sweet . . . wicked hella sweet . . . it's all that and a bag of chips . . . booyah!
A Coach's Notes on a JV Soccer Game
Some items I'd like to note for posterity about our home JV soccer game against South Plainfield on Wednesday:
1) we started the game with exactly eleven players because of sickness and a couple injuries;
2) our goalie was injured so my older son Alex-- one of our best defenders-- had to play goalie (he's a good goalie, but he hasn't played there in years, since he broke his thumb)
3) twenty minutes into the game, Max sprained his ankle, so we were down to ten players;
4) any time players are sick, we wonder if we are all going to wake up with coronavirus (so far, so good)
5) playing with ten is brutal-- Jake ran so much that he needed a sub . . . but I reminded him that we didn't have any subs; he told me he was going to puke and I advised him to get back defensively and just stand there; instead, he ran off the field and put his head into the trash can and threw up for a minute or two-- this was in full view of the fans-- and then, heroically, he went back into the game;
6) my son Ian has grown a couple inches and put on ten pounds in the last two weeks, which is great, but his feet are killing him-- they're a couple of sizes too large for his body-- so he couldn't really run by the end of the first half;
7) Ian went into the goal in the second half-- he hasn't played goalie since he was a little kid-- so this is the first game that both my children have played goalie in the same game;
8) we lost 5-0 . . . the best thing about Highland Park is you get plenty of playing time . . . but that can also be the worst thing about Highland Park;
9) Alex and I raced up to see the end of the varsity game . . . it went into overtime and we lost 2-1;
10) there were plenty of injuries on the varsity squad as well; a player got cleated in the temple, another may have broken his leg, another got a wicked cramp, etc.
11) I forgot the corner flags at the JV field and I didn't realize this until I was walking the dog in the park the next day . . . but luckily they were all still there; it's nice to live right next to the field at which I coach;
12) the next day at practice we had 19 able-bodied players-- for both JV and varsity-- and Ian didn't make until the end. his feet started to hurt again;
13) Ian came to acupuncture with me Thursday night-- I'm proud of him, as the first time is a little scary . . . he said the only needles that hurt were the ones she put in his ears, so maybe this will help his feet . . . or he's got bone spurs;
14) we got rained out today . . . a godsend, so maybe we will be healed and rested for Monday's game.
Dave Is Somewhat Color Blind (But Mainly Dumb)
The Garden State Achieves the Coronavirus Singularity
New Jersey has finally reached coronavirus nirvana: we now meet the criteria for our own travel ban (10 cases per 100,00) and all New Jersey residents must quarantine all the time-- to infinity and beyond-- you can't leave your zip code nor can you exist within it.
What Planet Are Living On?
Some of you may have noticed that I'm back to single-sentence format over here-- and I'm struggling to even produce a measly sentence a day-- hybrid-virtual school is so mind-numbing and soul-crushing (and mainly, produces so much eye-strain) that I can't bear to look at another screen; yesterday, after the usual digital circus, we had TWO meetings . . . the first was a faculty meeting, and I loaded this meeting up on Zoom on my phone because I had to take my son over to the orthodontist so he could get impressions for a new retainer (the dog ate his old one) which he was paying for because he had been warned to put the thing in the case . . . this was going to cost him $285 dollars (but our orthodontist gave him a 50 percent discount, so he lucked out) and as I was driving over-- in the pouring rain-- trying to listen to the faculty meeting on my headphones, we got put into "break-out rooms," so then I was chatting with other teachers-- while driving in the rain-- and then I passed the orthodontist office, which is right on Route 27, a busy road, and spun around; Ian hopped out and crossed the street and then they took us out of the break-out rooms and then Ian started frantically waving to me and I opened the window to find out why he was doing this-- it turns out that he had forgotten a mask, and the rain was coming down in sheets and the traffic was so dense that he couldn't get back across the street to get a mask from the car and meanwhile I hit some button so that I was sharing my screen with the 200+ people at the meeting and the principal wasn't too happy about that so he was telling me to unshare and chastising other people for whatever was going on in their backgrounds and the vice-principal was fast asleep in his office--on camera-- and Ian got across the street and got his mask and I managed to stop sharing my screen and then I had another meeting after that where some folks declared this whole escapade as "unsustainable" and now I've got a "Video Protocol" meeting on Microsoft Teams in ten minutes, which will overlap with soccer practice, so this should be interesting as well.
Some People Still Like Donald Trump
Those of you who are appalled by Donald Trump's downplaying of his COVID case and treatment, those of you who are thinking: How could he not acknowledge all those that didn't receive experimental monoclonal antibodies? How could he not sympathize with all those that lost loved ones because they didn't have a team of doctors at their disposal?
those of you who can't figure out how a reptile got elected President . . . a man with no sense of irony who had the gall to Tweet this:
Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.when over 200,000 people have died-- 1 in every 589 people is dead from COVID in New Jersey, it's a hard statistic to understand but the coronavirus is killing people at a greater rate than cancer or heart disease right now-- so you need to think through your life and remember the people who have died of cancer and heart disease-- if you have a decent-sized family and a large circle of friends and colleagues, then you know a few people who have died of each thing . . . not all in the same year-- but in a lifetime . . . if no one you know dies of a heart attack or cancer this year, that doesn't mean those diseases don't exist . . . but a lot of people have trouble with statistical thinking (including our very stupid President) but if you are thinking these thoughts and you are confident that Trump will lose this election, then you need to listen to this podcast:
and realize that a number of working-class lifelong Democrats felt abandoned in 2016-- mainly white people with a high school education-- and they have not changed their mind about Trump; he speaks to them, he doesn't categorize them as "a basket of deplorables," and he has tried to save their coal-mining jobs-- thought it's an exercise in futility-- and he is on-brand with these people . . . you may think the Democratic Party means one thing but that's not how much of the country sees it-- the Democrats are the coastal elites, they want to curtail freedom, they care more about identity politics than jobs, and they are weak and vulnerable and fearful . . . which is why Trump needs to present a strong, callous front about the virus . . . many of these people don't have health insurance so they can't get sick . . . so neither can their leader . . . you should also probably start listening to Rush Limbaugh . . . in the conservative world, Trump did the best he could with COVID, the disease wasn't his fault, he implemented Operation Warp speed, and he acted the best he could with the information he had, and he's fighting to preserve our Constituional Freedoms . . it's a neat trick, but a corrupt circus clown from New York City who inherited loads of money and squandered it on terrible business deals may beat a native of Scranton with working class Pennsylvania roots . . . policy means nothing, this election is all about emotion-- I can't wait until it's over.
Train to Busan: The Pandemic Could Be WAY Worse
Last night, after a long week of virtual/hybrid school and soccer, we watched Train to Busan, a South Korean zombie flick that combines the "fast zombies" of 28 Days Later and the fight-your-way-through-a-train action of Snowpiercer into a perfect cocktail of apocalyptic mayhem and magic . . . I had a Creative Writing class with one actual real-life student in it on Friday and she wrote about how she liked movies but she had never seen Pulp Fiction or any Quentin Tarantino film and explained that she was probably never going to watch any of his films and I told her she was nuts and missing out and I asked her why and she said she refused to watch them because a certain kind of pretentious film-buff guy would always lose his mind when she said she had never seen Pulp Fiction and she loved the reaction-- it made her laugh-- and I said, "I'm THAT guy!" and then I told her she should at least give Reservoir Dogs a try (because I'm that guy) and then I asked her for a film rec and she said she liked Train to Busan and though we were all very tired, we watched the whole thing (except for Alex, who eschews horror movies) and everyone loved it . . . including my wife, who made an apt comment at the end: "You see . . . the pandemic could be WAY worse."
During the Pandemic, A Loss is Still a Win
During the pandemic, we're considering every game we play a win-- but today's trip to Middlesex was a tough one . . . it was the third game of the week and varsity got spanked 5 to nil and my JV squad was a wreck; we lost 4-0 and I've never run on and off the field so many times for injuries--many of which were already present before the game and were compounded by extreme effort against an excellent team-- here's a quick rundown: Tyler with an ankle sprain,; Ian got the wind knocked out of him and has plantar fasciitis; Anthony twisted his ankle, Sebastian with a tender hamstring; Theo had trouble with his back and also got close-lined; Max got elbowed in the eye; Jake has turf-toe, and Eric has a pulled groin . . . with only thirteen players on the roster, these numbers don't add up (but it was still better to have an adventure and lose rather than the alternative . . . so despite the drubbing, we're staying positive: at least we are getting games in . . . there are plenty of games being cancelled . . . especially at East Brunswick, where I teach; also, my son Alex played the game of his life at left back . . . it was a full throttle assault from Middlesex because we had no midfield).
Dave and Arthur Hastings in the Same Boat
While reading Agatha Christie's first published novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, I was in the same boat as Hercule Poirot's rather guileless companion (and the narrator of the story) Arthur Hastings; the plot is a bit byzantine for my taste-- so many possibilities, so many characters-- and if you are a bit dim-witted (like Hastings and me) then you will certainly think this:
“Still you are right in one thing. It is always wise to suspect everybody until you can prove logically, and to your own satisfaction, that they are innocent."
and I suppose Christie plays fair-- if you follow the clues then you can unravel some of the mystery-- but Hastings doesn't feel this way and neither did I:
“Well, I think it is very unfair to keep back facts from me.”
“I am not keeping back facts. Every fact that I know is in your possession. You can draw your own deductions from them. This time it is a question of ideas.”
I even missed this utterly simple education (and I hate the heat and I'm really not fond of fires . . . I should have picked up on it)
“The temperature on that day, messieurs, was 80 degrees in the shade. Yet Mrs. Inglethorp ordered a fire! Why? Because she wished to destroy something, and could think of no other way."
in the end, the inscrutable Hercule Poirot decides that romance must be the final arbiter of morality, which is kind of cute (considering an old lady got poisoned) and he reasons thus
“Yes, my friend. But I eventually decided in favour of ‘a woman’s happiness’. Nothing but the great danger through which they have passed could have brought these two proud souls back together again."
Analogy of Dave
VIRTUAL SCHOOL: REGULAR SCHOOL
1) online shopping: the mall;
2) watching porn: sex;
3) YouTube: the movies;
4) watching Jaws: shark attack.
Just Do It Donald: Clean Up the Mess Alanis Morissette Made!
I know it's gauche to root for someone to kick the bucket-- even our crass and incompetent President-- so I'm wishing him a speedy recovery . . . but I'm wondering if Trump recognizes that dying of COVID is the gateway to all his dreams . . . certainly all Trump wants is fame and notoriety-- at any cost-- he obviously has no interest in policy, diplomacy, or running our nation . . . if he's ready and willing to give up the ghost from the pandemic that he has denied, mismanaged, and demeaned then he will gain his deepest desire: Trump will be the definition of irony for hundreds and hundreds of years; he will be the one thing that children remember from this era in history: the man who said the virus would disappear and then-- months later-- died from it . . . so consider it Don, forget the good fight and succumb . . . you'll achieve exactly what you want, you'll be remembered for time immemorial, and you'll provide literature teachers far into the future a concise and clear definition of a term that's been muddied by an Alanis Morissette song.
Please Recover, President Trump! What Would Big Coal Do Without You?
It goes without saying that my hopes and prayers are with President Trump . . . I wish him a speedy recovery from COVID-19 so he can return to the important work of rolling back E.P.A. rules limiting toxic waste from coal plants; if Trump were to grow heinously ill and die, then coal-fired power plants might not be able to conveniently dispose of wastewater laced with lead, selenium and arsenic . . . if Trump were to be incapacitated and placed on a ventilator, who would champion the cause of contaminated rivers and streams?
Many Americans Are Walking on a Tightrope
Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope Hardcover is a tough read; Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-wife-super-journalist team Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn trace the lives of a number of Kristof's childhood friends, all from the vicinity of Yamhill, Oregon and they end up reporting on income inequality in America . . . one of my favorite phrases I learned from the book is "talking left and walking right," which a number of successful liberal families employ . . . they are all for divorce and abortion and legalized drug-use, but rarely need these in their own lives-- it seems conservative values about family and school make the difference in who escapes poverty in places like Yamhill . . . anyway, here's a couple of excerpts that I pulled by taking a photo of the page with my phone and then opening that photo with Google docs . . . the Google AI "reads" the photo and does a decent job making it text:
When so many Americans make the same bad choice, that should be a clue simply individual moral failure. It is a systemic failure.
Here's one way of looking at what happened: Daniel was injured on the job, and then doctors in and out of the military prescribed highly addictive opioids that got him hooked. That was because the government, through lax oversight, empowered pharmaceutical companies to profit from reckless marketing. Once Daniel was addicted. didn't try adequately to help him, but rather spit him out, and the became a target not of public health efforts but of the criminal system. The government failed him, blamed him, and jailed him.
A couple of generations ago, the United States rewarded veterans by affording them education and housing benefits. More recently, the United States helped get veterans hooked on drugs and then incarcerated them.
* * * * *
We Americans are a patriotic tribe, and we tend to wax lyrical about our land of plenty and opportunity. "We have never been a nation of haves and have-nots," Senator Marco Rubio once declared. “We are a nation of haves and soon-to-haves, of people who have made it and people who will make it." We proudly assert, “We're number 1!" and in terms of overall economic and military strength, we are. But in other respects our self-confidence is delusional.
Here's the blunt, harsh truth.
America ranks number 40 in child mortality, according to the Social Progress Index, which is based on research by three Nobel Prize-winning economists and covers 146 countries for which there is reliable data. We rank number 32 in internet access, number 39 in access to clean drinking water, number 50 in personal safety, and number 61 in high-school enrollment. Somehow, "We're number 61!" doesn’t seem so proud a boast. Overall, the Social Progress Index ranks the United States number 25 in the well-being of citizens.
Pandemic Planet (Fitness) Gets a Thumbs Down from Dave
I just took an early morning trip to Planet Fitness-- my first visit to the gym since early March-- and it wasn't much fun . . . working out in a mask is uncomfortable (even my fake flappy mask) and all the joys of the gym are gone-- I like to circuit train: move from machine to machine, station to station in a fast and chaotic fashion-- if I wipe the equipment down it's in a perfunctory manner . . . but if I'm on something for one set, then I usually don't wipe it down at all-- but now it seems like you are expected to wipe stuff down (or at least pretend to) and I also love when the gym is a bit crowded, there are people to look at-- cute women, fat people, ripped people, people doing weird exercises that you might want to emulate-- but it was fairly desolate this morning . . . so I froze my membership until December; judging by the rising case counts in New Jersey, gyms will probably be closed by then, making this decision much simpler (for a better-written version of this, head to Medium).
Dave Builds a Standing Desk
I built a standing desk in my post-apocalyptic hybrid classroom but I didn't really think about how it looked from an outside perspective . . . there's so few students coming in that I'm hardly concerned with appearances . . . in fact, I played tennis in between periods yesterday and though I was all sweaty and gross, I threw my slacks and work shirt back on-- there were only three kids in the room and I told them to keep their distance and while Microsoft Teams is CPU intensive, it still doesn't deliver quality smells to the audience-- so there's a general lack of concern for how things look in the building-- but then a fellow English teacher (who is home now in quarantine because she came in contact with a student who came in contact with a person with Covid) got a look at this disaster of a desk and she asked me if I had "built it out of objects I found in a landfill."
My Son Needs Barbarian Therapy
My son Alex said the strangest thing yesterday:
"I wish I were a little worse at ping-pong so I could have more fun playing with my friends"
and I'm not sure if this is the kind of thing that warrants therapy, but obviously-- in my family-- I don't tolerate poor table-tennis play . . . if you're not going to crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentation of the women then why would you play?
Yup . . . Had to Happen
When the aliens sift through the wreckage of our civilization and find my son Ian's battery-powered skateboard, this will be their analysis: "This object looks like a lot of fun, but if the battery runs out while you are zooming up a hill and the skateboard stops suddenly, the laws of physics will cause the rider to wipe-out" and the aliens will be exactly right . . . luckily, Ian was wearing a helmet and so he only suffered road rash to his knees, elbows and hands . . . but I think he should only use this contraption on flat ground (with grass nearby).
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