No sooner have most public-school students returned to face-to-face learning than the clarion cry for accountability has begun.
The problem is real: Many students who went the all-remote route during the pandemic are behind in their studies and have significant gaps in their learning. Additionally, many high school students are coming back credit deficient, which could impact their graduation.
Districts are scrambling to institute extended hours and summer programs to address these gaps, even as medical professionals caution that this pandemic may not be entirely in the rearview mirror.
Infection rates are beginning to creep up in several states, to say nothing of what might happen as college students return from spring-break revels with the virus hitching a ride onto their campuses.
(I am old enough to remember when spring break was an opportunity to pick up extra hours at whatever jobs I had so I could remain in college for another semester. But I digress.)
In this rush to test returning public-school students in math, language, science and history, to schedule them for remedial coursework, to quantify and categorize every datapoint on every high-stakes test, let us remember this: Students are behind only because groups of mostly anonymous adults, somewhere, say they are behind, based on more or less arbitrary measurements.
And remember, too, that these kids are survivors. They have done something that no adults in their lives did at a comparable age: weathered a pandemic.
That survival has taught them skills that aren’t so easily measured on a test. For teens, the pandemic mighhave taught them how to hold down part- or full-time jobs and serve as primary breadwinners in their families. It may have taught them about loss — of grandparents, parents, siblings, or friends — cut down by COVID.
The pandemic has most certainly taught them about isolation and sacrifice, made them ponder big questions of mortality and spirituality, and caused them to look differently at the system of safety nets designed to support them through challenging times.
It has certainly opened their eyes to inequities, how some of their peers could ride out the coronavirus crisis in relative comfort while others struggled to secure the basics. These differences were more apparent in poor and minority students, where learning gaps can sometimes be more profound because of policies and procedures that privilege the upper-middle class and the wealthy.
And it is these very inequalities that make testing so important, testing advocates argue. Educators need to measure the gaps before they can address them, and policymakers need to wrestle with just how pronounced some of the deficits are across different socioeconomic groups.
But while all this is occuring behind the scenes, let’s make sure we are honoring these kids’ sacrifices and the tough spots they have been in. Let’s not overwhelm them with how far behind they might be and swamp them with endless remediation.
Because, in the end, standards can ease, exceptions can be made, and students can be credited for some of the life lessons they’ve learned instead of chastised for all of the book learning they’ve missed. Learning which, again, has been predetermined without considering the disruptions from a global pandemic.
It took students more than a year to fall behind. They might not catch up in three months, or six, no matter how hard they try. Asking them to do so is unfair.
Let’s be careful about how much educational angst we heap onto a demographic that is still digging out from under emotional and economic debris.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Monday, March 29, 2021
Monday, March 22, 2021
Book 'em, Danno!
There’s late, fashionably late, and then library-book late.
A recent New York Times story told of a Wisconsin resident who returned a library loan after 63 years. The book was some 23,000 days past due, wrote reporter Sasha von Oldershausen.
The patron had kept “Ol’ Paul, the Mighty Logger,” through various milestones in her life, including a Ph.D in English and a teaching career. When the long-standing guilt became too much, she sent the volume back, along with a $500 donation, to the Queens library it had originally called home.
(And no, books can’t call anything “home,” but you can grant me a little literary leeway here, can’tcha?)
I feel this Wisconsinite’s mortification. Especially since I have a title of similarly sketchy provenance in my own collection.
I came by “my” book — quotation marks because I can’t lay claim to legitimate ownership — as a child, via an older friend with a larcenous sibling.
The title in question is a paperback, “The Illustrated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.”
On the cover is a lurid collage. A woman in an evening gown shrieks. Horror stars of an earlier generation — Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre — leer. Pallbearers escort a coffin to its final resting place. (Although, in Poe, few bodies remain at rest, with apologies to Newton.)
The contents are typical Poe. Stories include “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Apropos — pun intended — of nothing, the last is probably my favorite short story.
Poems include “Annabel Lee” and, of course, “The Raven.” Because it would be a crime much greater than the theft of a book not to include “The Raven” in any Poe collection.
The book is obviously a library expat. It has a call number on the spine and the telltale tracings — but not the tell-tale heart — inside. “Tracings,” by the way, is the super-cool library term to denote card-catalog information recorded inside a book.
On Page 68 is a different kind of tracing. Some wit from decades past has drawn something very inappropriate in the vicinity of Roderick Usher’s mouth, along with misspelled and anachronistic dialogue attributed to the lady Madeline, busy choking the life from him.
All that is missing, from the inside back cover, is the borrowing card and the name of the lending library.
So even if I wanted to return the book, I wouldn’t know where to take it. Nor would I feel inclined to make a monetary donation, since I’m not the one who lifted it in the first place. And since I’m cheap.
At one point, when my wife and I paid a visit to Poe’s gravesites — he has two — in Baltimore, I considered leaving the book as an offering to one of my literary idols. But I didn’t because, well, I just couldn’t part with it.
What’s especially intriguing is that the volume doesn’t seem to exist officially. An internet search netted different collections of Poe’s work, but not this one.
All of which sounds like the plot of a Poe story: A rare book comes into the hands of an unwitting reader who slowly falls under its thrall until one day, the object reveals that it is not really a book at all, but instead …
Well, let’s just say that if I disappear anytime soon, check for me in the walls of the basement or under the floorboards in the living room.
Then take the book, if you can find it, back to the library — any library — and clip a check to it before it’s too late.
And let’s hope that last sentence isn’t my final pun.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
A recent New York Times story told of a Wisconsin resident who returned a library loan after 63 years. The book was some 23,000 days past due, wrote reporter Sasha von Oldershausen.
The patron had kept “Ol’ Paul, the Mighty Logger,” through various milestones in her life, including a Ph.D in English and a teaching career. When the long-standing guilt became too much, she sent the volume back, along with a $500 donation, to the Queens library it had originally called home.
(And no, books can’t call anything “home,” but you can grant me a little literary leeway here, can’tcha?)
I feel this Wisconsinite’s mortification. Especially since I have a title of similarly sketchy provenance in my own collection.
I came by “my” book — quotation marks because I can’t lay claim to legitimate ownership — as a child, via an older friend with a larcenous sibling.
The title in question is a paperback, “The Illustrated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe.”
On the cover is a lurid collage. A woman in an evening gown shrieks. Horror stars of an earlier generation — Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre — leer. Pallbearers escort a coffin to its final resting place. (Although, in Poe, few bodies remain at rest, with apologies to Newton.)
The contents are typical Poe. Stories include “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” Apropos — pun intended — of nothing, the last is probably my favorite short story.
Poems include “Annabel Lee” and, of course, “The Raven.” Because it would be a crime much greater than the theft of a book not to include “The Raven” in any Poe collection.
The book is obviously a library expat. It has a call number on the spine and the telltale tracings — but not the tell-tale heart — inside. “Tracings,” by the way, is the super-cool library term to denote card-catalog information recorded inside a book.
On Page 68 is a different kind of tracing. Some wit from decades past has drawn something very inappropriate in the vicinity of Roderick Usher’s mouth, along with misspelled and anachronistic dialogue attributed to the lady Madeline, busy choking the life from him.
All that is missing, from the inside back cover, is the borrowing card and the name of the lending library.
So even if I wanted to return the book, I wouldn’t know where to take it. Nor would I feel inclined to make a monetary donation, since I’m not the one who lifted it in the first place. And since I’m cheap.
At one point, when my wife and I paid a visit to Poe’s gravesites — he has two — in Baltimore, I considered leaving the book as an offering to one of my literary idols. But I didn’t because, well, I just couldn’t part with it.
What’s especially intriguing is that the volume doesn’t seem to exist officially. An internet search netted different collections of Poe’s work, but not this one.
All of which sounds like the plot of a Poe story: A rare book comes into the hands of an unwitting reader who slowly falls under its thrall until one day, the object reveals that it is not really a book at all, but instead …
Well, let’s just say that if I disappear anytime soon, check for me in the walls of the basement or under the floorboards in the living room.
Then take the book, if you can find it, back to the library — any library — and clip a check to it before it’s too late.
And let’s hope that last sentence isn’t my final pun.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
HR-1 is all about securing voters' rights
I’ve been staring at a screen grab from Fox News that is making the rounds on social media, trying to understand where we are as a nation and how we have arrived here.
The chyron at the bottom of the image reads, “How Democrats Plan to Change Voting Forever.” A list at the right touts “The Horribles of HR-1,” which “mandates universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, [and] online voter registration.”
Who could possibly quibble with any of these points? Although given the constipated look on the face of the Fox personality/teleprompter-reader, it’s apparent that she does — or is being paid to act like she does — in an attempt to convince viewers that, once again, Dems are chip-chip-chipping away at the Old World Order.
In reality, the nation’s goal for voting should be to make the process as seamless and painless as possible while still safeguarding its security. In 2021, it’s ridiculous to expect people to jump through byzantine hoops of bureaucracy, to stand in long lines at polling places sometimes located far away from their homes, before or after a long day of work, and often outside in lousy weather to exercise their right of franchise.
This is not to say that voting isn’t worth the inconvenience. It is. Maybe in the past this was the best we as a nation could do.
However, we can do better today.
It starts with a recognition that all the “little inconveniences” of traditional Election Day voting add up to a major impediment, especially for the working poor, who don’t have the luxury of hopping in a car and zipping off to a polling place across town, or of taking a long lunch for the purpose of voting, or even sneaking to the ballot box early in the morning before the lines get too long, because they still have kids and grandkids — and sometimes parents and grandparents — to care for. To say nothing of those who work midnights and for whom a quick trip to the polls comes at what feels like the dead of night for the rest of us.
And for readers boohooing the above or using their thumbs and forefingers to imitate the world’s smallest violin playing “My Heart Bleeds for You” (in stereo!), be careful. Your privilege is showing.
What can it possibly hurt to allow these people, and by extension, everybody in the nation, to vote in a way that is more convenient, to skip the lines, to request and later mail their ballots from home?
It’s not an issue of security, not really. Election officials at all levels and on both sides of the aisle declared this past presidential election, with a record number of mail-in ballots, free of widespread fraud. Multiple court challenges alleging voter irregularity were dismissed for lack of merit, including several rejected by former President Trump’s “own” Supreme Court. Despite the Big Lie narrative pushed by 45 and his loyalists, the election was secure.
But, on the other hand, perhaps it really is an issue of security — GOP security. A party that increasingly finds itself out of touch with the American public (for example, not a single Republican voted in favor of the latest coronavirus stimulus bill, despite its broad popularity with a majority of Americans) must find a way to cling to minority rule by any means possible, including reckless and obvious gerrymandering. (To be fair, Dems have also played that game.)
Oh, HR-1 would prohibit gerrymandering, too.
Make no mistake, opposing HR-1 is really about voter suppression, which for many conservatives — and especially Trumpublicans — is really about fear of brown people and poor people and people who have different ideas about gender, equal rights, and living wages. It’s about demographics that are slipping away from them, a battle they’re fighting state by state with laws disguised to “protect” voting that are really designed to suppress it and make it easier to keep their next tinpot dictator, whoever he is, in power.
But if conservatives believe so strongly in their principles, then they should work hard to sell them to the American people, in the time-honored tradition of democracy. Instead of stumping so diligently to promote the Big Lie, they should work to convince the majority of Americans that their policies are best for the country.
But because they can’t, they have to peddle the alleged “horribles of HR-1” and stoke baseless fears about election security. Again.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
The chyron at the bottom of the image reads, “How Democrats Plan to Change Voting Forever.” A list at the right touts “The Horribles of HR-1,” which “mandates universal mail-in ballots, early voting, same-day voter registration, [and] online voter registration.”
Who could possibly quibble with any of these points? Although given the constipated look on the face of the Fox personality/teleprompter-reader, it’s apparent that she does — or is being paid to act like she does — in an attempt to convince viewers that, once again, Dems are chip-chip-chipping away at the Old World Order.
In reality, the nation’s goal for voting should be to make the process as seamless and painless as possible while still safeguarding its security. In 2021, it’s ridiculous to expect people to jump through byzantine hoops of bureaucracy, to stand in long lines at polling places sometimes located far away from their homes, before or after a long day of work, and often outside in lousy weather to exercise their right of franchise.
This is not to say that voting isn’t worth the inconvenience. It is. Maybe in the past this was the best we as a nation could do.
However, we can do better today.
It starts with a recognition that all the “little inconveniences” of traditional Election Day voting add up to a major impediment, especially for the working poor, who don’t have the luxury of hopping in a car and zipping off to a polling place across town, or of taking a long lunch for the purpose of voting, or even sneaking to the ballot box early in the morning before the lines get too long, because they still have kids and grandkids — and sometimes parents and grandparents — to care for. To say nothing of those who work midnights and for whom a quick trip to the polls comes at what feels like the dead of night for the rest of us.
And for readers boohooing the above or using their thumbs and forefingers to imitate the world’s smallest violin playing “My Heart Bleeds for You” (in stereo!), be careful. Your privilege is showing.
What can it possibly hurt to allow these people, and by extension, everybody in the nation, to vote in a way that is more convenient, to skip the lines, to request and later mail their ballots from home?
It’s not an issue of security, not really. Election officials at all levels and on both sides of the aisle declared this past presidential election, with a record number of mail-in ballots, free of widespread fraud. Multiple court challenges alleging voter irregularity were dismissed for lack of merit, including several rejected by former President Trump’s “own” Supreme Court. Despite the Big Lie narrative pushed by 45 and his loyalists, the election was secure.
But, on the other hand, perhaps it really is an issue of security — GOP security. A party that increasingly finds itself out of touch with the American public (for example, not a single Republican voted in favor of the latest coronavirus stimulus bill, despite its broad popularity with a majority of Americans) must find a way to cling to minority rule by any means possible, including reckless and obvious gerrymandering. (To be fair, Dems have also played that game.)
Oh, HR-1 would prohibit gerrymandering, too.
Make no mistake, opposing HR-1 is really about voter suppression, which for many conservatives — and especially Trumpublicans — is really about fear of brown people and poor people and people who have different ideas about gender, equal rights, and living wages. It’s about demographics that are slipping away from them, a battle they’re fighting state by state with laws disguised to “protect” voting that are really designed to suppress it and make it easier to keep their next tinpot dictator, whoever he is, in power.
But if conservatives believe so strongly in their principles, then they should work hard to sell them to the American people, in the time-honored tradition of democracy. Instead of stumping so diligently to promote the Big Lie, they should work to convince the majority of Americans that their policies are best for the country.
But because they can’t, they have to peddle the alleged “horribles of HR-1” and stoke baseless fears about election security. Again.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, March 11, 2021
The Doctor Is Out — Far Out
Modern readers weighing in on the controversy surrounding Dr. Seuss Enterprises’ decision to stop publishing six of the author’s titles omit one incontrovertible truth: Most of the good doctor’s books are too darn long.
This is a scandalous comment to make at the tail end of Read Across America Week, which marks the anniversary of Seuss’s birth, but there it is. I love his rhymes, stories and art — mostly clever, whimsical and fun — but many of his books overstay their welcome by at least 20 pages.
Some parents on bedtime-story duty cringe when the little ones select “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” or “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” After the prolonged agony of the pre-bedtime bath, followed by the sublime torture of the pre-bedtime snack, both coming only an hour or so after the horrors of the post-supper homework struggle, any story longer than three-and-a-half minutes is highly suspect, and these two books are like the “Ben-Hur” or “Cleopatra” of the storytime set.
Published in 1938, which I suspect is before Seuss knew exactly what he was doing as a children’s author, “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” is especially unbearable. It’s a fairy tale of sorts about a waif who can’t tip his hat as a sign of respect to the king, because every time he does, a new hat appears on his head. It doesn’t even rhyme, and a Seuss story in prose is like a Playboy bunny in an ankle-length flannel robe — what’s the point?
Joe and Jane Average Parents just know they are going to be subjected to each and every one of those 500 hats, most of them exactly the same (red hat with one feather). By the time the hats start to change in appearance (red hat with two feathers, red hat with three feathers with a jewel, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), any erstwhile enthusiastic adult reader is writhing in torment because 40 minutes have passed and the damn hats just keep coming and the kid is as wide awake as ever.
A more sensible title would have been “The 100 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,” or better yet “The 26 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,” if only because “The 9.2 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” is too much to hope for.
“Mulberry Street,” despite the artwork that makes it problematic for today’s kids, is a little better. At least it rhymes. And the repetition — like “The House That Jack Built,” but on speed — means that a cagey parent can accidentally-on-purpose skip two or four or 16 pages, especially ones that have been torn out prior to story hour. (Although don’t tear too indiscriminately, as “Mulberry Street” is one of the titles to be retired. As such, it is already commanding high prices on the secondary market, so an enterprising parent with a copy could conceivably clean up.)
Most of Seuss’ later works — think “Green Eggs and Ham” — are superior because they have fewer words and move a lot faster. This means parents have a chance of getting the kids tucked in before halftime ends or before they need another trip to the bathroom or a drink of water or any of the dozens of reasons little ones can find to keep Mom and Dad jogging up and down the steps until 11:30 p.m
And for those readers who think I’m criticizing Dr. Seuss only because it’s fashionable for liberals to do so in 2021, note that I originally wrote this column 10 years ago. With some light editing and updating, it works just as well today.
Call it a favorite bedtime story that nobody asked for. Kinda like those 500 hats or that ridiculous street.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
This is a scandalous comment to make at the tail end of Read Across America Week, which marks the anniversary of Seuss’s birth, but there it is. I love his rhymes, stories and art — mostly clever, whimsical and fun — but many of his books overstay their welcome by at least 20 pages.
Some parents on bedtime-story duty cringe when the little ones select “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” or “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.” After the prolonged agony of the pre-bedtime bath, followed by the sublime torture of the pre-bedtime snack, both coming only an hour or so after the horrors of the post-supper homework struggle, any story longer than three-and-a-half minutes is highly suspect, and these two books are like the “Ben-Hur” or “Cleopatra” of the storytime set.
Published in 1938, which I suspect is before Seuss knew exactly what he was doing as a children’s author, “The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” is especially unbearable. It’s a fairy tale of sorts about a waif who can’t tip his hat as a sign of respect to the king, because every time he does, a new hat appears on his head. It doesn’t even rhyme, and a Seuss story in prose is like a Playboy bunny in an ankle-length flannel robe — what’s the point?
Joe and Jane Average Parents just know they are going to be subjected to each and every one of those 500 hats, most of them exactly the same (red hat with one feather). By the time the hats start to change in appearance (red hat with two feathers, red hat with three feathers with a jewel, ad infinitum, ad nauseum), any erstwhile enthusiastic adult reader is writhing in torment because 40 minutes have passed and the damn hats just keep coming and the kid is as wide awake as ever.
A more sensible title would have been “The 100 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,” or better yet “The 26 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins,” if only because “The 9.2 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins” is too much to hope for.
“Mulberry Street,” despite the artwork that makes it problematic for today’s kids, is a little better. At least it rhymes. And the repetition — like “The House That Jack Built,” but on speed — means that a cagey parent can accidentally-on-purpose skip two or four or 16 pages, especially ones that have been torn out prior to story hour. (Although don’t tear too indiscriminately, as “Mulberry Street” is one of the titles to be retired. As such, it is already commanding high prices on the secondary market, so an enterprising parent with a copy could conceivably clean up.)
Most of Seuss’ later works — think “Green Eggs and Ham” — are superior because they have fewer words and move a lot faster. This means parents have a chance of getting the kids tucked in before halftime ends or before they need another trip to the bathroom or a drink of water or any of the dozens of reasons little ones can find to keep Mom and Dad jogging up and down the steps until 11:30 p.m
And for those readers who think I’m criticizing Dr. Seuss only because it’s fashionable for liberals to do so in 2021, note that I originally wrote this column 10 years ago. With some light editing and updating, it works just as well today.
Call it a favorite bedtime story that nobody asked for. Kinda like those 500 hats or that ridiculous street.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Friday, March 5, 2021
Ready for Somber Commemorations
The nation is on the cusp of many covidversaries.
It was one year ago that rumors of a rampant virus coalesced into bitter reality. News probably would have landed earlier if not for a concerted effort at the federal level to obfuscate and hide facts. Protecting the oh-so-precious economy and the president’s chances for re-election took precedence; giving certain movers and shakers an opportunity to dump their stocks before a financial implosion was just lagniappe.
Be that as it may, we are approaching the 12-month marker for many firsts in the coming weeks and months. Just because they aren’t happy milestones doesn’t mean we won’t remember.
For me, the pandemic became a reality last March when schools closed and teachers, students and administrators started the shift to online education. I can remember cheers among some students with that initial announcement because many welcomed a week or two off, like a supersized spring break.
Nobody realized it was the end of in-person learning for the rest of the school year and the start of societal changes that continue to impact us all today.
Whether your jam was sports, shopping, live concerts, visiting with family outside your own home or all of the above, your way of life was going to be upended — a true cancel culture, borne of necessity, not politics.
The reactions across the area and nation made us think differently about the concept of sacrifice. Namely, that some Americans were willing to make concessions and others weren’t.
The first indication was the inability of so many people to accept the evidence of science, including the reality that epidemiologists and virologists didn’t — and don’t — have all the answers.
Initial recommendations that masking was not necessary were soon replaced with an urgent plea to wear them. Yet many people clung to that original precept, refusing to acknowledge new evidence and advisories, even when researchers demonstrated that each person’s mask did as much to protect others as it did to protect oneself.
This should have been enough to mollify the so-called freedom fighters, including our then president, who continued to characterize mask wearing as a personal decision devoid of repercussions for others — I’ll do me, you do you — and as a sign of timidity and weakness.
Asymptomatic spread was a concept these folks just couldn’t or wouldn’t accept, not if it meant deviating one iota from their way of life. Instead, they hid behind a flimsy wall of rationalizations, arguing to shield only the weak and elderly and practicing confirmation bias by amplifying the voices of a minuscule number of healthcare professionals who argued against masks and general quarantines.
What many of these contrarians see as science’s greatest failure — its ability to change in the face of additional evidence — is actually the discipline’s greatest strength. Hypotheses about the coronavirus are not religious truths, ancient and immutable, but are modified to account for better data.
So it’s not a contradiction to go from no-mask to mask-wearing recommendations, or to refine risk factors for transmission or for returning to work, school and recreation, even today, one year after the pandemic began in earnest.
Of course, the hardest and most tragic covidversaries are the ones families and friends will mark this year and every year hereafter — the loss of so many lives, 517,000-plus and counting. Spouses, parents, children, siblings, coworkers — each person special to so many, snuffed out like a candle with so much light yet to give.
What I fear most during these months of pending covidversaries is the entirely understandable but oh-so-dangerous human inclination to use them as an excuse for saying “no more.” No more delays, no more inconveniences, no more looking out for others at the expense of our own lifestyles and preferences.
I’m hearing this already, even among people who have been patient thus far: Once I have my vaccine, the storyline goes, I can get back to everything I want to do. But it will take time before enough people have been vaccinated to achieve anything close to herd immunity. Normalcy, such as it is, is still months away.
Now that holiday spikes are behind us, it’s easy to be lulled into false security by dwindling infections, to rush back to much-missed pastimes too soon, before we know if vaccinated people can still transmit the virus, before we see how much protection the shots provide against new variants.
Nobody wants to mark a second year of covidversaries in 2022. But neither does anybody want to stack more fatalities on top of those that have come before, not when we are so close to beating this virus for real.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
It was one year ago that rumors of a rampant virus coalesced into bitter reality. News probably would have landed earlier if not for a concerted effort at the federal level to obfuscate and hide facts. Protecting the oh-so-precious economy and the president’s chances for re-election took precedence; giving certain movers and shakers an opportunity to dump their stocks before a financial implosion was just lagniappe.
Be that as it may, we are approaching the 12-month marker for many firsts in the coming weeks and months. Just because they aren’t happy milestones doesn’t mean we won’t remember.
For me, the pandemic became a reality last March when schools closed and teachers, students and administrators started the shift to online education. I can remember cheers among some students with that initial announcement because many welcomed a week or two off, like a supersized spring break.
Nobody realized it was the end of in-person learning for the rest of the school year and the start of societal changes that continue to impact us all today.
Whether your jam was sports, shopping, live concerts, visiting with family outside your own home or all of the above, your way of life was going to be upended — a true cancel culture, borne of necessity, not politics.
The reactions across the area and nation made us think differently about the concept of sacrifice. Namely, that some Americans were willing to make concessions and others weren’t.
The first indication was the inability of so many people to accept the evidence of science, including the reality that epidemiologists and virologists didn’t — and don’t — have all the answers.
Initial recommendations that masking was not necessary were soon replaced with an urgent plea to wear them. Yet many people clung to that original precept, refusing to acknowledge new evidence and advisories, even when researchers demonstrated that each person’s mask did as much to protect others as it did to protect oneself.
This should have been enough to mollify the so-called freedom fighters, including our then president, who continued to characterize mask wearing as a personal decision devoid of repercussions for others — I’ll do me, you do you — and as a sign of timidity and weakness.
Asymptomatic spread was a concept these folks just couldn’t or wouldn’t accept, not if it meant deviating one iota from their way of life. Instead, they hid behind a flimsy wall of rationalizations, arguing to shield only the weak and elderly and practicing confirmation bias by amplifying the voices of a minuscule number of healthcare professionals who argued against masks and general quarantines.
What many of these contrarians see as science’s greatest failure — its ability to change in the face of additional evidence — is actually the discipline’s greatest strength. Hypotheses about the coronavirus are not religious truths, ancient and immutable, but are modified to account for better data.
So it’s not a contradiction to go from no-mask to mask-wearing recommendations, or to refine risk factors for transmission or for returning to work, school and recreation, even today, one year after the pandemic began in earnest.
Of course, the hardest and most tragic covidversaries are the ones families and friends will mark this year and every year hereafter — the loss of so many lives, 517,000-plus and counting. Spouses, parents, children, siblings, coworkers — each person special to so many, snuffed out like a candle with so much light yet to give.
What I fear most during these months of pending covidversaries is the entirely understandable but oh-so-dangerous human inclination to use them as an excuse for saying “no more.” No more delays, no more inconveniences, no more looking out for others at the expense of our own lifestyles and preferences.
I’m hearing this already, even among people who have been patient thus far: Once I have my vaccine, the storyline goes, I can get back to everything I want to do. But it will take time before enough people have been vaccinated to achieve anything close to herd immunity. Normalcy, such as it is, is still months away.
Now that holiday spikes are behind us, it’s easy to be lulled into false security by dwindling infections, to rush back to much-missed pastimes too soon, before we know if vaccinated people can still transmit the virus, before we see how much protection the shots provide against new variants.
Nobody wants to mark a second year of covidversaries in 2022. But neither does anybody want to stack more fatalities on top of those that have come before, not when we are so close to beating this virus for real.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
A Country Musician's Redemption Arc?
Morgan Wallen is learning about racism, although what those lessons are may be subject to interpretation.
A few weeks after hurling some drunken epithets, including the n-word, in his driveway, as caught on video by a neighbor, Wallen is still top dog on Billboard. His “Dangerous: The Double Album” has been No. 1 for five weeks, according to The New York Times, which also notes his songs were streamed 146 million times last week, and his traditional album sales were up 49 percent.
Remember, this is after the driveway incident.
I must confess ignorance to Wallen’s music. My own dabbling in country-western includes some Johnny Cash, a smattering of Kenny Rogers, and a few songs at wedding receptions or in the background of TikTok videos. I have never, to my knowledge, heard any song by Wallen.
What I do know is his first appearance on Saturday Night Live was canceled after he was spotted partying in a bar without a mask, a reckless choice. I also watched his apology video, a five-minute monologue in which he sounds sincere, blaming his racist comments in part on an extended bender of which he is also ashamed.
The singer’s situation is being used by some conservatives to further their argument about “cancel culture,” an alleged practice said to punish people on the wrong side of various social and political issues. Such public rebukes, the argument goes, are somehow a violation of the offenders’ rights to free speech, as if they should be allowed to say what they want free of consequences.
It doesn’t work that way.
For years, it is true, many rich and powerful people have been shielded from blowback because their money has purchased or coerced silence from those they have transgressed against or the whistleblowers who would have otherwise revealed their misdeeds or problematic language.
Today, however, fewer government agencies, sports franchises and entertainment conglomerates are willing to look the other way at such behavior, either because their stakeholders have grown an ethical backbone or they worry voters and consumers will abandon them. Likely, it’s a mixture of moral fiber and financial fear.
For a while (say, the last four years), the practice of blurting out half-formed thoughts enjoyed a resurgence among Americans who fancied themselves as straight-shooters — just sayin’ what others are thinkin’ — when in reality they were merely boorish, misogynistic or racist. Or all three.
Often, but not always, such ramblings went hand-in-hand with behaviors that were more common fifty or one-hundred years ago, when America was supposedly great — and if only this spirit could be rekindled, the argument goes, we could make it great again.
Any pushback against such sentiments and the people who voiced them is disparagingly dubbed “cancel culture” by those who pine for such times. Such is the state of white-grievance politics.
But it’s not fair to say Wallen is being cancelled. His albums are obviously still available, or how else could his sales increase? His record company did not end his contract, but rather “suspended” it, whatever that means. (A typical school suspension lasts three to 10 days. Maybe Wallen’s will follow a similar timeline.)
Nor is it fair to say, as some on the left have, that the increase in Wallen’s streaming and physical sales is evidence that country music is filled with racist fans.
My hypothesis is that the sales jump is another example of the time-honored maxim that all publicity is good publicity. People like me, who have only a sketchy sense of who Wallen is, might be enticed to peruse his work, if only because this is the first we are hearing of him.
In some ways, it’s like the sales spike that accompanies a celebrity’s death, when their movies, books or songs are suddenly of interest to the public once again. Nothing pumps life into a career like death. And a racist revelation is a kind of death, after all, or maybe more of a career suicide.
Consumers may also be responding to what they perceive as the sincerity of Wallen’s apology. Americans love a redemption arc, perhaps especially in country music, whose subject matter frequently focuses on unending sadness and unredeemed failure.
This could be a moment for the young artist to demonstrate a willingness to stare down his own shortcomings and emerge better for the experience. A time to show he’s genuinely sorry for what he said, and not just sorry for being caught.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
A few weeks after hurling some drunken epithets, including the n-word, in his driveway, as caught on video by a neighbor, Wallen is still top dog on Billboard. His “Dangerous: The Double Album” has been No. 1 for five weeks, according to The New York Times, which also notes his songs were streamed 146 million times last week, and his traditional album sales were up 49 percent.
Remember, this is after the driveway incident.
I must confess ignorance to Wallen’s music. My own dabbling in country-western includes some Johnny Cash, a smattering of Kenny Rogers, and a few songs at wedding receptions or in the background of TikTok videos. I have never, to my knowledge, heard any song by Wallen.
What I do know is his first appearance on Saturday Night Live was canceled after he was spotted partying in a bar without a mask, a reckless choice. I also watched his apology video, a five-minute monologue in which he sounds sincere, blaming his racist comments in part on an extended bender of which he is also ashamed.
The singer’s situation is being used by some conservatives to further their argument about “cancel culture,” an alleged practice said to punish people on the wrong side of various social and political issues. Such public rebukes, the argument goes, are somehow a violation of the offenders’ rights to free speech, as if they should be allowed to say what they want free of consequences.
It doesn’t work that way.
For years, it is true, many rich and powerful people have been shielded from blowback because their money has purchased or coerced silence from those they have transgressed against or the whistleblowers who would have otherwise revealed their misdeeds or problematic language.
Today, however, fewer government agencies, sports franchises and entertainment conglomerates are willing to look the other way at such behavior, either because their stakeholders have grown an ethical backbone or they worry voters and consumers will abandon them. Likely, it’s a mixture of moral fiber and financial fear.
For a while (say, the last four years), the practice of blurting out half-formed thoughts enjoyed a resurgence among Americans who fancied themselves as straight-shooters — just sayin’ what others are thinkin’ — when in reality they were merely boorish, misogynistic or racist. Or all three.
Often, but not always, such ramblings went hand-in-hand with behaviors that were more common fifty or one-hundred years ago, when America was supposedly great — and if only this spirit could be rekindled, the argument goes, we could make it great again.
Any pushback against such sentiments and the people who voiced them is disparagingly dubbed “cancel culture” by those who pine for such times. Such is the state of white-grievance politics.
But it’s not fair to say Wallen is being cancelled. His albums are obviously still available, or how else could his sales increase? His record company did not end his contract, but rather “suspended” it, whatever that means. (A typical school suspension lasts three to 10 days. Maybe Wallen’s will follow a similar timeline.)
Nor is it fair to say, as some on the left have, that the increase in Wallen’s streaming and physical sales is evidence that country music is filled with racist fans.
My hypothesis is that the sales jump is another example of the time-honored maxim that all publicity is good publicity. People like me, who have only a sketchy sense of who Wallen is, might be enticed to peruse his work, if only because this is the first we are hearing of him.
In some ways, it’s like the sales spike that accompanies a celebrity’s death, when their movies, books or songs are suddenly of interest to the public once again. Nothing pumps life into a career like death. And a racist revelation is a kind of death, after all, or maybe more of a career suicide.
Consumers may also be responding to what they perceive as the sincerity of Wallen’s apology. Americans love a redemption arc, perhaps especially in country music, whose subject matter frequently focuses on unending sadness and unredeemed failure.
This could be a moment for the young artist to demonstrate a willingness to stare down his own shortcomings and emerge better for the experience. A time to show he’s genuinely sorry for what he said, and not just sorry for being caught.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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