If we can look on the bright side, 2020 brought and taught us many new words.
Just one year ago, covidiots didn’t exist. We had never experienced a blursday or drunk a quarantini, and superspreader had an entirely different connotation. Back in 2019, many of us may have been doomscrolling, but who knew it had a name?
Time magazine featured all of these neologisms and more in a Year in Language feature in the Dec.14/28 issue.
In brief, a covidiot is somebody who refuses to wear a mask and social-distance (another new term) during a pandemic. Blursday is confusion over the day of the week because the world has basically been on modified house arrest since March. Or maybe the uncertainty about whether it’s Saturday or Wednesday comes from drinking too many quarantine martinis.
Superspreader refers to events where a bunch of covidiots get together and ignore public-health guidelines, leading to increased coronavirus spread. And doomscrolling is flipping through social media to see what fresh hell has been unleashed today.
This is the year when all fortune tellers should have been put out of business, because nobody peered into our palms in 2019 and prognosticated anything like the past 10 months. It’s also the year when students and teachers received crash courses in hitherto unknown educational models like hybrid schedules and remote learning.
Last December, Zoom was a sound effect in comic books and cartoons, not a platform to host everything from a huge gathering of executives to little Timmy’s 6th birthday party. Among other things, 2020 recontextualized the opening of “The Brady Bunch,” so housekeeper Alice will now always look like the last person to show up for a meeting where nobody else has turned off their cameras, despite everybody knowing how to mute their microphones.
I’ll never think of “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha” in the same way again.
The past year also took personification to new levels. The practice of portraying an incoming year as a baby dates back to ancient times, according to “Panati's Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things,” when new harvest cycles were celebrated with images of infants, a visual shorthand that became wedded to the new year by Germans in the 14th century and traveled with them to the New World.
But I’m hard pressed to think of any other year so often addressed as a living, sentient being. As in, “Oh, 2020, how I despise you!” Or, “That’s just so 2020!,” referring to anything from a windshield crack to the shuttering of the family business. The calendar itself has become the ultimate scapegoat, a living, breathing embodiment of bad luck.
It wouldn’t surprise me if people started burning and burying the year in effigy over the next several days, just to make sure it’s good and gone.
Not to sound like the voice of doom and gloom here, but despite good news on the vaccine front, the first few months of 2021 could very well be touted as “the sequel to 2020 nobody asked for” regarding public health, mortality, the economy and education.
Let’s hope not.
I prefer to look on the positive. In a few more weeks, the tweeting disinformation disseminator in the White House will either leave willingly or be evicted forcibly. We can look forward to a more unified federal and state response to the pandemic, coupled with a straightforward message about vaccine safety.
With luck and hard work, we should be able to resume more if not all of our day-to-day activities by late spring and early summer, with a resultant uptick in the public mood and the economy.
Heck, my threshold for the new year is set so low that just having mail delivered in a timely way again would satisfy me.
Not needing to learn any more new words for a virus-ravaged world? That would be, to quote a credit-card company, priceless.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, December 27, 2020
Monday, December 21, 2020
Something's fishy about this Christmas tradition
Every family, I'm convinced, no matter how straitlaced and proper, has an oddball holiday tradition.
For my family, it is fish.
Not a Christmas Day meal. Not an expedition where we cut a hole in an icy lake and squat in a shanty, waiting for a nibble on our cane poles.
No, this is a ceramic fish.
It is a cross between Big Mouth Billy Bass and Flounder from Disney's "Little Mermaid," if the latter were drawn by a singularly untalented 4-year-old and bereft of any aesthetic appeal.
Technically, this hideous sculpture is a koi (not the real McKoi), but I'm not one to carp about labels. Whatever it is, it is truly horrific, with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth questing upward, ever upward, in search of some elusive worm. Or possibly human flesh.
The fish travels back and forth between our house and my sister-in-law and her husband's house each year, sometimes wrapped as a gag gift — emphasis on the gag — and sometimes secreted outside, on top of a car, or dangling from a tree.
Legend has it this piscine monstrosity was once the size of a tennis ball, but has been painted so many times over the years it has ballooned to its present size, roughly the dimensions of Rosemary's Baby or some other dark denizen of the netherworld.
One year, the fish was pink and teal. Another, it was yellow and black, a nod to a certain team in Pittsburgh whose name shall not be spoken. Occasionally, it has been adorned with battery-operated lights or pinwheels or pictures of loved ones in compromising positions. (OK, not that compromising — we're not that kind of family.)
Two years ago, my wife and I plastered peace and love stickers across its scaly surface and affixed it with a QR code. The code led to a YouTube video where I imitated Ringo Starr's passive-aggressive message to fans to stop mailing him merchandise to be signed. We shipped the fish special delivery, requiring a signature by the recipient.
Your stories live here.
Fuel your hometown passion and plug into the stories that define it.
This was where I learned two horrible lessons. First, marking "fragile" 16 times on a box is still no guarantee mailroom gorillas won't play catch with a package. Second, ceramic fish can break.
The fish arrived a few days before Christmas in pieces. (I am tempted to say "in Pisces.") Photos were sent. Services were arranged. The fish, we assumed, would receive a burial at sea. Another custom lost to the vagaries of the USPS.
But it was not to be. By Christmas Day, the fish had been resurrected, shades of Danny DeVito's Penguin, who bragged to Batman that "a lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference."
Not tape, but glue allowed my in-laws to stitch Frankenfish back together and re-gift it, with bolts on each side of its neck. Later that year, they stole it out of our house on Mother's Day and gave it to us again last Christmas. This time, it was green, white and red, wearing a tie.
It has lived a hellish half-life in our basement ever since, awaiting another chance to rise and thwart our revels.
My wife and I are plotting what to do with Mr. Chips this year, aware time is running out, especially if we want to find a way to get it inside our victims', er, family's house without them knowing. Thank goodness they don't read the paper.
Some years, I'll be honest, the fish has been a damn — or is it dam? — nuisance. But this year, when so many other traditions have been postponed or canceled, it has provided a sense of continuity and familiarity, an activity we can complete in isolation and deliver while social distancing.
Provided the backdoor key we have still works.
Shhh. Don't tell. And Happy Haddock Days to you and yours.
For my family, it is fish.
Not a Christmas Day meal. Not an expedition where we cut a hole in an icy lake and squat in a shanty, waiting for a nibble on our cane poles.
No, this is a ceramic fish.
It is a cross between Big Mouth Billy Bass and Flounder from Disney's "Little Mermaid," if the latter were drawn by a singularly untalented 4-year-old and bereft of any aesthetic appeal.
Technically, this hideous sculpture is a koi (not the real McKoi), but I'm not one to carp about labels. Whatever it is, it is truly horrific, with bulging eyes and a gaping mouth questing upward, ever upward, in search of some elusive worm. Or possibly human flesh.
The fish travels back and forth between our house and my sister-in-law and her husband's house each year, sometimes wrapped as a gag gift — emphasis on the gag — and sometimes secreted outside, on top of a car, or dangling from a tree.
Legend has it this piscine monstrosity was once the size of a tennis ball, but has been painted so many times over the years it has ballooned to its present size, roughly the dimensions of Rosemary's Baby or some other dark denizen of the netherworld.
One year, the fish was pink and teal. Another, it was yellow and black, a nod to a certain team in Pittsburgh whose name shall not be spoken. Occasionally, it has been adorned with battery-operated lights or pinwheels or pictures of loved ones in compromising positions. (OK, not that compromising — we're not that kind of family.)
Two years ago, my wife and I plastered peace and love stickers across its scaly surface and affixed it with a QR code. The code led to a YouTube video where I imitated Ringo Starr's passive-aggressive message to fans to stop mailing him merchandise to be signed. We shipped the fish special delivery, requiring a signature by the recipient.
Your stories live here.
Fuel your hometown passion and plug into the stories that define it.
This was where I learned two horrible lessons. First, marking "fragile" 16 times on a box is still no guarantee mailroom gorillas won't play catch with a package. Second, ceramic fish can break.
The fish arrived a few days before Christmas in pieces. (I am tempted to say "in Pisces.") Photos were sent. Services were arranged. The fish, we assumed, would receive a burial at sea. Another custom lost to the vagaries of the USPS.
But it was not to be. By Christmas Day, the fish had been resurrected, shades of Danny DeVito's Penguin, who bragged to Batman that "a lot of tape and a little patience make all the difference."
Not tape, but glue allowed my in-laws to stitch Frankenfish back together and re-gift it, with bolts on each side of its neck. Later that year, they stole it out of our house on Mother's Day and gave it to us again last Christmas. This time, it was green, white and red, wearing a tie.
It has lived a hellish half-life in our basement ever since, awaiting another chance to rise and thwart our revels.
My wife and I are plotting what to do with Mr. Chips this year, aware time is running out, especially if we want to find a way to get it inside our victims', er, family's house without them knowing. Thank goodness they don't read the paper.
Some years, I'll be honest, the fish has been a damn — or is it dam? — nuisance. But this year, when so many other traditions have been postponed or canceled, it has provided a sense of continuity and familiarity, an activity we can complete in isolation and deliver while social distancing.
Provided the backdoor key we have still works.
Shhh. Don't tell. And Happy Haddock Days to you and yours.
Our love of movies 'to be continued ...'
The movie-theater industry has been here before.
In the early 1930s, with the transition from silent films to talkies.
In the 1950s and 1960s, with the meteoric growth of television.
In the 1980s and 1990s, with the ubiquity of video stores and a smaller window between theatrical release and home-video debuts.
In the 2000s, with the growth of in-home theaters.
In the 2010s, with a horrifying mass shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the advent of streaming services.
And now, in 2020, with a pandemic and the announcement earlier this month that Warner Bros. would release all its 2021 movies to theaters and HBO Max simultaneously.
In every case, doomsayers poked their heads from behind the curtain to prophesy the end of theatrical films, to predict this or that cultural upheaval would be the one to drive home the final stake, more assuredly than any intrepid vampire hunter in the final reel of a Dracula chiller.
And yet, audiences always returned.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote Robert Frost, and he might have been talking about a living room or basement screen, no matter how large, no matter how sophisticated the sound system.
Movies are a communal event, designed to be seen in cavernous, darkened rooms. We should be sitting next to friends or that special someone, but we should also be surrounded by strangers, if only to experience the same thrills, chills, tears and guffaws simultaneously.
Going to the movies reminds us of a shared humanity we just can’t grasp in our individual houses, even when watching an event like a Super Bowl at the same time as other people in their own homes.
Movie theaters are a place where we cannot bend a schedule to our will. We have to arrive at a set time or risk missing out. We must obey certain civilized norms — no loud talking or excessive gum cracking — for the good of the community. We cannot freeze a scene mid-frame to pick it up after a restroom break.
Like life, a movie in a theater keeps coming, whether we want it to or not.
Your stories live here.
Fuel your hometown passion and plug into the stories that define it.
Yes, watching a film at home brings certain benefits. We can jump to the scene where the heroine wins, skipping her heartbreak in the middle. Or rewind a funny moment and snicker at it again. Or freeze an image to study its intricate composition or gorgeous background.
But these advantages come with drawbacks. Home screens, no matter how large, diminish cinema’s biggest moments. A battle in Middle-earth will never be as epic, a lavish embrace as romantic, a pratfall as embarrassingly funny.
And we lose the uncertainties and reminiscences that come with watching movies at the movies.
A broken projector led a friend and me to make a second trip — with free passes, no less — to see “Congo,” the most memorable moment in an otherwise forgettable 1995 sci-fi thriller. My wife and I still recall any number of visits to Mount Union Theatre, now sadly just a memory itself, sometimes for date nights, more often with our daughter, for the latest Disney animated opus.
However, I can’t recall any of the circumstances surrounding the last movie I screened at home, other than watching it between the inevitable phone calls and snack runs, starting it on Friday night and finishing it on Sunday afternoon.
Sure, right now many of us are scared to worship in those dimly lit cathedrals, munching popcorn and slurping sodas while exposing ourselves to a potentially deadly virus.
But this reticence won’t last. Just as our parents or grandparents returned to the fold despite the dominance of TV (from fewer than one million households with a television in 1949 to 44 million in 1969), just as audiences cautiously crept back after the Aurora shootings, so too will we find our way back to theaters in the next year or two.
Maybe not as often, to be sure. The current pandemic may have accelerated the pace at which movie-going will become a niche business, attracting audiences only for the newest big-budget spectacle begging for an eight-story-tall IMAX screen.
And some theater chains may not survive the lean months ahead, driving audiences into the arms of streaming services more deftly than any announcement from Warner Bros.
But at some point, we will return. Because the industry has been here before, and it’s too early to write “The End” across our love affair with cinema.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
In the early 1930s, with the transition from silent films to talkies.
In the 1950s and 1960s, with the meteoric growth of television.
In the 1980s and 1990s, with the ubiquity of video stores and a smaller window between theatrical release and home-video debuts.
In the 2000s, with the growth of in-home theaters.
In the 2010s, with a horrifying mass shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, and the advent of streaming services.
And now, in 2020, with a pandemic and the announcement earlier this month that Warner Bros. would release all its 2021 movies to theaters and HBO Max simultaneously.
In every case, doomsayers poked their heads from behind the curtain to prophesy the end of theatrical films, to predict this or that cultural upheaval would be the one to drive home the final stake, more assuredly than any intrepid vampire hunter in the final reel of a Dracula chiller.
And yet, audiences always returned.
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote Robert Frost, and he might have been talking about a living room or basement screen, no matter how large, no matter how sophisticated the sound system.
Movies are a communal event, designed to be seen in cavernous, darkened rooms. We should be sitting next to friends or that special someone, but we should also be surrounded by strangers, if only to experience the same thrills, chills, tears and guffaws simultaneously.
Going to the movies reminds us of a shared humanity we just can’t grasp in our individual houses, even when watching an event like a Super Bowl at the same time as other people in their own homes.
Movie theaters are a place where we cannot bend a schedule to our will. We have to arrive at a set time or risk missing out. We must obey certain civilized norms — no loud talking or excessive gum cracking — for the good of the community. We cannot freeze a scene mid-frame to pick it up after a restroom break.
Like life, a movie in a theater keeps coming, whether we want it to or not.
Your stories live here.
Fuel your hometown passion and plug into the stories that define it.
Yes, watching a film at home brings certain benefits. We can jump to the scene where the heroine wins, skipping her heartbreak in the middle. Or rewind a funny moment and snicker at it again. Or freeze an image to study its intricate composition or gorgeous background.
But these advantages come with drawbacks. Home screens, no matter how large, diminish cinema’s biggest moments. A battle in Middle-earth will never be as epic, a lavish embrace as romantic, a pratfall as embarrassingly funny.
And we lose the uncertainties and reminiscences that come with watching movies at the movies.
A broken projector led a friend and me to make a second trip — with free passes, no less — to see “Congo,” the most memorable moment in an otherwise forgettable 1995 sci-fi thriller. My wife and I still recall any number of visits to Mount Union Theatre, now sadly just a memory itself, sometimes for date nights, more often with our daughter, for the latest Disney animated opus.
However, I can’t recall any of the circumstances surrounding the last movie I screened at home, other than watching it between the inevitable phone calls and snack runs, starting it on Friday night and finishing it on Sunday afternoon.
Sure, right now many of us are scared to worship in those dimly lit cathedrals, munching popcorn and slurping sodas while exposing ourselves to a potentially deadly virus.
But this reticence won’t last. Just as our parents or grandparents returned to the fold despite the dominance of TV (from fewer than one million households with a television in 1949 to 44 million in 1969), just as audiences cautiously crept back after the Aurora shootings, so too will we find our way back to theaters in the next year or two.
Maybe not as often, to be sure. The current pandemic may have accelerated the pace at which movie-going will become a niche business, attracting audiences only for the newest big-budget spectacle begging for an eight-story-tall IMAX screen.
And some theater chains may not survive the lean months ahead, driving audiences into the arms of streaming services more deftly than any announcement from Warner Bros.
But at some point, we will return. Because the industry has been here before, and it’s too early to write “The End” across our love affair with cinema.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, December 9, 2020
No black oil lurks in coronavirus vaccines
Many Americans must have been scared and scarred by repeated viewing of “The X-Files” 20 years ago.
How else to explain the widespread societal reticence, conspiracy theories and flat-out zaniness surrounding opposition to an imminent coronavirus vaccine?
I’m not talking about normal caution accompanying anything new. That, I get. People want assurances from the medical community, the Food and Drug Administration and independent review boards before they put anything into their bodies or their children’s bodies.
Even during a global pandemic that has sickened and killed millions, this is sensible.
No, I’m talking about far-fringe theories — a concerted plan among the world’s elites to eradicate millions by engineering a pandemic and then offering a fatal solution, or using the occasion of an unplanned pandemic to insert microchips into the body.
These sound like plots ripped directly from “The X-Files,” where, if memory serves, a shadowy cabal introduced alien DNA through the smallpox vaccine. Some weird black oil was involved too. Whatever. I mean, it makes no sense because, well, “X-Files.”
Any real-world plan rotating on the same wobbly axis is just as risible.
First, where’s the proof? Conspiracists point to one badly made “Plandemic” video, a smattering of rogue scientists and so-called medical professionals who appear to enjoy the notoriety that comes from telling some people what they want to believe.
Definitive evidence? Hardly.
Second, would the planet’s elites really want to rub out much of the global population that provides the raw labor necessary for them to continue to lord it over the rank-and-file? Answer: They wouldn’t, even if they could somehow manage to cobble together a conspiracy of this magnitude, which they can’t.
Third, Watergate. A relatively small group of people couldn’t cover up a bungled plan to wiretap the DNC headquarters in Washington, an operation miniscule in comparison to a global culling of the herd via vaccination.
Most of us can’t stay quiet about a surprise party. Imagine how many minions would need to keep mum about international genocide.
Yet the only people who seem to have any knowledge of this massive conspiracy are a few hairdressers posting on Facebook, some semi-regular callers to AM-radio talk shows, and the unemployed guy down the street who runs his own website from a backyard shed.
Fourth, intention. Maybe the plan isn’t to kill us, but to track us. Hence, microchips in our bloodstreams.
There are much easier ways. I surrender more sensitive information on my phone than would ever be gleaned from tracking me through a microchip.
Think of all the third-party apps we opt into, the websites that collect information about our buying habits, the insurance companies we allow to monitor our driving in exchange for reduced premiums.
The sad truth is many of us have an inflated sense of our self-worth. The government has no need to track most of us. They can find us whenever they need to, and they will never need to.
It’s fun and exciting to live in a world where shadowy operatives are arrayed against us, where only Joe from Pougkeepsie knows the real truth, which he is revealing to just a select few. And we’re among the few.
It’s like James Bond minus the suave sophistication and cool cars. Without the buxom models. Sans the shaken, not stirred.
So not really much like Bond.
This imaginary world and the myths surrounding it are intoxicating. Strip it away, and all that remains is the glum reality: Roll up your sleeve, here comes the needle.
Boring, with a high degree of safety and security, but nevertheless wondrous because coronavirus vaccines will save lives.
Ponder all these researchers, toiling in obscurity, not to hide tiny cameras in syringes, but to alleviate suffering and death and allow us to get on with our glorious, messy, non-controversial and non-conspiratorial lives.
Where the only concerning cameras aren’t embedded in our bloodstream, but mounted above our streets, snapping images of speeders to fatten municipal coffers.
If we are so worried about privacy, let’s start there.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
How else to explain the widespread societal reticence, conspiracy theories and flat-out zaniness surrounding opposition to an imminent coronavirus vaccine?
I’m not talking about normal caution accompanying anything new. That, I get. People want assurances from the medical community, the Food and Drug Administration and independent review boards before they put anything into their bodies or their children’s bodies.
Even during a global pandemic that has sickened and killed millions, this is sensible.
No, I’m talking about far-fringe theories — a concerted plan among the world’s elites to eradicate millions by engineering a pandemic and then offering a fatal solution, or using the occasion of an unplanned pandemic to insert microchips into the body.
These sound like plots ripped directly from “The X-Files,” where, if memory serves, a shadowy cabal introduced alien DNA through the smallpox vaccine. Some weird black oil was involved too. Whatever. I mean, it makes no sense because, well, “X-Files.”
Any real-world plan rotating on the same wobbly axis is just as risible.
First, where’s the proof? Conspiracists point to one badly made “Plandemic” video, a smattering of rogue scientists and so-called medical professionals who appear to enjoy the notoriety that comes from telling some people what they want to believe.
Definitive evidence? Hardly.
Second, would the planet’s elites really want to rub out much of the global population that provides the raw labor necessary for them to continue to lord it over the rank-and-file? Answer: They wouldn’t, even if they could somehow manage to cobble together a conspiracy of this magnitude, which they can’t.
Third, Watergate. A relatively small group of people couldn’t cover up a bungled plan to wiretap the DNC headquarters in Washington, an operation miniscule in comparison to a global culling of the herd via vaccination.
Most of us can’t stay quiet about a surprise party. Imagine how many minions would need to keep mum about international genocide.
Yet the only people who seem to have any knowledge of this massive conspiracy are a few hairdressers posting on Facebook, some semi-regular callers to AM-radio talk shows, and the unemployed guy down the street who runs his own website from a backyard shed.
Fourth, intention. Maybe the plan isn’t to kill us, but to track us. Hence, microchips in our bloodstreams.
There are much easier ways. I surrender more sensitive information on my phone than would ever be gleaned from tracking me through a microchip.
Think of all the third-party apps we opt into, the websites that collect information about our buying habits, the insurance companies we allow to monitor our driving in exchange for reduced premiums.
The sad truth is many of us have an inflated sense of our self-worth. The government has no need to track most of us. They can find us whenever they need to, and they will never need to.
It’s fun and exciting to live in a world where shadowy operatives are arrayed against us, where only Joe from Pougkeepsie knows the real truth, which he is revealing to just a select few. And we’re among the few.
It’s like James Bond minus the suave sophistication and cool cars. Without the buxom models. Sans the shaken, not stirred.
So not really much like Bond.
This imaginary world and the myths surrounding it are intoxicating. Strip it away, and all that remains is the glum reality: Roll up your sleeve, here comes the needle.
Boring, with a high degree of safety and security, but nevertheless wondrous because coronavirus vaccines will save lives.
Ponder all these researchers, toiling in obscurity, not to hide tiny cameras in syringes, but to alleviate suffering and death and allow us to get on with our glorious, messy, non-controversial and non-conspiratorial lives.
Where the only concerning cameras aren’t embedded in our bloodstream, but mounted above our streets, snapping images of speeders to fatten municipal coffers.
If we are so worried about privacy, let’s start there.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
It's a long way to the top if you wanna rock like AC/DC
A TikTok video making the rounds on social media purports to show how easy it is to write an AC/DC song.
Created by the Sydney band Seaforth (@weareseaforth), which bills itself as a “pop/country duo that talk funny,” the clip shows how to use a keyboard to simulate drums and bass, three guitar chords — A, D and G — and a singer’s “best impression of Marge Simpson.”
The result? A few seconds of credible AC/DC-style rock, with the catchy lyrics, “What’s that? / Look out! / Dog on the road!”
Many people want Seaforth to finish the song. I do too. “Dog on the Road” might be the perfect coda for this interminable year.
Yet several comments on Twitter take Seaforth’s good-natured ribbing of AC/DC to the next level. They argue all AC/DC songs sound the same and the band has been recycling the same rhythm (especially drums) for most of its history.
Not to be a mansplainer here — or in this case a bandsplainer — and not that AC/DC’s originality or lack thereof is the hill on which I wish to die, but I would argue the consistency of sound is the reason many fans love AC/DC.
Yes, they sound pretty much like they did in the 1970s. No, they haven’t matured a bit lyrically. Their go-to subjects are still getting some nookie, the joys of playing rock, and occasionally getting some nookie after playing rock. Their latest album, “Power Up,” just reuses the template. If it ain’t broke and all that.
The band took the blues, stuck it into a light socket, and cackled over the resulting crackle. In the process, they created their signature sound. But hey, they did it first.
Alice Cooper, another rocker from AC/DC’s generation, noted in a recent Rolling Stone interview that “it’s easier to write something like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ than it is to write something like [the Beatles’] ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’” — those songs where “you could hear them one time and you knew them.”
Not that AC/DC is on the level of Lennon and McCartney, but the same principle applies. Both bands’ songs are deceptively simple. If it were just a matter of throwing a few notes together, why aren’t more wannabe rock stars doing it successfully?
Creating a song to mimic the supposed ease of another musician’s signature sound reminds me of the denouements in many Sherlock Holmes stories. Once Holmes had successfully solved some seemingly impossible crime, he explains it to Watson, who then comments on how the process is really quite simple, something anybody could do, much to Holmes’s chagrin.
And whether the limitation is a fixed number of notes or chords or a finite number of word and letter combinations — remember all those hypothetical monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare? — everybody works within the same restrictions. Some creators just do it better than others.
We are a society that too often equates simple with “easy” and complex with “hard.” Yet knowing what to take out is just as important as what to put in. The shortest sentence in a speech may have been rewritten dozens of times. A few seconds in a movie may have taken days to film and generated hours of unused footage.
AC/DC’s music, for all its three-chord cacophony, is harder than it looks to replicate. If Seaforth makes it look so effortless, it’s because they are talented musicians themselves.
In a piece that has already name-checked AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare, I’ll beg the readers’ forbearance as I quote Theodore Roosevelt, who said critics count far less than “the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming” from those who “actually strive to do the deeds …”
Even if they are dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.
Something to ponder while waiting on the inevitable single, “Dog in the Road.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Created by the Sydney band Seaforth (@weareseaforth), which bills itself as a “pop/country duo that talk funny,” the clip shows how to use a keyboard to simulate drums and bass, three guitar chords — A, D and G — and a singer’s “best impression of Marge Simpson.”
The result? A few seconds of credible AC/DC-style rock, with the catchy lyrics, “What’s that? / Look out! / Dog on the road!”
Many people want Seaforth to finish the song. I do too. “Dog on the Road” might be the perfect coda for this interminable year.
Yet several comments on Twitter take Seaforth’s good-natured ribbing of AC/DC to the next level. They argue all AC/DC songs sound the same and the band has been recycling the same rhythm (especially drums) for most of its history.
Not to be a mansplainer here — or in this case a bandsplainer — and not that AC/DC’s originality or lack thereof is the hill on which I wish to die, but I would argue the consistency of sound is the reason many fans love AC/DC.
Yes, they sound pretty much like they did in the 1970s. No, they haven’t matured a bit lyrically. Their go-to subjects are still getting some nookie, the joys of playing rock, and occasionally getting some nookie after playing rock. Their latest album, “Power Up,” just reuses the template. If it ain’t broke and all that.
The band took the blues, stuck it into a light socket, and cackled over the resulting crackle. In the process, they created their signature sound. But hey, they did it first.
Alice Cooper, another rocker from AC/DC’s generation, noted in a recent Rolling Stone interview that “it’s easier to write something like ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ than it is to write something like [the Beatles’] ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’” — those songs where “you could hear them one time and you knew them.”
Not that AC/DC is on the level of Lennon and McCartney, but the same principle applies. Both bands’ songs are deceptively simple. If it were just a matter of throwing a few notes together, why aren’t more wannabe rock stars doing it successfully?
Creating a song to mimic the supposed ease of another musician’s signature sound reminds me of the denouements in many Sherlock Holmes stories. Once Holmes had successfully solved some seemingly impossible crime, he explains it to Watson, who then comments on how the process is really quite simple, something anybody could do, much to Holmes’s chagrin.
And whether the limitation is a fixed number of notes or chords or a finite number of word and letter combinations — remember all those hypothetical monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare? — everybody works within the same restrictions. Some creators just do it better than others.
We are a society that too often equates simple with “easy” and complex with “hard.” Yet knowing what to take out is just as important as what to put in. The shortest sentence in a speech may have been rewritten dozens of times. A few seconds in a movie may have taken days to film and generated hours of unused footage.
AC/DC’s music, for all its three-chord cacophony, is harder than it looks to replicate. If Seaforth makes it look so effortless, it’s because they are talented musicians themselves.
In a piece that has already name-checked AC/DC, Alice Cooper, Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare, I’ll beg the readers’ forbearance as I quote Theodore Roosevelt, who said critics count far less than “the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming” from those who “actually strive to do the deeds …”
Even if they are dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.
Something to ponder while waiting on the inevitable single, “Dog in the Road.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, November 25, 2020
Biden should leave Trump to New York justice
The incoming Biden administration should not waste time prosecuting Donald Trump.
If you’ve been following my musings for the last few years, this statement may surprise you. I’ve made no secret of my belief that Trump engaged in illegal, immoral activities before and during his time in office. He and cronies deserve to be held accountable.
But not by Biden.
The 46th president will already come to office under a cloud of suspicion and mistrust. Despite the assurances of secretaries of state and other election officials from both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states that November’s election was safe and secure with no evidence of widespread fraud, the Trump crime cartel, which poisons everything it touches, has managed to sow real doubt among many of the 73 million people who cast their votes for a second term of misfeasance and malfeasance.
Not that those voters required much urging.
If Trump has been successful at anything over the last four years, it has been the creation of a near-cult of automatons who will accept anything he says and does at face value, just because he says it. They fly his banner in place of the American flag, leave his signs in their yards long after the election, and somehow embrace him as a consummate symbol of Everyman — or Every White Man — despite his gloating over paying almost no taxes and disparaging comments toward women, minorities and veterans.
Oh, and his complete bumbling of a pandemic that keeps devouring American lives and livelihoods while his focus remains alternately on Twitter and the golf course.
So whatever the result of any federal prosecution, Biden loses.
If Trump is found guilty, his supporters will spin a saga of kangaroo courts and QAnon-inspired deep-state conspiracies. A guilty verdict will make a martyr of Trump. If he’s found not guilty, it will be seen as a vindication of four years of chicanery and ineptitude.
And if Biden issues a pardon (which he indicated he is not inclined to do), the Always Trumpers will argue it’s because 45 did nothing wrong in the first place. It’s really a no-win in this nightmare scenario created by Fox News and Russian trolls, egged on by a narcissist who would rather annihilate all democratic norms than admit defeat.
Regardless, Biden has bigger problems just trying to undo the missteps of the last four years. A virus needs quelled, an economy salvaged, international relations repaired, and environmental damage reversed. All of these are more pressing issues than pursuing a divisive investigation into Trump.
This isn’t to say other legal forces won’t be closing in on the soon-to-be ex-president. Jane Mayer, writing in the Nov. 9 New Yorker, notes both the Manhattan district attorney and the New York attorney general are “independently pursuing criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became president.” He is said to be on the hook for some $300 million in personal loans and some $900 million in real-estate debt, according to Mayer.
Some say the thought of Trump in prison orange is a left-leaning fantasy. I tend to agree. He has more lives than the scrappiest alley cat, despite being one of the softest and most fragile men, ego-wise, on the planet.
The best outcome would be a nation and world that simply moves on post-Trump, voting out those who enabled him while leaving his outmoded form of noxious nationalism where it belongs — in the past.
Unfortunately, there are 73 million reasons why this isn’t likely to happen, and 73 million reasons to worry that if the next grifter is actually intelligent instead of merely crafty, the country could be in real trouble.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
If you’ve been following my musings for the last few years, this statement may surprise you. I’ve made no secret of my belief that Trump engaged in illegal, immoral activities before and during his time in office. He and cronies deserve to be held accountable.
But not by Biden.
The 46th president will already come to office under a cloud of suspicion and mistrust. Despite the assurances of secretaries of state and other election officials from both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states that November’s election was safe and secure with no evidence of widespread fraud, the Trump crime cartel, which poisons everything it touches, has managed to sow real doubt among many of the 73 million people who cast their votes for a second term of misfeasance and malfeasance.
Not that those voters required much urging.
If Trump has been successful at anything over the last four years, it has been the creation of a near-cult of automatons who will accept anything he says and does at face value, just because he says it. They fly his banner in place of the American flag, leave his signs in their yards long after the election, and somehow embrace him as a consummate symbol of Everyman — or Every White Man — despite his gloating over paying almost no taxes and disparaging comments toward women, minorities and veterans.
Oh, and his complete bumbling of a pandemic that keeps devouring American lives and livelihoods while his focus remains alternately on Twitter and the golf course.
So whatever the result of any federal prosecution, Biden loses.
If Trump is found guilty, his supporters will spin a saga of kangaroo courts and QAnon-inspired deep-state conspiracies. A guilty verdict will make a martyr of Trump. If he’s found not guilty, it will be seen as a vindication of four years of chicanery and ineptitude.
And if Biden issues a pardon (which he indicated he is not inclined to do), the Always Trumpers will argue it’s because 45 did nothing wrong in the first place. It’s really a no-win in this nightmare scenario created by Fox News and Russian trolls, egged on by a narcissist who would rather annihilate all democratic norms than admit defeat.
Regardless, Biden has bigger problems just trying to undo the missteps of the last four years. A virus needs quelled, an economy salvaged, international relations repaired, and environmental damage reversed. All of these are more pressing issues than pursuing a divisive investigation into Trump.
This isn’t to say other legal forces won’t be closing in on the soon-to-be ex-president. Jane Mayer, writing in the Nov. 9 New Yorker, notes both the Manhattan district attorney and the New York attorney general are “independently pursuing criminal charges related to Trump’s business practices before he became president.” He is said to be on the hook for some $300 million in personal loans and some $900 million in real-estate debt, according to Mayer.
Some say the thought of Trump in prison orange is a left-leaning fantasy. I tend to agree. He has more lives than the scrappiest alley cat, despite being one of the softest and most fragile men, ego-wise, on the planet.
The best outcome would be a nation and world that simply moves on post-Trump, voting out those who enabled him while leaving his outmoded form of noxious nationalism where it belongs — in the past.
Unfortunately, there are 73 million reasons why this isn’t likely to happen, and 73 million reasons to worry that if the next grifter is actually intelligent instead of merely crafty, the country could be in real trouble.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
COVID and Me: A Memoir in One Part
My wife and I were so careful.
We wore masks everywhere we went, and we didn’t go to all that many places. I shopped for groceries solo. We ordered carryout and delivery, only occasionally eating on patios when the weather allowed. We avoided family get-togethers.
COVID found us just the same.
My wife texted me at work a couple Fridays ago to tell me she had tested positive at her job. Because she works in long-term care, she is swabbed several times each week.
Minutes before her text, I had finished a morning of teaching and doling out Halloween candy. I had made a big production with the candy bars, pouring liberal amounts of sanitizer onto my hands, touching only the edges of the wrappers instead of allowing students to rummage around inside the bag.
An hour later, armed with a doctor’s referral and parked outside the local emergency room, I waited as an employee dressed in a spacesuit got too up close and personal to my nostrils with a cotton swab.
I was, by the way, completely asymptomatic. No fever. No shortness of breath. The week before, I had run more than 20 miles. The portrait of middle-aged health.
But when I woke from a nap later that night, I had a fever and the chills. My memory of the next two days is foggy. Holly and I woke periodically to shuffle around the house and grab a bite to eat. At some point, kids passed on the sidewalk outside, dressed in their trick-or-treat finery, yet I was the ghost, peering out the windows at them from quarantine.
I didn’t need the confirmation from the hospital a few days later; I knew the ’VID had taken root.
The Alliance City Health Department was stellar. A nurse called several times to check on us. During the first call, she asked pointed questions about my job. Had I been within six feet of any students for longer than 15 minutes? No. Was I sure? Yes. Did I always wear a mask? Yes.
What about lunch? How many colleagues did I eat with? Had we stayed far enough apart? Was there sufficient air circulation?
I confessed the candy distribution, afraid it would be a dealbreaker and my students would be quarantined. It wasn’t, and they weren’t. Maybe it was all the sanitizer.
After the first weekend, I started feeling better quickly. Ten days later, I was cleared to return to work. My wife has needed an extra week because of respiratory problems. (She is improving.)
We were lucky. Our symptoms were mild. Our families brought us food and left it on the porch. Our friends called and texted to check on us.
Many people have not been so fortunate. In the United States alone, COVID deaths are 241,000 and counting. I’ve read about people who have been hospitalized for months, breathing through tubes. The term “long-haulers” refers to survivors with lingering, life-altering symptoms.
And yet, in the local Walmart a few days ago, it was like the Wild West where masks were concerned. I saw parents with school-age children, older couples, younger couples, people who undoubtedly drove on the right side of the road to get there, who wore seat belts, who acceded to the state’s mandate to wear shoes and shirts inside the store — all deciding a strip of cloth across the nose and mouth was one public-safety requirement too far, a line in the sand where they could prove they weren’t sheeple, where they could thumb their noses at the man.
I see deluded people on social media, hinging their well-being on one or two mavericks in the healthcare field who say masks are worthless or they restrict our breathing, betting against the preponderance of evidence showing they are effective and safe, like the colleague who drove fifty-plus miles round trip to the one area pediatrician who said it was okay for her to smoke while pregnant.
And, yes, herd immunity sounds appealing, a throw-up-our-hands-in-surrender solution to absolve us of personal responsibility, until we realize how many millions of people need to die to make it a reality.
Sure, a vaccine is coming, but not right away. So, before you mock Gov. DeWine for reissuing mask orders and cracking down on businesses that won’t enforce them, or President-elect Joe Biden for proposing a more comprehensive federal response than any we’ve seen so far, remember there’s a long cold winter between most of us and immunity.
We can’t extract ourselves from this predicament with magical thinking, conspiracy theories or “Don’t Tread on Me” stubbornness.
Wear the damn mask. Stay home when you can. Live to fight another day.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
We wore masks everywhere we went, and we didn’t go to all that many places. I shopped for groceries solo. We ordered carryout and delivery, only occasionally eating on patios when the weather allowed. We avoided family get-togethers.
COVID found us just the same.
My wife texted me at work a couple Fridays ago to tell me she had tested positive at her job. Because she works in long-term care, she is swabbed several times each week.
Minutes before her text, I had finished a morning of teaching and doling out Halloween candy. I had made a big production with the candy bars, pouring liberal amounts of sanitizer onto my hands, touching only the edges of the wrappers instead of allowing students to rummage around inside the bag.
An hour later, armed with a doctor’s referral and parked outside the local emergency room, I waited as an employee dressed in a spacesuit got too up close and personal to my nostrils with a cotton swab.
I was, by the way, completely asymptomatic. No fever. No shortness of breath. The week before, I had run more than 20 miles. The portrait of middle-aged health.
But when I woke from a nap later that night, I had a fever and the chills. My memory of the next two days is foggy. Holly and I woke periodically to shuffle around the house and grab a bite to eat. At some point, kids passed on the sidewalk outside, dressed in their trick-or-treat finery, yet I was the ghost, peering out the windows at them from quarantine.
I didn’t need the confirmation from the hospital a few days later; I knew the ’VID had taken root.
The Alliance City Health Department was stellar. A nurse called several times to check on us. During the first call, she asked pointed questions about my job. Had I been within six feet of any students for longer than 15 minutes? No. Was I sure? Yes. Did I always wear a mask? Yes.
What about lunch? How many colleagues did I eat with? Had we stayed far enough apart? Was there sufficient air circulation?
I confessed the candy distribution, afraid it would be a dealbreaker and my students would be quarantined. It wasn’t, and they weren’t. Maybe it was all the sanitizer.
After the first weekend, I started feeling better quickly. Ten days later, I was cleared to return to work. My wife has needed an extra week because of respiratory problems. (She is improving.)
We were lucky. Our symptoms were mild. Our families brought us food and left it on the porch. Our friends called and texted to check on us.
Many people have not been so fortunate. In the United States alone, COVID deaths are 241,000 and counting. I’ve read about people who have been hospitalized for months, breathing through tubes. The term “long-haulers” refers to survivors with lingering, life-altering symptoms.
And yet, in the local Walmart a few days ago, it was like the Wild West where masks were concerned. I saw parents with school-age children, older couples, younger couples, people who undoubtedly drove on the right side of the road to get there, who wore seat belts, who acceded to the state’s mandate to wear shoes and shirts inside the store — all deciding a strip of cloth across the nose and mouth was one public-safety requirement too far, a line in the sand where they could prove they weren’t sheeple, where they could thumb their noses at the man.
I see deluded people on social media, hinging their well-being on one or two mavericks in the healthcare field who say masks are worthless or they restrict our breathing, betting against the preponderance of evidence showing they are effective and safe, like the colleague who drove fifty-plus miles round trip to the one area pediatrician who said it was okay for her to smoke while pregnant.
And, yes, herd immunity sounds appealing, a throw-up-our-hands-in-surrender solution to absolve us of personal responsibility, until we realize how many millions of people need to die to make it a reality.
Sure, a vaccine is coming, but not right away. So, before you mock Gov. DeWine for reissuing mask orders and cracking down on businesses that won’t enforce them, or President-elect Joe Biden for proposing a more comprehensive federal response than any we’ve seen so far, remember there’s a long cold winter between most of us and immunity.
We can’t extract ourselves from this predicament with magical thinking, conspiracy theories or “Don’t Tread on Me” stubbornness.
Wear the damn mask. Stay home when you can. Live to fight another day.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Monday, November 9, 2020
Problems for the next president
Hi, reader.
This is another case where I’m stuck a few days behind you, peering fitfully into my crystal ball, wondering what the world of Two-Days-Hence will hold, especially as it relates to the presidential election.
It appears increasingly likely that Joe Biden will have an opportunity in the nation’s top seat, provided states where ballots are still being counted continue to tilt his way.
But given President Trump’s continued calls to “STOP THE COUNT!” (in defiance of all democratic norms, by the way), it also appears likely that some part of the process will end up mired in lawsuits and adjudicated in court.
Regardless of how that shakes out, the eventual winner will face the same intractable issues.
First, America is a country divided. Blame it on ginned-up rhetoric, social-media disinformation campaigns, the competing realities of FOX News and MSNBC, or an alleged lack of civics education, but whoever takes the oath of office in January will have to contend with a sizable demographic that hates him and sees him as the Great Satan.
Second, America is still in the middle of a raging pandemic, and any corner that we might be turning is taking us in the wrong direction. A sensible compromise has to exist between utter disregard for public health and a complete lockdown. It would help to have federal leadership that acknowledges science even as it recognizes the importance of financial solvency and mental health. Most people will do the right thing when they see it modeled by sensible leaders who provide a sane rationale. No draconian lockdowns are necessary when people take the right steps voluntarily.
Third, racial tensions are inflamed. Many people cannot see that it is possible to support law enforcement but still recognize systemic racism in its midst. It is not a binary choice to support police or Black Lives Matter. Policing is in need of reform, if only so officers don’t find themselves dealing with issues best left to mental health experts. Frank discussions about how to reform — not defund — police departments to keep both officers and citizens — and especially citizens of color — safe are long overdue.
Fourth, hunger. In one of the most prosperous nations in the world, it is unacceptable that more than 35 million people struggled with hunger in 2019, a number that may balloon to 50 million this year because of the pandemic. How can we fail to feed our own?
Fifth, income disparity. Is the end goal of civilization to concentrate the majority of our wealth in the hands of a small cabal? If so, we are making good progress. If not, there has to be a way to redistribute that wealth in a way that still allows for competition and entrepreneurialism.
Sixth, seventh and eighth — the environment. Our reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable. On the face of it, rolling back regulations sounds like a positive step, a pro-business position to cut red tape and create more jobs. But when deregulation means allowing more groundwater pollution, expanding oil and gas drilling in protected national forests, and ratcheting up greenhouse gas emissions, we are cannibalizing long-term environmental health — to say nothing of the deleterious effects on our physical health — for short-term profits.
We need leadership that will work to reduce the carbon footprint of the industrialized world, invest in alternative forms of energy, and create jobs to replace those lost in coal country and elsewhere.
It won’t happen overnight and without concessions, but it has to happen before we bequeath to future generations a world that is unhealthy and unlivable.
If past performance is indicative of future results, all these issues would take a backseat under a potential second Trump term. Instead, we would have to prepare ourselves for another deep dive into white-grievance politics, partisan sniping, and tax-cut proposals that benefit the ultra-rich.
Under Biden, maybe at least some of these concerns will be addressed, although to what extent Congress will allow it is unknown.
But, make no mistake, somebody somewhere will have to deal with them, now or four years from now.
Nobody needs a crystal ball to forecast that.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
This is another case where I’m stuck a few days behind you, peering fitfully into my crystal ball, wondering what the world of Two-Days-Hence will hold, especially as it relates to the presidential election.
It appears increasingly likely that Joe Biden will have an opportunity in the nation’s top seat, provided states where ballots are still being counted continue to tilt his way.
But given President Trump’s continued calls to “STOP THE COUNT!” (in defiance of all democratic norms, by the way), it also appears likely that some part of the process will end up mired in lawsuits and adjudicated in court.
Regardless of how that shakes out, the eventual winner will face the same intractable issues.
First, America is a country divided. Blame it on ginned-up rhetoric, social-media disinformation campaigns, the competing realities of FOX News and MSNBC, or an alleged lack of civics education, but whoever takes the oath of office in January will have to contend with a sizable demographic that hates him and sees him as the Great Satan.
Second, America is still in the middle of a raging pandemic, and any corner that we might be turning is taking us in the wrong direction. A sensible compromise has to exist between utter disregard for public health and a complete lockdown. It would help to have federal leadership that acknowledges science even as it recognizes the importance of financial solvency and mental health. Most people will do the right thing when they see it modeled by sensible leaders who provide a sane rationale. No draconian lockdowns are necessary when people take the right steps voluntarily.
Third, racial tensions are inflamed. Many people cannot see that it is possible to support law enforcement but still recognize systemic racism in its midst. It is not a binary choice to support police or Black Lives Matter. Policing is in need of reform, if only so officers don’t find themselves dealing with issues best left to mental health experts. Frank discussions about how to reform — not defund — police departments to keep both officers and citizens — and especially citizens of color — safe are long overdue.
Fourth, hunger. In one of the most prosperous nations in the world, it is unacceptable that more than 35 million people struggled with hunger in 2019, a number that may balloon to 50 million this year because of the pandemic. How can we fail to feed our own?
Fifth, income disparity. Is the end goal of civilization to concentrate the majority of our wealth in the hands of a small cabal? If so, we are making good progress. If not, there has to be a way to redistribute that wealth in a way that still allows for competition and entrepreneurialism.
Sixth, seventh and eighth — the environment. Our reliance on fossil fuels is unsustainable. On the face of it, rolling back regulations sounds like a positive step, a pro-business position to cut red tape and create more jobs. But when deregulation means allowing more groundwater pollution, expanding oil and gas drilling in protected national forests, and ratcheting up greenhouse gas emissions, we are cannibalizing long-term environmental health — to say nothing of the deleterious effects on our physical health — for short-term profits.
We need leadership that will work to reduce the carbon footprint of the industrialized world, invest in alternative forms of energy, and create jobs to replace those lost in coal country and elsewhere.
It won’t happen overnight and without concessions, but it has to happen before we bequeath to future generations a world that is unhealthy and unlivable.
If past performance is indicative of future results, all these issues would take a backseat under a potential second Trump term. Instead, we would have to prepare ourselves for another deep dive into white-grievance politics, partisan sniping, and tax-cut proposals that benefit the ultra-rich.
Under Biden, maybe at least some of these concerns will be addressed, although to what extent Congress will allow it is unknown.
But, make no mistake, somebody somewhere will have to deal with them, now or four years from now.
Nobody needs a crystal ball to forecast that.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Friday, November 6, 2020
All treats, no tricks with early voting
My wife and I returned our absentee ballots to the Stark County Board of Elections a few weekends ago.
It feels good. Not only because we’ve performed our civic duty — and early! — but because it means no unforeseen circumstances will keep our voices from being heard.
Said unforeseen circumstances in this most hideous of years could range from a burning case of diarrhea to a swarm of murder hornets. As Dickens once remarked of Scrooge, waiting for the second spirit to visit, “nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much,” and so it has been with the unraveling of 2020.
Another reason why it feels good to have a ballot cast is because it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. I can now safely ignore all the rigamarole of the last few weeks — that final debate, the back-and-forth sniping from candidates and followers, the falling dominoes of increasingly desperate October surprises and the polls polls polls showing one candidate waxing as the other wanes. (And if you don’t like today’s numbers, change the channel or wait until tomorrow.)
Not that all this isn’t important, because it is. But none of it can change my mind now, even if I wanted it to. It’s the political iteration of the Serenity Prayer.
With this in mind, I’m spending the next few days not engaging in politics as much as possible. I know there is a degree of privilege in this, of which I am cognizant and for which I am grateful.
So while I am not engaging in political discourse, I will instead:
• Read seasonal favorites like Edgar Allan Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and “Ligeia.”
• Take a long run and soak up visions of autumn’s finery.
• Walk the dog.
• Mow the grass for what I hope is the last time this year.
• Grade papers (the bane of every teacher’s existence).
• Think up new ways to torment … I mean, engage students at high levels.
• Wear a mask in public (which, despite what some might believe, is completely non-political and just common sense).
• Help my wife shop online for early Christmas gifts, which usually consists of asking repeatedly if she’s found anything for me.
• Think about shopping online for her but decide to wait until closer to Christmas, like maybe Dec. 24.
• Drag the last pieces of patio furniture into storage.
• Sleep.
There might come a time in the near future when a potential assault on our democratic norms means I must speak up and make my voice heard, but not this weekend. Depending on how long it takes votes to be counted, it might not be next weekend either.
But it could be coming, and it’s best to be rested and prepared. I’ll watch and read the news, ponder perspectives from multiple sources, but not perseverate on any one outcome. And I’ll know when to tune it out and just be.
I advise other people who have already voted to do the same, just as I encourage anybody who is registered but has not yet returned an absentee ballot to complete that task, and those who plan to vote in person on Tuesday to follow through on this intention.
Otherwise, pick your battles. Metaphorically, of course.
And if you have any sure-fire preventative measures for murder hornets, let me know, huh? Because 2020 just keeps coming.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
It feels good. Not only because we’ve performed our civic duty — and early! — but because it means no unforeseen circumstances will keep our voices from being heard.
Said unforeseen circumstances in this most hideous of years could range from a burning case of diarrhea to a swarm of murder hornets. As Dickens once remarked of Scrooge, waiting for the second spirit to visit, “nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much,” and so it has been with the unraveling of 2020.
Another reason why it feels good to have a ballot cast is because it’s a get-out-of-jail-free card. I can now safely ignore all the rigamarole of the last few weeks — that final debate, the back-and-forth sniping from candidates and followers, the falling dominoes of increasingly desperate October surprises and the polls polls polls showing one candidate waxing as the other wanes. (And if you don’t like today’s numbers, change the channel or wait until tomorrow.)
Not that all this isn’t important, because it is. But none of it can change my mind now, even if I wanted it to. It’s the political iteration of the Serenity Prayer.
With this in mind, I’m spending the next few days not engaging in politics as much as possible. I know there is a degree of privilege in this, of which I am cognizant and for which I am grateful.
So while I am not engaging in political discourse, I will instead:
• Read seasonal favorites like Edgar Allan Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and “Ligeia.”
• Take a long run and soak up visions of autumn’s finery.
• Walk the dog.
• Mow the grass for what I hope is the last time this year.
• Grade papers (the bane of every teacher’s existence).
• Think up new ways to torment … I mean, engage students at high levels.
• Wear a mask in public (which, despite what some might believe, is completely non-political and just common sense).
• Help my wife shop online for early Christmas gifts, which usually consists of asking repeatedly if she’s found anything for me.
• Think about shopping online for her but decide to wait until closer to Christmas, like maybe Dec. 24.
• Drag the last pieces of patio furniture into storage.
• Sleep.
There might come a time in the near future when a potential assault on our democratic norms means I must speak up and make my voice heard, but not this weekend. Depending on how long it takes votes to be counted, it might not be next weekend either.
But it could be coming, and it’s best to be rested and prepared. I’ll watch and read the news, ponder perspectives from multiple sources, but not perseverate on any one outcome. And I’ll know when to tune it out and just be.
I advise other people who have already voted to do the same, just as I encourage anybody who is registered but has not yet returned an absentee ballot to complete that task, and those who plan to vote in person on Tuesday to follow through on this intention.
Otherwise, pick your battles. Metaphorically, of course.
And if you have any sure-fire preventative measures for murder hornets, let me know, huh? Because 2020 just keeps coming.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, October 29, 2020
James Patterson Gets in Your Blood
Chapter One
My wife and I have been reading books together during the pandemic.
Many of them have been James Patterson novels.
The books are time killers with short, punchy sentences, like the ones I’m writing here.
They also are mostly written not by James Patterson, but by his co-authors. Otherwise, he would have to work around the clock to write four books at once while dictating a fifth in his sleep.
Patterson’s co-authors are the people whose names are written in small print on the bottom of the covers. His name goes, really big, on the top.
Chapter Two
Most of these books have very short chapters.
Chapter Three
These short chapters mean you can say, “Just one more before bedtime” for an hour before you actually go to bed.
Because “just one more” is only a page or two, maybe three.
And before you know it, you’ve read another 50 pages.
Chapter Four
The paragraphs are also short, and about every third sentence is a fragment. Like this one.
Chapter Five
The characters follow a certain pattern. The protagonist is usually a loner with a tragic backstory.
A murdered family is a good motivator.
The protagonist swims against the current, career-wise. Maybe she is an FBI profiler who detects crimes nobody else does. Or a police officer fighting terrorists and moonlighting as a celebrity chef. Or a midwife exposing the Russian mafia.
It also helps if the hero has a tortured love life. If these people were happier at home, they wouldn’t be out fighting crime.
Chapter Six
My favorite Patterson novel so far has been “The Summer House.” Holly’s favorite is “Invisible.”
Chapter Seven
It may seem like I’m making fun of these books, but I’m not. They give us something to do besides binge-watch TV.
Plus, they’re the literary equivalent of chocolate donuts with sprinkles. Not healthy, but they go down easy.
About four months and 20 Patterson books into the pandemic, we changed it up.
We’ve now read some Harlan Coben. And some David Baldacci. And some Sandra Brown. By order of author, I’ve preferred “The Stranger,” “One Good Deed,” and “Lethal.”
Chapter Eight
I’ve read all these books aloud because I’m a bad listener. Plus, Holly bakes me cookies while I read.
It has helped me to absorb the sentence patterns and story structures. (The reading aloud, not the cookies. That’s a different type of absorption.)
After such concentrated exposure, I feel like these writers’ styles are part of my DNA. Especially Patterson's style. To the point that I’m contemplating a contemporary thriller of my own.
Maybe one about a high school teacher and his wife, stuck inside during a pandemic, reading and reading and reading. While the former writes shorter and shorter sentences.
Stop me if you’ve read that one before.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
My wife and I have been reading books together during the pandemic.
Many of them have been James Patterson novels.
The books are time killers with short, punchy sentences, like the ones I’m writing here.
They also are mostly written not by James Patterson, but by his co-authors. Otherwise, he would have to work around the clock to write four books at once while dictating a fifth in his sleep.
Patterson’s co-authors are the people whose names are written in small print on the bottom of the covers. His name goes, really big, on the top.
Chapter Two
Most of these books have very short chapters.
Chapter Three
These short chapters mean you can say, “Just one more before bedtime” for an hour before you actually go to bed.
Because “just one more” is only a page or two, maybe three.
And before you know it, you’ve read another 50 pages.
Chapter Four
The paragraphs are also short, and about every third sentence is a fragment. Like this one.
Chapter Five
The characters follow a certain pattern. The protagonist is usually a loner with a tragic backstory.
A murdered family is a good motivator.
The protagonist swims against the current, career-wise. Maybe she is an FBI profiler who detects crimes nobody else does. Or a police officer fighting terrorists and moonlighting as a celebrity chef. Or a midwife exposing the Russian mafia.
It also helps if the hero has a tortured love life. If these people were happier at home, they wouldn’t be out fighting crime.
Chapter Six
My favorite Patterson novel so far has been “The Summer House.” Holly’s favorite is “Invisible.”
Chapter Seven
It may seem like I’m making fun of these books, but I’m not. They give us something to do besides binge-watch TV.
Plus, they’re the literary equivalent of chocolate donuts with sprinkles. Not healthy, but they go down easy.
About four months and 20 Patterson books into the pandemic, we changed it up.
We’ve now read some Harlan Coben. And some David Baldacci. And some Sandra Brown. By order of author, I’ve preferred “The Stranger,” “One Good Deed,” and “Lethal.”
Chapter Eight
I’ve read all these books aloud because I’m a bad listener. Plus, Holly bakes me cookies while I read.
It has helped me to absorb the sentence patterns and story structures. (The reading aloud, not the cookies. That’s a different type of absorption.)
After such concentrated exposure, I feel like these writers’ styles are part of my DNA. Especially Patterson's style. To the point that I’m contemplating a contemporary thriller of my own.
Maybe one about a high school teacher and his wife, stuck inside during a pandemic, reading and reading and reading. While the former writes shorter and shorter sentences.
Stop me if you’ve read that one before.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
So, What About 'All This'?
O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
— Robert Burns, “To a Louse”
Never in my 20-some years of teaching have so many non-educators asked about the school year.
What they really want to know about is “all this.” Imagine my index finger tracing a circle around my face where a mask perches while I teach.
“All this” also refers to social distancing, the disinfecting of desks after each class and the mental and physical wellness of kids and staff. I’m sure grocery store employees, doctors, nurses, and other workers whose day-to-day routines have undergone massive changes because of the pandemic field similar questions.
Well, “all this” in schools is going about as well as can be expected.
I’m sure it’s a challenge for younger kids, but high schoolers, by and large, have accepted mask-wearing as a way to resume a degree of normalcy. Occasionally I have to give a visual cue — a quick horizontal gesture of my finger beneath my nose — to remind an errant masker to pull it up. And some students take full advantage of the opportunity to slide down the masks and take loooong drinks, as if a Dunkin or Starbucks cup gives them carte blanche to go maskless for longer periods of time.
A song on the loudspeaker two minutes before the end of each period reminds students to stand while I pass among them, distributing paper towels and spraying disinfectant. Three squirts down the back and seat of the chair, three squirts on the desktop, accompanied by my verbal approximation of a Star Wars laser gun — pew! pew! pew! and then pew! pew! pew! again.
Students scrub to a variety of music — country, rap, rock. At first, we had only songs with “wipe” or “scrub” in the lyrics. Not many tunes fit those parameters, however, so the musical palette expanded. Two weeks ago, a few seconds of “Jump” honored late, lamented guitar god Eddie Van Halen, even though the snippet only featured him on keyboards. (Everybody’s a critic, right?)
The social aspects are also challenging. Modifications to extracurriculars, the postponement of dances, friends on the opposite day’s schedule (at least until we get back to all students, five days a week, in November) — all have contributed to student stress.
But kids are resilient and adaptable. They have an abiding belief, shared by their teachers, that normalcy will return, even if we don’t know exactly when or how.
Don’t mistake this for a desire to abandon masks and social distancing before it’s advisable, however. Most teens understand, more than many adults, I’m convinced, the concept of shared sacrifice, how their masks protect others inside and outside the school, including teachers, family members and vulnerable members of the community.
As for how teachers are handling “all this” — well, I can speak only for myself.
Every now and again, I have a moment of clarity, when I realize the enormity of how the world has changed. I had one such incident the first week of school, when I looked out across a room of masked kids and made eye contact with a student I’d had a few years before. His eyes communicated nervousness and uncertainty, maybe because of the new school year, maybe because he was stuck with me for another semester, or maybe because that strip of cloth that covered his usual smile indicated this would be a year unlike any other.
I had to pause, take it all in and swallow hard with a gulp I hoped wasn’t too audible before proceeding. If he could carry on, so could I.
A similar revelation came earlier this month, after I saw myself on camera, speaking in front of a classroom. I looked and sounded like a gangly robot, my head moving only slightly as I spoke in monotone.
To the casual observer, it would have been hard to tell if I were happy, angry or bored. Facial expressions say a lot. So does the lack of them.
Since then, I’ve made efforts to be more animated, to speak more loudly, to laugh more heartily, to push my intentions through the mask and into the room. I’ve upped the goofiness factor by several degrees.
Maybe it’s overcompensation. Or maybe just a case of fake it until you make it during “all this.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
To see ourselves as others see us!
— Robert Burns, “To a Louse”
Never in my 20-some years of teaching have so many non-educators asked about the school year.
What they really want to know about is “all this.” Imagine my index finger tracing a circle around my face where a mask perches while I teach.
“All this” also refers to social distancing, the disinfecting of desks after each class and the mental and physical wellness of kids and staff. I’m sure grocery store employees, doctors, nurses, and other workers whose day-to-day routines have undergone massive changes because of the pandemic field similar questions.
Well, “all this” in schools is going about as well as can be expected.
I’m sure it’s a challenge for younger kids, but high schoolers, by and large, have accepted mask-wearing as a way to resume a degree of normalcy. Occasionally I have to give a visual cue — a quick horizontal gesture of my finger beneath my nose — to remind an errant masker to pull it up. And some students take full advantage of the opportunity to slide down the masks and take loooong drinks, as if a Dunkin or Starbucks cup gives them carte blanche to go maskless for longer periods of time.
A song on the loudspeaker two minutes before the end of each period reminds students to stand while I pass among them, distributing paper towels and spraying disinfectant. Three squirts down the back and seat of the chair, three squirts on the desktop, accompanied by my verbal approximation of a Star Wars laser gun — pew! pew! pew! and then pew! pew! pew! again.
Students scrub to a variety of music — country, rap, rock. At first, we had only songs with “wipe” or “scrub” in the lyrics. Not many tunes fit those parameters, however, so the musical palette expanded. Two weeks ago, a few seconds of “Jump” honored late, lamented guitar god Eddie Van Halen, even though the snippet only featured him on keyboards. (Everybody’s a critic, right?)
The social aspects are also challenging. Modifications to extracurriculars, the postponement of dances, friends on the opposite day’s schedule (at least until we get back to all students, five days a week, in November) — all have contributed to student stress.
But kids are resilient and adaptable. They have an abiding belief, shared by their teachers, that normalcy will return, even if we don’t know exactly when or how.
Don’t mistake this for a desire to abandon masks and social distancing before it’s advisable, however. Most teens understand, more than many adults, I’m convinced, the concept of shared sacrifice, how their masks protect others inside and outside the school, including teachers, family members and vulnerable members of the community.
As for how teachers are handling “all this” — well, I can speak only for myself.
Every now and again, I have a moment of clarity, when I realize the enormity of how the world has changed. I had one such incident the first week of school, when I looked out across a room of masked kids and made eye contact with a student I’d had a few years before. His eyes communicated nervousness and uncertainty, maybe because of the new school year, maybe because he was stuck with me for another semester, or maybe because that strip of cloth that covered his usual smile indicated this would be a year unlike any other.
I had to pause, take it all in and swallow hard with a gulp I hoped wasn’t too audible before proceeding. If he could carry on, so could I.
A similar revelation came earlier this month, after I saw myself on camera, speaking in front of a classroom. I looked and sounded like a gangly robot, my head moving only slightly as I spoke in monotone.
To the casual observer, it would have been hard to tell if I were happy, angry or bored. Facial expressions say a lot. So does the lack of them.
Since then, I’ve made efforts to be more animated, to speak more loudly, to laugh more heartily, to push my intentions through the mask and into the room. I’ve upped the goofiness factor by several degrees.
Maybe it’s overcompensation. Or maybe just a case of fake it until you make it during “all this.”
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Lord of the Flies is breakout debate star
The star of Wednesday night’s debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris was the fly that alighted on the vice president’s head and lodged in his hair for two minutes like a large piece of soot from the wildfires out west.
This intrepid columnist was fortunate to score an exclusive interview with the fly, which hopped an airplane back to Cleveland shortly after his extended cameo.
Below are some highlights, translated from Basic Fly through Google, which may account for inaccuracies in the fly’s responses.
Chris Schillig: So, Mr. Fly …
FLY: Call me Brundle. Everybody does.
CS: Brundle, you’ve had a couple of interesting days. Tell me how you ended up on the vice president’s head.
FLY: To be honest, I thought I was late for practice. It wasn’t until I got onto stage that I realized it was the actual event.
CS: Are you saying YOU were the vice president’s debate-prep partner?
FLY: Yes. The campaign didn’t want to overwhelm the big bzzzz (untranslatable), and I had open dates in my schedule.
CS: What qualified you?
FLY: I have a long history in show biz. I was an extra in that Jeff Goldblum movie in the 1980s.
CS: The ’80s? But surely flies don’t live that …
FLY: BZZZZZZZZZ
CS: OK, since the ’80s, then. Where have you been for the last three decades?
FLY: I fell on hard times. I flew into a brewery in the late ’90s and found myself in the bottom of too many vats, if you know what I mean. (Brundle winks one of its three eyes and attempts to nudge me with what passes for its elbow.) When the economy tanked in the 2000s, I had some lean years where I couldn’t even find any suitable bzzzzzzz (untranslatable) to land on.
CS: The Internet was abuzz (sorry) with your appearance since you were not wearing a mask.
FLY: I wear a mask when I need to. I’ve worn many masks, but they’re too small to see with the naked eye and I take them off as soon as I can. I’m not like Joe Biden. That guy would wear a mask even if he were 20 feet away from you.
CS: Brundle, you’re starting to sound suspiciously like the president.
FLY: Am I?
CS: Have you been tested for COVID? Have you been in close proximity to the president?
FLY: I travel with him, actually. You may have seen me at the rallies if you look closely. I’m the hairy little guy in the MAGA hat.
CS: To be fair, that doesn’t description doesn’t exactly make you stand out.
FLY: Good point. But as for COVID, no, I’m good. Plus, you can’t live your life in fear, you know? I’m already awfully old for a fly, so I guess the way I look at it, I’m willing to die if it means others can be free and the economy can come back.
CS: You’re willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of economic prosperity?
FLY: Oh bzzzzzzz yeah. I mean, I do have a rather small brain, but still.
CS: Is it true that you were whispering answers to Pence on stage Wednesday?
FLY: Complete falsehood. The only thing I kept repeating was, “Act like you care” and “plausible deniability.” There’s a reason that guy looks like he’s kept in the dark, and it’s because he’s kept in the dark.
CS: What about Senate Republicans’ timeline to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the Nov. 3 election? Where do you stand on that?
FLY: Look, elections have consequences. The president gets to pick, and the party in charge is the party in charge. I was in the Rose Garden when the president announced her as his nominee.
CS: You mean the super-spreader event?
FLY: It was a fly smorgasbord. I stayed off camera at that one.
CS: Do you worry that Barrett’s confirmation will move the Supreme Court to the right for the next several decades?
FLY: It sounds like you've been poisoned by the left-leaning media.
CS: What about climate change? And the Trump administration’s rolling back of so many environmental regulations.
FLY: If people not being able to breathe and wildfires burning out of control are the price we have to pay for the 1 percent to get richer, then so be it. Plus, it’ll all trickle down to the rest of America. Eventually.
CS: Wow, you are a MAGA fly, aren’t you?
FLY: Trump 2020!
And with that, the fly departed, presumably to prep for his next appearance Oct. 15 in Florida.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
This intrepid columnist was fortunate to score an exclusive interview with the fly, which hopped an airplane back to Cleveland shortly after his extended cameo.
Below are some highlights, translated from Basic Fly through Google, which may account for inaccuracies in the fly’s responses.
Chris Schillig: So, Mr. Fly …
FLY: Call me Brundle. Everybody does.
CS: Brundle, you’ve had a couple of interesting days. Tell me how you ended up on the vice president’s head.
FLY: To be honest, I thought I was late for practice. It wasn’t until I got onto stage that I realized it was the actual event.
CS: Are you saying YOU were the vice president’s debate-prep partner?
FLY: Yes. The campaign didn’t want to overwhelm the big bzzzz (untranslatable), and I had open dates in my schedule.
CS: What qualified you?
FLY: I have a long history in show biz. I was an extra in that Jeff Goldblum movie in the 1980s.
CS: The ’80s? But surely flies don’t live that …
FLY: BZZZZZZZZZ
CS: OK, since the ’80s, then. Where have you been for the last three decades?
FLY: I fell on hard times. I flew into a brewery in the late ’90s and found myself in the bottom of too many vats, if you know what I mean. (Brundle winks one of its three eyes and attempts to nudge me with what passes for its elbow.) When the economy tanked in the 2000s, I had some lean years where I couldn’t even find any suitable bzzzzzzz (untranslatable) to land on.
CS: The Internet was abuzz (sorry) with your appearance since you were not wearing a mask.
FLY: I wear a mask when I need to. I’ve worn many masks, but they’re too small to see with the naked eye and I take them off as soon as I can. I’m not like Joe Biden. That guy would wear a mask even if he were 20 feet away from you.
CS: Brundle, you’re starting to sound suspiciously like the president.
FLY: Am I?
CS: Have you been tested for COVID? Have you been in close proximity to the president?
FLY: I travel with him, actually. You may have seen me at the rallies if you look closely. I’m the hairy little guy in the MAGA hat.
CS: To be fair, that doesn’t description doesn’t exactly make you stand out.
FLY: Good point. But as for COVID, no, I’m good. Plus, you can’t live your life in fear, you know? I’m already awfully old for a fly, so I guess the way I look at it, I’m willing to die if it means others can be free and the economy can come back.
CS: You’re willing to sacrifice yourself on the altar of economic prosperity?
FLY: Oh bzzzzzzz yeah. I mean, I do have a rather small brain, but still.
CS: Is it true that you were whispering answers to Pence on stage Wednesday?
FLY: Complete falsehood. The only thing I kept repeating was, “Act like you care” and “plausible deniability.” There’s a reason that guy looks like he’s kept in the dark, and it’s because he’s kept in the dark.
CS: What about Senate Republicans’ timeline to confirm Amy Coney Barrett before the Nov. 3 election? Where do you stand on that?
FLY: Look, elections have consequences. The president gets to pick, and the party in charge is the party in charge. I was in the Rose Garden when the president announced her as his nominee.
CS: You mean the super-spreader event?
FLY: It was a fly smorgasbord. I stayed off camera at that one.
CS: Do you worry that Barrett’s confirmation will move the Supreme Court to the right for the next several decades?
FLY: It sounds like you've been poisoned by the left-leaning media.
CS: What about climate change? And the Trump administration’s rolling back of so many environmental regulations.
FLY: If people not being able to breathe and wildfires burning out of control are the price we have to pay for the 1 percent to get richer, then so be it. Plus, it’ll all trickle down to the rest of America. Eventually.
CS: Wow, you are a MAGA fly, aren’t you?
FLY: Trump 2020!
And with that, the fly departed, presumably to prep for his next appearance Oct. 15 in Florida.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Trump's COVID test could change the coronavirus equation
President Trump’s positive COVID test could affect far-right math on the coronavirus pandemic.
Up to this point, the equations have not been difficult to solve. With every problem, the economy is valued more than human lives.
This “economy first” mindset was on full display in this week’s presidential debate.
Trump did note 204,000 Americans have died so far of coronavirus and related conditions, saying “even one person [dying] is too much.” But then he pivoted back to the economy, asserting “people want their schools open” and “they want their restaurants” and “their places open. They want to get back to their lives.”
Of course they do. But the majority of them want to do so safely, something made more difficult by the president’s uneven endorsement of mask-wearing and social-distancing guidelines.
When pressed, the president will say he supports both. But in reality, his campaign stops have often violated local and state health authorities, to the glee of many Trump supporters.
Ohioans saw this firsthand last month. When Trump appeared in Vandalia, crowds booed Lt. Gov. Jon Husted for suggesting they should wear masks. They similarly decried Gov. Mike DeWine, calling him “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — presumably because his policies, especially in the early days of the pandemic, put people ahead of profits.
During Tuesday’s debate, Trump also mocked Biden for wearing a mask too frequently.
Given the president’s positive COVID test, this mockery is tinged with irony, not to mention concern. Friday’s diagnosis carries an existential danger to the president. He is in the high-risk demographic for the virus and its most serious effects because of his age. His weight, too, is a factor.
Maybe the next few days — weeks? — will give him only more opportunities to tweet half-lies, to cast more doubt, largely without evidence, on the integrity of mail-in balloting, the peaceful transfer of power after the Nov. 3 election, and his ongoing grievances with a press he feels has been unfair to him.
But imagine a scenario where he admits he has been wrong and urges his followers to don masks, to stay away from large gatherings, to stay home when sick.
Imagine a scenario where these followers do exactly that, realizing their decision not to wear a mask affects more than them, that it impacts their families, co-workers and friends. Where they decide going into a place of business without a mask is not an example of don’t-tread-on-me patriotism but callow insensitivity.
Imagine a scenario where this single positive COVID diagnosis has a ripple effect throughout the country, where it allows us to change the calculation and do what many health experts say we could have done last spring and summer with a more unified governmental response: beat the virus.
Hey, I’m an eternal optimist, or maybe just hopelessly naive. In any event, I harbor no personal ill-will toward the president. He has been a liability for this nation, without a doubt, but I hope he and the first lady make a quick and full recovery.
I just hope that with it comes a new appreciation for the stakes. An empathy he has so far seldom exhibited would also be welcomed.
However, given the president’s track record of learning from his mistakes instead of doubling down on them, I’d say the odds are not in the public’s favor.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Up to this point, the equations have not been difficult to solve. With every problem, the economy is valued more than human lives.
This “economy first” mindset was on full display in this week’s presidential debate.
Trump did note 204,000 Americans have died so far of coronavirus and related conditions, saying “even one person [dying] is too much.” But then he pivoted back to the economy, asserting “people want their schools open” and “they want their restaurants” and “their places open. They want to get back to their lives.”
Of course they do. But the majority of them want to do so safely, something made more difficult by the president’s uneven endorsement of mask-wearing and social-distancing guidelines.
When pressed, the president will say he supports both. But in reality, his campaign stops have often violated local and state health authorities, to the glee of many Trump supporters.
Ohioans saw this firsthand last month. When Trump appeared in Vandalia, crowds booed Lt. Gov. Jon Husted for suggesting they should wear masks. They similarly decried Gov. Mike DeWine, calling him “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — presumably because his policies, especially in the early days of the pandemic, put people ahead of profits.
During Tuesday’s debate, Trump also mocked Biden for wearing a mask too frequently.
Given the president’s positive COVID test, this mockery is tinged with irony, not to mention concern. Friday’s diagnosis carries an existential danger to the president. He is in the high-risk demographic for the virus and its most serious effects because of his age. His weight, too, is a factor.
Maybe the next few days — weeks? — will give him only more opportunities to tweet half-lies, to cast more doubt, largely without evidence, on the integrity of mail-in balloting, the peaceful transfer of power after the Nov. 3 election, and his ongoing grievances with a press he feels has been unfair to him.
But imagine a scenario where he admits he has been wrong and urges his followers to don masks, to stay away from large gatherings, to stay home when sick.
Imagine a scenario where these followers do exactly that, realizing their decision not to wear a mask affects more than them, that it impacts their families, co-workers and friends. Where they decide going into a place of business without a mask is not an example of don’t-tread-on-me patriotism but callow insensitivity.
Imagine a scenario where this single positive COVID diagnosis has a ripple effect throughout the country, where it allows us to change the calculation and do what many health experts say we could have done last spring and summer with a more unified governmental response: beat the virus.
Hey, I’m an eternal optimist, or maybe just hopelessly naive. In any event, I harbor no personal ill-will toward the president. He has been a liability for this nation, without a doubt, but I hope he and the first lady make a quick and full recovery.
I just hope that with it comes a new appreciation for the stakes. An empathy he has so far seldom exhibited would also be welcomed.
However, given the president’s track record of learning from his mistakes instead of doubling down on them, I’d say the odds are not in the public’s favor.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, September 27, 2020
White privilege is real and must be acknowledged
How refreshing to hear Joe Biden say he has benefitted from white privilege.
The Democratic presidential contender told a CNN town hall earlier this month he hadn’t had to “go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through.”
Contrast Biden’s response to Donald Trump’s. The president apparently finds even the discussion of white privilege offensive. He told Bob Woodward earlier this summer that the renowned journalist “drank the Kool-Aid” when Woodward asked about the isolating effects of white privilege and how it blinded recipients to the challenges facing minorities.
The differences in the responses speak volumes about how each man views the advantages typically bestowed on European Americans in this country. One candidate acknowledges such benefits exist, which presupposes he will work to even the playing field, if only by talking about it openly.
The other won’t even entertain the notion.
For those in the cheap seats, which usually means white men — and some women, although most women have seen how bias, intended and unintended, affects them — let me repeat: White privilege is real.
As a result, institutional racism is real, lurking beneath the bylaws and regulations of many organizations and groups that believe they deal fairly with all people.
Racism affects even those people who say they don’t “see” color and “don’t have a racist bone” in their bodies. Maybe it especially affects these people, as they have used their certainty to bar the door on further debate.
It also bears repeating that white privilege does not mean white Americans have not worked hard for what they have or do not deserve what they have earned. They have, and they do.
But white privilege does mean certain aspects of society are stacked against minorities, so when they work equally hard, they encounter additional roadblocks that often do not trouble whites in this country.
Take job searches, for example.
A 2017 article in “Administrative Science Quarterly” presented the results of a study where minority applicants removed references to their race on résumés to see if the change garnered more calls for interviews. The process is called “whitening” résumés.
It worked. Only 11.5% of non-whitened résumés submitted by Asians received calls, compared to 21% of the whitened résumés. Among Black candidates, 10% received calls off the non-whitened résumés, vs. 25% for the whitened versions.
Sadly, the results were the same for businesses that identified as “pro-diversity” and encouraged minorities to apply.
The study is not meant to suggest some chortling gatekeeper is separating applications based on race and intentionally slighting minority candidates. But it does indicate, perhaps at some subconscious level, people are reacting to ethnic-sounding names or activities like black-student unions, or perhaps selecting individuals whose résumés look more similar to their own experiences.
This is why it is so important to have better representation by minorities in the upper echelons of business administration, on various boards of directors, in government, policing, clergy, everywhere.
Again, not because whites are explicitly racist, but because the systems and institutions that have served white America so well over the decades and centuries are still doing so today.
Change starts with acknowledging a problem exists, and one of the best places to start is the highest office in the land.
But when we have a president who refuses such acknowledgement, the chances dwindle for honest dialogue, let alone substantive change.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
The Democratic presidential contender told a CNN town hall earlier this month he hadn’t had to “go through what my Black brothers and sisters have had to go through.”
Contrast Biden’s response to Donald Trump’s. The president apparently finds even the discussion of white privilege offensive. He told Bob Woodward earlier this summer that the renowned journalist “drank the Kool-Aid” when Woodward asked about the isolating effects of white privilege and how it blinded recipients to the challenges facing minorities.
The differences in the responses speak volumes about how each man views the advantages typically bestowed on European Americans in this country. One candidate acknowledges such benefits exist, which presupposes he will work to even the playing field, if only by talking about it openly.
The other won’t even entertain the notion.
For those in the cheap seats, which usually means white men — and some women, although most women have seen how bias, intended and unintended, affects them — let me repeat: White privilege is real.
As a result, institutional racism is real, lurking beneath the bylaws and regulations of many organizations and groups that believe they deal fairly with all people.
Racism affects even those people who say they don’t “see” color and “don’t have a racist bone” in their bodies. Maybe it especially affects these people, as they have used their certainty to bar the door on further debate.
It also bears repeating that white privilege does not mean white Americans have not worked hard for what they have or do not deserve what they have earned. They have, and they do.
But white privilege does mean certain aspects of society are stacked against minorities, so when they work equally hard, they encounter additional roadblocks that often do not trouble whites in this country.
Take job searches, for example.
A 2017 article in “Administrative Science Quarterly” presented the results of a study where minority applicants removed references to their race on résumés to see if the change garnered more calls for interviews. The process is called “whitening” résumés.
It worked. Only 11.5% of non-whitened résumés submitted by Asians received calls, compared to 21% of the whitened résumés. Among Black candidates, 10% received calls off the non-whitened résumés, vs. 25% for the whitened versions.
Sadly, the results were the same for businesses that identified as “pro-diversity” and encouraged minorities to apply.
The study is not meant to suggest some chortling gatekeeper is separating applications based on race and intentionally slighting minority candidates. But it does indicate, perhaps at some subconscious level, people are reacting to ethnic-sounding names or activities like black-student unions, or perhaps selecting individuals whose résumés look more similar to their own experiences.
This is why it is so important to have better representation by minorities in the upper echelons of business administration, on various boards of directors, in government, policing, clergy, everywhere.
Again, not because whites are explicitly racist, but because the systems and institutions that have served white America so well over the decades and centuries are still doing so today.
Change starts with acknowledging a problem exists, and one of the best places to start is the highest office in the land.
But when we have a president who refuses such acknowledgement, the chances dwindle for honest dialogue, let alone substantive change.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Assessing the cost of failure
I wasn’t surprised by my students’ reaction to advice about failure.
Late journalist and teacher Donald Murray — and I dislike “late” in this context because Murray was alive when he shared the suggestion and presumably arrived on time for his funeral — urged writers to “seek instructive failure.”
“You try to say what you cannot say,” Murray wrote, “but in the attempt you discover — draft by draft — what you have to say and how you can say it. Failure is essential.”
Most of my students were having none of it. When I polled them recently, the vast majority disagreed with Murray.
Cue the refrain of “kids these days” who cannot process defeat. They have all been given participation ribbons and ice cream even when they lose and are sheltered from the Darwinian dog-eat-dog nature of the world. Tiny helicopter parents perpetually hover around their heads, ready to drop napalm on anybody who comes bearing hardships.
I can picture the stereotypical grandpa, parked in the corner of a wedding reception or wake, grousing about how we’ve created a softer generation, a lesser generation.
Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so.
I believe, instead, that today’s children and young adults are keenly aware of failure. They have experienced it often and will thus go to great lengths to avoid it, not because their supposedly delicate psyches cannot handle it, but because they know all too well its cost.
Failure means moving off the established track that propels them through grade school to middle school, high school to college, a great job to a family, a big house to a secure retirement.
These kids have internalized a message adults send, perhaps unwittingly, that missteps are tolerated, but the bill for them will nevertheless come due. The payment could be fewer scholarships, a lower-tier college or a dead-end job.
Are students going to take a chance on failing to communicate a message in an essay, to “discover — draft by draft — what [they] have to say and how [they] can say it” when a grade waits at the end of the process? Or are they instead going to demonstrate audience awareness by writing what the teacher wants the first time, dotting all the compositional i’s and crossing all the rhetorical t’s?
No wonder students beg for rubrics. Just tell me what you want so I can do it right the first time, they think. Cut to the chase.
I teach in a building with a progressive policy about grading. We award formative grades, which are about practice, and summative grades, which are about performance. Many of the summative grades can be redone, giving the students a chance to fix what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. Yes, this means they can take many tests more than once.
It’s a great philosophy for students who embrace the spirit of the policy. Schools should be places where learning is prized above grades. (Despite what grandpa thinks, learning and grades are not interchangeable.)
But one policy is not enough to change how society at large deals with failure. One misstep, one wrong answer in a college interview, one stupid mistake — each is enough for a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion, creating consequences that last for decades.
Or so kids believe, and perception is reality.
So when the economy takes a pandemic-inspired downturn, when thousands of students return home from college or university and begin learning from home, when sports seasons that could make or break athletes’ future chances are canceled, when twenty-somethings are forced to move back in with parents because their recession-proof careers wither … how do we expect they will respond?
Kids and young adults are resilient. They will bounce back. But it won’t be easy — emotionally, socially or financially — especially for those who view the world as a perpetual hamster wheel where one misstep sends them topsy-turvy.
Because this is the world we adults have created for them, one where life’s biggest essays don’t come with redos.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Late journalist and teacher Donald Murray — and I dislike “late” in this context because Murray was alive when he shared the suggestion and presumably arrived on time for his funeral — urged writers to “seek instructive failure.”
“You try to say what you cannot say,” Murray wrote, “but in the attempt you discover — draft by draft — what you have to say and how you can say it. Failure is essential.”
Most of my students were having none of it. When I polled them recently, the vast majority disagreed with Murray.
Cue the refrain of “kids these days” who cannot process defeat. They have all been given participation ribbons and ice cream even when they lose and are sheltered from the Darwinian dog-eat-dog nature of the world. Tiny helicopter parents perpetually hover around their heads, ready to drop napalm on anybody who comes bearing hardships.
I can picture the stereotypical grandpa, parked in the corner of a wedding reception or wake, grousing about how we’ve created a softer generation, a lesser generation.
Yeah, maybe. But I don’t think so.
I believe, instead, that today’s children and young adults are keenly aware of failure. They have experienced it often and will thus go to great lengths to avoid it, not because their supposedly delicate psyches cannot handle it, but because they know all too well its cost.
Failure means moving off the established track that propels them through grade school to middle school, high school to college, a great job to a family, a big house to a secure retirement.
These kids have internalized a message adults send, perhaps unwittingly, that missteps are tolerated, but the bill for them will nevertheless come due. The payment could be fewer scholarships, a lower-tier college or a dead-end job.
Are students going to take a chance on failing to communicate a message in an essay, to “discover — draft by draft — what [they] have to say and how [they] can say it” when a grade waits at the end of the process? Or are they instead going to demonstrate audience awareness by writing what the teacher wants the first time, dotting all the compositional i’s and crossing all the rhetorical t’s?
No wonder students beg for rubrics. Just tell me what you want so I can do it right the first time, they think. Cut to the chase.
I teach in a building with a progressive policy about grading. We award formative grades, which are about practice, and summative grades, which are about performance. Many of the summative grades can be redone, giving the students a chance to fix what they did wrong and learn from their mistakes. Yes, this means they can take many tests more than once.
It’s a great philosophy for students who embrace the spirit of the policy. Schools should be places where learning is prized above grades. (Despite what grandpa thinks, learning and grades are not interchangeable.)
But one policy is not enough to change how society at large deals with failure. One misstep, one wrong answer in a college interview, one stupid mistake — each is enough for a guilty verdict in the court of public opinion, creating consequences that last for decades.
Or so kids believe, and perception is reality.
So when the economy takes a pandemic-inspired downturn, when thousands of students return home from college or university and begin learning from home, when sports seasons that could make or break athletes’ future chances are canceled, when twenty-somethings are forced to move back in with parents because their recession-proof careers wither … how do we expect they will respond?
Kids and young adults are resilient. They will bounce back. But it won’t be easy — emotionally, socially or financially — especially for those who view the world as a perpetual hamster wheel where one misstep sends them topsy-turvy.
Because this is the world we adults have created for them, one where life’s biggest essays don’t come with redos.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sturgis numbers are extreme on both ends
A recent editorial cartoon by Jeff Koterba of the Omaha World-Herald shows a bearded motorcyclist and his hog, labeled Sturgis, riding across a map of the United States, spewing Covid clouds in place of exhaust fumes.
The drawing predates a study by the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. It suggests the South Dakota motorcycle rally in August may have spawned more than 260,000 positive coronavirus tests.
Those numbers are at odds with other tallies of the rally’s impact on the Covid pandemic. South Dakota’s own count is that 124 residents became sick with the virus after the event in Sturgis, which had an estimated attendance of 365,979 people over ten days. (Some sources put attendees at over 400,000.)
As a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, a USA Today Network paper, made clear, the discrepancy in the two counts comes from the different methodologies used for each.
The San Diego State study examined areas of the country where the most people traveled to the rally. Statisticians then compared positive test results after those visitors returned home. Cell-phone data was used, in part, to determine who went to Sturgis.
The South Dakota Department of Health reached its much more conservative numbers — pun intended, I suppose — via contact tracing.
The truth likely resides somewhere between 124 and 260,000. It beggars the imagination to think that so many attendees, many of whom appeared to be tooling around sans masks and without social distancing, could generate only ten dozen cases.
But it’s also unfair to suggest that the jump in Covid cases across parts of the Midwest is due exclusively, or even primarily, to one motorcycle rally, no matter the size.
Medical experts quoted in a Washington Post story from Sept. 2 note the Midwest’s apathy for mask-wearing in general, along with residents’ resumption of wedding, funeral and party attendance. Everybody wants to get back to “ordinary,” which is an entirely ordinary reaction, even in extraordinary times.
The same Washington Post story reports one death and 260 cases in 11 states with connections to the Sturgis rally, which health officials dubbed an undercount.
No matter how carefully one discusses such figures, remembering that behind each is a real person with an affected family and livelihood, it is easy to grow numb to the sheer profusion of numbers and the various ways that people spin them.
Covid deniers will split hairs over the CDC’s recent release of the number of Americans who have died solely of Covid, a figure below 10,000, arguing that the other 180,000 (and counting) fatalities are people who have died “with” Covid, not “of” Covid.
Would these people, with comorbidities such as diabetes, asthma and obesity, have died anyway in the last six months, even without contracting coronavirus? Some, undoubtedly. But if not for Covid, many — indeed most — could still be with us, as people with these conditions can live quality lives for decades.
Deniers will also break out arguments similar to the South Dakota ones — people who comply with mask mandates and social-distancing requirements are “sheeples” who should just stay home and let everybody else go about their business, this is a “plandemic” with a Nov. 3 expiration date, etc. etc.
It doesn’t help that the nation is led by a man who, on one hand, mocks masks and does not encourage their use during his rallies, and who, on the other, promises an expedited vaccine on a timeline that even the most optimistic researchers say is unlikely.
Covid believers, meanwhile, will cite ever-higher estimates of 300,000 dead by Dec. 1, fears over the upcoming flu season, and arguments about how putting kids and young adults back in school and on college campuses exacerbates the problem.
Between the no-problem and Grand Canyon-sized problem people — just as between the Sturgis counts of 124 and 260,000 — exists a middle ground of health experts who say that we can mostly rejoin our previous lives, already in progress (as the old TV disclaimer goes), as long as we wear masks, wash our hands often, limit large gatherings and stay home when sick.
This means compromise — life back to mostly normal, yet with changes that pinch a little socially and financially. But we don't compromise very well in this country these days, unfortunately.
Instead, we all like to be on our metaphorical hogs, tearing around and making a lot of noise about either ignoring all precautions or shutting it all down again.
Both extremes are roads that lead to failure.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
The drawing predates a study by the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University. It suggests the South Dakota motorcycle rally in August may have spawned more than 260,000 positive coronavirus tests.
Those numbers are at odds with other tallies of the rally’s impact on the Covid pandemic. South Dakota’s own count is that 124 residents became sick with the virus after the event in Sturgis, which had an estimated attendance of 365,979 people over ten days. (Some sources put attendees at over 400,000.)
As a story from the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, a USA Today Network paper, made clear, the discrepancy in the two counts comes from the different methodologies used for each.
The San Diego State study examined areas of the country where the most people traveled to the rally. Statisticians then compared positive test results after those visitors returned home. Cell-phone data was used, in part, to determine who went to Sturgis.
The South Dakota Department of Health reached its much more conservative numbers — pun intended, I suppose — via contact tracing.
The truth likely resides somewhere between 124 and 260,000. It beggars the imagination to think that so many attendees, many of whom appeared to be tooling around sans masks and without social distancing, could generate only ten dozen cases.
But it’s also unfair to suggest that the jump in Covid cases across parts of the Midwest is due exclusively, or even primarily, to one motorcycle rally, no matter the size.
Medical experts quoted in a Washington Post story from Sept. 2 note the Midwest’s apathy for mask-wearing in general, along with residents’ resumption of wedding, funeral and party attendance. Everybody wants to get back to “ordinary,” which is an entirely ordinary reaction, even in extraordinary times.
The same Washington Post story reports one death and 260 cases in 11 states with connections to the Sturgis rally, which health officials dubbed an undercount.
No matter how carefully one discusses such figures, remembering that behind each is a real person with an affected family and livelihood, it is easy to grow numb to the sheer profusion of numbers and the various ways that people spin them.
Covid deniers will split hairs over the CDC’s recent release of the number of Americans who have died solely of Covid, a figure below 10,000, arguing that the other 180,000 (and counting) fatalities are people who have died “with” Covid, not “of” Covid.
Would these people, with comorbidities such as diabetes, asthma and obesity, have died anyway in the last six months, even without contracting coronavirus? Some, undoubtedly. But if not for Covid, many — indeed most — could still be with us, as people with these conditions can live quality lives for decades.
Deniers will also break out arguments similar to the South Dakota ones — people who comply with mask mandates and social-distancing requirements are “sheeples” who should just stay home and let everybody else go about their business, this is a “plandemic” with a Nov. 3 expiration date, etc. etc.
It doesn’t help that the nation is led by a man who, on one hand, mocks masks and does not encourage their use during his rallies, and who, on the other, promises an expedited vaccine on a timeline that even the most optimistic researchers say is unlikely.
Covid believers, meanwhile, will cite ever-higher estimates of 300,000 dead by Dec. 1, fears over the upcoming flu season, and arguments about how putting kids and young adults back in school and on college campuses exacerbates the problem.
Between the no-problem and Grand Canyon-sized problem people — just as between the Sturgis counts of 124 and 260,000 — exists a middle ground of health experts who say that we can mostly rejoin our previous lives, already in progress (as the old TV disclaimer goes), as long as we wear masks, wash our hands often, limit large gatherings and stay home when sick.
This means compromise — life back to mostly normal, yet with changes that pinch a little socially and financially. But we don't compromise very well in this country these days, unfortunately.
Instead, we all like to be on our metaphorical hogs, tearing around and making a lot of noise about either ignoring all precautions or shutting it all down again.
Both extremes are roads that lead to failure.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
More issues than packages with delivery gig
I was walking out of a stranger’s garage near Warren — or maybe it was Boardman or Niles — when the owner caught me.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice equal parts indignation and fright.
I froze, just as taken aback as she was. Pointing to my blue vest and then to a box on the floor, I said, “Amazon delivery. It says to leave the package in your garage.”
Her relief was palpable.
It was just another odd encounter in a job filled with them. For the past five months, I’ve been an Amazon Flex driver, delivering across northeast Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The gig started as a coronavirus lark, a way to get out of the house when there weren’t any other places to go. Quarancheating with a purpose.
As a Flex employee, I drive to a distribution center in North Jackson (in Mahoning County), pick up 12 to 40packages, and use my own car and gas to deliver. Shifts last three or four hours. Twice a week, like magic, money appears in my bank account.
I’ve driven through flash floods, down streets that have no name — with apologies to U2 — and across communities of every socioeconomic status, following an app that leads me by the nose from one stop to the next.
Sometimes, though, the app is wrong. On one occasion, it tried to send me off the Ohio Turnpike and onto a maintenance-truck-only access road secured with a gate. On another, the street it suggested ended a mile from the destination. I had to park and hoof it through the woods, smacking my head on a tree branch to complete the delivery. (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator has nothing on me.)
Since we are in the middle of a pandemic, no matter what your clueless neighbors with their hundreds of Labor Day guests might believe, customer reactions to Amazon drivers are varied. Some greet me like a conquering hero, showering me with accolades and offers of food and drink. Others view me as one of the four horsemen, carrying disease.
One customer sent her toddler down the drive to take a package straight from my hands. Another shouted at me to leave it on her porch, and as I drove away, I saw her soaking down the box with Lysol.
It’s almost impossible to screw up. I scan each box or envelope with the app, which alerts me if I’ve selected the wrong one or if I’m too far away from the delivery site. Packages are numbered in delivery order, so if I can count higher than three dozen, I’m good to go on most days.
To deliver is to see the myriad ways that people live, from hardscrabble existence on one side of town — or even one side of the street — to sprawling McMansions on the other.
If this weren’t Labor Day weekend, I might work harder to make a point about materialism and the American Dream; wax poetic about that bedrock of the economy, the hourly worker; or question the viability of the gig economy, where employee protections are shrinking almost as quickly as giant, soul-sucking corporations are growing.
But since it’s a holiday, I’m dispensing with all the heavy-thought stuff and leaving you with a few practical takeaways.
One, home delivery is convenient, but it comes at a price. That two-dollar item that arrives on Sunday night costs considerably more to the environment. Bundle it with a few other products for the planet’s sake, not to mention the mental well-being of the poor sap trying to keep body and soul together by hauling it to your door.
Two, delivery people love dogs — when they’re tied up and not gnawing our legs.
Three, it costs nothing to say thank you, or to smile and wave.
Four, if you live in a gated community or a secure apartment building, don’t have packages sent to a guardhouse or leasing office that closes at 5 p.m. Many deliveries arrive later than that.
Finally, make sure your house has the address displayed somewhere in big, bold numbers that glow in the dark. Not just for delivery drivers, but for ambulance services and police protection. You know, the important stuff.
These days, I’m semi-retired from the Flex business. The wear and tear on my vehicle was considerable, and other responsibilities have taken precedence.
Still, every once in a while, it’s fun to load up the trunk with packages and deliver smiles, to borrow a corporate catchphrase.
And even if I never do it again, I’m keeping the blue vest. It’ll make a great Halloween costume, or at least a convenient excuse if I ever decide to explore a neighbor’s garage.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
“What are you doing in here?” she asked, her voice equal parts indignation and fright.
I froze, just as taken aback as she was. Pointing to my blue vest and then to a box on the floor, I said, “Amazon delivery. It says to leave the package in your garage.”
Her relief was palpable.
It was just another odd encounter in a job filled with them. For the past five months, I’ve been an Amazon Flex driver, delivering across northeast Ohio and parts of West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
The gig started as a coronavirus lark, a way to get out of the house when there weren’t any other places to go. Quarancheating with a purpose.
As a Flex employee, I drive to a distribution center in North Jackson (in Mahoning County), pick up 12 to 40packages, and use my own car and gas to deliver. Shifts last three or four hours. Twice a week, like magic, money appears in my bank account.
I’ve driven through flash floods, down streets that have no name — with apologies to U2 — and across communities of every socioeconomic status, following an app that leads me by the nose from one stop to the next.
Sometimes, though, the app is wrong. On one occasion, it tried to send me off the Ohio Turnpike and onto a maintenance-truck-only access road secured with a gate. On another, the street it suggested ended a mile from the destination. I had to park and hoof it through the woods, smacking my head on a tree branch to complete the delivery. (Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator has nothing on me.)
Since we are in the middle of a pandemic, no matter what your clueless neighbors with their hundreds of Labor Day guests might believe, customer reactions to Amazon drivers are varied. Some greet me like a conquering hero, showering me with accolades and offers of food and drink. Others view me as one of the four horsemen, carrying disease.
One customer sent her toddler down the drive to take a package straight from my hands. Another shouted at me to leave it on her porch, and as I drove away, I saw her soaking down the box with Lysol.
It’s almost impossible to screw up. I scan each box or envelope with the app, which alerts me if I’ve selected the wrong one or if I’m too far away from the delivery site. Packages are numbered in delivery order, so if I can count higher than three dozen, I’m good to go on most days.
To deliver is to see the myriad ways that people live, from hardscrabble existence on one side of town — or even one side of the street — to sprawling McMansions on the other.
If this weren’t Labor Day weekend, I might work harder to make a point about materialism and the American Dream; wax poetic about that bedrock of the economy, the hourly worker; or question the viability of the gig economy, where employee protections are shrinking almost as quickly as giant, soul-sucking corporations are growing.
But since it’s a holiday, I’m dispensing with all the heavy-thought stuff and leaving you with a few practical takeaways.
One, home delivery is convenient, but it comes at a price. That two-dollar item that arrives on Sunday night costs considerably more to the environment. Bundle it with a few other products for the planet’s sake, not to mention the mental well-being of the poor sap trying to keep body and soul together by hauling it to your door.
Two, delivery people love dogs — when they’re tied up and not gnawing our legs.
Three, it costs nothing to say thank you, or to smile and wave.
Four, if you live in a gated community or a secure apartment building, don’t have packages sent to a guardhouse or leasing office that closes at 5 p.m. Many deliveries arrive later than that.
Finally, make sure your house has the address displayed somewhere in big, bold numbers that glow in the dark. Not just for delivery drivers, but for ambulance services and police protection. You know, the important stuff.
These days, I’m semi-retired from the Flex business. The wear and tear on my vehicle was considerable, and other responsibilities have taken precedence.
Still, every once in a while, it’s fun to load up the trunk with packages and deliver smiles, to borrow a corporate catchphrase.
And even if I never do it again, I’m keeping the blue vest. It’ll make a great Halloween costume, or at least a convenient excuse if I ever decide to explore a neighbor’s garage.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Smart Reply isn't so intelligent
A student sent me an email the other day because he couldn’t find a writing assignment on the class website.
My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.
Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”
Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.
Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”
In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.
For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.
“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?
Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.
Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?
Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?
I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.
The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!
I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.
I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.
Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)
“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!
“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?
“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.
Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”
The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?
Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?
Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.
Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”
Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.
Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”
In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.
For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.
“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?
Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.
Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?
Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?
I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.
The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!
I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.
I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.
Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)
“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!
“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?
“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.
Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”
The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?
Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?
Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Did a cynical generation get the president it deserves?
If I had been 30 or 35 years younger in 2016, I would have voted for Donald Trump.
I would have selected him because, in my callow youth, I equated “outsider” with “good.”
I was too young in the 1970s to care about Watergate, except that the televised hearings interrupted my favorite cartoons, but I still absorbed the basic cynicism about government that was Nixon’s legacy.
The ugliness of the nation’s response to Vietnam, the burgeoning military-industrial complex, the rise of lobbyists and their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas, the proliferation of nuclear arms — all of it got into my DNA in a generalized, non-partisan way.
It ultimately led to a generation — or more — of people like me who came of age believing that all career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, were smarmy and not to be trusted. (I’m sure older readers will attest that governmental distrust did not begin in the 1970s.) I also believed gridlock was good, so a government that was mewed up in debates and didn’t accomplish anything was less likely to hurt anybody.
See? Cynical.
As we Watergate kids grew up, some of us became content creators whose projects underscored and extended that pessimistic worldview. “The X-Files,” for example, combined Nixonian distrust and paranoia with a healthy dose of public-health anxiety (vaccines, carcinogens and the rest) and urban legends to create a heady broth that influenced yet another generation.
These same misgivings and paranoia begat the modern iteration of Fox News, which begat QAnon, which begat a thousand and one memes where facts take a backseat to smarminess, conspiracy and the quick comeback.
All of which is to say that there is an undeniable appeal in the outsider, the maverick, the person who promises to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to borrow an old expression, by tossing a grenade into the political system and chortling gleefully amid the ruins.
Donald Trump would seem to fit that bill. He comes from the corporate world. He has a healthy disdain for the status quo. His very presence irritates all the right people.
Eighteen- or 20-year-old me would likely have punched Trump’s ticket based on those qualities alone.
What I’ve come to realize over the decades, however, is that blowing things up isn’t enough. The guy with the live grenade in one hand needs to have blueprints in the other and a construction crew right behind him.
Trump is all about the destruction. The destruction of civil discourse. The destruction of democratic norms. The destruction of the rule of law, except where it benefits him.
In the last several months alone, we’ve seen him flounder through a pandemic, civil unrest and now an impending election. His administration’s lack of response and denial of science have contributed to the sickness and demise of more than 170,000 people.
Yet, somehow, he still has the active support of some 40 percent of Americans who have apparently made peace with the misogyny, racist dogwhistling, and election meddling. They are still fascinated by the guy with the grenade.
I’m convinced that, for many voters, politics is like being a fan of a particular sports team. No matter how awful the record, no matter how many people the star player assaults, it’s still their team. To abandon the franchise is to risk that worst of appellations: the fair-weather fan.
Good governance, of course, is not about blowing things up or backing the same horse, time after time. It’s about making laws to protect people and help them live better lives.
In my older and somewhat wiser years, I prefer to believe that many career politicians subscribe to a similar definition. They have dedicated their professional lives to working within a system of carefully delineated — yet imperfect — checks and balances to bring about their vision of what better lives look like.
They may disagree about what tomorrow should be. Some may be more willing than others to cross certain lines to get there.
And for those who are in it just for the money or the glory, or for those who step off the straight and narrow, well ... that’s why we have a free press.
Mavericks are fun to read about in novels or watch in movies. We cheer when they cut through the red tape by coercing a confession with force or punching through problems.
But real society shouldn’t work that way, not and call itself civilized. Trump is not building anything; he’s tearing it all down. Along the way, he’s gone from outsider to insider, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the inherent corruption of politics.
Let’s stop glorifying the maverick mindset and start appreciating those who work for change from within, through diplomacy and collaboration. Maybe that way, future generations can grow up with a healthy skepticism, minus the cynicism.
Or maybe I’m still cranky about missing my cartoons during those endless Watergate hearings.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
I would have selected him because, in my callow youth, I equated “outsider” with “good.”
I was too young in the 1970s to care about Watergate, except that the televised hearings interrupted my favorite cartoons, but I still absorbed the basic cynicism about government that was Nixon’s legacy.
The ugliness of the nation’s response to Vietnam, the burgeoning military-industrial complex, the rise of lobbyists and their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas, the proliferation of nuclear arms — all of it got into my DNA in a generalized, non-partisan way.
It ultimately led to a generation — or more — of people like me who came of age believing that all career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, were smarmy and not to be trusted. (I’m sure older readers will attest that governmental distrust did not begin in the 1970s.) I also believed gridlock was good, so a government that was mewed up in debates and didn’t accomplish anything was less likely to hurt anybody.
See? Cynical.
As we Watergate kids grew up, some of us became content creators whose projects underscored and extended that pessimistic worldview. “The X-Files,” for example, combined Nixonian distrust and paranoia with a healthy dose of public-health anxiety (vaccines, carcinogens and the rest) and urban legends to create a heady broth that influenced yet another generation.
These same misgivings and paranoia begat the modern iteration of Fox News, which begat QAnon, which begat a thousand and one memes where facts take a backseat to smarminess, conspiracy and the quick comeback.
All of which is to say that there is an undeniable appeal in the outsider, the maverick, the person who promises to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to borrow an old expression, by tossing a grenade into the political system and chortling gleefully amid the ruins.
Donald Trump would seem to fit that bill. He comes from the corporate world. He has a healthy disdain for the status quo. His very presence irritates all the right people.
Eighteen- or 20-year-old me would likely have punched Trump’s ticket based on those qualities alone.
What I’ve come to realize over the decades, however, is that blowing things up isn’t enough. The guy with the live grenade in one hand needs to have blueprints in the other and a construction crew right behind him.
Trump is all about the destruction. The destruction of civil discourse. The destruction of democratic norms. The destruction of the rule of law, except where it benefits him.
In the last several months alone, we’ve seen him flounder through a pandemic, civil unrest and now an impending election. His administration’s lack of response and denial of science have contributed to the sickness and demise of more than 170,000 people.
Yet, somehow, he still has the active support of some 40 percent of Americans who have apparently made peace with the misogyny, racist dogwhistling, and election meddling. They are still fascinated by the guy with the grenade.
I’m convinced that, for many voters, politics is like being a fan of a particular sports team. No matter how awful the record, no matter how many people the star player assaults, it’s still their team. To abandon the franchise is to risk that worst of appellations: the fair-weather fan.
Good governance, of course, is not about blowing things up or backing the same horse, time after time. It’s about making laws to protect people and help them live better lives.
In my older and somewhat wiser years, I prefer to believe that many career politicians subscribe to a similar definition. They have dedicated their professional lives to working within a system of carefully delineated — yet imperfect — checks and balances to bring about their vision of what better lives look like.
They may disagree about what tomorrow should be. Some may be more willing than others to cross certain lines to get there.
And for those who are in it just for the money or the glory, or for those who step off the straight and narrow, well ... that’s why we have a free press.
Mavericks are fun to read about in novels or watch in movies. We cheer when they cut through the red tape by coercing a confession with force or punching through problems.
But real society shouldn’t work that way, not and call itself civilized. Trump is not building anything; he’s tearing it all down. Along the way, he’s gone from outsider to insider, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the inherent corruption of politics.
Let’s stop glorifying the maverick mindset and start appreciating those who work for change from within, through diplomacy and collaboration. Maybe that way, future generations can grow up with a healthy skepticism, minus the cynicism.
Or maybe I’m still cranky about missing my cartoons during those endless Watergate hearings.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Why Schools Can't Reopen This Fall
Schools cannot open or reopen this fall.
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Cleaning up on hygiene
Have you ever read something that you knew you shouldn’t, but you couldn’t help yourself?
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Wing, wing, who’s there?
Given that much of the world is on fire, literally and figuratively, I hope you didn’t miss National Chicken Wing Day on July 29.
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Friday, July 24, 2020
Coming to the aid of lemonade stands
Country Time rolled out its “Littlest Bailout” plan earlier this summer.
Recognizing the COVID pandemic has wreaked havoc with lemonade stands across the nation, the company is offering budding entrepreneurs (re: kids 14 and younger) a chance to recoup their losses.
In exchange for a 250-word essay submitted on the company’s website and a photo of each entrant’s lemonade stand, Country Time will send 1,000 baby businessmen prepaid gift cards valued at $100 each.
In the essay, writers must explain how they will use the cards to “juice” — see what Country Time did there? — the economy.
By the time you’re reading this, my guess is that Country Time will already be inundated with entries. It’s a cute idea, right?
My rudimentary math skills indicate that $100 for 250 words works out to 40 cents a word, which is — ahem! — more than some people are paid for their writing.
If there’s a sticking point in the deal, it will be the photo. Even before the pandemic squeezed the life out of lemonade stands — see what I did there? — the practice was one that, in Shakespeare’s words, was more honored in the breach than the observance.
In other words, many adults like to say we gained business experience by running lemonade stands, but how many of us actually did?
I didn’t. During my formative years, I lived on streets where lemonade stands would either be decimated by wind from speeding trucks or where cars were so rare that they were akin to UFOs.
Foot traffic? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I have, however, had the experience of being a customer at a few lemonade stands. But given the suburban neighborhoods where I’ve lived as an adult, not as many as one might expect.
Most of these exchanges involve jogging or running — or crawling and crying, depending on the heat and my exhaustion level — past some enterprising kids, making the mistake of looking into their weepy eyes, and then promising to come back when I have money.
I generally do — come back, that is. I never run with money, unless you count Apple Pay on my phone as money, which you could, but what self-respecting lemonade stand accepts Apple Pay?
Come to think of it, what business anywhere accept Apple Pay? Whenever I ask, I’m met with a sad shaking of the head. Nope, sorry, not here, the cashiers say with a frown. These days, I have to assume they’re frowning beneath their COVID-repelling masks – the same coverings that their noses hang out of and that are worn to protect only their chins, apparently.
But I digress.
On those occasions when I return to a lemonade stand with change (back when change was plentiful and its scarcity was not a sign of the impending New World Order, according to all those conspiracy theorists holding court in their parents’ basements), I’m often not served lemonade, but Kool-Aid, and usually whatever unpopular flavors have been clogging Mom and Dad’s cupboard for the past three years.
Sometimes, the pitcher contains sugar. Most times, it doesn’t. If ice was ever part of the mix, it has long since melted, further watering down the strawberry-kiwi-raspberry concoction.
Nobody wants to be that guy, the one who complains about quality at a lemonade stand. So I drink what I’m given, try not to think about the last time the little barista washed her hands, and then go on my way.
Regardless of my execrable experiences, I hope this year’s crop of junior business people gets a share of those $100 windfalls and that they don’t all get gobbled up by giant corporations and the infamous lemonade lobby. Which is probably really a thing, right?
Good for Country Time for having some fun in a summer that isn’t exactly overflowing with it. Still, the company missed a golden opportunity to call this promotion Lemon Aid. A savvy copywriter could have fun with a tagline offering kids $100 in their pocket for not making lemonade in their pants.
Goes good with fudge, I hear.
See what I did there?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Recognizing the COVID pandemic has wreaked havoc with lemonade stands across the nation, the company is offering budding entrepreneurs (re: kids 14 and younger) a chance to recoup their losses.
In exchange for a 250-word essay submitted on the company’s website and a photo of each entrant’s lemonade stand, Country Time will send 1,000 baby businessmen prepaid gift cards valued at $100 each.
In the essay, writers must explain how they will use the cards to “juice” — see what Country Time did there? — the economy.
By the time you’re reading this, my guess is that Country Time will already be inundated with entries. It’s a cute idea, right?
My rudimentary math skills indicate that $100 for 250 words works out to 40 cents a word, which is — ahem! — more than some people are paid for their writing.
If there’s a sticking point in the deal, it will be the photo. Even before the pandemic squeezed the life out of lemonade stands — see what I did there? — the practice was one that, in Shakespeare’s words, was more honored in the breach than the observance.
In other words, many adults like to say we gained business experience by running lemonade stands, but how many of us actually did?
I didn’t. During my formative years, I lived on streets where lemonade stands would either be decimated by wind from speeding trucks or where cars were so rare that they were akin to UFOs.
Foot traffic? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I have, however, had the experience of being a customer at a few lemonade stands. But given the suburban neighborhoods where I’ve lived as an adult, not as many as one might expect.
Most of these exchanges involve jogging or running — or crawling and crying, depending on the heat and my exhaustion level — past some enterprising kids, making the mistake of looking into their weepy eyes, and then promising to come back when I have money.
I generally do — come back, that is. I never run with money, unless you count Apple Pay on my phone as money, which you could, but what self-respecting lemonade stand accepts Apple Pay?
Come to think of it, what business anywhere accept Apple Pay? Whenever I ask, I’m met with a sad shaking of the head. Nope, sorry, not here, the cashiers say with a frown. These days, I have to assume they’re frowning beneath their COVID-repelling masks – the same coverings that their noses hang out of and that are worn to protect only their chins, apparently.
But I digress.
On those occasions when I return to a lemonade stand with change (back when change was plentiful and its scarcity was not a sign of the impending New World Order, according to all those conspiracy theorists holding court in their parents’ basements), I’m often not served lemonade, but Kool-Aid, and usually whatever unpopular flavors have been clogging Mom and Dad’s cupboard for the past three years.
Sometimes, the pitcher contains sugar. Most times, it doesn’t. If ice was ever part of the mix, it has long since melted, further watering down the strawberry-kiwi-raspberry concoction.
Nobody wants to be that guy, the one who complains about quality at a lemonade stand. So I drink what I’m given, try not to think about the last time the little barista washed her hands, and then go on my way.
Regardless of my execrable experiences, I hope this year’s crop of junior business people gets a share of those $100 windfalls and that they don’t all get gobbled up by giant corporations and the infamous lemonade lobby. Which is probably really a thing, right?
Good for Country Time for having some fun in a summer that isn’t exactly overflowing with it. Still, the company missed a golden opportunity to call this promotion Lemon Aid. A savvy copywriter could have fun with a tagline offering kids $100 in their pocket for not making lemonade in their pants.
Goes good with fudge, I hear.
See what I did there?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Mr. President, What a Big Mask You Have!
President Trump was photographed wearing a mask last Saturday, and the internet went wild.
He was visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the media captured the history-making moment. It didn’t take long for the derision to kick in.
Some online wags were pleased the mask shielded the public from the president’s weirdly-shaped mouth. Others cheered because they said he looked defeated and deflated.
I don’t know about that. In a rare move for me, I’m going to applaud the president for having the courage — just this once — to lead positively by example.
Of course, we can’t discount the possibility that his decision was politically motivated. Trump’s calculus about such matters is as shrewd as it is often accurate: Like a wounded animal with its paw caught in a trap, he knows when it serves him to act in a certain way, whether to endear himself to his base, to own the libs, or both.
So the mask may be an act of political expediency. Or not. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, by wearing it, he paves the way for the typical Trump supporter to do the same, to reverse course and put on a mask even after long, drawn-out Facebook rants about how our rights are being compromised by a piece of cloth over our mouths and noses.
Who knows how many lives Trump will save and how much illness he will prevent by the simple choice to wear that mask, even if only for a few minutes, even if in his secret heart of hearts, he still believes a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and bleach works better.
Less publicized but just as significant, Trump told CBS News a few days after the hospital visit that Americans should listen to the CDC. “If it’s necessary, I would urge them to wear a mask and I would say follow the guidelines,” he told reporter Catherine Herridge.
While this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the efficacy of masks, it’s another step in the right direction. How exhausting it must be for Trump’s handlers to nurture anything like empathy in the man. Almost as exhausting as it is for the public to watch him slowly evolve into somebody with an iota of compassion — a case of one step forward, two dozen steps back.
Let’s face it, Trump needs some wins where the coronavirus is concerned. His administration’s handling of the pandemic has been horribly uneven, which is a euphemistic way of saying it has been a near-total disaster leading to more illness, fatalities and economic disruptions than necessary.
The national shutdown last spring, intended to give the country time to ramp up COVID testing and contact tracing, was instead so squandered that some experts now speculate a second shuttering of non-essential businesses and activities may be needed. By advocating for the nation to reopen too quickly, in defiance of his own administration’s plan to wait until 14 days of declining numbers, Trump presided over a Titanic-level catastrophe and spawned a Frankenstein-monster patchwork of state and local regulations festooned with red tape and contradictions. Meanwhile, President Nero waded into the culture wars, crowed about his ratings and pouted over his rally attendance.
His most definitive COVID action, announcing travel restrictions to and from China at the end of January (they went into effect on Feb. 2), could be seen as merely an extension of his usual America-first nationalism. In other words, he used COVID as a cover story.
Another bold action with a similar not-so-hidden agenda was a recent attempt to ship foreign college students back to their countries of origin if their courses were entirely online in the fall. His administration walked that back recently after threats of litigation and, one assumes, realization that these students subsidize many American students’ bills.
But timeout. I came to praise Trump, not to bury him, or however that line goes.
So ...
At least he’s wearing a mask and advising others to do the same. That’s a start. And while it would undoubtedly have been better had this realization hit him two months earlier, his detractors — if they truly desire best-case outcomes where the virus and the country are concerned — should encourage the better angels of Trump’s nature to unfurl their wings a little more often.
If that means admiring the emperor’s new mask, so be it.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
He was visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the media captured the history-making moment. It didn’t take long for the derision to kick in.
Some online wags were pleased the mask shielded the public from the president’s weirdly-shaped mouth. Others cheered because they said he looked defeated and deflated.
I don’t know about that. In a rare move for me, I’m going to applaud the president for having the courage — just this once — to lead positively by example.
Of course, we can’t discount the possibility that his decision was politically motivated. Trump’s calculus about such matters is as shrewd as it is often accurate: Like a wounded animal with its paw caught in a trap, he knows when it serves him to act in a certain way, whether to endear himself to his base, to own the libs, or both.
So the mask may be an act of political expediency. Or not. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, by wearing it, he paves the way for the typical Trump supporter to do the same, to reverse course and put on a mask even after long, drawn-out Facebook rants about how our rights are being compromised by a piece of cloth over our mouths and noses.
Who knows how many lives Trump will save and how much illness he will prevent by the simple choice to wear that mask, even if only for a few minutes, even if in his secret heart of hearts, he still believes a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and bleach works better.
Less publicized but just as significant, Trump told CBS News a few days after the hospital visit that Americans should listen to the CDC. “If it’s necessary, I would urge them to wear a mask and I would say follow the guidelines,” he told reporter Catherine Herridge.
While this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the efficacy of masks, it’s another step in the right direction. How exhausting it must be for Trump’s handlers to nurture anything like empathy in the man. Almost as exhausting as it is for the public to watch him slowly evolve into somebody with an iota of compassion — a case of one step forward, two dozen steps back.
Let’s face it, Trump needs some wins where the coronavirus is concerned. His administration’s handling of the pandemic has been horribly uneven, which is a euphemistic way of saying it has been a near-total disaster leading to more illness, fatalities and economic disruptions than necessary.
The national shutdown last spring, intended to give the country time to ramp up COVID testing and contact tracing, was instead so squandered that some experts now speculate a second shuttering of non-essential businesses and activities may be needed. By advocating for the nation to reopen too quickly, in defiance of his own administration’s plan to wait until 14 days of declining numbers, Trump presided over a Titanic-level catastrophe and spawned a Frankenstein-monster patchwork of state and local regulations festooned with red tape and contradictions. Meanwhile, President Nero waded into the culture wars, crowed about his ratings and pouted over his rally attendance.
His most definitive COVID action, announcing travel restrictions to and from China at the end of January (they went into effect on Feb. 2), could be seen as merely an extension of his usual America-first nationalism. In other words, he used COVID as a cover story.
Another bold action with a similar not-so-hidden agenda was a recent attempt to ship foreign college students back to their countries of origin if their courses were entirely online in the fall. His administration walked that back recently after threats of litigation and, one assumes, realization that these students subsidize many American students’ bills.
But timeout. I came to praise Trump, not to bury him, or however that line goes.
So ...
At least he’s wearing a mask and advising others to do the same. That’s a start. And while it would undoubtedly have been better had this realization hit him two months earlier, his detractors — if they truly desire best-case outcomes where the virus and the country are concerned — should encourage the better angels of Trump’s nature to unfurl their wings a little more often.
If that means admiring the emperor’s new mask, so be it.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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