A help-me-out hangout on the pandemic experience

As part of the response to moving our course content online, my university provides all the faculty a licensed copy of Zoom, which I’ve used as a client before, but have never hosted a meeting myself. I’m throwing myself into it this weekend, ironing out my awkwardness by setting up a conversation, to be held at 3pm tomorrow, 15 March. Anyone want to join in? Email me, I’ll put you on a list and send you a link. Depending on the response, I may not be able to add everyone, so tell me a few words about what you’d want to talk about. You don’t need to have licensed Zoom to be able to use it.

The subject: what we’re doing to cope with the pandemic. Fellow educators are welcome, but this is affecting everyone, so everyone has a place in the discussion. Let’s not make it a piss-and-moan session, but talk about the positive actions you are taking.

This conversation will also be streamed to YouTube, I think, if I’ve got everything figured out. Student discussions will be private in the future. You’ll be helping me to master all the details of the technology! Which also means I may fumble stuff up and the beginning might be glitchy. It’ll be fun!

The Cutty Sark has fallen on hard times

In that post about building models as a kid, I mentioned how my old models were left behind at my grandparents’ house, and later demolished (with my permission!) by younger family members. I forgot, though, that there was one rescue, and it came home with me. My grandparents asked me to build a decorative model sailing ship for their mantel, and they bought me a kit.

I worked hard on it, since it was to be a gift for them, and it had to look good and classy. I spent months on it, and remember being a real perfectionist in getting all the shroud lines perfect and taut, staining the sails to get that perfect tone, painting every little detail. I’m proud to say that it was gloriously displayed in their living room for many years afterward, until their deaths. That was the one model my family saved from destruction and brought home for me.

It wasn’t exactly perfectly preserved.

The bowsprit was snapped off, the spars have been torn away from the masts, the rigging is sagging, it’s dusty and stained. I’m thinking, though, that it might be a pleasant project to repair over spring break…a little superglue, some delicate forceps work, I could maybe get the major stuff back in alignment and get it looking battered but presentable. I wouldn’t want it pristine, though — it has a history.

Also, when I lean in real close and sniff, I can still smell my grandfather’s cigars. They added some patina to the sails.

Nerdy nostalgia

OK, I’ve got to put up something light just to relieve my stress. Years ago, long before video games, before Dungeons & Dragons, what did stereotypical young male nerds do? One acceptable answer would be model railroading — there was a gigantic subculture of that — but I was poor and living in a family with six kids, so there was no space for the layouts. The other answer would be building model kits.

You might not know it from my current suave air, but there was a time between 12 and 18 years of age when I was building and painting all kinds of models: model planes, model rockets, model movie monsters, all that stuff. I also branched into balsa wood models in high school. I had these things hanging from my bedroom ceiling, on my dresser, on the floor. Because of the aforementioned lack of space, I did a lot of the crafting in my grandparents’ attic, which had the dual benefit of a large amount of storage room, and that my grandmother would come up every once in a while with cookies and milk.

So it was nice to stumble across this video summary of the various model companies that dominated the 60s and 70s. I swear, I recognized half the models shown and remembered building them.

You might ask what happened to my vast cluttered collection after high school. I abandoned them. They were left piled up in my grandmother’s attic, and then she died while I was living far, far away, and the house was sold and the old memorabilia had to be cleared away, and some of my relatives asked if they could blow them up with firecrackers and set them on fire. I said yes. Sometimes you just have to let go of childish things.

I do wish they’d at least made video recordings of the carnage. Those big old balsa models in particular would have been spectacular in their fiery demise.

This is my life for a while, isn’t it?

I just got out of class, which was part explaining science, and part negotiating how we’re going to continue from here to the end of the semester. The students had questions, I have questions, and we have relatively few answers.

Next up, I’m coordinating a biology faculty meeting which may get eaten up with addressing the multiple questions we’re going to have about how to suddenly switch to teaching online. We’ll have questions, I hope we have some answers.

Then I’m teaching a lab, which will be very short, because I’m just going to abort the experiment we were about to start and tell them we’re going to switch to me doing online demos and getting results, which they’ll have to analyze and interpret.

Finally, I’m just going to lie down. I didn’t get much sleep last night, trying to figure out how I’m going to have to revamp everything in both my classes. I expect I’ll be spending spring break trying to cope with this headache.

Nothing makes sense any more

I did it. I watched Trump’s address last night. It was painful. Somebody told him he couldn’t mug for the camera and that he had to hold still and not rant, but only read from the teleprompter, a completely unnatural behavior for him, and it showed. What’s with all the loud sniffing? All the speech did was highlight the unsuitability of this man for a crisis. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Nothing he’s saying makes sense, except as an incoherent reaction to a problem that motivates him to reach out and help…his fellow rich people. We keep getting whipsawed by inconsistent policy decisions.

Makes sense:

  • Much as I hate it, shutting down face-to-face interaction at our university is a smart move. We have to slow this pandemic down.

Doesn’t make sense:

  • Closing down universities, while still allowing massive sporting events to go on. Tens of thousands of people, shoulder to shoulder, eating hot dogs and drinking beer?
  • Megachurches holding massive services. Jesus won’t help you.

Makes sense:

  • The NBA suspending all games.

Makes sense:

  • Putting scientists and doctors to work to come up with sensible policies.

Doesn’t make sense:

  • Trump waiting for Jared Kushner to make a decision about the virus.
  • Cutting funding to the CDC and NIH.
  • $50 billion in loans to small businesses, and cutting taxes.

Makes sense:

  • Coordinating internationally to prevent the spread of the disease.

Doesn’t make sense:

  • Banning travel from Europe. Just Europe, not Asia. Later amended to exclude the UK from the ban.
  • Calling this a “foreign virus”. Viruses don’t have nationalities.

Makes sense:

  • Universal free healthcare.

Doesn’t make sense:

  • Relying on the charity of insurance companies.

Makes sense:

  • 54% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s overall performance.

Doesn’t make sense:

  • 43% approve of how he’s handling the pandemic! Only 49% disapprove.

The president’s address was preceded by this phenomenon, which was perfectly representative of how America works.

And on that note, I have to go work with students who I may be seeing personally for the last time to figure out how we’re going to finish up this semester.

As expected…University of Minnesota closes in-person classes

And here we go…

We are suspending in-person instruction, including field experiences and clinicals, across our five campuses and are moving to online, or alternative, instruction. Students on the Morris and Crookston campuses will have in-person classes through this Friday, March 13.

I guess my spring break will be spent trying to figure all this out.

Quick, email me some energy

I have to go teach in 15 minutes, and I’m barely conscious. I’m chugging coffee, but it isn’t doing the trick, and I’m afraid I might fall asleep in my own lecture. I have a seminar after that, a lab this afternoon, and another seminar at 5, and it’s going to be tough getting through this day.

I hate Tuesdays. They’re worse than Mondays.

OK, I made it through the first class of the day — the magical lightning bolts from hither and yon helped a lot. Sorry, trolls, I know you think you’re zapping me with hatred, but it’s all fuel for the machine. I managed to do a lightning-quick summary of both mitosis and meiosis for the first year students — next I’ve got to give them a bunch of homework to make sure it sticks.

I have a short break before the senior seminar on NKX-2.5, homeobox proteins involved in cardiac devalopment always keep me awake. Before that, though, it’s time to tend to my spiders for a bit.

I made it through the whole day! Fortunately, the student seminars were both very good, and the lab was painless. I still need a nap.

Max von Sydow is dead

He’s gone. He had some impressive roles, he had some cheesy roles, but one thing he always had was presence.

One thing that always struck me about him is that he reminded me of my great grandfather: that slight accent, the pitch of his voice, and that he was tall and physically similar (I think my great grandfather was tall, but I was also very small when I knew him). I kind of hoped I’d grow old to be like Great-Grandpa Westad, or like Max von Sydow, but I think I got too many Myers genes.