I can’t say it was successfully completed, though — it was a disaster. We’ve got this fancy video projection system that I already hate, and a step-by-step instructions on the wall are full of errors, and it was a struggle to get connected at all, and then the sound feedback was so horrid that I just gave up and shut it all down and just used words and gestures to communicate. How primitive.

Then I called our tech help to get assistance and get this damned thing working for the next day. I called the number on the wall to the Morris campus help desk, and who picks up? Some helpful guy at the Twin Cities campus, 150 miles away, who wasn’t familiar with our system. He tried to connect me to Morris, but it just looped back to circle around to the Twin Cities again. Three times. Phones, what are they good for anyway?

I am now the proud possessor of a numbered help ticket…to assistance at the Twin Cities. Man, I hope they don’t mind taking a 3 hour drive to help a professor with presentation technology. Otherwise, I’m going to be doing everything with chalk.

So how’s your day going? Getting a good start on the Fall term?

(Also, it’s true: none of the students wear a mask to class. Just me.)

Currently, I’m one of the rare weirdos at my university wearing a mask. I’ll be wearing it when I teach. I’m mystified by the reluctance of administrators to follow simple, painless health rules.

Maybe it’s because so many doctors are saying it’s unnecessary, sort of, like this op-ed from a doctor in the Washington Post. She’s abandoning masking her kids for the strangest reasons.

I accept the risk that my kids will probably contract covid-19 this school year, just as they could contract the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and other contagious diseases. As for most Americans, covid in our family will almost certainly be mild; and, like most Americans, we’ve made the decision that following precautions strict enough to prevent the highly contagious BA.5 will be very challenging. Masking has harmed our son’s language development, and limiting both kids’ extracurriculars and social interactions would negatively affect their childhood and hinder my and my husband’s ability to work.

So no more masks because she is resigned to the fact that her kids will get a potentially debilitating, even deadly disease? Meh, if COVID doesn’t kill them, something else will, so don’t bother protecting them. It’ll be challenging, but not challenging enough to make an effort. Besides, it would mean not turning out for baseball or dance class, and most importantly, might hinder Mom & Dad’s ability to work!

Hint: if that’s what worries you, don’t have kids. That’s what kids do.

But then, I was interested in the one concrete thing she claims: Masking has harmed our son’s language development. It’s got a link that I presumed must point to a study demonstrating that specific problem, but no, it’s a news story about growing calls to take masks off children in school. It’s a collection of anecdotes about anti-masking people complaining about how hard it is to keep a mask on their kids, and claiming, like the doctor above that it is hampering their language or even smothering their empathy. It mentions (but does not cite) one German psychiatrist, Manfred Spitzer, who claims all kinds of deleterious consequences of using a mask, but this is also a guy who argues that children should be banned from having a cell phone until they’re 18. And then, this:

Diane Paul is with the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, the national professional association representing speech therapists. She says referrals of children to speech therapy have increased since the pandemic began.

But, Paul adds, there are no studies to prove — or disprove — that this is due to masking rather than, as she believes, the lingering effects of remote learning and other factors of the pandemic.

Is it hard to keep a kid masked? Sometimes, no denying it. Does it cause little problems? Sure.

But I will deploy my own anecdote to counter that: my granddaughter, Iliana, has been living under the cloud of the pandemic for practically her entire life. She cheerfully puts on a mask — it’s a fashion accessory, it’s the grown-up thing to do — and toddles off to the store with mom and dad without complaint.

Also, she is extremely vocal and will chatter away non-stop, with no real speech impediment.

Checkmate, anti-maskers. Put the damn thing on and do everything you can to protect your child from disease. Why is that even in question?

A reader sent me this rather affirming quote from Bertrand Russell, in which he refuses to debate the old fascist, Oswald Mosely.

Dear Sir Oswald,
Thank you for your letters and for your enclosures. I have given some thought to our recent correspondence. It is always difficult to decide on how to respond to people whose ethos is so alien and, in fact, repellent to one’s own. It is not that I take exception to the general points made by you but that every ounce of my energy has been devoted to an active opposition to cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution which has characterised the philosophy and practice of fascism.
I feel obliged to say that the emotional universes we inhabit are so distinct, and in deepest ways opposed, that nothing fruitful or sincere could ever emerge from association between us.
I should like you to understand the intensity of this conviction on my part. It is not out of any attempt to be rude that I say this but because of all that I value in human experience and human achievement.
Yours sincerely,
Bertrand Russell

I note that so many of the debate channels are begging for people to participate, and they usually start with bringing in creationists of flat earthers or such trash to take one side, and can then find others willing to take the reasonable side. It’s not necessarily “cruel bigotry, compulsive violence, and the sadistic persecution” in the beginning, but still, by joining in, you’re contributing to the popularity of pernicious ignorance.

I’ve also noticed that that’s only the start — those channels, in their desperate straining for increasing sensationalism, always seem to end up bringing fascists and racists on. Would you believe I saw a video with Richard Spencer arguing for evolution? That was such a shit show I couldn’t bear it. Bertrand Russell would have wept. That’s the direction these pro-debate groups are going, milking profit off their ability to convince people to step into the ring with some terrible nobody. They are the modern equivalent of bum fights, and they are all morally reprehensible.

Just say no to debates.

That’s short for “transient ischemic attack” — I had one. It was only 10 minutes of discombobulated confusion that ended quickly and went away, but it landed me in the hospital overnight. I got CAT scans, an MRI, heart monitors, the works, all while I fumed in a hospital bed because I had things to do, since classes start tomorrow.

All is well now, no detectable damage done, this was just a warning. I got a new pill and some dietary restrictions to keep it from happening again.

And now I have to play catch-up. Everything I was going to get done yesterday has to be done now.

I knew it.

I did it. I threw away a coffeemaker, just before the start of classes.

We had this Black & Decker coffeemaker, which ought to have been a warning sign — don’t get your kitchen appliances from a company that makes the kind of power tools you keep in the garage. It was needlessly complicated, with timers and a built-in grinder, and it had modes. I don’t need modes — I just want to push a button and have it make coffee. That’s it.

This one had a tortuous internal path to deliver coffee to the carafe, and it kept clogging up. The last straw this morning was when three quarters of the coffee ended up on the counter top, and I still have enough pride that I refused to lap it up. Instead, I swooped in, grabbed the infernal device, and threw it into the trash.

Now I’m committed. We’re going to Alexandria today to buy a new, simpler, more reliable coffeemaker. I also have to get some new shirts for the school year, and restock the refrigerator. Now I can’t put it off any longer, because waking up without coffee tomorrow morning would be intolerable.