A Journal of the Plague Year: #11

It’s Saturday here in Portland, Oregon. More likely than not, it’s Saturday where you are as well. I don’t have a lot to report today, except to say that we are two full weeks into our extended Spring Break. We are all healthy here. A little stir crazy. I have been behind the wheel of an automobile two times in two weeks. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that the dogs have had walks at least 12 days in a row. The dogs report that they are loving the new normal. Ruby tells me that there is someone living inside the wood pile. Every time she goes out there she stands in front of it and whines, roots around with her snout at the nooks and crannies between logs and whines some more. Then she’s happy to chase balls around. Whoever they are, they’re in there good and proper, are not vulnerable to dogs in the day time.

As this is my last official weekend before work as a high school English teacher begins again, I’m still trying to get my head wrapped around a remote 6 hour work day without classrooms and students. Luckily (I think), I have been using the google technology that allows me to assign stuff, share stuff, and read stuff my students write–all in the digital realm, in real time, using the magic of the inter webs. So I really don’t have any problem imagining a world in which material is prepared, instructions given, assignments assigned, and feedback administered within this realm, without ever seeing the whites of their eyes. I don’t like it, but I can imagine it. And I can imagine how, if everything was cooking on all cylinders, and if every one of my 170 plus or minus students was playing along, I would definitely have 6 hours of work to do every day. But again, as I understand it, the material that we will be giving to students is in the spirit of “providing an opportunity.” It follows that many of them will just not take the opportunity we provide. And I’m not recording or grading? And the semester credit will be given based on what? Less than half a semester’s worth of the stuff they did before all this went down? Anyway, I have lots of questions. I am hopeful that most of them will be answered in the three days worth of preparation we have next week before the intended roll-out. I think about how in a few days I’m going to be walking into my son’s bedroom while he is knee- deep in some game play to tell him, “Hey son, stay here and go to school!” Best case scenario, I imagine, is that the Governor’s school closure until April 28th does not have to be extended. Then, at least, we would have a month with students in a physical space, in community, where we are able to see and speak to them, laugh with them, and learn.

I was dreaming about this poem last night, a playful meditation on loss by Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art,” a villanelle, btw, if you’re interested in formal structures. And it’s a friend’s birthday today, Tracy Youngblom, a terrific poet, and I asked her if she had a poem she’d like read on the occasion, and she chose a poem called “Lilies” by Mary Oliver. So today we get two poems for no extra charge. And I was thinking about how, of the 10 poems I’ve read, 8 of them were written by dudes, so I thought it was time to get some more women up in here. I hope, wherever you are, that you are well, that you stay well, and that you enjoy these two readings. Thanks for being here. It means a lot.