"Tout va bien"

Today I learned the existence of a French song - it's an old comedy song, dating back to perhaps the 1930s, called "Tout va très bien, Madame la Marquise."

Here's a video of it (complete with "Madame la Marquise" as a guy in drag) that perhaps allows non-Francophones a bit of understanding of it:

Anyway. La Marquise phones up her faithful retainers (Butler - I assume that is "James," coachman, chef, et al...) to find out that everything is in order during her vacation.

However, the full horror gradually dawns....James lets on, "Oh, there is one tiny problem, nothing really bad at all, but your grey mare died...." and it goes from there that the horse died in a fire at the stables, which was part of the larger fire of the chateau, which began when her husband, in a fit of despair over being financially ruined, goes to end his life, and knocks over candles....

But, oh, "Tout va très bien," her retainers tell her ("Everything is fine," we might say in modern parlance, especially given this well-known comic)

Yeah. It has a very familiar feel to me, as someone who has worked in a university bureaucracy most of her life: "Everything's going well.....oh, well, there's that fire over there...."

April 2, if nothing changes, teachers in my state go out on strike. This is over the low pay and (I suspect) the threat that they will be expected to fork over even more for their health insurance (I expect that is coming for us, and while I can weather it better than a public school teacher can, depending on the number, I may have to (a) reduce my charitable giving, (b) drop cable or the landline phone, or (c) I don't quite know what else, because I am not taking on a second job)

Anyway, the most immediate effect of this is that kids who are in "food insecurity" (for whatever reason, and yes, I know there are terrible parents out there who put themselves first and assume someone else will care for their kids, but the kids still need to be cared for) will suffer without lunches or in some cases breakfasts. Steps are being taken to deal with that, with a small army of volunteers and the food banks planning for it. (But again: how many of these volunteers and food banks are already stretched to the limit themselves).

This may also impact the state testing - I THOUGHT it was next week? Maybe I'm wrong? I don't know. But if the strike stretches on or the decision is made that "class time must be made up" - well, we can probably kiss attendance at the Children's Play goodbye - I could see schools cancelling at the last minute. This is something our theater department has worked on for a couple months. And it's a joint effort with AAUW, we collect the money and guide the students to their seats, and we share the box-office proceeds with Theater. This is how we fund our scholarships.

So: no play, no scholarship money. I THINK we have enough to cover the 2-3 people who are continuing next year (if a student keeps a 3.0 GPA and remains enrolled - EVEN IF they go from an undergrad to a grad program at the university - they keep the scholarship, so it's a good deal). But I don't think we can give out new ones, which means (a) all those students filled out the forms for nothing and (b) my committee and I evaluated them for nothing*

(*Doing work for nothing - where, because of things beyond your control you fundamentally wasted a lot of time, even if at the time you were doing the thing you thought it was for good effect - is one of the things that makes me angriest)

And it means chaos of other sorts.

For example: I have a number of students who are themselves parents. They will have to find alternate child care. In some cases they may have to miss class. Which means I will have to once again be flexible about due dates and exam make-ups, which means more time-juggling for me. 

And then just today I realized: what about the state Science Fair? I judge this every year, and this year I am once again also judging the Barclay Award for the Illinois Native Plant Society. If the teachers are on strike, will the fair still happen? I don't know how involved teachers are at this point or how many of them are judges (dear me - I hope I don't get tapped to judge multiple other events then). I THINK it's mainly on the students and parents to get there, so maybe it will still happen - but I have an e-mail in to the head guy to find out for sure. I did tell him I did not know if I would be able to judge any other week than the 6th, if they wind up moving it. (I suspect it would be more likely to be done on a scaled-down level, or cancelled outright: I cannot see managing to re-mobilize all that effort for a later week). But, what a disappointment. 

Everything has ripples. And it seems all too often I am trying to clean up after the negative ripples caused by others. (And the same goes for many other people: I am thinking of all the retired folks quietly mobilizing to staff Boys and Girls Clubs in the event of emergency childcare being needed....)

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Also, I have to try to find time to get a plumber out. I got in the shower last night to wash my hair and....no hot water. (I did it with the sort-of-lukewarm I could get out of the shower head but it wasn't fun). This morning I was able to heat enough water to wash and even shave my legs by filling up a larger saucepan and heating it on the stove, and if worse comes to worse, I can fill my stockpot and heat that and use it to wash my hair when it comes time for that. But I want my hot water back and I am hoping it's just a tiny thing, but I'm also bracing for it being time to replace the heater, given our hard water and how stuff isn't made to last any more (this heater is just over 10 years old). I have money in savings for this but....I'm having to tap my savings more and more these days to cover minor emergencies and that worries me. (We are doing better than public school teachers, yes, but we haven't had raises in a long time, and inflation keeps going up. And I'm not teaching summers any more because of declining enrollment and my unwillingness to teach what amounts to 2 full-effort classes for about $1000 for the whole summer, which is what you get paid for classes smaller than 12 or so.)

(Confession: I asked myself early this morning, "How terrible would it be to live without a hot water heater if it came to that, and just heat water on the stove every time you wanted to bathe, and wash all your clothes and stuff on cold" - the dishwasher has a heating element in it so I don't have to worry about that. But yeah, it would get really old in the winter, so I think the answer is "You have to replace it even if it means eating beans and rice for the next two months")

Maybe in the future, I ask for money for any and all holiday/birthday gifts? That kind of sucks and is no fun at all, but yes, I do worry a lot about money these days.