Thursday random thoughts

 * Wednesdays are just busy and exhausting (three lectures plus a lab plus often meetings) so maybe for a while I just don't post on Wednesdays. 

* Feeling discouragement on several fronts this morning.

- The news yesterday that a number of species were being 'delisted' from the ESA because they are now presumed extinct. This includes the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, and as I remember (though I cannot find a reference to it in my early blogposts), the initial hope that maybe it was still out there was a thing of hope, that maybe there really are swamps in Arkansas remote enough that small populations of this thing could hang out, undetected?

I suppose you could say in a way it was my Bigfoot - there are people who believe that these exist, and go out hunting for them. I am very skeptical on Bigfoot and always have been, but I thought maybe there was a possibility the ivory-bill was still out there, seeing as we actually had a record of it existing in the past whereas with Bigfoot it's all legend. 

But no, almost 20 years of searching have failed to turn up any, so it's presumed dead. I commented sadly on Twitter that "maybe this is a bookend; since I started my blog (or so I remembered) in response to the news of it maybe still being out there, that maybe it was time to end the blog because I know I am no longer interesting and few people still read blogs anyway.

I am no longer interesting because I'm stuck in a rut of doing very little other than work, and the work I do isn't interesting to talk about because these days it's mostly grading, and dealing with the horrible interfaces of BlackBoard, and shepherding students whose only college experience has been mostly-online, and it's exhausting and at times demoralizing.

I don't think I'll end the blog, though. Like everything I keep hoping for better days even if like the claim in the Depression 'recovery is just around the corner,' but it's ooops, all corners, or maybe "the corner that you will turn to better times is in another castle" to wildly mix metaphors. 

But speaking of demoralizing: I read an article linked through metafilter, that the author had entitled "What if it's all Bull...."  It's written by a professor, as it turns out, at one of "our" big flagship universities, about how demoralized she is about the crummy covid response (yeah, we don't have a mask mandate either, though I also admit I would not love having to police one now; so I just wear a mask and tell students they are free to and hope my mask and vaccination will protect me enough if someone comes to class bearing Delta) and about the casual sexism in her department (thank goodness I don't really see that; my department is about half women and that helps - though I have had a few run-ins with admins where later on, when I was raging about how badly they treated me, a colleague will raise an eyebrow and say "oh, they're like that to every woman on campus" and while it doesn't make me feel BETTER it makes me take it less personally).

But then it came out that the professor in question  makes $100,000, and while I SUPPOSE Norman is more expensive to live in than here - well, that's roughly half again what I make, and I teach a 4/4 (no idea what the prof in question teaches as a load, but she's also not in the lab sciences, where we get 1 credit hour of load for every 2-3 in lab, so you really get it if you teach a lot of labs, like I do in the spring). 

And I don't know. I get that I need to be more grateful for what I have, but I'm also tired, and have dealt with minor (and maybe not-so-minor: the loss of comfortable human interaction is probably a bigger thing than any of us realize) deprivations and annoyances for 18 months, and I've had what feels like relatively little in the way of compensation, and so hearing someone that is arguably better positioned than I am say "it's all BS" makes me discouraged.

Because what if it is? What if my teaching does nothing to improve anything? Why even bother? These are the questions that keep me up at night, along with the one of "is that pain really just hip arthritis or could it be something worse"- I've had it for years but of course you never know. (I have a lot of pain right now; part of it is it's fall allergy season, part of it I'm on my feet for many hours - five, some days - on concrete floors, and I can't always wear super supportive shoes)

*At some point I probably need to force myself to make the time for a foray into Texas for my own mental health. What I would *really* like is to go to the yarn shop in Whitesboro - have not been there since February 2020 and in past times (once they had opened; they have not been there very long) I went several times a year. Mostly now it's taking the time - finding the time - because they're 45 minutes away, and running out at the end of the day (during after-work rush hour) is not desirable even if they had evening hours, so I need a Saturday. But this Saturday is spoken for unless it's bucketing down rain (and I'd probably not go if it were anyway) and next Saturday is me trying to finish my fieldwork for the fall, so...

And at any rate, I don't need any more yarn; I am at the point where I will have to put something in my will about what will happen with the yarn that I haven't knit up - even if I live to be 90. 

What I need is to be around other people who share my interest and my hobby, around people that I can talk something OTHER THAN "shop" with (like I do at work). Then again - with me still masking in public talking seems less uncomfortable and less desirable and I feel less free. But I still don't think, given the numbers we have here, it's quite safe yet. (And please, I would like local news everywhere to do virus forecasts: number of cases per 100,000 people, say, and let people decide. For me, I'd say maybe fewer than 20 cases per 100,000 and I'd be comfortable going out unmasked and eating in a restaurant; right now I think we're somewhere north of 60.)

I think actually that's what I've missed: not opportunities to go out and shop, so much, but the opportunity to (a) see things different than the limited set of things around me - that includes driving to the place; I have never been comfortable just going out and driving "aimlessly" because I feel like it's burning gas for no reason and (b) maybe a chance for even a SHORT conversation with someone. Like, at the JoAnn's, the people cutting fabric sometimes used to ask what you were planning on making with it and while I know some people found that question intrusive I kind of liked being asked. 

And no, I don't know how to easily recreate that for myself, not with a lot of work. Online spaces help SOME but really what I want is the in-person contact: there are no craft groups in town that meet when I'd be free (I've checked), there are no shops where you can really just drop in and hang around (and again: that's being in an indoor space with other people I don't know well, during a pandemic). So I don't know. I mean, maybe I'm beginning to figure out what I WANT in case the pandemic ever ends (but I don't want to be the one to try to run a drop-in crafting group; that's too much work and you are the one who gets dumped on if things go badly, and I have too many responsibilities already). 

What this town needs is some sort of "makerspace," and not the kind that's mostly devoted to the "cool, man-coded making" like doing minor electronics projects or woodworking but spaces for everyone -maybe a "loud space" and a "quiet space" so people who want to use machinery can, but people who want to sit and stitch or do other quiet things can. 

But again: I don't know how to make that happen without a lot of heavy lifting and knowledge I probably don't have and v. likely grant money to secure the space and pay for utilities, and also there's the whole question (pertinent these days) of what do you do about someone who is being abusive or even just rude in the space? I don't know.

*(one of my issues is I am too good at seeing potential bad consequences)