Wednesday afternoon stuff

* Scuttlebutt* in the department today is that now that the F-1 visa issue has been solved (international students would not have been permitted to stay in the US if classes were all online; not sure what would happen to international students who went home and all their classes turned out to be in-person and they couldn't get back here), there's increasing likelihood we will be all-online for fall

(*Well, FSVO scuttlebutt: the secretary, the anatomy prof, and I were the only ones in, but we all concur in this)

I am okay with this. I would be even more okay with this if faculty were permitted on campus to teach in the classrooms (using, for example, the smart board to write on for classes like my stats class) because that would be easier.

I dunno. I just don't see how we can keep COVID *off* campus with all the commuters, all the students who work in all kinds of places. And we have enough students-who-are-parents that if their kids' schools went all online from home - well, then childcare becomes an issue.

I dunno. I don't see any good solutions until there's a really solid preventative (e.g., an antiviral that doesn't cause horrific side effects if taken for an extended time - one of the problems with the first-gen flu antivirals, I understand, is they can make you hallucinate wildly, and that is very much a Do Not Want, especially for me living alone with no one to talk me down) or a vaccine that mostly works. (I think "mostly works" is all we can hope for at first).

Teaching masked would be....safer....but if you can't be in a person's personal space during lab to help them, and each lab student has to work individually (to avoid personal-space incursions), you might as WELL be online.

Also I fear there will be people who complain they can't hear me masked. I always had the back-row folks who complained of things like that (but would not move to empty spaces in the front rows, so whatever)

* I also suspect this is going to trigger mass retirements in a lot of fields. Not gonna lie: if I were eligible for early retirement, I'd be mightily tempted to just do it. In my state you have to sit out after retiring for six months, but then you can come back as an adjunct....so it would be tempting to retire, sit on the sidelines for the pandemic, and then come back to teach (but not have to do research or committeework) as an adjunct later. Granted, yes: that kind of screws one's department, and also adjuncting pays badly (though if you have a pension, who cares?). But I wouldn't be eligible; it's still 9 years until I could retire and I think the most generous they've been with early retirements has been to comp for 3.

Also, I find sitting around idle is very very bad for me psychologically. In "real" retirement - post pandemic (hopefully! Hopefully there will be a "post pandemic" time) - there would be volunteer work to do and places to go. But right now? Nnnnnnope. I mean, I could make a crapton of quilt tops and do a lot of knitting, but that's about it.

* In about 10 days (July 27, to be exact), it will be the one-year anniversary of my dad's passing.

I feel like I need to do something. I know in some traditions there are official things to do (e.g., Jahrzeit) but my Protestant Christian background doesn't really do anything.

But I feel like I need to mark the day.

I am considering - if they are open, if between now and then we don't have a giant blowing-up of cases- of driving up to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area for a while. It's about an hour away, so not hard to get to (and if I am careful about fluid intake, I might not even need a restroom on the road, though I guess "fomites" are less a worry than they once were). If I planned to be up there over my usual lunchtime I could bring my own food. (Or, heck, find a place with a drive through window, and bring some way to clean my hands)

He used to like going there the few times he and my mom were down here to visit me, and a couple of the last grad students he had did projects based on analyzing water from the various springs, so it feels kind of fitting.

In particular, if the big overlook area (Bromide Hill? I think that's it) is open, I think....I think it would be nice to go up there and maybe just say a prayer.

This year has been so terrible and so many things have been interrupted and changed, I feel like at least I should be able to do this. The 27th is a Monday, so the area would be unlikely to be extremely busy. I wouldn't even have to go in the visitor center - though I suspect if I masked up and was careful about distancing, it would be fine.

(It looks like the park is open. Some camping areas aren't, but this would just be a day trip and I probably would only be in my car or perhaps out on a few of the short trails. It will probably be HOT so I probably won't want to walk *too* much)