The Breath Cloud Is of More Concern Than Touch Surfaces

Since my last post a week ago the election has been called for Biden. A few counts continue to trickle in and at least one state will have a recount, but most people accept the outcome. Not the current president, though. So far he's refused to concede, along with some of his allies. There are worries he might try to discredit the election. He's made some legal challenges and some of his supporters seem to expect the result to be reversed at some point, but the rest of us are tentatively moving on. It's made relaxing and thinking about other things much easier.

I tried not to post anything retributive or angry when the announcement was made, tried not to gloat, but I did share a video of this final scene from Return of the Jedi in celebration. Yub Nub.

To other matters, then.

Earlier this week we finished our older son's seventh birthday festivities with the most 2020 party ever. Pump It Up is a party place available for rentals. It's basically two gigantic rooms--they call them arenas--full of inflatables plus a few other activities. They have two party rooms for gathering before and after the wild play, and I would guess they're normally always booked with overlapping events. Not so much now. So we were able to make a reservation for their most affordable package, the "play date." We didn't feel safe inviting friends, though, so we decided to make it just us. We arrived after dinner, with everything dark and quiet. The four of us were led back into the empty arenas for 90 minutes of bouncing fun. Walking in felt like discovering a deserted, post-apocalyptic landscape; someplace normally crawling with screaming, running, chaotic kids totally devoid of life. But we had fun nonetheless, and afterwards the worn out boys had their best night of sleep in ages.

This looks So Weird. Both creepy and fabulously indulgent, someone commented on Facebook. Definitely like something out of fiction, right? Cool.

And the pandemic continues. Daily rates of infection and death are steadily increasing, regularly setting records. Many are carrying on more than ever like life is normal even as health officials and those directly involved are trying to sound new alarms. The title of this post is a quote from one of them in an article I read.

The seven-year-old just brought this work home from school. In 2020 first grade anatomy work there is no nose or mouth, merely a mask.

The latest board meeting of our local school district included this.

Staffing Update: interim associate superintendent of human resources spoke on the current impact the pandemic is having on staffing. He shared details about an increased number of resignations, retirements, staff taking leave, and staff in isolation and quarantine. He also shared that the number of substitutes is dwindling. While there are multiple steps being taken to fill vacant positions, there are concerns about the ability to continue to staff schools with the current trajectory.

So we're wondering if soon we will once again return to all virtual school instead of in-person.

I stole this from Facebook and find it absolutely true. Best quote for 2020: "This is not the year to get everything you want. This is the year to appreciate everything you have."

We just had our first parent-teacher conference with the seven-year-old's first grade teacher. Here are highlights:

"You guys have created a child who is waaay out of the box."

"He's a hippie."

"He is so incredibly brilliant."

"I have no idea how to get him to listen to me. I haven't said anything until now because I thought it would get better with time, but he just won't respond to me when I talk to him. He won't listen."

"He is creating a disruption for the other students around him, because when he ignores me they pay attention to him instead of me."

Except we didn't create him; he came this way. We just spend our time trying to help him develop in a benevolent manner and steer him away from evil genius. So maybe it shouldn't have come as a surprise because we have the same issues (my wife said the comments "nailed it"), but we weren't expecting her level of frustration with his lack of attentiveness and engagement. We thought he would moderate his tendencies and be on best behavior at school, but it turns out he isn't. One of his most common strategies is if he doesn't like what he's hearing he simply ignores it--pretends not to hear it--and disappears into his head or whatever has his interest in that moment. I'm a bit that way myself, so I get it, but he's entirely rude. So we're trying to figure out how to help him change that behavior.

I don't have any worries in this teacher's case, but I do have red flags when I hear adults complain that kids aren't treating them with enough respect. Sometimes there are legitimate behavioral issues, but sometimes it's this:

Sometimes people use "respect" to mean "treating someone like a person" and sometimes they use "respect" to mean "treating someone like an authority." And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say "If you won't respect me I won't respect you" and what they mean is "If you won't treat me like an authority I won't treat you like a person." And they think they're being fair but they aren't, and it's not okay.

I agree.

I have to admit to pride in hearing the comments about how brilliant and out of the box he is. I've never cared for the box.

On the topic of the kids, recently I was trying to assure this older one that his younger brother wouldn't do something he was worried about. "Yes he will," he said. "I know [Younger] better than you. He's my brother." This year sheltered together socially distancing from everyone else has made them best buds even more than ever before.

Last night the five-year-old was talking with us about the imaginary games he plays with his brother at home and on the playground with peers. At one point he told us, "Guess what, Mom? It's actually kind of fun to be evil."

He also mentioned needing to do his imaginary sword training. I responded we wouldn't be enrolling him in anything like that and he said it's something he does all by himself.

I recently overheard this while the two were playing: "You shouldn't have killed them because now we have ghosts all throughout our house."

I inquired just a bit and it seems we have two groups of imaginary creatures in our house, one known as "Goods" and the other as "Evils." It was the Evils they were eliminating, and something from Halloween was infiltrating their imaginative play with spooky, supernatural results.

Do you see the heart sending you love?

A couple posts ago (The Interminable Wait) I shared the last book from Tomi Ungerer, Nonstop. I've since explored a couple of his older books. The image above comes from The Three Robbers. And I love taking the quote below from Fog Island and considering it with no context. Both are very good stories.

"I've been alone here for such a long time.

But to be lonesome is not a reason to get bored.

The animals seem to love my songs, which

I drone on for hours in forgotten languages.

Now, let me entertain you!"

Hmm. Maybe there's a reason my son is a hippie.

Though, speaking of Nonstop, this contextless bit from it particularly resonates with me as someone who didn't get to have kids until later in life in a second marriage.

Vasco clutched Poco to his heart.

At last he had someone to care for.

Just in time.

Two of my posts in the past year have included meditations on aging, One of My Favorite Words Is "Embody" and Fall Is a Craving. They share some ideas in common with what follows, so I find this article intriguing.

You’re a Completely Different Person at 14 and 77, the Longest-Running Personality Study Ever Has Found

The longest personality study of all time, published in 2016 in Psychology and Aging and highlighted by the British Psychological Society, suggests that over the course of a lifetime, just as your physical appearance changes and your cells are constantly replaced, your personality is also transformed beyond recognition. . . . 

Teachers were asked to use six questionnaires to rate the teenagers on six personality traits: self-confidence, perseverance, stability of moods, conscientiousness, originality, and desire to learn. Together, the results from these questionnaires were amalgamated into a rating for one trait, which was defined as “dependability.” . . . 

This time, aged 77 years old, the participants rated themselves on the six personality traits, and also nominated a close friend or relative to do the same. Overall, there was not much overlap from the questionnaires taken 63 years earlier. . . . 

“Personality refers to an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion, and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms—hidden or not—behind those patterns,” note the authors.

I wish there was more to it than simply sharing the results of the study, some kind of analysis or reflection. I guess that's up to me as I spend some time pondering it. Those two links above do, ponder ways I've changed with age. And maybe a topic for next time. My next birthday is in a few days, after all.

I'm not one to often reminisce or wax nostalgic or even remember that I have memories besides the fresh ones, but I was just reminded of a game we used to play when I was young. One I learned from peers and joined because it was the thing to do. Sharing it seems appropriate with these other thoughts of childhood playground games and not fitting in the box and changing with age.

In the small Kansas town where I grew up we called the game pig slaughter. I don't get anything for that name with a quick Google search, but I also heard it called smear the queer and that brings up some results. This is the best, from Wikipedia's list of variants for tag:

Muckle (sometimes called "muckle the man with the ball", "kill-the-guy-with-the-ball", "smear the queer", "kill the carrier", among other names) is the reverse of regular tag; all the other players chase "it". This player is denoted by carrying a ball (usually a football). When they are caught, they are tackled, or "muckled".

In my mind it will always be pig slaughter since that's what I grew up calling it (and I'm grateful I'm not stuck with the homophobic option). So . . . 

In the small Kansas town where I grew up we called the game pig slaughter. It was played on dusty playground fields during recess, before and after school, anytime there was a group of boys and some time to kill. Usually around ten players, but any random assortment of 5-20 would work, whoever was around. Someone would throw a football into the air. When it came down, someone would catch it. Some were eager to grab it, some reluctant, but ultimately the ball would choose someone--everyone in the group was obligated to snag it if it came their way. He would tuck the ball and start to run. Not run away, though, not flee to escape, because the goal of the game was slaughter and he was now the pig. Some would dodge and duck and do their best to avoid contact at all costs. Others would accept the inevitable and plow right into the group, trying to punish as many as possible on his way to defeat. Everyone else would pursue, attempting to grapple him and pull him down or to jump on his back. Ultimately the collective weight would be too much and the boy would go down, becoming the bottom of a magnetic pile. All the others would collapse on top into a great heaping mass, and he would hope to protect his fingers and fragile parts and not get smothered. After a bit--longer or shorter depending on the group's feelings about the person on the bottom--everyone would climb back to their feet, the boy in possession would toss the ball high, and it would all begin again.

Ah, the lost joys of masculine socialization. I've kept that memory buried for a long time.

I was reminded of it by this poem by Ross Gay in his book Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.

smear the queer

was what we called it

sometimes or sometimes

kill the man

from afar

you could watch

the savannah's dust bellow

from the chase

the fleet boy's pronghorn flight

his juke and whirl

his stutter-step spring

or the buffalo boy's chug

hauling the whole

flailing pride

and one way or another

down we'd be

dragged and good chance was

there'd be some piling on

the bloody-knuckled boy

and the long-haired boy

the boy with the crooked

smile and the one

who would die bad

tumbling and swan-diving

in layers and tangles

in fleshy knots of sediment

until was made a mountain

within which a cave

where was heard

a stream's faint murmur

and seen the mirrored glance

of an iridescent bird's

luminous eyes

a cave

across the ridged walls

of which gallops and flickers

a herd of elk

and on the sandy

floor beneath the feathers of firelight

all of us sprawled lank

and shimmering and woven

opening our small

bodies like moonflowers

to the dark

This last bit is a major departure from the rest of the post and doesn't really fit, but I'm afraid if I don't capture it soon it will get lost in time so I'm going to include it. It relates to one of the ways I've both changed and stayed the same as I've aged. I grew up a white kid in small town Kansas pretty oblivious to race issues, yet more aware than most of my peers and with a foundation that left me open to learning and an interest in doing more. My first wife would say of me as a new adult that I wanted to "save the world." But I have learned so much along the way and am sure I have beliefs now that I didn't then.

At my work I am one step short of management. I don't supervise anyone yet am in a lead position with a team I kind of coordinate. At the start of this week one of my team members reached out to me. She was responding to a message from a peer--we are part of a large library system with 14 locations, so we are each part of a location team and part of a systemwide youth services department; this was from someone at a different location about sub-team work in our department. My colleague responded to me with, in part, this:

I've been sitting with the email [that was] sent out, mulling it over. Perhaps you can help me "settle down". I think I know what the intent of the email was. However, the strong language feels accusatory. First couple of paragraphs are fine. . . . Then I begin to feel like they are an activist group. That I am evil. That I have never done enough in my storytimes or when working with the general public. I am a racist (yes, we all are) and I should be stoned or something.

 

Yes, I'm overreacting. But is some of what I'm feeling actually there in the email? At this point I want to have nothing to do with the group.

I wanted to get back to her quickly so I didn't spend as much time mulling over my response as I might have. This is what I came up with.

Thank you for trusting me enough to bring this to me.

 

I just read [Colleague]’s message a few minutes ago and am still digesting it. Like you, I was surprised by how emphatic her language is. She makes some really bold, strong statements. . . . 

[redacted]

 

I would look to the essence of the ideas more than the exact language she uses. Besides that, I have two quick thoughts (more may come later).

 

She is attempting to describe, I believe, the idea of structural racism. She is not talking about you or me or any individual people, but about the systems we live within. Policies and laws that are much bigger than us, not our individual decisions. So if her language is accusatory, there is nothing in it that is accusing you.

 

[Colleague] starts with the term “antiracism.” That term was coined by Ibram X. Kendi. I have a copy of his newest book, a journal with quotes and ideas then lots of space for the owner to reflect, write, and respond. On page 110 he writes: “Racist power thrives on anti-White racist ideas--more hatred only makes their power greater.” And the page after: “How does our focus on White people as the problem--instead of racist power and policy--lead to the strengthening of racist power and policy?” A key part of the way he defines racism is that people cannot by definition be racist, only ideas, systems, and power structures. The same person can do something racist one moment and antiracist the next--and everyone, of all races, does. The person who created the term and has informed much of the conversation behind [Colleague]’s thoughts wants to make clear we should not focus on, accuse, or blame White people in any way. Focusing on people undermines the work of focusing on power structures. That did not come through in [Colleague]’s message, but we need to make it part of any conversation that follows.

 

My second initial thought is the idea of white fragility. Robin DiAngelo wrote the book of the same title, and she defines it as white people feeling accused by any mention of racism and being so bothered by that sense of blame that it overwhelms anything else being said; we can’t consider racism or have conversations about it because we’re blinded by our need to protect ourselves from feelings of blame or guilt.

 

I’m not telling you you’re being fragile in this instance because you haven’t said enough for me to know, I just know it’s something I think of myself when I read things like what [Colleague] has written. You asked the perfect question with, “is some of what I'm feeling actually there in the email?” That’s exactly what I try to do when I feel accused, ask myself if the person is actually going after me or if I’m being too fragile to give it a fair look.

 

And [Colleague] doesn’t mention anything you or I have done personally. She mentions the history of Kansas City and librarianship and things that remain in our structures today that have been shaped by racism in the past. We don’t need to feel any guilt about that, just because we happen to exist within that landscape. But--and this is the point I think she is trying to make--we might have the ability to do some small things to make the situation better.

 

That’s probably more than you were asking for and it might be missing the mark--please let me know if I didn’t hear your concerns correctly or if I have made them even worse. But that’s what was running through my head when I read her message and saw your reaction.

 

And I hope you don’t feel pushed away and disengage from the group, because it’s essential that what [Colleague]’s advocating doesn’t become a message of single-minded propaganda. We need different perspectives and voices of disagreement and moderation to keep the conversation balanced and representative. It should be a group effort with many points of view, negotiation, and debate, and not a runaway train that will only derail. Please speak up when you feel ready.

 

I hope that helps.

Those are awarenesses I certainly wouldn't have had when I was younger. They seem to have helped, because her response included, you calmed me down and helped me to see the email in new ways. I was very glad to see that, feeling that maybe all this reading and learning I try to do is actually paying off in practical ways.

These thoughts feel like they need to be paired with a couple of things I've blogged before. From I Am the Dream of a Giant Fungus on a Tree:

Americans Grossly Underestimate the Racial Wealth Gap Between Black and White Families — and It's Making It Harder to Achieve Financial Equality

From slaveholders accumulating massive wealth to the decimation of Tulsa's "Black Wall Street" to Jim Crow laws, Black people have been routinely denied the opportunity to create wealth in the same way white people have. And many Americans are still unaware of just how bad it is, ongoing research from Yale University shows. . . . 

The median white family had more than 10 times the wealth of the median Black family in 2016, according to the Fed's 2017 "Survey of Consumer Finances." In other words, for every $100 in wealth held by a white family, a Black family has just $10.

Yet, a series of ongoing studies by the Yale School of Management reveal that Americans are largely unaware of this. Most Americans think that for every $100 in wealth held by a white family, a Black family has $90. . . . 

"Our national survey found that 97% of Americans are overestimating racial equality." . . . 

Americans also believe that the wealth gap is closing, the national survey found. When in fact, it's gotten bigger over time. . . . 

Addressing the wealth gap will be near impossible if Americans continue to deny it exists.

And from For the Skeptics:

Let's start with an acknowledgment of the fact that Black people--and I'm going to keep it in Black and white terms for this since that is the current, Black Lives Matter moment, even though other ethnicities, backgrounds, and skin tones add layers of complexity--of the fact that Black people in the U.S. have unequal income and wealth compared to white people. They have higher levels of poverty. And everything that comes with poverty, including more health issues, unemployment, violent crime, and other ills.

So, fact: if you are Black you are more likely to live in poverty than if you are white.

If that is our fact, then we must ask why. Why do Black people have higher levels of poverty than white?

There are two general categories of explanation, either:

• Blacks have caused themselves to be poorer, or
• Circumstances have caused Blacks to be poorer.

If you believe Black choices, behaviors, and attitudes have caused themselves to be poorer, then you believe something about Black people is inferior, wrong, or unequal. Whether it is physical and genetic and a part of their bodies or taught and learned and a part of their culture, you believe they are in some way different based on the fact of their blackness. Something makes them lazier or less intelligent or less capable because they are Black. That belief is Racist.

If you don't believe that something about being Black has caused the issue, then, logically, you must believe that the cause is external. It is not something about Black people themselves, it is about the circumstances they are in. Something about the way they are treated by others. Something about the beliefs of the larger culture, the laws, regulations, and policies, the structures and systems that surround them. If they are not unequal themselves yet still have unequal results, then their conditions must be unequal. The problem, then, is Systemic Racism. It is built into our landscape. And it needs to be changed.

Of course, the reality isn't quite so simple. Built into our racist policies and systems are ideas to support them to make them harder to change. And because we are part of racist systems, we absorb the ideas built into them whether we want to or not. Because of systemic racism, we unconsciously adopt some measure of racist beliefs. All of us. So both sides of the chart are true and both need to be changed. . . . 

Of course, Black people face more racial issues than simple economic ones. Racism manifests itself in many other ways than poverty. That's merely a beginning point to extrapolate from. The same dynamics apply across the board.

Including, unfortunately, the pandemic.

We're just about out of time to complain about 2020. I wonder what comes next.