Through the Prism

After passing through the prism, each refraction contains some pure essence of the light, but only an incomplete part. We will always experience some aspect of reality, of the Truth, but only from our perspectives as they are colored by who and where we are. Others will know a different color and none will see the whole, complete light. These are my musings from my particular refraction.

7.26.2021

Hope Is an Ugly Thing


A recent anecdote:

A couple of weeks ago in Attend to the Mundane I reported on an aspect of the summer for our kids, including, "We used some of our pandemic stimulus money to enroll the boys in a variety of interesting day camps for the school vacation. About half of the weeks at a shelter at a park to allow them to be active, the other half a mix of art, theater, computers/coding, cooking, and science. A bunch of things they find interesting." [Younger], age six, is this week taking two half-day camps that so far (it's Tuesday) he's loving. The morning is a Mad Science camp called "Clues, Crimes, & Culprits." We learned yesterday the scenario is a pet monkey has been stolen, and they are learning forensic science to analyze the evidence to try to solve the crime. The afternoon is "Sweet Summer Creations," where they learn to make/bake candy and desserts.

We thought this would be his most educational week of the summer, but this morning he spent a half hour in the car telling us about a game from the shelter at the park he's missing out on this week. From what we can tell, it was created by the students, and they seem to have developed their own capitalist economic system. [Younger]'s goal is to acquire more dig sites. A dig site is where they can dig in the dirt with sticks, and if they get deep enough to where the soil is wet they excavate mud to make mud balls. The mud balls are currency, so the more mud balls you have, the better. The game has bosses and big bosses. [Younger] says he has almost made "C.A. Manager." He is a small company, but he hasn't hired anyone yet. He also needs to get more sticks for digging, but I'm not sure if that happens through barter, purchase, or theft--as it seems all three are in play. There are also jails for thieves who get caught. Oh, and two of the big bosses recently merged and are trying to take over. I didn't understand enough to completely grasp the entire system, but he went on and on about his accomplishments and ambitions, and all of it centered around acquiring more and more dig sites and mud balls--which might be tied to the trees they exist under. It was fascinating listening.


Out of the blue in the car the other morning, [Younger] said, "Dad, do you and Mom want to make some more love, so you can have another kid?"

His explanation: "I'm tired of being the youngest."


An interesting observation from Georgia's Chicken Run (above; not my picture) on Saturday. It was the third time our boys have participated in this annual event, a streak broken only by last year when everything was canceled for Covid. This was the first time we saw lots of the little ones (2-3 years old) completely freak out during their races when the crowd started cheering for them. The year of isolation has been a big chunk of their lives, and you could tell they haven't ever had the opportunity to get used to being around groups of people the way the rest of us have.


Kids under the age of 12 are not eligible to be vaccinated. The health department said children between the ages of 5 and 17 are making up 30% of the new COVID-19 cases in the county.

I came across this on my Facebook feed and appreciated just how succinctly and well it captures my feelings about those who have chosen not to get the Covid vaccine. They claim they are displaying patriotism by exemplifying freedom of choice, while completely denying their choices can have any impact on others. By choosing to spread a disease they don't have to, they are impacting everyone who catches it after they do and impacting everyone who will need to continue to mask, social distance, and live with other safeguards we otherwise might not have to.


Them: I'd take a bullet for my country.
Me: You won't even take a needle for your neighbors. Sit down.

source

Unlike most, we've never given up masking or social distancing. We've relaxed some, but have remained vigilant about the possibility of continued infection. Our kids have been virtually the only ones masked at their camps this summer, even though all children their age are two young to be vaccinated. We're really glad, now, that we've done so.

source

A summary of the recent news:

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID infections,” wrote Cobia, a hospitalist at Grandview Medical Center in Birmingham, in an emotional Facebook post Sunday. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.” . . . 

“A few days later when I call time of death,” continued Cobia on Facebook, “I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same.”

“They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back. But they can’t. So they thank me and they go get the vaccine. And I go back to my office, write their death note, and say a small prayer that this loss will save more lives.”

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — After months of declining COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in the Kansas City region, the B.1.617.2 variant — better known as the “delta variant” — is surging across the area.

According to the Mid-America Regional Council’s Kansas City COVID-19 data hub, the number of rolling seven-day average of new cases has more than doubled in the last month, while hospitalizations have increased more than 48% in the last two weeks.

The inpatient hospital count for the Kansas City region is the highest since Feb. 2, which will continue to become more of a problem if COVID-19 hospitalizations keep climbing.

Meanwhile, testing remains less than half of the recommended level in the Kansas City area and the vaccination rate has slowed with fewer than half of residents 18 to 64 years old and only one in five children ages 12 to 17 vaccinated.

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As COVID-19 cases in the Kansas City metropolitan area continue to rise, Children’s Mercy said Monday that its hospital has reached capacity. . . . 

“We do have more COVID cases in the younger population that is not able to get vaccinated,” she said during The University of Kansas Health System’s daily briefing. “But also when we decided to lift the mask policies because we have now vaccines available, in addition to COVID being able to spread, all these other childhood diseases can start spreading as well.” . . . 

On Monday, the Kansas City metro added 424 new COVID-19 cases, for a total of 157,593 since the pandemic began. The seven-day rolling average for new cases rose from 411 on Sunday to 422. The average has not been this high since Feb. 4, according to data tracked by The Star.

COVID-19 is impacting young adults who have chosen not to get inoculated and children under age 12, who are not eligible for the vaccine, Pahud said.

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Now the virus is looking for people who haven’t been vaccinated, according to health experts. That includes a large number of younger people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 42% of the people hospitalized for COVID-19 last week were between the ages of 18 and 49. . . . 

The Johnson County Health Department said it’s keeping a close eye on a number of positive cases involving children. Kids under the age of 12 are not eligible to be vaccinated. The health department said children between the ages of 5 and 17 are making up 30% of the new COVID-19 cases in the county.

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In counties where COVID rates are currently the highest, there is a direct correlation to the fact that the vast majority of residents are unvaccinated. More than 99 percent of the people who died from COVID-related causes in June were unvaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Sunday, and the rise of delta means “we are seeing increased hospitalizations and deaths among unvaccinated individuals,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Thursday. . . . 

Without widespread vaccination and rigid adherence to public health measures, such as masking and social distancing, SARS-CoV-2 has been allowed to mutate and evolve over time and will continue to do so.

Data suggest this variant is three times as infectious as the original coronavirus strain . . . 

Those who are dangerously vulnerable to this variant are not limited to those unvaccinated by choice or access, but also include those who are not yet old enough to get their shots.

Children younger than age 12 should continue to take precautions, such as wearing masks and social distancing . . . 
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A summer camp in Johnson County has been shut down after eight COVID-19 cases were reported.

The camp, hosted by the Johnson County Park and Recreation District, was held at Clear Creek Elementary School in Shawnee.

Masks were recommended but not mandated, according to the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment, which said many of the children were not wearing masks. . . . 

Later Monday, the health department said two additional probably cases had been identified.

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The Shawnee Mission School District will require elementary students to wear masks at school after the board of education on Monday approved a COVID-19 mitigation plan for the coming school year.

As part of the plan, middle and high school students will be encouraged — but not required — to wear masks.

But with the vote Monday, SMSD became the only public school district in northern Johnson County to require at least some students to wear masks when students return for in-person learning next month.
Last year we were getting regular updates at work when colleagues had caught the virus, letting us know what was being done to prevent the spread. Then we went a long time without any. Last week we had two new ones, the first in a long time. And this from the chat among my colleagues answering phones for the library tonight: "I just got my 3rd call in 2 weeks from someone sick with Covid, after going months without."


I wish I had a better source for this, but it came across my Facebook feed as an image and going back to the source hasn't provided me with any better information. Anyway, I love it.
17. Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It's a Sewer Rat

Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.

Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that's seen some shit.

It's what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.

It's the gritty, nasty little carrier of such diseases as
Optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across your path
and
Bites you in the ass.

Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird, Emily.
It's a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.
I believe it's by Caitlin Seida.


This also came across my feed recently. I like what it has to say about agency and perspective.
He who cannot dance will say, "The drum is bad!"
~ Ashanti Proverb
And this one. The willingness to be vulnerable. From Stephen King.
"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear."

And while the larger point is about how hard it can be taking a chance sharing your fears, flaws, and weaknesses with others, I also have a thought related to this bit: words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. It makes me think of Ann Patchett's example (see: A Glossary of Enchantment) that writing her thoughts feels like capturing a butterfly and smashing it flat on the page, that's it's still a butterfly, but two-dimensional and lifeless. And of the poem "March" by by Nathaniel Perry in No One Will Believe You if You Actually Get It Right: "and that’s the thing with recording the world, / no one will believe you / if you actually get it right."

I've been struck by a metaphor. I don't know if it will speak to anyone besides me. But light seems to function as a wave until you try to measure it, then it can only be captured as a particle. It goes from being a fluid part of motion to being a single point. I don't know if a scientist would say that diminishes it, but saying so makes good poetry. Similarly, quantum states are vast and variable until they are "observed," then all of their multiple possibilities are reduced to a single moment. All of these wonderful things are happening in the realm of possibility until we try to capture and measure them, then they are lesser. So, perhaps, it is with all attempts at expressing ourselves. We reduce our thoughts and feelings when we try share them, we take all the life out of them and make them static. Artists are the ones who come closest to preserving their natural state. Quantum emotions and ideas.

Maybe. If my attempt to articulate the thought hasn't completely taken all the life out of it.


A little thing from The Chameleon's True Colors by Yuliya Pankratova. I want the bees to dance around me too.


The sad thing is, to anyone who's worked in libraries this isn't that shocking. We deal with this kind of thing far more than you might expect.

"For weeks, an unknown man has called libraries around the country asking for a specific Supreme Court opinion to be read to him. As the librarians comply, it becomes clear that he’s pleasuring himself to the words of the Court."
All are welcome at the library.

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I am a serial headline reader. A feed scroller. I'm very selective about what I actually click into, but I like to get the widest variety of headlines possible to help me stay in touch with the rest of the world. I get a daily email from Yahoo (among others) with a selection of their latest news stories. I grabbed today's because I was struck by what an interesting (odd? alarming?) picture they paint for sociologists and others who study societies.


Every day there's at least one article about a female celebrity wearing something risque. We love to objectify and obsess over female bodies. For example.

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After a year of the headlines being dominated by support for the movement for Black Lives and protests against unequal treatment, lately backlash against so-called Critical Race Theory has become all the rage. Except CRT is a stand-in for anything opponents of racial justice work don't like. They've taken the name and applied it to virtually everything. And the political swell is such that the previous enthusiasm is being dampened significantly.

As someone involved in this work, I decided to try to get a better understanding of CRT critics. I carefully read through AllStances™: Critical Race Theory from the AllSides "Perspectives Blog: Perspectives from across the political spectrum." Unfortunately, I had trouble buying the legitimacy of many of the sources referenced in support of the critical arguments and found those arguments were almost universally straw men--A straw man (sometimes written as strawman) is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one. Nothing argued against was either CRT or the ideas behind the actual work people like me are doing.

Ibram X. Kendi just wrote something similar.

Pundits and politicians have created their own definition for the term, and then set about attacking it.

The United States is not in the midst of a “culture war” over race and racism. The animating force of our current conflict is not our differing values, beliefs, moral codes, or practices. The American people aren’t divided. The American people are being divided. . . . 

The Republican operatives, who dismiss the expositions of critical race theorists and anti-racists in order to define critical race theory and anti-racism, and then attack those definitions, are effectively debating themselves. They have conjured an imagined monster to scare the American people and project themselves as the nation’s defenders from that fictional monster. . . . 

The Black Lives Matter demonstrators, cancel culture, the 1619 Project, American history, and anti-racist education are presented to the public as the many legs of the “monstrous evil” of critical race theory that’s purportedly coming to harm white children. The language echoes the rhetoric used to demonize desegregation after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, in 1954. . . . 

I have been called the father of critical race theory, although I was born in 1982, and critical race theory was born in 1981. Over the past few months, I have seldom stopped to answer the critiques of critical race theory or of my own work, because the more I’ve studied these critiques, the more I’ve concluded that these critics aren’t arguing against me. They aren’t arguing against anti-racist thinkers. They aren’t arguing against critical race theorists. These critics are arguing against themselves.

What happens when a politician falsely proclaims what you think, and then criticizes that proclamation? Is she really critiquing your ideas—or her own? If a writer decides what both sides of an argument are stating, is he really engaging in an argument with another writer, or is he engaging in an argument with himself? . . . 

What we write doesn’t matter to the people arguing with themselves. . . . 

How should thinkers respond to monstrous lies? Should we mostly ignore the critics as Matsuda has, as I have? Because restating facts over and over again gets old. Reciting your own work over and over again to critics who either haven’t read what they are criticizing or are purposefully distorting it gets old. And talking with people who have created a monologue with two points of view, theirs and what they impute to you, gets old.
It's getting old indeed.

So, anyway, that's today's news.


posted by Degolar @ 7:19 PM

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