Zoombies

The dictionary tells me that I can describe someone as a zombie if their face or behavior indicates "no feeling, no understanding, or no interest in what is going on around them".  Well, I've certainly seen a few zombies in the classroom over a few decades of teaching.

But thanks to COVID-19, I now feel qualified to add to the zombie section of the dictionary.   After collecting many hours of data, I can confidently identify someone as a Zoombie if all cues traveling across Zoom -- the once just a video platform but now emergency on-line teaching rink -- fail to indicate interest, understanding, enthusiasm, or engagement of any kind.  While it is challenging enough to accurately judge student engagement when students are sitting in the classroom in front of me, it's next to impossible to make those kinds of judgements when students are scattered in the wind, hiding behind blank thumbnails or head shots taken at a time when education was much more ordinary and smiles were far more commonplace.

On the one hand, the Zoombies are a terrible threat to my teaching prowess (ha).   While normally I would feel comfortable taking a few cracks at how profoundly exciting the engineering topics I teach are (not), it's nearly impossible to be funny while teaching engineering via Zoom.  Most attempts at humor zoom in one ear and out the other.   And, for me, the unfortunate consequence of having humor fall flat time and time again is that I have become the professor that I swore to never be.  With the greatest of ease, I too have become someone who can put students to sleep as quickly and effectively as many of my professors did during my undergraduate education.  This newfound talent makes me cringe and cringe again.   But, the cringing I do... I do with my video turned off, so that if a student just happens to be paying attention, he or she can't see me fold under the weight of my own self-acknowledged boring delivery. 

All is not lost with the emergence of the Zoombies however.  The lack of any human activity emerging from a gallery of thumbnails on my computer screen is at its best -- devoid of distraction.  And, undistracted, I can take a deep dive into Nerdville and stay there.  Focused and immersed in one equation, derivation, or another, I make far fewer mistakes than I would in an ordinary classroom.  Without facial cues, emotional expressions, and other indicators of what's going on with my audience as my lectures, examples, activities, and other stabs at engagement ebb and flow, my head is almost entirely occupied with delivering content at a steady, accurate, and clear pace. 

Woo Hoo!
I may put 'em to sleep, but I sure don't fill their dreams with technical errors.

On a sincere and serious note, though, I would like to apologize to all my Zoombies for putting you to sleep (well -- to those of you who actually woke up to attend class in the first place).   I appreciate that your thumbnails feign interest and that you log into Zoom at the appropriate time to simulate attending class.

But, most of all, I'd like to thank the Zoombies that come to office hours.  In office hours, I am blessed with web cams that are much more frequently turned on than left off.  And, as the questions and interaction ebb and flow during office hours, I see that you are not Zoombies at all.  Instead, you are as I suspected -- human beings striving to learn and committed to doing well even during this odd Zoom-centric life we find ourselves navigating together. 

Not so Unusual

When on-line church services first began hitting the "airwaves" in early March, watching the Pastor preach on Sunday morning to an empty sanctuary while I absorbed the wisdom of the message in my pajamas was nothing less than really weird. 

That's not to say that I was one to spring out of bed on Sunday morning, burst out the door, jump in the car, and bound into church.  Mornings just weren't my thing and weekends made them even less my thing.  But, more often than not, I managed to roll out of bed on Sunday morning and make it to church kind of on time and rarely for the early 9 a.m. service.  I always sat in the back, preferably partially hidden by a post, so that if I succumbed to my body's desire to continue sleeping the morning away, the Pastor was less likely to notice.   And my propensity for napping in the morning had little to do with Pastor's message.  Mornings just weren't my thing. 

As we headed into on-line delivery of sermons, messages, inspiration, communion, worship, and a myriad other aspects of church life that for my entire adult life had taken place in person, I found a few reasons (mostly superficial ones) to enjoy the transition.  I really enjoyed the part about sipping hot coffee in my pajamas while taking in the sermon and worship, but the rest took some adjustment. Sometimes during on-line services (shame on introverted me), I enjoyed not having to greet the person next to me.   But more often than not, I missed the interaction and the connection that could only come with physically being present in the sanctuary and coffee hour after church. I missed in-person lessons, Sunday school, and the irreplaceable feel of live music and singing that seemed to make it oh so much easier for the holy spirit to fill my often wandering and distracted heart. 

By Easter Sunday, on-line church was part of our weekly routine, although it didn't always get delivered on Sunday morning. Pre-recorded video was more likely to finally make it onto our daily schedule in the evening, and sometimes even waited until Monday to be viewed (shame on undisciplined us).   We weren't avoiding Christian living.  But, I imagine we were not the only ones struggling to keep up a structured daily routine during stay-at-home days that increasingly blurred into one another.

Easter deserved to emerge from the blur, so we awoke on Easter Sunday, dressed in some semblance of Sunday best, and took a seat before the computer.  It was not so unusual anymore to walk into cyberspace to see Pastor.  And to his credit, Pastor had become funnier over the past weeks, learning to preach to an empty sanctuary and bring humor into the whole process and procedure.

Today, Pastor spoke of the hope that Easter brought to the world in the miracle of the resurrection.  He spoke to how unusual it was that on this day, we would not be with our families, celebrating Easter together.  He reassured us that isolation would not go on forever, and soon, we would be back to what was normal and usual, celebrating holiday with our families. And, the loneliness of this Easter would become just a sad memory in the landscape of our lives.

As he spoke, a wave of melancholy rolled into my heart, filling every corner and giving me a lot of pause.  Because -- this Easter was not so unusual for my husband and I.  On Easter and most other holidays, we would eat dinner in our house alone -- my husband's family would as usual be busy with other things and my only surviving relative, my sister, was thousands of miles away.   Families would come together and celebrate, deferring friends to other more ordinary days.  As best as we could, we had adapted to the loneliness and the sadness that came with Easter and the other annual holidays that arrived while we were in the Pacific Northwest.

Of the many changes in lifestyle and daily activities that came along with the COVID-19 pandemic, loneliness on Easter was not a change at all.

It was simply routine. 

Torture by Pizza

I have spent several weeks collecting data.   Now, I am certain.  It is not just my imagination.  It is true.... The number of pizza commercials on TV has skyrocketed during April 2020.   

It might be my pizza-starved imagination that sees the cheese as creamier, the toppings as more plentiful, the veggies as more vibrant, the dough as tantalizingly fresh and fluffy.   Even the pepperoni and hamburger are starting to look appetizing.  And to add to my COVID-19 lockdown-induced delusions, pizza is now starting to look like, on top of all its other appealing attributes.... healthy.  

As I stare mesmerized at the television and as the multitude of toppings float languidly down the screen onto the waiting abundance of cheese below, the mere 30 second commercial seems to transform into a minutes-long event.   Toppings of every shape, size, color, and caloric content appear, appealing to every last taste bud.  Fresh, hot pizzas are attached to smiling faces offering to deliver pizza in a flash... contact-free and safe from COVID exposure.     

Jolting myself out of my semi-hypnotic state, tearing my gaze away from the screen with all of my willpower, I gaze sadly at some point in the distance that is nowhere near the TV screen.   With each passing day, I have come to realize the gruesome reality of this stay-at-home situation.

It is Torture by Pizza. 

While Dominos, Papa Johns, and cousin companies reach out to America to provide pizza-induced solace in this public health emergency to those who have a phone and credit card in hand, their well-intentioned, profit-driven marketing has forgotten one thing:   their delivery area is limited.

While generally content and extraordinarily grateful to be living in the woods on an island while under stay-at-home orders from our governor, I have come to realize that someone should had the sense to block these commercials from our island.    A pizza block on all satellite, cable, and other TV transmissions onto the island would have been most helpful to preserving my mental health.

Indeed. 

Back to staring at all that cheese....

NOTE:
Frozen Pizza does not count.

My New Smoothie

Usually my morning smoothie, with a little bit of fruit, a lot of yogurt, a little bit of homemade jam, and a good shot of soy milk, gives me a boost and starts my day out right.   But, this morning, I awoke realizing that my smoothie was missing a key ingredient.

Upon this realization, I pulled out the food processor determined to make things right. I put slightly less yogurt in the mix and a little bit of Lysol.  I pressed the magic button on the base of the food processor and the ingredients almost immediately became one.   I pulled off the lid and smelled.  The Lysol definitely masked the smell of fresh fruit but that was the price I was willing to pay to find a way to kill any virus that may have crept into my mouth and GI tract overnight. 

Tomorrow, I will put a little bleach into the mix.

Oh, I forgot.  After I drink today's smoothie, I am unlikely to live until tomorrow. 
A not so minor detail.

Sarcasm aside, the fact that the President of the United States just yesterday suggested that some form of ingested, injected, or otherwise absorbed form of disinfectant into the human body might be helpful in combatting COVID-19 is upsetting.  Whether Mr. Trump's suggestion was a result of sarcasm, a slip of the tongue, an impulsive response, uninformed rhetoric, or a well-intentioned  inquiry is largely irrelevant.  Coming from anyone else, his comment would likely have been quickly disregarded and forgotten.  Coming from someone in his position, though, it set off a flurry of urgent warnings from agencies, doctors, toxicologists concerned that some Americans might take the comment as license to experiment with Lysol, bleach, or otherwise while sheltering in place. 

Yesterday's error reminds me of what happens when I make a mistake in teaching.  Even the most minor of mistakes can snowball into poor exam scores, unnecessary hours lost in debugging labs, and misconceptions that follow students into future courses and cause ongoing frustration and pain.  As college teachers, we all bear the responsibility of correcting our mistakes (and apologizing for them) as quickly as possible in order to prevent harm to students' education (and interviewing success!). 

So, if I have to apologize and fix that semicolon I left out in a hundred lines of code I was explaining to students the other day, why is Mr. Trump not apologizing (in a compelling and humble) way to the American people today?

As I drank my (lysol and bleach free) smoothie, I pondered the answer to this question.  As I transitioned into a deeper reverie, I experienced a deeper longing ... I longed for a true statesman in the President's chair.  I questioned prayers that remained unanswered ... for someone who puts the health and well-being of the American people front and center and is able to deliver stable, compassionate, and credible messaging to a population that desperately needs it in the middle of a horrifying time in American history.

Our need for strong and caring leadership "at the top" is not an issue of political party, nor is it about underlying theology or about race/ethnicity, gender, or other demographic. 

It's simply an issue of being human. 

Leadership please. 

Blue Tape Living

During the COVID-19 pandemic, stores that remain open have chosen multiple options for keeping customers and employees safe in their stores.   Prior to the pandemic, blue tape was only a "thing" while painting, protecting many a surface from the unintended (but colorful) consequences of messy painting technique.

Now though, blue tape has made a widespread debut on the tile floors of grocery, hardware, and other essential stores which continue to operate, albeit under restricted hours.  One of the more common uses of such blue tape is to mark where one may stand while waiting to check out.   Blue tape, at six foot distance, keeps us apart in the store and reduces the temptation to stroll up to the cashier to make our purchases or to do anything else that could be construed as "formerly normal". 

In addition to the blue tape corral, I observed another twist in the checkout process while at Ace Hardware today.  Once I had filled my shopping cart with what was on my list, I advanced to the blue tape.  As expected, I was instructed to wait and to proceed only to the next blue tape mark when the customer in front of me advanced.   I waited patiently as I moved forward in six foot increments, marveling at how I could feel safe in the middle of all this craziness. 

Finally some many minutes later,  I approached the somewhat broader blue tape that marked my final approach to the cashier.  A large sign warned me (under threat of something, I am not sure what), that I needed to refrain from crossing the broad blue tape line.  I waited.   A pleasant enough store assistant approached me and took my shopping cart (and my leaning post) from me and rolled it up to the cashier.   The cashier began to scan and bag my selections. 

I was quite far away from the register and the cashier-- many times more so than I was distanced from my fellow customers now waiting patiently behind me.  Indeed, I was far enough away that I couldn't really see what actually ended up in my shopping bags.  I took it on faith that some of what landed in those bags coincided with what had formerly resided in my shopping cart.

When the scanning was complete, I was ushered forth to insert my plastic into a machine -- contactless of course.  I tried to smile at the cashier behind the plexiglass in front of me, but it was a masked smile and failed to do the good I intended.  While waiting for my credit card to do its magic so I could return home with my mystery bags, I reflected on how similar this experience seemed to be to my prayer life.

Just like the helpful hardware folks at Ace, everyone in the Holy Trinity was friendly, efficient, and welcoming about my prayers.  And, of course, they never criticized the irregularity with which I offered them.  Prayers were ushered in and encouraged in any shape or form that reflected what dwelled on my heart or mind.  Once uttered, they were taken away, guided through a process, and considered.   Snippets of scripture promised that any prayer, large or small, well articulated or mumbled, would be received, scanned, processed, and returned with some form of answer. 

But, just like at the hardware store, I had to submit my prayers at the blue tape line.  And once I turned them over to the Master Cashier, I could only see at a distance how my requests, my pleas, and my yearnings were being handled.  More often than not, I had not a single clue what was going to end up in my take-out bag at the end of the line.  Would it be answered prayers?  Post-it notes with "Are you kidding" scrawled on them?  Stunned Silence (at such requests as "please save the world right now")?  Disappointment?    

On my way home, I stood on the spiritual version of the blue tape line, wondering what would happen to this barrage of pandemic prayers that kept streaming out of my bleeding heart.   

Sigh.

I hear that God is among other things, remarkable in His role as my prayer cashier.    So in the end, what ends up in the bag will be the best and most essential items... no more and no less.   

And -- no credit card required ... the price had already been paid.   

Of all things.... Toothpaste

Like most everyone around me, I am trying to take sheltering in place, spending day after day at home, working with few boundaries between work, rest, and leisure .... in stride.  

Right before stay-at-home measures during COVID-19 2020 took hold, my husband and I decided to of all things ... to stay at home.  

In accordance with our pact to avoid becoming COVIDiots, I, with some sadness, cancelled my hair appointment.  Even though the appointment was long overdue and I was starting to look like something I brought home from the dog pound, I thought that we would be back to business as normal in no time.  And at that time, the lovely young woman who does my hair could whip, cut, and highlight my hair into shape in no time.   And, I could once again project the "proper" image when I went to work.   

As the days past and we adapted to the crazy "new normal", I found out that if I brushed my hair just right, Zoom wasn't going to give away the fact that I was long overdue for a haircut. And, after all, there were far more important things to worry about than long hair in the midst of a global pandemic.  As I managed more tangles and more hair drying time, I looked for the positives and... 

• I found out that keeping my hair in a ponytail was much easier as my hair grew longer and I could complete hours of yard work without one time having to re-tie my hair into submission. 
• I found out that my husband really didn't notice that I was starting to look like a serious mutt.  This is as convincing an indication that he truly loves me as any I have seen in our marriage.

Sadly though, I reached a day when the negatives overtook the positives.  On that day, immersed in my usual morning routine, I brushed my teeth. I leaned over the sink to rinse all manner of toothpaste out of my mouth and marched out of the bathroom, heading toward my first Zoom meeting and ready to take on the day's challenges.   

It was then that I noticed it.  

Could it be true?  

Indeed

I had toothpaste in my hair.  

My hair has now grown so long that when I finish the brushing of teeth procedure, my hair lands in the sink and picks up the remnants of toothpaste there.  

Ugh.  

Toothpaste in the hair -- It is noticeable -- even on Zoom.   

Delightful Oblivion

No rain in Western Washington during the month of April is unheard of.  After all, the old saying has been modified for the Pacific Northwest to read:

April showers bring May showers

Of course, there are flowers that abound during both months of showers, but the point is that spring does not by any stretch of the imagination mark an end to the rainy season. 

After no rain during the first few weeks of April this year, a drought was declared, and the slightest mutation of color on the weather radar made news.   And predictably, late last night, the rains returned.  The pitter patter of rain on the skylights and the drip accelerating through the downspouts woke me up.   When I first opened my eyes, it seemed a strange noise but after only a moment, I realized how normal it all was.

As the sun rose unseen behind the clouds, the pitter patter continued.  The dogs took one look out the front door and decided to delay their potty needs, retreating to their beds and resting as the world grew smaller in the steady rainfall.   After feeding the crew, I crawled back into bed, not yet willing to dig up energy to face the day.  As I looked out the window, a half dozen chickadees, unperturbed by the rain, waited their turn at the feeder outside the bedroom windows.  The gray overcast sky stretched as far as the eye could see into the distance.   The geese in the wetland below were quiet; something about the steady falling rain quelled their incessant honking.   Almost instantaneously, the alder trees had responded to the return of the rain by leafing out in a brilliant shade of green that only spring can bring.

As I took a sip of my morning coffee and gazed peacefully out the window, I took the scene in with a fascination that would match my interest in the best of Hollywood movies.  I felt grateful for the taste of good coffee, the quiet that settled into the woods around me, the warmth creeping into every corner of the house fed by the fire burning in the wood stove, and the contentment of the cats and dogs around me.  All these things settled my heart.

For in these few moments, I existed in delightful oblivion, briefly unaware of COVID-19.  In those few moments, my heart and spirit recovered and relaxed.   And hope, dampened by the suffering and the seemingly endless days of horrific headlines, peeked its head out.... and said Good Morning.