A Geek History of Time - Episode 46 - WASH YOUR HANDS

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

WASH YOUR HANDS – Damian and Ed address the elephant in the room, giving some context to why some episodes may be tinted with talk of quarantine, epidemics, and isolation.

I said good day sir. You don't ever plan anything around the Eagles because the Eagles represent the grace of God. You heathen bastards. One of vanilla nabish name. Well you know works are people too. I'm thinking of that one called they got taken out with one punch. So he's got a wall, a gall, a gall, and a wall. Every time you mention the Eagles, I think done Henley.

Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. This is a geek history of time. Where we connect Nurgere to the real world. I'm Ed Blalake, a world history teacher with one section of English here in Northern California. As I always point out, I'm also the father now a two-year-old little boy

with who may or may not have asthma, which is going to become germane to the conversation in a minute. Who are you, sir, sitting on the other end of an electronic connection this evening? Yeah, I'm Damien Harmony. I am a Latin teacher and a high school world history teacher up here in Northern California, the father of a seven and a half, almost eight-year-old, and a ten-year- old, little girl and little boy. And yes, I'm sitting on the other end of the internet from you because this episode is, I hate to use the phrase a very special episode,

but in some ways. Well, you know, we talk about nerdness to so much that you know, a very special, so capital fee, capital S, capital E, seems seems kind of appropriate. Yeah. This episode we're recording on the first day of spring. It's actually my dad's 77th birthday. Really? Yeah, it's March 20th. And my Yeah, yeah, our entire world shifted hugely in the last week alone, although something had been kind of burgeoning for a while. Yeah, COVID-19 made its way to our shores a while back and it has now become a worldwide pandemic. Yeah, and we are not across from each other.

Yeah, because we are located in a region of Northern California where both of the counties we live in have individually separately from one another before our government, governor's statements a little more than 24 hours ago. They called for residents to shelter in place, which essentially means we are not quite on lockdown, excuse me, to the level that folks have been in Italy now for a couple of weeks now. But we are called upon to remain indoors unless we absolutely need to go out to do anything.

It's a couple of steps below martial law in a lot of ways in terms of severity. But as we are both teachers, we're both in a profession that got shut down pretty quick. Luckily our state values teachers on some level, and so that's been okay. But our students, I have not seen my students since Friday. Most of them I haven't seen since Thursday of last week. And so it's been a week. And I am now trying to figure out ways to design lessons so that my program doesn't die, so that my kids learn and can go on to the next level. And so they have some sense of normalcy. And so I'm kind of taking that last one is going to be as best I can.

That last one is going to be real. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all that you have us are doing. Yeah. And I'm taking matters into my own hand because bureaucracies being what they are, I'm gonna get this shit done a lot quicker and better than anybody above me.

I'm also kind of unique in my district. I'm literally the only person who knows the language that I teach. So I know. Wait, okay, hold on. Yes. Sorry. Sorry, sorry, back up. Sure.

How many students, roughly, does Sacramento, Sac City Unified have? About 50,000. Okay. Okay. Your unit has approximately how many credentials certificate a person out. I think it's around 2100, maybe 24. There's a line where the numbers yeah.

Okay, and you are no shit, the only Latin teacher. And I'll go you one better. There is one principle. Uniquar. Yes, I am. There is a principle at a middle school that I was an undergrad student with who I met in my Latin one class.

He's the only person I know of in the entire district who knows any Latin at all? And he didn't go nearly as far as I did Because he and I took Latin one is not teaching it obviously right But there's no but like you you could find other people who know Spanish you could find other people who are specialized in other languages Nothing for Latin. I am the only one so I'm trying to keep this thing going, but more importantly, my students, because I'm the only one in the whole district,

I get my students for four years very often. And so I get to watch them grow up from children into adults. It's a wonderful, wonderful bond. And so I'm fiercely loyal to them. And so I'm looking for all the ways that I can to make sure that the damage done by this disease to their schedules and to their normalcy

and to their learning is minimized. Never mind the fact that I don't get to see them. And many of them have reached out to me saying, like the worst part is I don't get to be in your class. it's it's very validating, but it's that's what's going on So like all next week. I'm going to be designing lessons and posting stuff online Videos and such of translations and whatnot So that's that's what I'm doing for the job. What are you doing for your job? Right now my my district,

boy, um, so you name. We go ahead and name you. Yeah. Okay. Fairfields is a unified school district. It's only fair. I didn't, I apologize.

I, I, I realized only as it was coming out of my mouth, that's very, oh shit. I'm not. People are going to confuse us anyway. So I'm the one that works in Elk Grove. And you're the one that works in Lincoln. There you go. Perfect. Nobody like, you know, yeah, we're not in San Francisco. We're not in LA. Nobody cares about where the fuck we are.

Nobody else out of California. I'm at Millard Philmore High School up in Cisiscute County. And there you go. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm in Millard Philmau High School up in Cisiscute County. And there you go. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm in Roosevelt. Yeah. Uh, whatever, again, to anybody who's not, you know, in Northern California, those words mean Bob Gasper. You're at Calvin Hawkely Middle School, a fire call.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. He's the bad guy from Texas. We'll go with that. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, he's the bad guy from taking that with Yeah And no, he's the kind of asshole who'd have a middle school named after him too. Yep but my my my district fear fields to soon I Was literally saying until

Until Thursday of last week. I was literally telling people, we are no kidding going to have to have somebody in our district actually get confirmed as having the disease before our district is going to shut anything down. And when, when, when, and if we do do if we go back before the end of this year, which is a whole other conversation we can have in a minute, I'm going to have to bring donuts for a whole bunch of people on my campus because I was talking chatting during my prep period with one of the campus monitors. And I said, you know what, I will buy everybody donuts if we actually get shut down.

Because you need to understand my my district was was very close to the Napa fires. Right. A couple years ago. And it took air quality getting toxic for them to shut classes down for like two days. Yeah, we did the same. Now the argument there was at least that like at least for my kids, the ventilation at home might have been worse than the argument with us. I never entirely bought into it. Okay. But anyway, because of that, I was highly skeptical that my district was ever going to shut things down. And so I made that bet. And so when if we go back before the end of the year, And so I made that bet. And so when if we go back before the end of the year, and if I don't find a job in a different district

over the summer, which I'm only, I wanna stress this, the biggest reason I'm learning is not the only reason, but the biggest reason I'm looking for one is simply because right now where I'm working is a killer commute for me. I'm having a travel a very long distance for those of you who aren't personal friends who are listening to this podcast.

And so then it came as a shock. Sure. When I got the email on Friday afternoon, and then okay, as of the end of the day today, we're shutting down, don't come back on Monday. Now, when you got your notice, and actually wait that might not have been, that might have been on Thursday, we might not have gone in Friday, I'm trying to remember.

It feels like the weirdest thing about this whole experience is, you know, that the thing you get speaking, you know, as teachers, you know, I know one of the things that winds up happening to me is I've got to find a way to make myself remember what day of the week it is during summer break. Yes. And and usually that takes me about a week and a half to get to that point of I don't know I don't know what day it is I don't know what time it is. I have I'm floating free in this in this weird limbo, that happened to me instantaneously. Yes, it's the way I say it. I don't know if it's just because of all of the free floating anxiety that's surrounding

all of these things, but I had to remind my, I'm a Catholic, as anybody, you've listened to you guys already know the back and forth about that. And we're in the middle of the vent. And so today is Friday. And like I had to remind myself that it was Friday, because of, because of observance, I had to be like, oh wait, right, the plan for dinner is, you know, we're doing a shrimp Caesar salad because you know, I can't do that thing I was you know, it's thinking okay, well, you know So I got I got the leftovers from the from the from the New York strip steaks We had last Sunday. I can do something with it wait. No, I can't it's Friday. Right right, you know and

Like I'm I'm I'm in that I, that weird place. And it, it's made even weirder because since Tuesday, I think, my wife has been working from home. Okay. And since Monday, she, she got word on Friday that her office was being closed. They were all being sent home. And she's been working from home all week. And like on Monday, we wound up taking our son to daycare. That would have been on Tuesday. We took our son to daycare because I had to report in to my work site in the morning, which originally, anyway, this all ties back to the point I was trying to make a minute

ago, my district kept telling us, okay, go to Solano County Office of Health for the latest updates on what's going on, and they said, we have a plan, we have a plan, we have a plan, but they never told us what the goddamn plan was. Right. And that was started by the number of downstairs basement in the bedroom. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, and I'm like, okay, so, so stop. Like, tell us what the plan is.

Right. Like, you don't have to go into exhaustive detail. I understand maybe there's stuff that needs to be eyes-only. I understand you don't want to cause a panic or whatever. But, but when you tell me, well, we have a plan, but we're not going to tell you tell me, well, we have a plan, but we're not going to tell you what the plan is,

that immediately causes my bullshit detector to go ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, like, I don't really have a plan. And then we got told, okay, don't come in right here Monday, I think, I think like Thursday was last day I went in. And then we got told, don't come in Friday, don't come in Monday.

And you know, your site administrators are going to tell you what to do Tuesday. And then the story told don't come in Friday, don't come in Monday, and you know your site administrators are gonna tell you what to do Tuesday Mm-hmm And then the story from my site administrator what the hell is gonna happen on Tuesday changed like four times over the weekend right Because there wasn't a fucking plan. So what are you doing for your classroom? What are you doing for your kids? right now The what what got handed down to us from the district was from the day we didn't show up, which was Monday. I read and thinking about it now. From from this Monday through until 30th of April, we are not we are not giving any

instruction that is required. Nothing that is going to get rated nothing in anything we're providing Anything anything we are supposed to provide during that time period is all enrichment. Yeah And and then on the 30th We are supposed to go back in right now. This is the planet stands and like with everything else right now everything changes Now March 30th or April 30th March 30th. Okay, you're supposed to go but yeah. We're going in we're going in March 30th. Okay. And that's going to be and that's going to be a site meeting at which what what we've been told is okay. So now, you know, what you're going to get together with the other members of your of your department, which in my case, that's like three of us.

Okay. We're going to meet with the other members of our department and figure out, okay, as the history department, what are we going to do? And my job there is going to be to walk one of the third leg of the history tripod. I'm going to be walking him through, okay, remember this is what you got to do to set up your Google classroom. And right now that's what the district is pushing real hard is Google classroom, which I'm okay with. From the standpoint of, okay, well, you know provide provide Assignments and grade stuff and turn stuff back. You sure? I Genuinely

Don't have any I'm gonna admit that right now. I'm having a little bit of existential professional panic right now Okay over what I am going to do in terms of instruction. Because I am low to set up like a Zoom and say, okay, show up at this Zoom meeting at this time for half an hour. Because I teach middle schoolers. Like for university professors, Zoom is a great tool. I'm teaching middle schoolers, like for university professors, Zoom is a great tool.

I'm teaching middle schoolers. Yeah, they don't show up on time to class as it is. Number one, they don't show up on time. Number two, all of their focus is social before everything else. So the moment I put anything up on Zoom, they're going to show up, they're going to see their friends in that Zoom room, whatever you want to call it, in that setting, they're gonna show up, they're gonna see their friends in that Zoom room, whatever you wanna call it. In that setting, they're gonna have the opportunity to chat with friends who they haven't spoken to for two weeks. And whatever I'm trying to give them goes out the window.

Sure. So like while I'm at home trying to wrangle my son, trying not to get in the way of my wife who's trying to work from home at the same time, while I'm trying home trying to wrangle my son, trying not to get in the way of my wife who's trying to work from home at the same time, or I'm trying to do all that, I'm also somehow supposed to find a way to like, reign them in and get them focused on curriculum. Classroom management, not in the classroom.

Yeah, like where they all have their devices literally in front of them instead of you have to put that away. Yeah, I'm doing everything as opt in as possible as far as that goes. And it just like I'm posting this. This is where you can find this information. You email me what you have and I will correct it with you

and I will give you feedback. And I will show you a better version of a translation. That's basically it. For the world history kids, I honestly, I don't think there's much to do. Now, the funny thing is for me for the world history, and then I want to move on to another aspect of this whole thing. Yeah, yeah. For world history, I had just started World War I with them. I had just handed out a novel to them, because I bought a class set of novels. Luckily, I have records as to who got what novel. So I can keep track of that and hunt those kids down next time.

But I just handed out novels to them to write their term paper, because that was a quarter of the grade on the Armenian genocide. And I was going to teach them about World War One, we got to everybody's ready and the arch duke is pulling into Serbia. Like, that's where we got. So they have no idea what's about to happen. You literally got to, like, the three quarters point in episode one of the series. Yes.

So now that you know all the players are... The true exciting event hasn't even happened yet. Right. So, triggering event. So I, my kid, and then after that, after World War I was over as a lesson, and that was gonna be about a three or four week deal, because I go pretty deep on it, then I was going to

do a unit on the influenza epidemic because that's never been taught well in our textbooks. So I was like, oh, well, I'm going to do this since I'm crazy Uncle Damian. And so I was going to teach about the influenza epidemic. And then I was going to teach about the influenza epidemic. And then I was going to teach about the rise of fascism. And it's weird when you have such wonderful real world examples to draw on. Don't get the opportunity to teach them. Well, when they actually interfere with your ability

to teach them, it would be like if I did a unit on book burning and then somebody said my curriculum needed to be burned. I mean, it's like on that level of like, well, I was a little bit behind the curve. Yeah, or if somebody actually marched in your classroom, grabbed all of your books and set them on fire. Right. So I think saying, I think, I think somebody saying your curriculum needed to be burned isn't quite as on the news. You're right. So I think saying I think I think somebody saying your curriculum needed to be burned isn't quite as on the news you're right you're right as current events are yeah I would point I feel like I need to point that out and they are I mean it's and now I I want to point out this is it once in a four-life time event that we're living through I talked to my dad he's 77 as of today. He was born in 43, which means his parents were

of age, what, like 20 years prior to that. So they were born probably just after the war or just during the war. So like his grandparents would have memory of this stuff happening, which means nobody living right now has memory of this having happened, because it literally was 102 years ago. PDS did a big thing on it. So there's that happening, and we're both trying to raise children through it,

and what I was talking to my students about as we were getting, because it was getting worse. And I told my principal, like, you need to cancel this rally. That was on Thursday, those Hal Cian days of last Thursday or, or some question is whether or not we're going to have a rally. I was like, no, you need to cancel it. And he was very reasonable and listened to what I had to say and as to why and he had no problem canceling it.

Um, and then I went to him that afternoon, I said, now about the prom. And then the next day it was, oh yeah, you're going to shut down for a week. And then it was that week gets turned into like, and one of the reasons you kept getting different stories through the weekend was this. And I'm getting to give a lot of grace to leadership here and I don't normally because this is once in the four lifetime event. I mean, it really, really is. So I'm gonna be a little bit more understanding about that happening.

We are making it up as we go and they didn't have vaccines back then. And they didn't have the infrastructure that we have right now. So, but I was talking to my students about it. I was like, this is awful because your first year here, we were picketing outside the district. Your second year here, we had a active shooter threat

and bomb threat, so we had to evacuate the school. Your third year here, we went on strike. Your fourth year here, your senior year, you are having to leave a quarter early because the whole world is having a pandemic. And what really got me was I realized, a lot of my seniors were born in July and August of 2002, which means they exist because 9-11 happened.

Yeah. And the sobering, as a sobering God, I'm thought they're brought into this world by calamity and their school is ending by calamity. Yeah, they're coming of age in the middle of an even bigger calamity than the one that led to that was the inciting event for their own lives. Yeah. So I want to read a couple things. No, it's sobering.

Yeah. I want to read a couple things to you and then I'm going to ask you a question. And then we should get out of here because hey, come listen to Geek History of Time and get really depressed about what's going on. Really, really depressed. So at current, there are 276,462 coronavirus cases. There are one other worldwide.

That's worldwide, yes. There are 11,417 deaths as a result of coronavirus. I think that number would be higher if you look at who didn't get the care they needed because coronows taking up all the beds. 91,954 have recovered, which means you have 173,091 active cases. 165,180 of those are considered in mild condition.

7,911 are considered in serious or critical condition. That's, I have a friend who lives in Italy. He said that yesterday there were 2,500 new cases that day, or as of midnight that night and yesterday truck convoys had uh army convoys had to be called in to and 450 people died that day and army convoys had to be called in to uh take out the dead uh to crematoria we are 11 days behind Italy hopefully we'll do something different. But history is not showing that that's the thing. And if you look at the scale of deaths that are happening, it looks like a hockey stick. Yeah. And the curve is frightening. Yeah. And so, and this is a thing that, I mean, we're looking at school being shut down potentially

through to the fall, if not longer. Yeah. We are looking at a tremendous economic disaster as a result, because so many people can't work. Yeah, huge, huge economic downturn. Huge. Um, the site of which we've only studied about in history and I didn't even get to get to it this year, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Um, we are looking at, I mean, I'm, I'm a comic. I have a lot of

friends who are comics in addition to being a teacher. Um, and so many of my friends are like, how am I going to pay rent this month? Like there's so much squeezing happening to everybody. And there's this weird hoarding thing that happened and there's just this tremendous, yeah, there's a huge panic. And again, I give us a bit of grace on that, but at the same time, this is a symptom of how toxic our society has become. Because we don't go for collectivism at all, and we're being faced with the fact that- Yeah, we don't look out for one another,

we look out for number one. Yeah, our patriotism isn't about how are you taking care of your neighbors that you don't know across town. So, I guess my question is how, how to put this? How is your, and as privately or as publicly as you want this to be how is your family Handling this feel free to give any specifics And then I'll tell mine and then we'll we'll both Just kind of take a look at what's coming up in the future

Well here My wife and I have said basically from the moment we were officially a couple, we kind of have a standing policy that one of us is allowed to freak out at any given time. Good policy. policy and we and we take turns and the weird thing is in a day's leading up to my school shutting down. I was the one who was quietly but gradually less quietly over time starting to freak out. Because I would, you know, we have, you know, I have something like 150 and change, student contact daily. Right.

And like just the sheer number of people I was in contact with on a daily basis, being in a classroom with recycled air, you know, I mean, like all of it was just, and the thing is, I have hypertension that's controlled. I'm tick-minsed for it. I'm, you know, so like hypertension is one of the conditions that's supposed to be an even masturbating factor, but mine's under control. I wasn't really worried about myself. I was worried about my wife who is asthmatic and also has hypertension.

who is asthmatic and also has hypertension. And so that's like a double whammy. And to a lesser extent, I was worried about our son, who is young enough that the virus has spared most little kids up to this point, but my son may or may not be asthmatic. He may be getting that from his mom. We don't know for sure. He's had a couple of incidents where we've used an inhaler for him.

And so I was worried about the two of them. And the other thing that really had me genuinely freaking out is my 45th birthday is going to be four days from now. It's right now it's the 20th. And my parents were going to be coming up to visit for that. And my father was born in 44. My mother was born in 45. So they are both in their 70s.

They are both in an age category that puts them at risk. Now, my parents are both far fitter than I am. My mother historically has gone to some form of aerobic workout class, whether it's a spin class or Pilates or just aerobics or whatever, five days a week. I mean, her cardiopulmonary system is like you can launch aircraft off of it. She's ridiculously fit. My father similarly, not quite his hard core, but my dad has historically been very healthy. He's been very careful about being active every day, walks a couple of miles daily, you know, all those kinds of stuff.

Then back in December, my father got a really bad cold, which then turned into what we figured out at the end of all of it, just like last month, figured out that what what happened in virus actually attacked his heart, he got viral cardiomyopathy. Or not my opathy, but anyway, viral cardiomyopathy, which looked like heart failure, looked like congestive heart failure. And so he is still recovering from that. Okay. And in the process of recovering from that, he wound up having a fall off of a bicycle that led to him breaking three ribs. So he's also recovering from that at the same time. And so the thought, what I was worried about,

what I was really starting to freak out about, was not me getting sick, was not even really my wife getting sick, or my son getting sick, because I was pretty confident that like, yeah, there were risk factors there, but we're still not, like none of us have COPD, none of us have, you know, really serious,

pulmonary stuff. What I was really worried about was my dad who is still recovering from this, if I wind up being the vector for the disease that killed him, I am never going to be able to live with it. I recognize that it's not my fault. Yeah, and at the same time. Yeah, at the same time. And so up until my sight shut down, I was having a harder and harder time not staring at the ceiling worrying about that.

Sure. And then my side shut down and the coin flipped. I stopped freaking out. And I think the gravity of the situation and the enormity of the situation struck my wife for the first time when I was no longer going to be working for two weeks. And then she had a freak out. Like I texted her to let her know that that was going to happen. And I found out when we got home that night, she said she had to get up from her desk and working on the bathroom and cry. Because it really hit her really hard. She really freaked out. And so since then, we have, we've kind of been in that kind of mode that I've been like, okay,

no, look, we're going to stay inside, we're going to do what we've got to do. And, you know, we're going to pull through this, we'll figure out, you know, we'll take things the same way that we've taken parenthood for the last two years, we'll just do what we gotta do. We gotta do it and we'll learn as we go. And now that the normative of the situation has come home to everybody, like the weird thing for me about all of this is there's a great gift that I've seen on Facebook going around that's out of Monipython in a Holy Grail. Are you familiar with Holy Grail? Oh, yeah.

Okay. So you know the scene where you got the two guards sitting outside the cast of the swamp castle. I got sent this the other day. And you see often the distance you can land a lot running toward them, running toward them. And he's little and he's far away, running toward them, running toward them. And go back to the guards and they're like staring and then the same clip of Lancelot running toward a place again So he comes to the same distance up the hill and that repeats like three times until finally like he's on him Yeah, I need kill one of them runs through the gate in the other words like hey wait Yeah, and and you know what's what's been done for that gift isIF is they've labeled Lancelot as coronavirus and the

two-gar, you know, WHO and the Trump administration or whatever. It's like, hey, you know. You know, pandemic. You know, and I think that's the weirdest thing to me is like everybody in China was screaming and hollering about, no, no, you don't get it. Right. And anybody who knew anything about math, like I've got a friend who's a math instructor, math tutor at UC Davis, and he was like,

no, no, let me show you the charts. This is what Longer with Nick looks like. Like, you can argue with me about a lot of stuff, but if you bring up math, I'm gonna get insulted because that's literally what I do for a job. Like, look can with me about a lot of stuff, but if you bring up math, I'm going to get insulted because that's literally what I do for a job. Like, look at the math. And the thing is, it's like anything else in the world.

If it's happening in a different part of the planet, if it's happening to different people, it's really abstract. Right up until it hits you. Or you know, I think that's also, and again, when I say what I'm about to say, I'm not saying this as a criticism, because again, we as a society haven't seen anything like this since literally a hundred years ago. But I think that particular bias, whatever the technical term is for that, well, you know, it's not real until it happens like in your backyard. Whatever that cognitive bias is, I think that's that is a real thing that is unfortunately going to get real people killed in our country

and around the world. I mean, it's not just us, it's other countries also, but especially us. And, you know, I think the biggest thing I'm having trouble wrapping my head around is just the sheer enormity of it. Yeah. And the uncertainty and the, we don't know, when we're gonna be able to go back to something alike. Yeah. You know, and part of what has me angry on a daily basis is like we still don't even have accurate numbers.

Like until. You'd have to have the infrastructure in place to be able to do that. That was gutted two years ago. Well, that was good. We find out that our president put a pause on trying to get a test, put out because he didn't want the numbers to get too big and scare people because that had looked bad for him in real action? Now, as of today, there was a reporter who asked,

and then I'll speak to my experience. As of today, there was a reporter who asked the president, what do you have to tell Americans who are scared? I'm Damien phrasing, but that was it. And he said, I would tell them that you're a lousy reporter. That's a really, really nasty question. And he went in full defense mode on the most softball of pitches. And that's our leadership.

Like, I don't pretend to not be politically minded. I don't pretend not to be biased at all. Well, nobody who's a listener says that we're going to be nonpartisan here. But yeah, but oh my god, like it's rock bottom has a lot of give. Well, turns out rock bottom was made out of shale. Yes. And we fallen, we fallen through and we're plummeting toward the Earth and the moon core.

Yes. But it's just astounding. Like, the last time something like this happened, it was the great depression. Okay, it was not a huge epidemic. It was, it was a huge economic, just kerfuffle fucked everything, right? And then prior to that, the last time it happened was during an epidemic. But the last time this happened, we had a president who got on the radio and calmed us the fuck down.

We had a guy who had plans, who hired experts, who misstepped all over the place and also made wonderful, wonderful repair jobs. Like he did all that. He was not going after the press for asking him the nasty question of what do you have to tell Americans who are scared right now? He, 10 days ago, was calling it a hoax. Yesterday, he tweeted in all caps social, and that was literally the only thing he tweeted. In that message, I mean, he tweeted like 30 more times that day, making fun of political opponents,

talking about how it's a Democrat hoax, et cetera, et cetera. Like, this is the time that we're living in. It's, if you could have the worst possible person in charge of things during the worst possible thing to happen, we've got it, like we are seeing a test case of what it is. We're there, solidly there. Yeah, and we are testing it. The states are essentially on their own.

And they're doing a good job overall, at least ours is, overall. And I recognize that you have a bone to pick and I'll let you pick that if you want and if it's too specific I completely understand. But I, I, I, I, for the, yeah, yeah, for the sake of listeners in a second I'll explain. Okay, go ahead. But I, by and large, our governor in California has told people flat out like xenophobia is

not helping us. I mean, our president literally crossed out the word corona and wrote in the word Chinese so that he could call it the Chinese virus. And is in a staffer referring to it as the cone flu? Yeah. So it just, which is like, I'm sorry, stop for a second. Like, no, no, all of you are fucks. Yeah. Like, like, you are evil, evil shitty people who are not worthy of the position that you are holding and You are making all of us worse like I hate you making me literally leading to people being dead Like they're actually killing people with their ignorance. So I Have a grandmother who is 94

93 She's been in the hospital. I think three times in the last month and a half I have a grandmother who is 94, 93. She's been in the hospital, I think, three times in the last month and a half. Fuck. Yeah, now she's fine. But how many more of those, she got in her. I was talking with my mom about this, and it's one of those, there is no way our family

is gonna get out of this unscathed. My family tends to run a little older, you know, as does yours. There's no way that my students are going to get out of this unscathed. On a personal level, I'll tell you what's going on with me. I'm a parent of kids who have to go back and forth between two homes. I'm divorced. We have 50-50 custody and their mom works in the nursing field and

When it was a three-week And that's the thing. It's come out and it like every time we hear about it It's worse like so first it was okay We're gonna send you home for the weekend and then it's we're gonna send you home for through Monday And then it's you better stay away all week and we'll come back Thursday and then it was, okay, we're going to send you home for the weekend. And then it's, we're going to send you home through Monday. And then it's, you better stay away all week and we'll come back Thursday. And then it was, okay, it's going to be two weeks. And then it's, the governor comes out and says, no, it's going to be at least four. And then it, and then, and then, and then. Yeah.

So when it was at the three week mark, we had a long discussion and we try to be amicable. I'll put it that way. We had a long discussion and it was agreed that I would and I was in favor of this because I want my kids. It was agreed that I would take them for the duration of the three-week lockdown and then it got expanded to like three months pretty quickly. Like this is you know the governor said this, you're not going back to school. The odds are very much against it. And so at that point, we said, okay, there's no way that that's tenable.

You know, if that's the case, then we'll just keep custody as it is, you know, just trades these back and forth. Called me yesterday saying, you're going to need to take them tomorrow morning because of just a few living Situation things. I don't want to tell other people stories, but essentially she she is not comfortable Being able to guarantee their health and safety from this virus, which by the way is starting to kill younger and younger people That's that's a thing too And she can't guarantee that. And so now I have my kids full time, essentially until further notice.

And it's a discussion that she and I will have. I'm happy to keep them as long as I can with the understanding that once things die down, we're gonna try to get back to as normal as possible. My kids are gonna be without their mom for an extended period of time. And they're gonna be with me for that extended period of time. So the silver lining is they're gonna be with me. But I have full time custody of my kids right now, which is its own full-time job.

And I'm glad to do it, and I'm glad to keep their education going and stuff like that. But that's what I'm seeing. And I have to explain to them in terms that they'll understand that this is a decision that is sad for their mom. And if we could have it any other way, it would be split so that they would have time with their mom too and that this is a sacrifice that we have to make for

their safety. And that's hard when you have kids of divorce when there's already emotional baggage and weight behind the fact that they have two homes when they used to have one, etc, etc. And so it's a razor blade to dance on. You know, at the end of the day, it's a pretty easy explanation, but that's easy for me at 42. I don't know that it's easy for my daughter at seven. I don't know that it's easy for my son at 10. But that's kind of what we've got going on over here at Outpost Harmony. But that's that's kind of what we've got going on over here at Outpost Harmony. Yeah, well, yeah, we're related related to what you just said about nobody's, you know, we're not, we're not going to get out of this unscathed. I have an uncle, okay, who is,

about little, little older than my folks, a couple of years older than my folks. And I don't know how many years ago it was now, but it was over a decade ago, he got told, if you don't quit smoking right now, you're gonna be dead in six months. And at that point, he crumpled up the pack of cigarettes he had in his pocket, threw it out,

he has not touched the cigarette since. Good for him. Okay. Which like, holy cow, all the credit for willpower like in the world. But as he has gotten older since then, all of the time that he did spend smoking, you know, a pack and a half a day, has manifested as M. Fsema and COPD. And he has been working as an Uber driver. Oof. Yeah. And so my aunt, his wife has told him, no, no, no, you need to, You're done. And he, with a combination of kind of fatalism and, you know, I survived this long, whatever

kind of attitude, he said, well, you know, I'll make sure they sit in the back seat. And like, oh, for God's sake, no. I think my aunt has since put her foot down and he's been forced to quit, I think, but I'm not 100% sure. So like he's, you know, he even before this whole series of events happened, we were talking about he's really not looking good, you know. And single, you know, we're talking about we got to find a way to pack him in a bubble like right now.

And at the same time across the hall and the in the apartment complex that my family and I are living in, across the hall we have a neighbor who's, I don't know probably in his late 50s or has COPD, is still a smoker. And like conversations I've had with him from six feet away in the hallway, is he asked me at one point, because he knows that I'm a no at all. So he figured I might have any answer, he said, so you know, when you wind up, when you wind up dying from that, like, how long does that take?

Right. Like, because if he gets it, he was just in the hospital recently for other stuff. If he winds up getting it, like, his chances are not good. Like, like, really, really bad. It's virtually a death sentence. Yeah, and it's like, and members of my family, I don't wanna say who all, but I mean, there's, you know, grandparent of my son's four grandparent,

There's, you know, grandparent of my son's four grandparents, several of them have expressed frustration at being stuck inside and have asked, you know, does anybody, you know, on Facebook say, you know, does anybody here actually know anybody who has coronavirus, you know, and it's kind of like, you know, this really, this can't really be that bad, can it kind of like, this really can't really be that bad, can it kind of tone. Right.

And, you know, and part of its age, part of its outlook and part of it is information sources. You know, like, well, you know, it's the flu. What, you know, the flu kills how many people a year? I tell you what, I'm so sick of anybody saying anything about, well, you know, it's the flu. What you know the flu kills how many people a year? I'm telling you what I'm so sick of anybody saying anything about well, you know, everybody's freaking out about this. We don't we don't freak out about the flu every year. Well, yeah, we have a vaccination for the fucking flu. There's no vaccine for this shit, right? And this is and this is as communicable or more communicable in the flu, and it's about five times as lethal.

Yeah. So don't come at me with your, well, you know, we don't freak out about the flu bullshit. Well, number one, we should. You know, like that's like when people tell me, oh, there's no atheist in foxholes. I'm like, that's a good argument against foxholes. You know, like let's not have a world where I have to start praying to someone else's

God because I'm in fear of death. Yeah, everybody's a socialist during a pandemic. Well, tell you what, how about we don't have any pandemics if you think socialism is so fucking bad. Right. You know, yeah, let's, let's, you know, let's, let's look at what the real problem here is. And, you know, and, and, and, and, yeah. So it's just the frustration on top of everything else with dealing with having to have the same kind of arguments

over and over. All right. So, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, what? How to put this? If our listeners have actually listened this far, number one, bless you both. Secondly, if I'm struggling with the words, here's what I'm doing to deal with this. Okay. I am relaxing quite a bit on screen time for my kids. I and grant you my kids are old enough for that's a thing.

You have a kid at an age that I would not want to be doing through this right now with. My kids are reasonable, they can be reasoned with. I can talk them through their feelings, but it's how it goes. But here's what I'm doing. I am way more chill on screen time. I make sure that we all do something together. I am taking the time to teach them household chores. And like today, I taught my kids how to vacuum.

You know, stuff like just the little things, those little things that like we take for granted that we do. I'm also wiping down every doorknob of the house every day. I'm also making sure that we wash our hands the right way every single time. And I was never a big hand washer. And I've been washing my hands like acidiously for the last 15 days.

Yeah, same. Because, you know, the disinfectant, the sanitizer, that's all well and good, but soap actually strips this virus down and kills it pretty quick. So I have no doubt that my kids being in school and me being a teacher and their mom being a nurse increases our risks of having the virus, but I'll be damned if it stays on us. You know, like it might stay in us, but it ain't gonna

stay on us. And so those are the things I'm doing. And the other thing I'm doing, my daughter loves to ride her bike Around the neighborhood. I have drilled it into her that she is not to go to people's houses She is to if there's somebody on the sidewalk she's to pull off into the street Within reason because of safety and she you know get to the other side of the street you could talk to people from across the street, but no closer And our streets aren't only six feet wide, but I'm like, why take risks? Better safe than sorry. Exactly.

And so I'm teaching my kids. My six feet is a hard distance for anybody who's not a source of geek. Yeah. But I'm teaching my kids these weird-ass skills that have nothing to do with being a human being. Like we are social creatures, you know? And so I'm, and I was talking about this earlier,

it's weird what I'm normalizing for my kids in order to do my part, to blunt the damage of what's going on. I've also holed up in outpost harmony. Like we don't go very far at all. I haven't taken them on any kind of car rides, except for from their mom's house. And I did all my shopping for the next two weeks about a few days ago.

Like I am ready to stay home this whole time. What are you doing physically in terms of how you teach and work with your son and what not. And then we'll close it up because I'd rather we did episodes about analyzing bringing nerdery into the real world instead of real world into our nerdery. Just real world. Yeah. I think it struck me just a little while ago before we started recording this evening. Um, I'm trying to remember what triggered it. My, my son, oh, we were, we were going to be putting Robert to bed.

And his, his mother said, okay, come on. It's, it's time to go night night. And he, you know, as toddlers will do, he, you know, tautled away. And she said, come on, it's time to go night night. And he did not, I'm not going to say for the first time, but for the first time in a little while, he actually very clearly, very, very, he enunciated it very, very precisely. He said, no. And and hunkered down. And we both, you know, I called him by his full name, including his middle name.

And his mother picked him up and put him in a time out for it. And he had a meltdown. And what struck me, because you talk about, you're able to talk to your kids and reason why them in talkroom through their feelings and all that.

It struck me that I think because of what's going on. My son is going to have to get a very early crash course in emotional intelligence because we're going to need to be trying to teach him to recognize and tell us what these feelings are and have a talk with them about, you know, when Mommy said, when Mommy tells you to do something, you need to listen to Mommy, you know. And when we raise her, when we get frustrated, that means we're frustrated, but we always love you. And that was all of the kind of conversations we're going to have to be doing that, I think, more consciously.

If that makes sense. I do, yeah, that makes sense. I told my kids specifically, like, we need to make sure that we make room for each other emotionally. But again, I can speak that way to that. Yeah, and the same way that we're all now paying attention to the way we wash our hands, I think my wife and I are now,

whether consciously, I mean, what happened this evening was me having conscious realization, but I think subconsciously we've kind of been drifting toward it. It's the realization that the same way that now we're all aware of the way we're washing our hands, now we've got to be aware of the way we're dealing with those things with our son. We're going to have to be much more mindful. That's the word I've been hunting for the whole time. It finally occurred to me. We're going to have to be much more consciously mindful of that. I am working very, very hard on being a lot better.

I'm working very, very hard on being better and the bar is set very low. So whatever improvement I make will be a lot better about picking up my dishes, picking up my glass, picking up my stuff, cleaning up after myself when I do something, because when Leon and I are both working, there's a reason that I don't spot stuff. I just, you know, my eyes drift over clutter because they just do, you know, now that we're not getting any space,

physically, the day, I don't wanna wind up having that become the thing that leads to friction resentment, whatever. And just in the last few days, I've been working very hard to try to try, to see the stuff that historically I just haven't. Which is tough. to see the stuff that historically I just haven't. Which is tough.

And then one of the nice things about my wife and I having met when we did and having life experience we had before we met is we were old enough and had enough myelogenes, these are the phrase I used before, we have an old mileage under our belt. Right. That we had had most of our most, we had developed ways to constructively communicate

with each other before we actually met one another because we had both been through some pretty shitty situations. Sure. And we had both been through some pretty shitty situations. And we had both figured out, okay, like, this is what I want, and this is how I'm going to communicate about what I need. And we're able to be honest with each other in a way that we don't take as an attack. And we have the communication support skills for for one another to deal with all of the emotional stress and all the trauma that this is creating.

And so I think just like emotional intelligence with our son is a big deal. Exercising that same level of emotional intelligence with each other is a big deal. And like, you know, whatever, whatever else it is that we wind up having to deal with over the course of however long this winds taking. The next, you know, the next 18 months till there's a vaccine and we can all, you know, get stuck with the needle and go about our daily lives. Right. You know, over the course of the next year and a half,

you know, or more until the curve flattened sufficiently or whatever, you know, those are the things we're going to have to be exercising. The things we're going to have to be paying attention to and working on, you know, and I think attention to and working on, you know, and I think that's those the biggest things that I'm trying to do, you know, and then, you know, other than that, I'm drinking. So, you know, that's how I'm coping, but you know, I'm a scum, so that's what happens. Yeah. Well, you know, let's close this this up because I'd rather get to other content We've got a lot more stuff to talk about we do we do um, so I Guess the the thing that I've gleaned from this is stay the fucking side

Yes, wash your goddamn hands. Wash your fucking hands. This matters. We have not seen the worst of it yet. We're going into it, and that will last for way too long. So be prepared, be ready, and take it seriously so that we can flatten that curve. So, yeah, wash your hands, stay inside social distance, those things, and Christ be patient and compassionate. So, well, for a geek history of time, I'm very sad

and you are. And I'm angry and frustrated with a lot of people in the world right now. And so until next time, as we already said, stay inside and wash your fucking hands.