ReaderWriterVille

I worked all day, which is not unusual for a Sunday when I teach on Mondays, but my work involved syllabus revision and figuring out Zoom via Canvas. So that was not usual. And there was a little bit of department and curriculum work, which we tried to do without involving the office staff since it was Sunday.

TheH had finished his syllabus revisions days ago and was working on the new requirement (worksheets to replace attendance tracking and reading response papers). I had put revisions off, in much the same way I’d put off setting up my home office (administrative work can come in very handy sometimes). But I was down to the deadline so I had to confront it. I pulled out my class files and looked at what I had scheduled for the six weeks after spring break.

I tackled my Political Protest class first because it was easier and it meets before Privacy (they both meet on Mondays and Wednesdays, one in the morning and one in the afternoon). I usually leave the last couple of weeks of reading open so that students can choose the case studies, and because over the last few years protests have occurred that we can follow in real time (e.g., the Dakota Pipeline protests). The main section after the break is titled “leaderless protests,” which are ones that don’t have a well-known charismatic figure like MLK, Gandhi, or Nelson Mandela at the forefront. After some thought, I decided to keep all the readings, which range from the Captain Swing riots in early 19thC England through anti-migrant riots in 2008 South Africa to Ferguson and Charlottesville here in the US. But I’m starting with some readings on what happens to protest when we all have to practice social distance and live so much of our social lives online. I added videos to supplement each reading and I’ll be making up PowerPoint slide decks with audio commentary to guide them.

My Politics of Privacy class was a little different. After spring break we get into the legal arguments, cases, and history, and there wasn’t a lot of open time or slack. But there was a bit of repetition, and a long article that I remembered had a lot of overlap with a piece by the same author we’d read earlier, so that could go. I pruned and got the readings down to nine sessions, including one that paralleled the first full session for Protest: what are the privacy implications of tracking people who contract COVID-19, and have our attitudes toward the privacy v. public benefits tradeoff changed in the past few weeks?

One week down, one to go on our self-isolation. Although our self-isolation feels increasingly like a technical description of our everyday life now. We’re still asymptomatic and given we’re past the median point of becoming symptomatic (and close to the 2/3 point), it seems likely that we didn’t contract the virus. The best would be if we did and had very mild cases, but we can’t count on that, obviously, so after Day 14 we’ll move from assuming we can transmit it to assuming we can contract it.

I started work yesterday by dealing with a problem that was not COVID-19-related. It was a student issue and took two days, five people and a couple of dozen emails to resolve. On the one hand I was annoyed at being asked to fix something that wasn’t part of the immediate crisis situation. On the other, it was weirdly reassuring to solve the kind of “normal” problem that crops up because undergraduates inevitably want the system to accommodate their last-minute changes of heart, mind, and/or curriculum. We were able to find a solution that made the student happy. And then back to crisis-as-normal work.

I should have finished unpacking and setting up my home office yesterday but I got bogged down doing a bunch of small tasks. I did get out and take a brisk 45-minute walk in the park in the afternoon. There were quite a few joggers, walkers, and bicyclists on the path, all of us attempting to maintain lots of distance. It was cold, windy, and cloudy but it felt so good to be out of doors. I’m very grateful that this disaster allows for outdoor exercise in most places. TheH went out as well, but we took separate walks. He needed a break in the morning when I was tied up and I got mine in the afternoon. I pointed out to him that since we’re together almost 24/7 and will be for a while, we might want to use our outdoor opportunities to have some solitary time.

On my walk I listened to Monday’s Guardian Football Weekly podcast, which was taped after the Premier League suspended its schedule but before many of the other sports and non-sports shutdowns had been announced. There is a hard to hear but necessary interview with their La Liga reporter, Sid Lowe, about the situation in Spain. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to listen to their podcasts before this. I had tried to listen to last Thursday’s podcast while traveling back from the UK on Friday, but the feeling of the season slipping away, and Liverpool’s first title in 30 years with it, was still too painful. I’m mostly over that now. It looks as if they’ll try very hard to finish the season, because it’s not just the title but Champions League places, relegation, and promotion to be determined. But even if they don’t, it’s not that important. People staying alive through a pandemic is important. If you don’t believe me, believe Liverpool’s manager, Jürgen Klopp. His comments and messages have been exactly what everyone should hear about football and society.