Ninety-one days. Lucky (or not) 13 weeks. Lucky or not, it's been an interesting 13 weeks. Thirteen weeks ago, a pandemic was enough. Who would have foreseen 16 (as of now) days of protests on top of a pandemic?
Virginia evidently has more things (monuments, buildings, schools, streets, etc) named after Confederate figures than any other states. That doesn't really surprise me. Richmond was the last capital of the Confederate States of America, after all. Two of the three branches of the American Civil War Museum are in Richmond; the third is in Appomattox. I glanced through the online museum store to see what sort of memorabilia they offered. It all seemed politely politically correct, though the Daughters of the Confederacy might not agree with me.
Today's Washington Post print Metro section contains the article "College crackdown: Masks in, parties out" that was put out online several days ago under the title "Masks required and fewer parties (allegedly): What college will look like this fall." Enforcing distancing, masks, and other necessary anti-virus strategies will not be easy for institutions. The husband is not optimistic about students here following whatever mitigation measures might be put in place. A survey of undergraduate students indicated that one in 12 students would not be serious about safety, meaning that in a class of 60 students there would be five who would not be playing it safe. That's a bit disconcerting.
The husband taped the first lecture of his summer school course this morning while older son and I took the family dog for her weekly park outing. He's getting ready now to pe the second one. He's not pleased with teaching online. (He did not teach spring semester, so this is his first experience at online instruction.) He said he'd be much happier just going in and blathering (his word) at the students in person. I reminded him that he might be given a choice in the fall whether to teach in person or online. Details as to how fall instruction might proceed are supposedly forthcoming.
States proceeding with reopening are seeing new rises in covid-19 cases. The number of cases in Virginia went down from Friday to Saturday, but not by much. Weekend reporting can be sketchy, so I'll wait for Monday numbers available on Tuesday to see if the line on the chart is still rising. It will be interesting to see how the governor plays it. He keeps citing the seven-day moving average which is going down rather than the daily numbers that have slowly been rising. My fingers are crossed that we do not enter Phase Three on Friday. Let's give Phase Two another week or two ... or more. In the meantime, I shall continue hermitting.
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