The View from the Hermitage, Day 138

Today looks like a win on the weather front. Yesterday was the 35th straight day of 90-plus degrees Fahrenheit. Today seems a struggle to get to 80 degrees, though it probably has. Every time I've checked the temp, it's been in the high 70s. Looking ahead at what I know can be unreliable, there's only one day with a forecast high of 90 or higher in the next eight or nine days. Now if we could only win on the humidity front.

Both local school systems are starting all-virtual, though the county system does plan to have some sort of in-person instruction for English as a Second Language students and special needs students whose educational needs cannot be met virtually. Both will reassess halfway through the nine-week term as to what they should do for the next nine weeks. The county school board did give the superintendent permission to, at any point, close any in-person teaching. Should the county make it through the first nine weeks okay, kindergarten through grade 3 students will have some in-person classes during the next nine weeks. I have not yet heard if parental outrage has risen its ugly head, though there would have been parental outrage in the other direction were the schools to go in-person in any way.

I was interested in how some of the local private schools were going to handle fall, so I checked the websites of three. One had a discussion of how they handled things in the spring, but made no mention if that was the way the fall would be. The other two had no mention at all, not even something left behind about the school's closing back in March. Do they think that putting something up about going online only will force applications down? The three schools I checked are not cheap; I know that a year at two of them costs more than a year at the local university for an in-state student. It just seems a bit dishonest not to put up on the school website what the plans for fall might be. Or perhaps they have yet to decide.

Several colleges and universities in the Washington, DC area have announced plans to go totally online for the fall semester. One is even refunding a small amount of tuition as compensation. The new case numbers in DC and Maryland are similar to those in Virginia, not rising steeply but not headed down in any noticeable way. The local university is holding on letting any students who want to come back come. They would be doing virtual classes from their dorm rooms. Given that all classes with 40 or more students will only be offered online, it's probably first- and second-year students whose large introductory classes won't be in person.

Older son and the husband were discussing the advantages that taped lectures and virtual office hours can offer. A student can stop the lecture at any time and try to work things out on their own. They can also make a note about what to ask the prof about the specific item. I do remember a class or two in which something just flew by me as I was trying to take notes on what had just been said. The prof who oversaw my dissertation research handed out copies of the notes at the start of class for that very reason. He wanted students to be paying attention and not taking notes.

The husband just left on his first trip to the university to meet with his graduate students. When he comes home, he will enter through the basement, shower, put on clean clothes, and deposit the clothes he wore into the washer. This is the procedure we're looking at for the coming semester. If I have to go into public for any reason, I'll do the same when I come home.

I go now to restock the liquor cabinet or at least the bottles back in their new location. We so rarely drink liquor as opposed to beer or wine that I'm not sure why we have as many various bottles as we do. After that, I may get back to reading Mary Trump's book.