The View from the Hermitage, Day 273

It appears that The Professor and I have accomplished all the things on the weekend list save one, and that one may still get done. Among the things we accomplished was planting the bulbs I purchased in a possibly pandemic-induced Mother Nature moment. I have never been good with plants; my mom would back me up on this. I have gotten better with certain houseplants but recognize my limits. Speaking of houseplants, excuse me while I water them. Weekend watering accomplished, back to bulbs. I loved the flowers the year we spent in the Netherlands. They were so inexpensive, we always had fresh flowers on the dining table. Possibly because of this, I purchased a collection of Dutch bulbs from Michigan Bulb. Between the directions that came with the bulbs and the book Month-By-Month Gardening in the Mid-Atlantic, The Professor and I decided that this weekend was the time to plant them. So we did. 

When I ordered bulbs, and there were a lot of bulbs, I had no idea that I would be trying not to have a relapse of lower back pain. The Professor dug up the bed we wanted to use, ad I set about putting the bulbs in, trying to squat rather than bend over and not move too quickly. The diagram from Michigan Bulb showed how all the bulbs would be planted in a space roughly 2.5 feet by 2.5 feet. If we had soil in Virginia rather than a dirt-clay mixture, I may have been able to be precise about things. When I got to the teeny weeny bulbs, I ended up just clearing an area, dumping them in, then turning them to have the pointed end up as the instructions suggested. We'll see what comes up when knowing full well that the neighborhood deer may have something to say about that. 

The New York Times ran a story reporting that since August, deaths from covid-19 have doubled in counties with a large college population, while the increase elsewhere was 58 percent. There were very, very few student deaths, but there were plenty among older residents of the area. I don't think that's been a problem around here, but the local university is not huge despite being the state's flagship university. Of course, no one knows what will happen when all those students go back to campus after the winter holidays. Things might be worse then. 

The local university offered undergraduate students the option of taking classes pass-fail instead of for a letter grade. They had to make this decision late in the semester but before taking the final exam. Colorado State University on the other hand allowed students to choose pass-fail after seeing the letter grade they would be getting. The Professor noted that when he ranked the students in his class by their final scores, the students wanting letter grades were at the top, and those who had switched to pass-fail were on the bottom end of the distribution. I guess they figured a pass was better than some letter grade likely a C or lower. 

The Professor's alma mater (for his PhD) is MIT, and even there they gave students with letter grades worse than a C the option of not having those classes appear on their transcripts. Students don't receive credit for those classes but presumably future employers won't know the student bombed out in some classes. That said, I have heard that the only potential employer who might care about undergraduate classes and GPA is the employer hiring someone for their first job. 

Coronavirus numbers in Virginia aren't going down. In fact, Virginia was one of 19 states to set a weekly case record in the week ending on December 10. In Virginia's case, that meant over 26,000 new cases in seven days. It will be interesting to see if the governor strengthens the restrictions. I can understand not wanting to further restrict indoor dining during the holiday season, but I could see closing gyms or cutting back on their capacity limits. Right now, they can only operate at 75 percent of capacity. 

The other news that caught my eye this morning was the editorial controversy brewing at The Wall Street Journal. The Journal ran an op-ed piece written by someone named Joseph Epstein who claimed to have taught at Northwestern University for 30 years despite his highest degree being a BA from the University of Chicago. He thinks that Aunt Jill should not refer to herself using the honorific "Dr." After all, her degree is an EdD from the University of Delaware based on a thesis on student retention at community colleges. I am not the only person who thinks Mr. Epstein is full of shit. She legitimately earned that degree and has every right to use the honorific "Dr." As I was graduating with my PhD, one of my graduate professors advised me never to say that I received my PhD from the local university. They did not give it to me; I earned it. 

As for that PhD, I think that the last time I went by "Dr." was maybe 10 years ago when I attended a professional conference with a former professor with whom I was considering writing a book. (The project never got off the ground, but I count it among my 15 minutes of fame.) He would refer to me as "Dr." It felt funny. The last time I used the "Dr." myself was in the last year of my first go-round working at the local university. I was going to work as the assistant to the Vice President over Health Sciences. When I went to get my photo ID, a colleague told me to make sure it said "Dr." because the medical doctors tended to be dismissive of non-Dr. people. I did, but I can't recall ever introducing myself or referring to myself as "Dr."

Not much on the coronavirus front and possibly more about myself than I usually include. It felt good to step away from the virus-troubled split-screen country in which my little bubble exists. I should probably do that more often.