Leathernecks

First harvest of sweet corn from my one row in my garden. Delicious!

It was delicious! Don't have any others starting to turn, so it will be a while before I get another one.

I don't mean this in a mean way, but I think that's a very misguided statement. We do all kinds of drills, training, emotional work, and many other things to try to prevent school shootings. Maybe if our crappy educational system created the amount of concern Covid has, we could improve on our embarrassingly poor education.

I think part of it is the teacher shortage too. My mom is actually the secretary at the school I teach at, and her first year (2005), I helped her mail letters to people who applied for a social studies job. There were over 120 people who applied. We've had the same position open in the last few years, and we had to search just to get a handful of people to interview. There just aren't people going into education anymore, so I think that is part of the issue. If there were extra people to step in to do more classes, it would make things a lot easier. The part I bolded of yours is the biggest thing. The blaming is crazy right now. There is definitely a large part of this issue with schools that is political. I do think of the issues is that it just takes time and experimentation. There are times I find lessons and I'm so stoked. Think it is going to be the best lesson I've ever done, and then I do it, and it is garbage. A complete waste of time. You really don't know until you actually do it. I think that is part of the thing with education during this pandemic. Until schools get in and start doing things, we don't know what will be good or bad. We might find a lot of new ways to be safe, and we might find some of the ways we thought would work are useless. No way to know until we try it, but also no way to know what will happen to case numbers until we try it.

That's something I've wondered about. I don't know enough people in healthcare to know, but is it easy for them to get supplies? Will supplies be set aside for schools? I bought a 3 pack of Chlorox wipes in December, and those things are like gold. I almost want to hide them in my room so nobody knows I have them.

Online was horrible. Especially for chemistry. Luckily we did food chemistry for a big part of it so they could cook at home, but I don't know how I'd teach most of the things we do online. Unfortunately at our school a pod system wouldn't work. Our whole high school is 300 kids, and we have quite a few electives, so kids within each grade are in all kinds of different classes. We looked into it, and it wasn't feasible for our school. Our school is going to make masks mandatory. Don't like it, go home. I was happy to hear that so we weren't having to deal with headaches of kids not wearing them or being defiant. I'm just not sure what more could be put in place to protect everyone in schools. Like I said, as a science teacher, it is like the country's largest experiment. The science person in me loves that. I am really looking forward to seeing what will happen. I think the results, whatever they are, will give us a lot of insight. I'm really hopeful we open up and things don't pick up and we can keep taking precautions and stay in school.

I had forgot she was from there! I remember talking about that now. We're in a similar boat. No air conditioning at all. We're going to try going until 12:30 and do 2 hours online in the afternoon until sometime in October since it will be so hot in the school. Luckily I think most schools will be alright. As far as the money that comes in and out of a school, a few thousand extra for ppe and cleaning supplies won't break the bank. Things will likely be tighter, but I think most places will be alright.

I'm a high school teacher, and I admit I'm nervous about starting. Seems like that age has a lot higher transmission rate than younger grades, and quite a few teachers are older as well as my family I'm close with. The science teacher in me would love to say let's open up schools and make things a large science experiment. Then we would really be able to see what is going on. At least as far as my district goes, one of my biggest concerns is I don't know what we'll do for subs. If we're in close contact with someone for more than 15 minutes, we have to be off 2 weeks. Our main subs are retired teachers, and they aren't going to sub this year. Another concern of mine is what is going to happen when a kid gives it to a parent and the parent dies. Might not happen in my district, but it will happen somewhere. That would just be devastating. Obviously on the flip side of that, what kind of things are kids going through at home while they're not at school? I worry about that constantly. I've seen kids in the past during the summer, and they have a countdown to school starting because they don't want to be at home. I fear some of the things kids could be going through. I really wish more time and money would have been spent on online learning. Instead of everybody just debating back and forth on if we should go back or not, we should have been putting resources into making online learning better. We've known for a while that it is almost inevitable that it will be used at some point, even if it is just for some kids. This spring it was a joke. Most states said we couldn't hurt kids grades, so they could do nothing and pass. I had kids who didn't turn in a single assignment. I get the idea behind it because grades would have been hurting under privileged kids the most, but it did not go well. There really should have been things going on this summer to try to improve it, but most people were just hoping and arguing. I'm sure I missed some points in there, so feel free to ask more questions.

It seems like once you find one, there's 10 more. They're freaking pack animals!

I've got some good and bad news on my garden. Bad news I noticed one of my tomatoes had some leaves eaten off and found 5 tomato worms on it! Luckily the plant is pretty big, so it should be alright, but they did do some damage. Good news I might have a brandywine tomato to pick today. I've almost avoided looking at it so I won't pick it early, but it is real close!

Don't let him kid you. He found out where I live and stole them in the middle of the night! Happy to help.

I had that last year and I had good luck with crushed up egg shells.

Those are good. I'm partial to brandywines, and they are pretty long too. Just today I saw one of mine is starting to turn pink. The only problem is I almost always pick the first tomato too soon!

That's too bad. It's always a crapshoot with new kinds of tomatoes, and you never know from year to year what they'll produce. Hopefully they get better as the season goes on. It seems like a lot of stores carry bad varieties too. The easy to grow, nice looking ones that taste like nothing.

As a science person, that has me so annoyed. There are great scientists doing great research, and then there are others that ruin everything. I was trying to research HCQ yesterday and I read a few papers about how it is almost impossible to know what is going on because of the political lines in the sand and the scientists who have done poor research. Like the video from a couple days ago. I watched a little, and there might have been some good info, but when the first person starts talking about a spiderweb of lies, it all goes down the drain. That is a dead giveaway that they have an agenda of some sort. Reputable scientists and doctors don't talk like that. If there is good evidence behind the drug working, stick to that. Otherwise it does nothing but divide. We need to hear a lot more about research and facts, but it has been so bad that after an hours worth of research yesterday I feel like I'm more confused than I was before.

The town just north of me (the town I teach in) has about 1900 people and has 54 confirmed cases. I heard it is going through the nursing home right now. My county of around 30,000 people has 240 confirmed cases and 7 deaths. We've had 41 new cases in the last week.

This is why politicians, actors, athletes, news anchors, etc., need to stay out of science and let doctors and scientists do their jobs.

Sure! I'd send some to you!

I won't tell her you said that!

I'm at the point right now with my cherry tomatoes that I almost cherish each one. I had 1 ripe one this morning and I was like Tommy Boy with the roll in the diner.

Note to self, don't plant 2 of each kind of pepper. 1 is plenty. Edit: Those are gallon bags.

🍆

Anybody have any ripe tomatoes yet? My "early" ones are starting to turn, but no luck on my brandywines yet. Started getting a couple cherry tomatoes, but they went dry for a few days. Crazy amount of green tomatoes on it, so I'll be overrun with them soon.

When I walked my dog this morning, I swear I saw some of these "tomatoes" next to the road in town. It caught me off guard and it didn't register until we were past it, and my dog was too interested in the squirrel ahead of us to go back, but I am definitely going back today to see if they have any ripe "tomatoes."

Especially if more people have complications like Eduardo Rodriguez for the Red Sox. I think most people were hoping professional athletes would be unscathed if they got it (and the vast majority are), but there is a lot more to this virus than just the death toll.