This Summer has been one strange trip. The only thing that remained the same was that all of my Summer classes were offered online. I rarely teach on-campus classes over the Summer.
I wore a mask whenever I left the house, except to exercise around the neighborhood. I even work a mask (with a charcoal PM 2.5 insert) when I went to the gym once they reopened. I wore that mask while I exercised: 60 minutes on the elliptical machine and 30 minutes on the treadmill. I wore that mask when I went to HEB. I did not go to the mall or any other place, except to my barber, once over these last five months. Only 1 person allowed in the shop at a time. The barber wore a mask and so did I. Neither my wife nor my son left the house, except to exercise around the neighborhood. Except, my wife volunteered to be the Treasurer for our son's school's PTA so right before the Fall semester began she went to the school for some training and to hand out school supplies.
My wife and I were going to share my home office, but our son needed my PC for his summer school work (primarily math and Spanish) so I took my lap top and worked off the kitchen table over the Summer. He is starting the second grade. We did not want him to lose his math knowledge nor his Spanish. He is in a dual language Spanish program so he spent time each day working on math and Spanish.
He couldn't go to the YMCA summer camp he was accustomed to attending, so I hosted "Dad Camp: COVID 19, 2020." He got a new bike, a basketball hoop, a slip-n-slide, water guns; he planted cucumbers, taught him to tie his shoes, tell time, and wrestle. It was a good camp. Different from the Y, but good. He even got a t-shirt. He was very concerned about that -at the YMCA he always got a t-shirt.
I spent the entire Summer working on just one chapter of the OER textbook, Our Story. It's the chapter on New Deal culture. I just could not make it work. I would add a few pages, then edit it, then add some new content, then try to figure out an overarching theme to connect the new material. Just a mess. I did not finish the chapter. I've never written so little in so much time.
But the true weirdness is the rise of QAnon. QAnon is a conspiracy that purports the existence of a "deep state" of satanic, pedophile, cannibals jonesing to remove Trump from the White House. And, that Donald Trump was placed in the presidency by God in order to fetter out those satanic, pedophile, cannibals from around the world, not just the "Deep State." The FBI has identified QAnon as a potential domestic terrorist organization. In August, Donald Trump was asked about QAnon. He said he didn't know much about them, but that he "appreciate[s]" the conspiracy theorists support.
QAnon is not some fringe Reddit group. In 2020 there are at least a dozen Republicans linked to QAnon running for Congress. And while some establishment Republicans have come out against the conspiracy theorists, most Republicans have remained silent.
Donald Trump was impeached for two crimes. The Senate, which refused to hear evidence and allow witnesses, vote to acquit Trump. Turns out Donald Trump and his 2016 presidential campaign was indeed in bed with the Russians. I'll turn this next section over to the historian Heather Cox Richardson in a Facebook post dated August 19th, 2020:
"Yesterday’s Senate Intelligence Report on connections between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives is beginning to attract the media notice it deserves. Authored by a Republican-dominated committee, the report established that Konstantin Kilimnik, the longtime business associate of Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, is a Russian intelligence officer. While chairing Trump’s campaign, Manafort both communicated often with Kilimnik in encrypted conversations and gave him sensitive internal polling data from the campaign. The report says Kilimnik may have been directly involved in the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails and handing the stolen files to Wikileaks. The report also establishes that Trump repeatedly discussed the Wikileaks document dumps with operative Roger Stone, then lied about those discussions with investigators.
Washington Post conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin today published an article titled “As it turns out, there really was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.” Norman Eisen, lawyer for the House impeachment managers, told her: “Collusion simply means Trump and those around him wrongly working together with Russia and its satellites, and the fact of that has long been apparent…. Indeed, it was clear to anyone with eyes from the moment Trump asked, ‘Russia, if you’re listening.’… The Senate report is a valuable contribution advancing our understanding, including explaining former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort’s nexus to Russian intelligence. The report further elucidates our understanding of collusion via WikiLeaks, which acted as a Russian cut-out.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi focused not on 2016 but on the present, noting that “America’s intelligence and law enforcement communities have made clear that the Russian Government is continuing to wage a massive intervention campaign to benefit the President, warning of a ‘365-days-a-year threat’ to compromise the 2020 elections and undermine our democracy.” She noted that the very first thing the Democrats did when they took a majority in the House was to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, to secure our elections, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has refused to take the bill up."
Now, back to me.
And then the Postmaster General allegedly began dismantling the post office's ability to deliver mail-in ballots, as Donald Trump claimed, without evidence, that mail-in ballots are ripe for fraud. Interestingly enough, he and his wife vote by using mail-in ballots.
Did you see the Democrat National Convention? Themes of the convention included Joe Biden has empathy, morals, honesty, sympathy, strong family, strong supporter of the military, and gets strength from his Catholic background. Surely the DNC painted Biden as an opposite of Trump. Three ex-Presidents spoke on Biden's behalf, along with three ex-First Ladies. There were several Republicans, many retired members of the US military to include Senator (LTC) Tammy Duckworth a disabled vet of the Iraq War and Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a veteran of the Afghanistan war.
There were a lot of regular Americans as well giving testimony as to how and when Biden touched their lives. My personal favorite was the 13-year-old Brayden Harrington. Brayden spoke about his stuttering and how he met Joe Biden. Biden used to stutter when he was young. Biden reached out to Brayden one day and gave him some advice, as well as his cell phone number. I used to stutter when I was younger. More importantly, my 7-year-old son stutters. When Brayden spoke at the Convention, he got stuck on the "s" and "v", his face would contort as he tried to get the sounds out. My son also gets stuck on those two letters and makes the same facial expressions as he struggles to get the words out. I saw my son's future in Brayden. I was both proud and sad. Mostly proud. Brayden is one brave, eloquent young man.
A lot of other stuff happened this summer such as the price of food (especially eggs, dairy and meat) rose dramatically. We decided to keep our son home for the Fall semester. He will be learning online. I will be offering classes both online and on-campus. I am more than merely worried and anxious about being on-campus until a reliable vaccine is available. Oh, September 2nd (still officially in Summer) is our 20th wedding anniversary. So, I guess the news is not all bad. But, there is that tropical storm (Laura) that might affect us?
Here is my Yelp review of 2020 so far:
