[The following blog contains mentions of suicide.] I woke up four years ago today with a sense of dread, having gone to bed the previous night before any formal announcements had been made about the election, but knowing by that point what kind of news I was likely to wake up to. (Given that I’d had two Red Bulls the day before, my tiredness might have been my body engaging in an unconscious act of self-preservation.) Mom had passed away a week and a half…
Racial Battle Fatigue: What is it and What are the Symptoms? (medium.com) The infamous George Carlin routine about “soft language,” particularly his explanation of how the condition first called shell shock has come to be known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, has more than its fair share of merits. Its strongest point is that medical language, like other specialized language used in small circles of the broader public, tends to obfuscate and depersonalize the serious problems that the words represent. Shell shock may have an additional…
Airborne Covid-19: Updated CDC guidance acknowledges virus can spread through the air (CNN via MSN)Wisconsin surpasses 100,000 all-time cases of coronavirus (fox47.com) One of the things I missed out on this summer was the release of the yearly “Mindset List,” first produced at Beloit College but now a product of Marist College, which enumerates the cultural experiences that incoming first-year college students each year are likely to have been the first to experience, or not experience, or take for granted. This is something I always…
A School Called the Cops on a Black 12-Year-Old for Having a Toy Gun in His Own Home (Vice.com)I Refuse to Be the Pajama Police (weareteachers.com) Someone needs to come up with a new term to describe clichés that have been overused to the point where they’re a whole level worse than your garden-variety cliché. I’m not sure if the saying “Dress for the job you want, not for the job you have” would qualify for such a classification, but I’d nominate it anyway just because…
College party with 400 people shut down in North Carolina (Houston Chronicle)Miami University parent files class action lawsuit over tuition charged for blended courses amid coronavirus (Cincinnati Business Courier) My alma mater started its fall semester last week, and they’ve already confirmed twenty-seven cases of COVID-19 there, according to what passes for a newspaper in my hometown. Absent so many similar stories from campuses and schools across the nation these past few weeks, this might have garnered more attention. Instead, though, this is quickly becoming…