Warm day prods us to forget shutdown

Can we adjust long-term to this new lifestyle? We are still fairly new into this. It seemed to come out of the blue. Our spirits were lifted for at least the short-term by summer-like weather on Monday. There was home improvement activity, or should I say yard improvement in my neighborhood. We have new residents who I do not know because in America of 2020, we do not get to know our neighbors. It did not used to be that way.
We once had neighborhood parties on Northridge Drive. File that away with Norman Rockwell magazine covers. It is too easy to say the old days were better. Our nature is to filter out bad aspects of the past while focusing on the good. Isn't some affinity with neighbors a good thing? Perhaps today we see privacy as more of a bedrock.
My yard improvement project Monday was removal of brush piles and some logs that had built up over time. The buildup was acceptable for as long as it was, because we are semi-rural. So I guess we get a pass for certain things that would be no-go in town. Probably a little fungible. I was starting to feel concerned that if I held off much longer having a tree service come, I could get a complaint.
Chore is done now. Aesthetically it's better but there's probably a little loss of windbreak. The northwest wind roars down from the slightly elevated land to the north in winter.
The Earn Julius farm was well-established when the residential strip sprouted in the early 1960s. The Holts of the soils lab moved in right next to the lab, how convenient. Then came us. Faces have changed through the years but Williams has been a constant with our mailbox on the pink stand.
The first summer-like day probably served to get our minds off the current, well, circumstances. The pandemic has profoundly changed everything. The realistic side of us acknowledges there is still danger with our attempts to circulate normally again. A part of us wants so badly to do that. All the new rules are downright mystifying because it's important to implement this with precision. Social distancing? Six feet? A store clerk still must present a receipt to a customer. "We can't throw it at them," a business spokesman said on the radio the other day.
Customers can circulate pretty freely in some places like grocery stores which seem like an oasis of normality amid the drastic restrictions. The store is essential, yes. But do we really want to accept the risk that comes about? Again there's conflict: the rational side of us that wants to recognize the limitations, and the human side that desperately wants life as normal. The latter urge comes close to trumping the former, no doubt unfortunately.
I suppose we take risks when we drive an automobile each day. We hear about traffic fatalities constantly. Many of us have been impacted by death or serious injury among family or people we know/love, yet we accept the risk.
We see all the rules and recommendations in connection for dealing with the pandemic. Yet we know there are all sorts of weaknesses or breakdowns in the strategies. A part of us must insist on simply "plugging away" with our daily routine as we seek to shut out the most disturbing thoughts. The anti-lockdown protesters around the country have to be thinking this way. The judges who required the in-person voting in Wisconsin had to have been thinking this way. New Covid cases have been attributed to the voting.
Today, Tuesday, we hear so much about the reopening plans. How can we not feel joyous and buoyant about this? We are in a time of year that would normally be full of school activities to cap the school year, concerts etc. It's impossible to imagine life with this whole slate wiped out. Just imagine all the music concerts at UMM in April and May. Our public school would be abuzz. Instead we have all been hunkered down.
 
Kids and learning
Distance learning is supposed to be in effect. Reports are surfacing, though, that parents are getting discouraged about this as time goes on. If kids are going to be at home, maybe our impulse toward privacy is surfacing. "We'll take care of ourselves." I'm not a parent but maybe parents feel as though keeping their kids active with self-directed reading is good enough. Good enough for the short term anyway.
Maybe we'll all realize that basic reading, writing and arithmetic, the things achieved through the old eighth grade education, is really good enough. One argument for this is that "advanced" learning seems less necessary today - paradoxical yes - because of our digital age and the mind-boggling shortcuts to efficiency. We literally do not need to work as hard. My old friend Tony O'Keefe, RIP, said "you only work if you have to."
Work is presented as a virtue but it really is done by necessity. And "work" today is not measured by the traditional metrics, so much as before, from when the 40-hour week was a standard and we clicked our heels on Friday and got set for the weekend with its opportunities for alcohol consumption as an escape. That old template for living has gotten erased. Just accept it - it's reality.
And if distance learning is really to be embraced, how do we know it can't be with a whole new system that has little connection to our local taxpayer-supported bricks and mortar schools? Why can't seventh graders everywhere take online-based lessons from the finest educators? The sea change lying ahead can be disturbing. Our livelihoods will be disrupted or eliminated, which is why we hear louder arguments for UBI (universal basic income) which would give us some insulation from the turbulence. Andrew Yang has been a leader arguing for UBI.
 
Shutdown accelerates natural change
Pre-pandemic we were already on the road to far more home-based work duties. We were held back some by a natural fear of drastic change, or maybe by customers' expectations of traditional offices. But those "legacy" considerations are being put aside even faster due to our current circumstances. Change happens and then years later we remember the quaint traits of how it used to be. What was it like going from Morris to Cyrus in horse and buggy, or in the earliest motor vehicles? Will we reminisce someday about how so much of our work was once in offices where we had to commute to?
Will inner-ring suburbs lose their attractiveness as fewer people need to commute? Will auto transportation itself be a much lower priority? Surely our air could be made cleaner. Surely there would be satisfaction in knowing that auto vehicle mishaps with all the tragedy will go down. So maybe someday we'll think it's insane how our highway arteries in highly populated areas were such congested madhouses of motor vehicle traffic. Why did we ever put up with it?
Amid all these thoughts we welcome early summer of 2020. We go outside and we just want the pandemic to go away. We can even try to be in denial.
The home or yard improvement projects on Northridge Drive send the strong message that we are all trying to be optimistic. Our natural inclination.
We don't even want to think about if the 2020-21 school year is now imperiled. It could well be. Families will work to adjust and to advance learning in a practical way because to cite a cliche, kids really do want to learn. It's less of a cliche today and more practical reality because of online communications, the availability of all the info and enrichment in the world, at your fingertips. Kids want to absorb knowledge and new and interesting things, and the opportunities are now afforded them. It really is a bonanza.
The people left whistling past the graveyard are those who have made their living in the established manner of schooling: get on the orange school bus, get bullied, arrive at school too tired and probably agitated, survive the day with rules and restrictions that can come across like prison, although it's probably not as bad as it once was. The people who run schools know the world we're in, and that their sense of monopoly has been crushed - they had better sell themselves, create a user-friendly environment.
It's too late for me of course. Make sure your kids learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Where has "advanced education" gotten us? The U.S. populace elected Donald Trump. You know those drawings that show the progression of ape to man? Maybe we're going backwards now. Just don't drink Clorox.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com