Monday, March 30, 2020

Learning bullets of sheltering in place

Nextdoor: We are all Gladys Kravitz now.
  • Although I am still distracted--aren't we all?--my brain has come back online for administrative and class work. I worked on that stuff all weekend. Those of you with kids at home (gwinne, I'm thinking of you) are heroes.
  • Social media 1: still not on Facebook, which I am thankful for.
  • Social media 2: Twitter has been surprisingly generous in tone. I try to post and retweet helpful items and haven't been dragged for it yet. Also, it's a learning space:
    • How to sew a mask and why a vacuum cleaner HEPA bag insert may be useful. 
    • What Instacart is, though we're encouraged to shop ourselves if we can to not overwhelm it for those who cannot get out. 
    • Online course resources for all ages. Virtual museum tours. Performances by musicians. 
    • Actual news, with links, about the pandemic.
  • Social media 3: Nextdoor. I joined this just recently, and while I had heard tales of its suspicious nature and complaining--the Gladys Kravitz syndrome of minding other people's business--what's mostly there are offerings of help or advice: which supermarkets might have some out-of-stock necessity, for example. I haven't been to the store for a couple of weeks, so it's helpful to know this. 
  • In work news: My awesome colleagues have stepped up with all of the changes and we're all working hard to make the rest of the semester as good as it can possibly be for the students.
  • However, if a faculty member who has not attended a faculty meeting for at least five years (apparently with impunity; yes, I'm petty and have kept track) floods everyone's mailboxes with questions and complaints about a university policy, is that sea-lioning? Sea-lioning:  "a type of trolling or harassment which consists of pursuing people with persistent requests for evidence or repeated questions, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity." Or is that just what they call on The Good Place being an "ashhole"?
  •  Remember that phrase "I hope you are well" that we started seeing in emails about 10 years ago? These days we really, really mean it.

3 comments:

  1. Undine, thanks for this. Both the general post and the specific note.

    I'm also on twitter more than ever before. Also nextdoor. Our community has an independent newspaper that also posts good things (i.e. a spreadsheet of which restaurants are open and doing carryout/delivery).

    Best kid resource for the squirrely sort: Cosmic Yoga on YouTube.

    LG and I have started a film project: 1 movie/year for each of their 16 years and the first 16 of mine. Which means we're skipping the 90s which is probably my favorite decade. Another project for another time.

    It's very very strange being so physically removed and socially connected during this time. All of us in our own homes living parallel lives.

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  2. My colleagues in my department have been EXCELLENT. We're all checking in with each other on the regular.

    In the college on the other hand, I wonder: who ARE these people who, even in the midst of a pandemic, have time to compose two or more multi-paragraph e-mails to the facultuy listserv every day?

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  3. gwinne--I like your projects! Nextdoor is pretty good here but some of the people make me nervous.

    Notorious, that is wonderful. We aren't checking in on each other as much, or at least I'm not part of it, but we are on email often enough, I guess.

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