What Would You Do?

I have a decision to make.  A couple of weeks ago we met with the School leadership and decided whether our classes would be Remote, Hybrid, Hybrid in Shifts, or In Person.  Remote means everyone attends via Zoom.  Hybrid means the class meets in a classroom and there is a Zoom simulcast.  Hybrid in Shifts is the same as Hybrid except the class is broken into subsections and only a part of the class attends on any given day.  In Person is in person only.

I have three classes this Fall:  PTM Professional Practice, Technical Direction 1, and Technical Direction 3.  Right off the bat I decided that PTM Professional Practice should be Remote.  At least half the sessions of that class are guests and under the current circumstances it felt irresponsible to bring guests to campus.  Knowing that the guests would be appearing on a screen it wasn't too far a trip to deciding that the students should also be on a screen.

TD1 and TD3 were not as clear cut.  At the time I was making the decision the undercurrent seemed to be "If it can be in person it ought to be in person."  Truth be told I don't think anyone ever said it that cleanly, but there were discussions about how if you didn't want to teach in person you would have to formally request an accommodation from HR for a health problem or request an accommodation from your school head for a personal reason.  That procedure, at least to me, communicated that the expectation was that classes that could meet in person should meet in person.

Also at that time the daily county cases were typically under 100.  We had just gone from "yellow" to "green."  That "green" doesn't mean "normal" is some truly unfortunate communicating BTW.  Campus was talking about testing and PPE and social distancing.  Things were fairly optimistic.  Since then things have taken a bit of a turn.  PPS has walked away from in person classes and gone remote.  MLB, with all the money and incentive in the world, has had to cancel baseball games.  The daily county case rate has jumped to well over 100, and even though we are technically still on "green" the governor reinstated many of the restrictions that were part of "yellow" without changing the status.

Yesterday in a meeting the Provost said "if you can work remote, you should work remote."

There is still an undercurrent of wanting classes to meet in person.  In the same meeting there was discussion about how it would be significant for every student that does elect to come to Pittsburgh could have at least one in person class.  I can see how coming to campus and living in campus housing and taking all of your classes from your room might be less than.  There was also a mention about how there is a concern that international students be able to find at least one in person class to validate their immigration status.

The latter notwithstanding, in the light of the change in circumstances since our discussion I am wavering on teaching in the room.  TD1 and TD3 have been sited in the Chosky Theatre, so there's plenty of room for distancing.  Everyone is required to wear a mask at all times on campus, and they are placing hand sanitizing stations all over the place.  So the "3W" wear a mask, wash your hands, watch your distance should be fairly strongly implemented.  Additionally, everyone on campus has to do daily symptom assessments - which helps, but obviously will not capture asymptomatic carriers.  TD1 could have 12 students and TD3 could have 8.  I say "could" because I don't know how many of the registered students are coming to Pittsburgh, and how many of those are planning to come to class.  Students are free to make those decisions at will and day to day, so even if I asked it would only be a rough answer.

The school does appear to be doing what they can to keep things safer.  But there is an even safer decision - we could go remote.

I've looked at the content, and really there's nothing that suffers unduly from not being in the room.  Both classes take a little bit of a hit as discussion over Zoom isn't what it is in person - although I think it can be; it just wasn't in my spring classes.  TD1 takes a hit in that it probably loses the hands on dimension of the "Rearrange The Shop" project.  But that project is doable from drawings.  I could probably have Sean and Ben provide a survey.  TD3 has historically had projects with realized shop components, but not last year as I have been taking it toward more sketching and conversations.  On top of that, the semester is basically only 12 weeks this fall.  So both classes were going to take a content hit anyway.

There's also a part of me that wonders if Zoom without a mask is better than in person, distanced, with a mask - especially for anyone still attending via Zoom.  Really I don't wonder, I'm pretty sure it is.

I'd like to have some quantitative metrics in place to make this decision for me.  Something like: no in the room teaching until the R0 is less than 1.  Or maybe: no in person classes until there have been three weeks of demonstrably lowering new cases in the county and an absolute daily case count of less than 50.  Or maybe: no in person classes without twice a week testing of all participants with less than a 48 hours turnaround.  But nobody is providing quantitative measures.  Just 3Ws and symptom screening, with isolation after appearance of symptoms.  I'm just not sure I am willing to gamble my life and the life of my family on those metrics (or the lives of my students).

There's a tool online that tells you for your county based on a crowd of a given size how likely it is that at least one person is a COVID carrier.  I just checked and for Allegheny County today, for a group of 10 (the choices are 10 and 25 and based on the size of my classes 25 doesn't feel fair) - so this number is conservative for my circumstances - for a group of 10 in Allegheny County the likelihood is 14%.  So every time I go to class there is a 14% chance that the entire class is potentially exposed.  That doesn't account for symptom screening, and it doesn't say anything about how likely one person is to be infected by another person.  That infection possibility is mitigated by masks and distancing.  I tried and failed to find numbers on how likely infection is when exposed, and how much that is mitigated by PPE and distancing.

But it is non-zero.

The likelihood of becoming infected while teaching class without being in person is zero.

If I can do that, shouldn't I do that?

I feel like I am leaning toward moving everything online - if that option is still open to me.

What would you do?

Four Things

My Fall Schedule

I put my schedule into Google Calendar last week.  It is the time of year to be mapping syllabi against the current calendar and getting weekly details into our family calendar so that me and Mrs. TANBI can head off as many SNAFUs as possible.  For years now all of my classes have been in the afternoon.  That's left over from when I built my schedule in anticipation of Gib5on being born.  The new COVID schedule doesn't change that, although the end of my class day is later than it has been historically.  I have my usual Fall semester: Technical Direction 1, Technical Direction 3, and PTM Professional Practice.  When I set it up, I elected for PPP to be full remote and for TD1 and TD3 to be hybrid.  In the last couple of days I have been second guessing that decision.  Part of me thinks TD1 should be full remote as well, and maybe TD3 should meet on my porch - I'll have to look at the enrollment, the class might actually be too big for that this year.  The semester is only 12 weeks this Fall.  The university decided that we would not come back for the two weeks after Thanksgiving and the school decided that all things being equal that time might be better put to use by expanding (the now fully remote) Playground to two weeks.  I guess my next step is to look at the 15 week syllabi and cut them to 12.  PPP and TD1 should accommodate that easily.  TD3 will be more of a challenge mostly because it will shorten all the project timelines.

Biking Angst

If you have been following you know I've been trying to get some physical activity by doing some riding.  I don't know why I would think this would be different, but the biking has found me some new things to be angsty about.  Mostly here I blame Facebook.  To try to stay informed I joined a Facebook group for owners of the brand of eBike I bought.  I thought it would be a good way to find out about the bike since I bought it on kind of a lark without knowing much about it.  The COVID crisis has apparently caused eBike sales to spike.  Probably one third of the posts in the group are people doing unboxing videos when they receive their bike.  Another third of the posts are people complaining about how long they have been waiting for their bike - keep in mind every one of these orders was a back order.  I guess it is possible that RAD is letting the order deliveries slip, but people had to know what they were getting into.  The remaining third of the posts are probably split evenly between people having a great time with their bike and people that have had some kind of unfixable mechanical problem.  It's that last bit that is my problem.  In high school I was a pretty competent bike mechanic, but the eBike is an order of magnitude more complicated with electronics and sensors and bike components way more complicated than I remember.  This has caused me a fair bit of pessimistic thinking around breaking down on the road or having something on the bike fail.  There's probably no reason for this, and knock wood everything is fine, but I am now and pretty much always have been angsty.

Back to Public School

PPS has decided to take a 9 week time out.  They were going to be back in person for those that had elected that option as soon as three weeks from now.  Then the teachers started to push a little and the board voted on going full remote for everyone for a little while so they can better be ready when they do come back.  The schools are basically on a trimester and everyone is now staying home through the first grading period.  That has people coming back to the building right around Thanksgiving.  I wouldn't be surprised to see them come to the same conclusion CMU did and decide to stay home from Thanksgiving to New Years, at which point coming in for two or three weeks in November will seem less reasonable.  The second grading period goes basically from Thanksgiving to Valentines Day.  So part of me wonders if really we're looking at a return to in person school well into the Spring.  That is quite a bit of extrapolation though.  I'm probably wrong.  I am glad they have decided to take the time out.  There was a news report on last night where they were showing some of the preparations that local schools are making and they just seem to be way, way too little.  In one part they were saying one district was limiting bus capacity to 12 and another district was holding to 60%.  The internet says 48 adults fit on a school bus.  60% of 48 is 28.8 so say 28.  The reporter didn't even question how 12 and 28 could both be safe.  I think that's pretty indicative of the whole issue.  Every district is on their own.  Today on the news I saw coverage of Marching Band practice at an area high school.  The director was on saying "We're doing everything we can to keep the kids safe."  No you're not.  They don't have to be there.

The Latest Binge

I just finished watching The Girlfriend Experience on Starz.  We paid for Starz so we could watch the latest season of Outlander and since we finished that I have been looking for things to justify the subscription.  (Side note: did you know there's a straight line from DS9 to BSG to Outlander?)  So I was combing through the available series and fell on The Girlfriend Experience.  I should start off with that it is a little more porny than I was probably looking for.  It makes sense based on the content, but some of what they chose to depict was a little surprising.  Season three even starts to carry a new opening placard.  The show is shot really beautifully.  I could not help but notice that the locations they chose and the way they decided to shoot them were really impressive.  Another quirky element is that the three seasons are three different stories.  In and of itself that isn't too odd, but the first story and the third story don't really come to a conclusion.  They just sort of end with all kinds of unresolved plot lines.  I guess there's something to be said for less conventional story telling and maybe I don't need to have everything tied up in a bow but for me, at least, it was disappointing.  Also, the first season was really about the ins and outs of the business.  Season two made those details much more of a sideline, and season three shifted the narrative to political intrigue centering around one of the customers.  In some ways it really comes off as three different shows.

A Tale of Two .sigs

Sometime maybe in March I decided that I would use my email .sig to try to make a little bit of a difference in the general awareness to the pandemic.  I had heard something on TV and I had decided to write the phrasing on the sidewalk, and then I decided that I had access to way more people via email than I do via sidewalk and so maybe I should use my .sig.

So sometime in March I appended this to my .sig:

STAY HOME - STOP THE SPREAD - SAVE LIVES

I think one of the NBC shows was signing off with it or something and it just resonated with me.

That .sig was very much in line with the instructions we were getting early on: that people should stay home.  Don't travel, don't go to playgrounds or parks, don't eat out; stay home to "flatten the curve."

Sometime in the last couple of weeks I started to feel like I was the only person trying to deliver that message.  Locally they've opened the parks, people are eating out, and they are talking about in person school within a month.  Although the infection numbers are as bad as they were months ago, authorities have very much abandoned the "Stay home..." message.

That's too bad.  From my own vantage the message in that .sig is still exactly what we ought to be doing.

Other folks must have also come to the conclusion that there was nobody following behind where they were leading and so I heard a new pandemic catchphrase: the 3 W's.  The message seems more in line with the strategy being espoused by leadership.  So I changed my .sig:

WEAR A MASK - WASH YOUR HANDS - WATCH YOUR DISTANCE

There's part of this I like better than the old one: it seems critical that any messaging include "wear a mask."  Even under the old rules many people were going out, and it was important for those people to wear masks - often they did not (often they still don't).  I guess the old phrasing could have been "Wear a mask - Stop the spread - Save lives" but the WSS isn't as catchy as the SSS even if the "Stay home" part was always mushy.

It does sound like experts believe we could bring the virus under control with the measures in the new message without needing the greater restrictions of the first one.  I hope so.  Still it feels like we've softened the response at a point where we should have been becoming more restrictive.  The new phraseology seems far more economically friendly than the old one.  I am unsure that's where the priority should be.

But I'm not in charge.  I'm just playing around with my .sig.

And occasionally writing on the sidewalk.

And maybe changing the name of my wireless network.

And blogging about it:

Stay home

Wear a mask

Wash your hands

Watch your distance

Stop the spread

Save lives

More Masks

Today my friend had a nutty on Facebook:

She's not wrong.  It is ridiculous that people can't manage to keep their mask over their nose.  I share this frustration.

So I headed over to Vistaprint again and roughed out another mask:

That was mildly cathartic.

Show me the Money

There's lots of conversation going on about reopening schools.  Many different plans are being discussed and parents are struggling to decide whether they want their kids in school this fall.  There is some disagreement about what the actual risks are, but really it is more a problem of how comprehensive the solutions can really be, and what is an acceptable amount of risk as weighed against what is possible.

What is possible?  That is an interesting question as the answer is ultimately about available resources.  That's a real whammy for public schools because most of them didn't have sufficient resources to accomplish what they were already doing.  If schools were in a hole to begin with how are they supposed to take on orders of magnitude more expenses in order to mitigate the COVID risks?

Without a vaccine, mitigations tend to either be about distancing, PPE, or hygiene.  It seems a given that all three are needed, but I've yet to even hear speculatively what "safe" school would cost.  Most of the discussions seem to start with what is possible within an existing budgetary framework, or within a cost structure based on what funds organizers think can be obtained.  As with many arguments in contemporary American discourse this conversation is tilted before it begins.

We need to convene a panel of docs, teachers, and facility managers and hash out what safe school would look like without applying the constraint of budget.  Without that discussion we can't really frame just how woefully inadequate the proposed solutions likely are.

Start with distancing.  Stipulating everyone gets to return and we are to have 5 day a week school it would seem (and I am guessing here) that most classes need to drop in size to about 1/3 their "normal" size.  I put that in quotes because we should recognize that most classes have likely been too larger all along.  Gib5on's kindergarten class was 28 kids.  That is "normal" but I would think is at least a few too many.  With proper social distancing it feels (to me, and I am still making this up) that what we consider a normal classroom probably ought not have more than a dozen students in it.  That's more like 1/2 than 1/3 but it seems like a reasonable assumption for what is only a thought experiment.

From there it would seem there should be some obvious an unrelenting math.  1/2 the kids in the room means twice as many rooms.  Twice as many rooms means twice as many teachers.  I suppose there might be some kind of split shift solution available with half the kids doing morning/afternoon and half the kids doing afternoon/evening, but that still requires either a hell of a lot of overtime or twice the number of teachers - and likely a custodial crew of substantially larger than existing size to turn the spaces over.

So right from jump we need double the budget for faculty (oh, and we have to find a whole bunch of teachers).  We also need a substantive real estate acquisition budget to pick up or rent additional space.  I surmise that there might be decommissioned schools that could be brought onto the board here, but they would also require funds to get them operational again (as well as calendar time to do the work to prepare them).

I can't do it, but someone could put a number on that, right?  Probably needs to be a big number.

PPE...  Multiple masks for every student and staff member in every school in the nation.  Gib5on likes to chew on his mask.  He's going to need a few, and he needs a replacement mask even if he doesn't bring one from home.  Either that or the policy has to be to send a kid home if their mask gets lost, destroyed, or rendered ineffective.  That's a lot of parent calls.  Hand sanitizer for every room in every building.

Someone could put a number on that, yes?  I mean I can't but I bet there are people that can.  Probably for this issue one would also have to determine that there are that many masks and that much hand sanitizer available.  It does seem like manufacturers have really ramped up mask production and these masks don't need to be N95 masks, so maybe it is possible.  Hand sanitizer has been harder to come by.

At work they're redoing a bunch of the filtration in the HVAC systems.  Hospitals rejigger many of their spaces to be negative pressure volumes.  I don't know if that would be necessary for school buildings, but I do know many public school building are so old that they don't so much have ventilation systems to upgrade.  Big number.

On top of all of this schools would need a significantly increased cleaning tempo and the rigorousness of that cleaning also would need to be increased a great deal.  Bathrooms potentially need to be cleaned after every use.  The same is true about any common area: gyms, cafeteria tables, library tables... door handles; and any common equipment: computers, athletic equipment.  Some of those things could I guess be temporarily phased out.  Custodial departments, normally a handful of people would need to be a legion.  More money for people, more money for gear, more money for supplies.

The crazy part is that the last two bits: PPE and Sanitation are part of most of the solutions already being proposed.  I wonder to what degree these things are planned to be provided - and what the contingencies are for when necessary items are not available.

This neglects any backup plan for students that test positive and need to be out two weeks, or for staff that test positive and need to be out for two weeks.  Two weeks assumes ultimately the case clears up quickly.  In reality many of the people could be out for much, much longer.  Students being set home need technology for distance learning, and the teachers in their classrooms need to be able to simultaneously teach in the room and online, so that is more equipment in each classroom (or a separate infrastructure to teach students at home).  There will also have to be a large supply of substitutes available, or teachers need to be able to teach from home while quarantined.  More gear in the classroom for a remote instructor, and probably at least a teaching assistant in the room to keep things moving along while the classroom teacher is on a screen.

Oh and by the way... that last graph assumes frequent and quickly returning testing.  To be truly confident we'd need a daily, instant test.  There is apparently a test with a one hour result window that could be administered at home prior to coming in - although that neglects anyone someone might contact getting from home to school.  Some logistics there to be figured out even if the tests are available.  One test per day per person for every school in the US?  Big number.

What did I forget?  Buses.  Need WAY more buses.  Have to clean the buses every day, maybe twice a day?

When people talk about how it is safe to reopen the school they are likely saying they have determined there is an acceptable level of risk to reopening.  They are certainly not saying the risk has been eliminated.  Even if we did everything above the risk wouldn't be zero. 

Even staying home the risk isn't zero.

Still, I would like to know what the number is to maximize the available mitigation and how that number compares with some of the other bailouts.  I mean, this is without question a huge number.  But the legislation being tossed around has 12 zeros to the left of the decimal.  If we've got that kind of money to allocate then maybe we can make a real dent in the risk we're assuming at school.

Four Things

One of the blogs I read regularly does posts every now and then that he calls "Five Things."  Here's my version:

The House is Finished

It sneaked up on us, but recently it seems like we've completed all the major work we anticipated doing when we first bought the house.  We did one big renovation when we first bought the house.  After that we did a deck out in front of the house.  Last year we finished the basement and refreshed the guest bathroom.  When we did that last set of work we left a kind of an ugly spot around the laundry hookups in the refreshed bath, leaving it kind of unfinished.  Just recently we had someone come in and finish off that room.  When that happened we looked around and thought: we're done.  There's still a list:  I still want solar and a backup generator and we want a deck and some landscaping in the back and a set of partitions in the attic; but all of that feels like "extra."  The initial scope of work is complete.  Maybe it is time to look for a new house.

I Appear to be Riding a Bike

One of my Quarenpurchases was an eBike.  My docs have all been grousing with me for a very long time that I needed to get more exercise.  I added that to the thought that when we start up again at work I won't want to be riding the bus and started looking around for a bike.  With all the hills around the neighborhood an eBike seemed like a good idea and Facebook must have known that because I was absolutely being bombarded with eBike ads.  I found one that wasn't too expensive (and then wound up getting a discount because of one of the browser plug ins I run) and the sitting-too-long-at-my-desk-purchasing bug got to me and I bought one.  It sat in a box for almost a month after I got it, but last week I put it together and finally got on it and rode around some.  I hadn't ridden a bike really in over... I think the last time would have been senior year of college, so hadn't been on a bike in decades.  I'm hoping to be up to five miles a day within a week.  It isn't much, but it is more exercise than I've been getting; even if I let the bike do some of the work on the hills.

School Decisions

The Pittsburgh Public Schools have asked us to choose between 2 days/week in person - 2 days asynchronous distance learning 1st grade or 5 days/week synchronous distance learning for this coming school year.  They haven't told us the hours/day or either approach.  I think we're going to opt for the 5 days/week at home.  It feels likely that even if they start out with some in person that they are likely to revert to 100% distance learning anyway, so why not plan for that to begin with.  Really though I don't feel like they've given us enough particulars to be able to make an informed decision.  I can't fault them too much though since I think the reason they haven't told us is that they don't know yet.  There's going to be a lot of figuring it out as we go along for everyone this fall.  That's going to be stressful for us all and we're going to have to be able to run with it.  As it turns out there was a board meeting today and someone suggested starting out with 9 weeks of 100% distance for everyone in order for them to better get their ducks in a row.  Stay tuned.

Fall Classes

Speaking of fall school, I am still scheduled to be teaching at CMU this fall.  I typically have three classes in the fall semester and I am still slated to be starting that in a few weeks.  I will be teaching PTM Professional Practice, Technical Direction 1, and Technical Direction 3.  I'll also be advising on thesis projects and doing the normal amount of academic advising.  We've cancelled all fall production so there won't be the normal amount of production advising involved, but, we're still planning to do shows in the spring and that would typically involve work for my folks in the fall.  It is still unclear what portion of that work is still going to happen.  Based on the last item, if you are curious, PTM Professional Practice is going to be 100% remote.  It is like half guests and from a social distancing perspective in person classes just seem irresponsible.  TD1 and TD3 are planned to go forward as hybrid classes, with myself and some (currently unknown) number of students in the room - although they are planning to put me in much larger rooms to allow for proper distancing.  I am kinda waiting for the "never mind we're 100% online" email, but it feels like they really don't want that to be the case.  Watch this space.

I'm Getting Lax

I started wearing a mask to the grocery in February.  I remember taking it off because nobody else was wearing one and I felt stupid.  Next trip to the store there were others in masks and so I kept mine on, and a pair of gloves.

Not too long ago we would disinfect shoes when we came in.  We were wiping down doorknobs and faucets and light switches every other day if not every day.  I went out on all the errands and Mrs. TANBI stayed home.  Gib5on and Sabian never went out.

There was frequent handwashing - more than just when it seemed like a good idea, a regimented every little while washing.  There's an app on my watch with a 40 minute hand washing timer.  We were never that rigorous, but we were on it.

Somewhere along the line we made a conscious decision to expand our bubble to include another family and two babysitters so as to better enable everyone's work availability and also so that the kids got to see other kids now and again.  At one point my bother in law and his family came to visit for a while and at another point my sister and her family were here briefly.  Both of those were also conscious decisions and there was a lot of discussion about prior social distancing habits before we committed to the idea.

Lately though it feels like maybe we're losing sight of the issue.

Somewhere along the line it became ok for me to take Gib5on along with me to the store.  We both wear masks but he doesn't need to be there, its just a break in the routine for him and company for me.  Somewhere along the line I also stopped with the gloves.  There's still sanitizer in the car.  I guess there's a school of thought that says that is a better approach anyway.

The periodic hand washing and sanitizing has dropped off significantly.  It is still there, but we've lost our zeal.

We're keeping up our social distancing outside of the folks in our bubble, but I wonder how much longer we'll keep that up.  There's some peer pressure within our cohort to resume some pre-COVID behavior that would return us to periodic 20-25 person dinners.  About half of that group are kids that don't really manage the distancing very well, and half of those don't manage masks very well.  The talk is to keep the events outside, and that's well under the cap for an outside gathering in PA, but it still feels risky.

PPS is talking about two day a week in person school for Gib5on starting in like a month.  The ELC emailed today asking if Sabian is coming back full time in the fall.  CMU is expecting me back to work on campus to teach two classes in classrooms in the same time frame.  Work will be requiring masks any time anyone is on campus.  I guess they are thinking clear face shields for teachers at the front of the room.  I hope the students understand the exigency around masks and distancing and hygiene, but I also remember being a college student who more than I would like to admit did things I knew to be stupid on purpose (and probably many, many more times accidentally or without even noticing).

All of that sounds swell with regard to getting life back to normal, but against the day over day new case counts in Allegheny County it all feels premature.  It doesn't seem like social density should increase until the disease spread is decreasing.  Suggesting that doesn't seem to have much traction though.  I don't know why.

I've got to go wash my hands.

Custom Masks

Playing around with VistaPrint's custom mask generator.

Should I open a store?

Wear a Mask

We've had a mask order here in PA for a while now.  Even though the day over day new cases have been increasing for more than two weeks now compliance with the mask order is still spotty.  It did seem a little better yesterday and today than the days previous, but a trip around the neighborhood will still yield quite a few people without masks.

That day over day total?  In the past two weeks is up more than 1000%.  Mid June we were looking at 20 new cases per day.  This week in Allegheny County we're seeing more than 200 new cases each day.  The trend is going the wrong way and we're not doing enough to turn the trend around.

The administration screwed up the mask instructions right from the start.  In what must have been an effort to stretch the national mask supply we were told that we shouldn't wear masks - that they weren't necessary.  Really what they were saying was "the case trend is such that it is a better use of scarce masks to get them to medical personnel."  That's not the same as "it doesn't help."  Aside from that they could have delivered the message that "face coverings" were a good idea whereby masks shouldn't be diverted from hospitals.  There's nobody in a hospital that wants to wear a neck gaiter to protect themselves, but that works reasonably for someone walking their dog.

And we can leave aside conversation that they should have been in there early sourcing more masks.  My understanding is that although consumer grade masks are readily available presently that we're about to head into another period where N95 masks are going to be scarce again.  Well done USA.

Poor execution and lousy initial messaging aside it is well past time to get this behavior in place.  If there are people upset about wearing a mask to run through the grocery they are going to be right put out once we go back to work.  Those people working at the grocery?  They are wearing their mask for 8 hours straight or longer.  What we are required to do in terms of masks right now is nothing.

If Gib5on has in person school in the fall he is going to have to wear a mask for the entire day.  If I go back to work teaching on campus I will have to wear a mask from the moment I step onto campus.  I will have to wear a mask sitting alone in my office.  People are griping about wearing a mask for 20-30 minutes?  Less than 6 weeks from now we will have to wear masks 8-10 hours/day.

Get over it.

I get it, there's a Libertarian argument - you can't make me; it's like making me wear a seat-belt.  I remember when seat-belt laws started and there was push-back there too.  But there's a difference: your not wearing your seat-belt isn't going to kill me.  Your not wearing a mask absolutely could.  You wear your mask for the safety of the people around you as much as or more than for yourself.  We need to make this sacrifice of individual liberty for the greater good of the whole.  If you want to reserve your right to spew germs, do it in your own home.

If you go out, wear a mask.  Don't carry a mask.  Don't put the mask around your neck.  When you walk out the door cover your nose and mouth and leave the mask on until you get home.  If it is uncomfortable buy a different mask.  If you think it is restricting your oxygen, find any one of the videos online that shows definitively that that isn't happening.  The way to get over the feeling that the mask is confining is to get used to wearing the mask.  The longer you wear it around your neck or under your nose the longer it is going to take to build the tolerance to wear it in such a way that you will be able to return to work or for your children to return to school.

When you go out, wear a mask.  When you walk your dog, wear a mask.  When you go out for a run, wear a mask.  Walking from your door to your street parked car?  Wear a mask.

If you want for less people to be sick tomorrow than today so we can go back to work and school and parks and restaurants and concerts and movies: wear a mask.

Clean out Your Desk

We're coming to the end of the Spring session and into the Summer session for Sabian's daycare.  Gib5on had his last day on Kindergarten this past Friday.  A couple of family friends' kids had their High School graduation yesterday.  Regardless of the opened-up-edness of the economy and various schools the milestones are passing by with regularity - even though there's almost nothing regular about it.

Sabian's daycare is going to open up for the "summer camp" session.  For a kid in diapers that doesn't speak there isn't much of a difference between the spring and the summer.  There is a difference this year though.  Because of social distancing under PA "green" the number of kids that are allowed in the room has dropped.  There was a survey that went out earlier asking if as a parent you were in an "essential worker" job.  When we saw that we figured that they were probably going to have to back out on providing slots to many of the kids that were already signed up.  Since we were already looking for a solution for Gib5on we just rolled Sabian into that plan.

I bring this up because today I got to go by the daycare and collect the belongings we had left there when things abruptly closed up.  Parents got to drive into the driveway where they were met by a staff member who brought out whatever was left in plastic grocery bags.  We had one bag of diapers that were now too small and one bag of clothes that are also now too small.  I would have just donated all of it to the daycare but as with many things set up with a procedure there wasn't really an off ramp for that decision.  We'll find a way to do it later.

Picking up her stuff reminded me of an experience last week I had at my work.

Over Spring Break when we got the notice that we would be coming back online rather than in person we got an email instructing us to come in and get what we needed out of our offices to be able to finish the semester.  I went in with Gib5on riding in a collapsible wagon to pick up the binders for my Spring classes: one for ScenoFab, one for Production Planning, and one for CAD.  I also grabbed a armful of books I might need for Entertainment Rigging.  On top of that I also took a case of soda, a case of chips, what was left of the juice boxes I keep for Gib5on as well as some toys he plays with when he's around.  I thought about cleaning out and unplugging the refrigerator, but that felt like over reacting.

That would have been two and a half months ago.  It had an aura of responsibility and preparedness to it.  I bumped into other people in the building even though we were on break.  There were folks in the offices at the front of the ship and people in the shops working on inventories and maintenance.  The school had a buzz of activity to it.

About a month ago we got another email, this one talking about the fall telling us that we'll be in a hybrid model and that campus would eventually open up again but for the time being everything was still closed.

I have a shortened summer session coming up.  We're not having Drama Precollege this year, but we are having a Drama Summer Program (also for high school rising seniors).  I have taken to calling it "The Program Formerly Known as DP Precollege" but I probably won't put that on a syllabus or anything.  Since campus isn't opening until the fall and I am teaching next month I needed another trip to the office for supplies.

Instead of just going in this time I first emailed our facility manager to be sure I wasn't going to be stopped by Campus Security.  He told me things would be locked up but that it was ok for me to go in and out quickly and reminded me to wear a mask.  Once again I packed up the collapsible wagon and Gib5on and I went to my office.

I hadn't anticipated it, but this trip was really different.  The building was empty.  The only person I saw was a Campus Security person taking a break in our lobby (probably taking advantage of the air conditioning).  I was in the lobby on the way to the mail room - I had been told my box was overgrown.  It was.  I expected the guard to challenge me on my presence but he didn't.  Maybe having a key is enough to confer permission to be there.

In my office I loaded up what I think I need for my summer Technical Production class and anything I might need for the "Applying to College" class we're creating this time around.  We also snagged the last of the food I had: another flat of soda and half a case of Rice Crispy Treats we'd left the last time.  There just didn't seem to be any reason to leave anything this time.  I still haven't unplugged the fridge, but I do keep expecting an email telling me someone from FMS was going to go door to door to do that.

It doesn't look like we'll be back in our offices before the top of the Fall Semester.  That means any prep for the Fall is also likely going to happen at home; so I grabbed the binders for TD1 and TD3.  While I was at it I just grabbed the rest of the class binders: Rigging Seminar, Production Planning & Organization, and Technical Design.  I also grabbed books for those classes and also a stack of books that I haven't read but have been living on my shelves for a while now: my own "Books you should have read by now."  The thought was that with all this time at home I might have time to read more.  (Spoiler: it hasn't to date, I'm not sure why it will later).

Then, and I can't really speak as to why, I also took a bunch of general supplies and some of my personal gear.  I have this cool Arduino clock that seemed like it would be wasted sitting in an empty office.  I took my echo tap, another thing that seemed a waste sitting in an empty room.

That last bit seemed really weird.  The only time I have ever felt this way before was when I had left a gig forever.  There was this moment where you find an empty carton and fill it with the personal items you had accumulated at the office because you were never going to be int hat office again. I went from room to room looking for an empty box for odds and ends.  It really felt like a "clean out your desk" moment.  I have an intellectual appreciation that this was temporary, but on a gut level this errand felt very different from the first one.  We loaded up and slunk out of the building before we got busted.

I wonder if it is going to take more than opening up campus to put us on the path again.  Based on my last visit I think maybe something more fundamental has broken and will need to be rebuilt.

And we should unplug all those refrigerators.

When to go Back

There's been quite a bit of discourse within my media sphere about when it will be safe to return to work - or in the parlance of the Right: restart the economy.  I get it, there are pressures from all over to get back to the old normal.  I can't imagine there's much of anyone that likes the new normal.  (Mrs. TANBI says Pizza Hut is having a great new normal, so maybe it isn't everyone.)  The President and most Red State Governors want to get things going again as soon as possible.

For more than a week now there have been people protesting at state capitals demanding to be let back to their old lifestyle.  More than anything else it seems like people are demanding to be able to get a haircut.  One assumes that while this is a practical matter that it is also somewhat tongue in cheek.  The central theme with this group seems to be about small businesses at risk of going under.  Maybe not so much about getting a haircut as about giving haircuts.  There's also a fair number of people who are convinced that this group is actually secretly motivated by owners of large businesses that are upset about their ability to continue to make money off of low wage earners: not so much about getting a haircut or giving a haircut, but rather about opening your chain of salons.  Probably something to that too.

There's also the more than likely possibility that most of these people are being motivated by stories in their news feed that are being propagated by troll accounts just looking to sow discord.  More than four years later we're still not good at evaluating our information sources and the companies that provide that information aren't much better at it either.

Somehow this gets conflated with many other causes.  There are gun owners afraid their rights are being trampled by the closing of gun stores or ranges.  There are anti-vaxxers trying to show us how right they have always been.  There are home schoolers upset that people are calling distance learning home schooling (some teachers too, although not at the protests).

Today I heard that the push to get open again is coming from Right Wing legislators who want to get people off of public assistance.  If your job is shut down you can go on unemployment, but if your job is there but you are afraid to go in then you are essentially quitting and not eligible for unemployment.  Similarly if you own a business and the government shuts you down that may make you able to collect on some insurance you may be carrying, but if it isn't the government but rather your own good judgement that has you closed then you can't make that collection.

The metrics around opening things up are tied up in a vaccine, although that is far off, or in testing, contact tracing, and social distancing modifications.  From what I hear we're not nearly close enough to the capacity we need to be able to come back to normal measuring by those metrics.  From where I sit I think there might be some other things that should be considered.  Maybe we ought not restore things to normal until you can walk into a Rite-Aid and buy some hand sanitizer.  Maybe we ought to hold on to our enthusiasm until you can walk into a Home Depot and buy a box of N95 masks.  Perhaps we ought to stay home until you can walk into a Target and buy a can of Lysol or a (is it a jar?) of Clorox Wipes.

(I recognize there is likely a Catch 22 in this suggestion in that we may never get a reasonable quantity of those items before we send people back to work.  Navigating that is likely a significant challenge of these times.)

Clearly we're not ready by any of those standards.  But we're opening up in PA, at least a little bit, next week.  Guess we'll see if that works out or not.

Shelter in Place Update

We started another week of social distancing today.  I've lost track of how long it has been.  I want to say five weeks.  Looking at the calendar it actually is only three - really two since the order I think.  The week before was spring break.  Gib5on had two days of Corona-related school cancellations prior to that.  I'm looking right at a calendar, so I guess that's the true duration, but it really feels like it has been longer.

This weekend my brother-in-law and his family moved in with us.  They were in a high risk area and got the hell out of Dodge three weeks ago.  For the first two weeks they did a self quarantine in an AirBNB across town.  Then they got a deep discount to stay there so they hung out for another week before coming to us.  At the end of that week the landlord tried to get them to stay again but they declined.  I guess it is a rough month for AirBNB owners.  So we went from two adults and two kids to four adults and three kids.  It has only been two days, but so far it seems to be going well (at least from my perspective).  It is nice to have more people to talk to face to face and even though the kids are spaced age-wise in a way that isn't conducive for playing together it feels like they all get some satisfaction from having other kids around (two of them are too young to actually express that feeling, so there's a lot of assumption there).  Each day has felt like it has gotten smoother.  Finding a way for each of us to get on a conference is a challenge - we're all still working full time.  I think we'll figure it out soon.  They are currently only planning to stay for one week and then go on to my in-laws in Indiana for maybe another month.  It will be a shame to see them go.  We'll see if that impression sticks.  The reasoning behind going is that Gib5on's Grandparents are alone and could use the company.

Work continues apace.  Mrs. TANBI is trying to group most of her meetings in the morning and I am trying to group mine in the afternoon.  That lets each of us spell the other with the kids for roughly half the day.  We'll keep that up for another two weeks until my teaching ends (how long it will end is a significant unknown in my life).  It is an arrangement we are used to because it was what we did before Gib5on went to daycare.  The status quo is going to take a hit next week as Pittsburgh Public Schools will begin official distance learning.  When we first heard about it we were hopeful that we'd be able to manage it without the thing winding up to be more work for us.  Now we're not so sure.  We got Gib5on a rebuilt Chromebook so he can do school without him using one of our machines.  He's pretty stoked about that.  Unfortunately a large portion of what he'll be doing is apparently writing, which kind of requires a touch screen.  So we're already off to a running start.  I looked to see if there's a USB tablet for a Chromebook but an initial search came up empty.  Like so many other things it is just a wait and see thing.  So we'll wait and see.

People seem to be relaxing some.  Just based on what we see walking up and down the street.  More and more groups of folks that really seem unlikely to be families or housemates.  The Governor put a rule in place last week strongly advising face coverings whenever leaving the house.  For a couple of days last week it looked like the majority of folks had masks.  But the last few days, as the weather improved, the number of people with masks has dropped fairly steeply.  I'm not sure why.  This is a fairly easy ask compared with "stay in your house."  We've got masks for all of us, even some small ones for Sabian, although the CDC says kids under two should wear masks.  We figure that in spite of that we should have something in case one of us in the house gets sick.  Late today I put a fairly passive agressive message on the sidewalk in chalk: "If you go out please wear a mask."

Probably won't help, but probably doesn't hurt.

Spinning Our Wheels

When CMU closed campus for the rest of the semester we had to figure out what was going to happen with the balance of this semester's production course.  We were obviously not going to finish building and installing shows but the higher ups were opposed to just declaring the class over for the semester.  There's an objection to giving students credit for work they haven't done as well as an objection to simply abandoning content students are supposed to have.

For some of the various options this was really problematic, or at least really caused them to have to think out of the box.  For technical direction, especially within the framework of the Crazy Scheme it seemed like it was a lot simpler.  Since in our system everyone does everything there would be very little in the way of content loss - and in most of those cases it was with students who (at least in theory) would have an opportunity to visit this content again next year (more in a moment).  Plus there was still real work we could do.  The fourth mini of the calendar is when we start the early phases of the production for the fall.  We usually get into budgeting for 2-3 shows and get drawings started for at least one.  Even working remotely there's no real reason not to continue with that work.

That's not enough work to fill out the units.  We're only a little concerned about that since a decent argument can be made that they are always working more than we assess them at.  But it did seem like it was worth to come up with some more program.  The team decided that they would spread the work they have a little wider and do it redundantly to evaluate different approaches - plus they would take their time, something we never get to do under normal circumstances.  They've also added what would nominally be called "professional development" in other contexts.  They are spending time learning new software for CAD and data management.  Some of them are doing an online OSHA class.  I'm working on getting a few panel discussions together utilizing alumni.

Altogether it felt like we had a plan.  It wasn't perfect and it wasn't "crew" in most cases but it was a good use of time and most importantly it would work in the current setting.  Today at least part of it came off the rails.

The design of the fall shows is a collaboration of a team of designers and a director.   Today we heard that on at least two of the fall shows one or more of the team members was sick.  Maybe capital S sick, maybe just plain sick, we don't know yet.  But the sick they are is sick enough that they aren't working and will likely not be able to meet the deadlines that will allow my team to keep working.

Suddenly we were in a discussion about the expectations around fall production both right now as well as in the fall and through the summer.  Did we need to hold to existing deadlines?  Should we be assigning "understudies" to all the personnel in case of illness?  Could we slip deadlines from the spring since it was unlikely that folks will be working summer production like they normally would and could therefore maybe work on the show through the summer?

All of those are good questions but they got me thinking bigger.  If we're remote in the fall will there be any students?  If we're back in the fall is the Governor going to allow large assembly?  Would we do production if there can't be any audience?  Before the stay at home there was an order prohibiting assembly of more than 50 people.  Our mainstages probably have about 35 people around doing the show.  Would we do the show for an audience of 15?

The interesting thing there is that the only thing we could do that would be under our control would be to cancel right now (although I am not sure we would be permitted to do so even if we wanted to).  Any other decisions are fully dependent on the decisions of outside people.  What will the University decide?  What will the Mayor decide?  What will the Governor decide?  What will students and parents decide?  Students can elect to take a leave of absence into the semester so there's no way we would know how many students and what program they're in until they are standing there in the building.  As a planner by profession this is fairly worst case for data.

In the mean time, the latest revision to the first fall show arrived with my team on time.  Maybe it will be in budget and we can keep going.  Here's hoping.  And here's hoping for a vaccine and sufficient tests by the end of the summer.

Stay at Home Update

I heard something the other day that said we'd been shut in for a month now.  I don't feel like it has been that long.  Spring break basically started Friday, March 6th.  Gib5on was held out of school the following Thursday and Friday I think, so he's been home since 3/12.  That's just about when they called things off for us at CMU for the following Monday - and also when they closed Sabian's daycare program.  That means we've been at home as a group since Monday 3/16.  Today is April 13th - so yeah, about a month.  Although we didn't get the stay at home order until after that, so more like 3 weeks - but I guess there isn't a bright line in this case.

Of course Mrs. TANBI works from home without the stay at home order, so she's been in longer than that.  Her schedule usually includes travel every six weeks or so and weekly trips to a shared office about a half hour away.  None of those trips have been happening.

For the most part my wife and kids really haven't been... anywhere in that time.  They've been out of the house for walks but that's it.  The last family excursion was to a comic book store so Gib5on could show mom the discount Pokemon cards on, I think 3/14 - I wasn't writing it down.

In that window I have been to Costco, Giant Eagle, Staples, Trader Joe's, Uncle Sam's, and my office twice.  A couple of those came before the stay at home order, but most have been after.  Trips out have featured left over N95 masks and nitrile gloves from our renovation flotsam.  The boy came with on that lunch run to Uncle Sam's.  That felt like a mistake in the moment.  He can't keep himself from touching things.  Since then we've had him take a pair of kids gardening gloves on trips out of the house.  On that run I just hand sanitized him over and over.

I felt stupid with a mask and gloves at the grocery the first time.  I brought both but only used the gloves.  This was more than two weeks ago and pretty much nobody else had masks that trip.  That's been less of an issue more recently.  The governor has issued an order to wear masks in public and so lately you could do so and not feel dumb.  The was a huge increase of people wearing masks end of last week.  But then this weekend the weather was nice and there were many, many people out and the number of masks seemed low.  I guess we'll see if it mattered when we hear the hospitalization numbers in two weeks.

I'm working from home.  I've got six class sessions each week and a handful of meetings.  We're using the Zoom platform and it has been going ok.  I was fortunate this happened in mini 4 and not before.  Most of my content in this mini was easily transferable to online.  We've just been asked to look into what being in this mode for the Fall would be like.  I think my content will be fine as online, but I am going to have a lot more work to do in order to get it ready.

Sabian's schedule is the same as it was with daycare except we're no the daycare.  She's up around 7am.  There's a nap at 10am and another at 2:30 (if we're lucky).  On good days when she's awake we can put her down.  On less good days she needs constant attention.  She's skipping crawling altogether and seems to be days away from walking on her own.  She's been cruising pretty much since the stay at home started.  If there's an upside we're getting to spend a lot of time with her.

Gib5on is having a tougher time.  He's also up around 7.  We're trying to put him on a schedule:

7-8 Breakfast, Screen, Get dressed
8-9 Free play
9-9:30 Morning work
9:30-10 Active play
11-12 Play with Dad
12-12:30 Lunch
12:30-1 Chore
1-2 Play with Mom
2-2:30 Reading
2:30-3:30 Screen
3:30-4:30 Snack and Neighborhood Walk
4:30-5:30 Creative Play
5:30-6:30 Free Play
6:30-7:30 Dinner
7:30-8:30 Get ready for bed, books
8:30 Lights out

As you can see, it is a detailed plan.  Most days it works pretty well and we can juggle slots if we want - or if he wants.  Lately the formative parts of the schedule have been becoming more difficult.  He's feeling cooped up and it is making him impatient.  Thursday of this week he starts official distance learning with his school.  So far we've been getting the worksheets we've been using for his morning work from them, but there hasn't been much contact.  They did two Zoom sessions for some story time.  The whole mode is changing this week.  We're waiting to see if he can handle it. And if we can handle it.  We're hoping more school for him doesn't also mean school for one or both of us.  I guess we'll see.

We're all in good health.  I'm putting on weight.  I'd been on a diet but I dropped off it when the stay at home began.  I restarted today as I was up almost 10 pounds.  As I am sure that would indicate we have plenty of food around.  We're well supplied with other things and there have been deliveries almost daily.  Stores being closed hasn't effected much of the online shopping (although it has slowed down some).  The biggest problem there so far has been gas cylinders for the SodaStream and if we get through this with that being the biggest problem we'll be pretty damn thankful.

More to come.

Working From Home

We're into the third week of doing classes at a distance using Zoom.

As an unintended consequence of the venue change we have had to put our foot down on the gas on a basement renovation that has been meandering along for over a year now.

At the end of last winter, knowing that Sabian was on the way we had to shuffle some of the real estate in the house.  A new kid meant converting an existing office/tv room into a new bedroom.  The only space to create a new office space was the basement which at that point was unfinished.  So last year we hired a bunch of people and started a renovation of the basement.  We added drainage, put up walls and painted, redid all the HVAC and got a new waterheater.  Like most renovations it took a little longer than expected but eventually we had a pretty decent space.

We salvaged the custom desk and base cabinets we had from the existing office for the new space.  But that isn't nearly enough storage, and the upper cabinets won't work in the new space because the ceiling height is somewhat lower.  Enter the folks at Ikea and Target and a bounty of flat pack storage furniture.  We're really a little hazy on what we want the space to be and Mrs. T has been working at this desk for a while now without finishing it out.  That's mostly been enabled by my not using it much at all - so she had lots of space.

The switch to home working has made it impossible for me to eschew the new office space any longer and that meant cohabitating with the Mrs. and that meant that the finishing out of the space had to move forward.  So I got to work on the upper cabinets.  We'd selected some modular shelves from Target.  They aren't intended for horizontal mounting on the wall but theatre people are accustomed to using things in a manner in which they aren't intended.

We wound up with a little bit of an ugly spot in the corner.  With one unit starting in the corner the other unit would have blocked out the access to the end cubbie.  There also was a space between the two units because we didn't size the room based on the size of the available cabinets.  As a wrok around we bought an extra small unit which i cannibalized to create an extension to one unit to fill up the space.  This was extra fun as I was able to use not only my table saw, but also a hole saw kit and my pocket screw kit.  I only regret I wasn't able to work in the purchase of a new tool in order to finish things off.

Next up I'll have to do under cabinet lighting - also salvaged from upstairs.  In order to do that I have to track down a jumper cable for lighting units we bought almost a decade ago.  Fingers crossed.  More pictures to come.

Critical Path 2020

For more than a decade now I have had a staple project in my first year class.  Since the Production Planning class came into being there has been a critical path project and that project survived the transition into Basic PTM and then another transition back into Production Planning.  I use the subject of critical path as a vector to bring in this project where the students have to build and troubleshoot a fairly large Rube Goldberg machine.  The project has become a right of passage for year after year of classes and has also become a tradition within the Design Production community of our program every spring.

Each year I push up against my own feelings about whether I should be assigning the work.  The critical path dimension to the thing is a fairly frail fig leaf.  Although that is the basis, and the final product is a concrete example of a critical path, in truth the students don't learn much about critical path in completing the assignment.  Part of the original motivation for creating the assignment was to come up with something that could not possibly be achieved successfully if left until the last minute.  Historically my class has gotten less attention than some of the other classes the group is taking in this semester and so my assignments often appear to be getting short shrift from the students.  The nature of this project makes it so that it has to be done over a long period of time in order for it to work.  Students ignore it at their peril - and because it is a group project, one student ignores it at the group's peril making it aggressively self correcting.  Over the years this has become less of an issue.  The nature of the thing has percolated through the DP culture and the group has become fairly conscientious about getting a good start.

The other thing it has going for it is the collaboration and teamwork dimension inherent in the project structure.  This is the first true group project this population does in any class, and it sort of sets the tone for many things that follow.  All other things aside this dimension has value.  This year I actually added in some instruction and some process steps designed to emphasize the quality of the group interaction and to maybe even try to teach them something about collaboration on top of just setting them to the task.  I went to our teaching center and brought in some collaboration educators to help.  There was actually too much to do in the time frame I had and I wound up deferring some conflict resolution content until next spring.

That's the history, here are the current events.  In the middle of this year's project we got the shelter in place orders and CMU moved all the classes online.  My class had 3 weeks into the project and were on Spring Break with 2 weeks of work to go after they were return.  Most groups had gotten through their planning and had done a lot of materials scavenging and purchasing.  Some of the groups had started some fabrication and troubleshooting.  At that point we had the possibility of completing the assignment as assigned taken away.  There was just no way to do a collaborative build when the 26 students are spread across nearly as many states (and a couple of countries).  The deliverable had to change.

I had the thought that we could still preserve the event nature of the thing.  I could change the requirements such that each person's last step had to initiate some kind of electronic signal: email, text, phone call and that the next person's first step had to trigger by the receipt of that signal.  Then class could still meet on the due date for a group presentation in real time and they could still have their amalgamated machine.  I dropped this idea for a couple of reasons.  First, the atmosphere of real time problem solving we have in the room for the presentation is chaotic and really depends on them having the support of their classmates.  Having the device hitch up in someone's garage with them working on their own and knowing everyone else is waiting for them to resolve a problem on their own in real time just seemed like too heavy a load.  Second, I became concerned that without the resources available on campus: tools, materials, advisers, and their classmates the whole nature of the craft of the project might no longer be achievable.  We needed something to smooth over that rough spot.

In the end I proposed to the class that we abandon the majority of the group nature of the thing and that each person in their home should have to build a slightly larger machine: 5 steps each instead of 3.  The thought was that in losing the integration we were making it easier and so we would offset that by making each person's contribution larger.  I'd extend the due date some and each student would commit a working trial of their machine to video for submission and then on the due date we would watch all the videos.  I also told them I would have a grad assistant cut all the videos together so they would still have a class artifact at the end of the project.  In order to offset my second concern above I also opened up the definition of "machine" in the context of the assignment telling them that if they though that the making of the thing was going to be too far outside their skillset that they could do an alternate mode.  I suggested that they could do an animation or some kind of puppetry or perhaps some motion storyboard.  In our discussion I left the interpretation of what this meant open and told them that if they had something in mind they were unsure of that they should bring it to me for discussion.

On the whole this was received better than I had anticipated.  I should say that at the point at which I proposed it to the class I was still ready to just chuck the whole thing and chalk it up to unfortunate times.  Had they not had so many hours in already I might have leaned that way from the beginning.  But with the amount of effort they had already put in at the time the circumstances changed just taking what we had to date and calling it done felt less than.  Their biggest objection was losing the group nature of the thing as the planning together of the design and the execution had been a large part of the work they had already done.  In the end they suggested that rather than 5 steps each that they should do four, but that one of the four, the first step, should have to be a recreation of the last step of the prior student - thereby maintaining continuity of the whole thing and providing a small opportunity to collaborate with another student.  That sounded fine with me and we proceeded along those lines.

It turns out that we'd missed a few details in the tweaking of the assignment and one or two of the original dimensions of the assignment dropped out.  I didn't mind that too much.  My biggest concern was that being in an environment where everyone was working alone that some number of them would miss the due date.  That outcome would be very difficult to gloss over with the nature of the day of class I was planning.  There was also something nagging at me about the depth of effort that each student would apply.  With everything developing in the room in front of each other this is largely self-leveling.  With them not seeing their work as it came together I thought some might do way more work than others.  In the end that was just a chance I had to leave to them.

In the end pretty much everyone elected to do actual machines.  We did get a couple of animations and one paper craft puppet show.  Everyone made the due date.  I though everything was appropriate and that the work all in all was great.  We had class today and watched all the videos and a student in the class offered to cut everything together for extra credit and had it done in time to show at the end of the same session.  We didn't get the huge roar from the class the first time the machine completed, and we didn't get a burst of applause from an audience when they saw the thing come together and work, but we did have a fun class where they got to enjoy each other's work and bring a large project to completion - even if it was a different completion.

See for yourself:

Then Again Maybe I Won't

I was going to go out today.  Well, I did go out today.  Gib5on and I went for a walk with Sabian.  She sat in her stroller and he played with a giant tire.

I'm not sure why there's a giant tire there, but it has been a pleasant diversion.

What I mean is that I was going to go to the store today.  I'm out of SodaStream gas and getting that shipped has historically been problematic.  They have them at Staples and there's a Staples pretty close and that store is normally sleepy, so the social distancing there should be easier and more effective than it has been at the grocery store.

So I had a plan and I had the time and I was gonna go.  Then I didn't.

Just seems like soda isn't worth getting my family sick.  I've got this thing in my email .sig now: "STAY HOME - STOP THE SPREAD - SAVE LIVES."  Feels like if I have that in my .sig and am foisting it upon everyone that gets an email from me that maybe going out for soda gas is in conflict with my own brand.

I'm going out tomorrow.  We have a curbside grocery pickup, at least we think we do, and we think they'll have food.  Maybe when I am already out I will stop for soda gas.  Or maybe while I am at the grocery store I should just buy soda and give up the Sodastream for the balance of the social distancing.  I just make diet cola with it anyway.  It's not like stores don't have diet soda.

You don't really save all that much money making it with this gear anyway.

Company Coming

We had people over last night.  It felt really, really strange.

My primary interaction with anyone for the last two weeks has been on a screen.  I have Zoom classes, Zoom meetings, Zoom reunions; we've even done two Zoom Shabbats.  Mrs. T has been doing meetings in Teams.  Even Gib5on has been on screens: he had Zoom kindergarten, Zoom Sunday School, Zoom Karate, a Facetime playdate, and a Facetime visit with his cousins.

Screen, screen, and more screen.  But last night we had guests for dinner, right there in the same room.

A little over two weeks ago Uncle Brooklyn left New York with his family ahead of the COVID-19 wave.  It has turned out to be a decent decision I think.  They've been notified by their landlord that there was someone who tested positive in their play-yard, someplace they certainly would have been had they remained home.  Aside from that specific information, just in general the news from NYC is a little more ominous than anything in Pittsburgh.

So a little over two weeks ago they arrived in Pittsburgh and moved into an AirBNB on the Southside to self-isolate for two weeks to try to determine if their moving in here would be safe for us and safe for them.  That two weeks ended last Saturday.

All in all I am the biggest risk.  Mrs. T has been out for walks in the neighborhood and so has Gib5on and Sabian - but none of them has been in contact with other people at all.  The same is true of our visitors.  They've been out around their neighborhood but they have done all of their shopping through delivery.  Of everyone, I am the only one that has had any real contact outside the house as I have been shopping twice in three weeks.

The first time I went out since they closed the schools (but before the official imposition of social distancing) I brought a mask and gloves, but nobody else was wearing a mask so I felt silly and took it off.  I did wear the gloves though. The second time there were enough other people there wearing masks that I did too - and gloves.  I also went to Home Depot without gloves or a mask - I probably won't do that again.  Senator Toomey is on record now saying PA residents should wear masks in public.  The CDC hasn't changed their recommendation that we shouldn't - but I think that is more about not causing additional shortages more than it is about it not being a decent idea.

So we're all hoping that I was careful enough while I was out.  I guess we'll see.

Treating that optimistically we had my brother in law and his wife and son over for dinner.  It was so strange to have other people in the house.  We routinely have had 20 for dinner in the past but it has only taken two weeks to re-calibrate to being alone pretty much all the time just me and my immediate family.  Sitting at a table with three more people felt surreal.

The plan was originally for them to come stay with us after the two week period but we've since revised it.  They got a screaming deal to extend their AirBNB.  It seems like it is unlikely anyone else is going to want to use it.  So for the time being they are going to stay there where they will have significantly more space and then move in here when they lose their access to that property or when the money starts to feel stupid.  We've given them one of our cars so they could return their rental.  It's not like we're going anywhere.

So we have people to sit and talk to, and Gib5on has someone to play with even though the age relationship isn't optimal (6 and 2).  It's like our three kids are spaced exactly sub-optimally.  But even that is better than nothing in the new normal.

This Was Not a Surprise

That's a Facebook post of mine from January 24th.  I can't help but think how much better off we would all be if people in government had been as anxious as I was at that time.  Maybe they were all too burned out from the impeachment.  Maybe they were too busy trying to sort out the Democratic horse race.  Maybe they never read Station Eleven?  Somehow I found the bandwith to think about all of it.  Would that POTUS or Mitch McConnell or even Nanci Pelosi for that matter had.

This was 100% foreseeable.  The news was there in plain sight.  I'm not sure if this came to me through feeds or NPR or MSNBC.  Certainly not Facebook or Twitter.  It was probably my RSS Reader and the sources there.  So my intelligence gathering apparatus was up to it; we have to assume the national intelligence gathering machine was also up to the task.  It is a pretty sad state of affairs.

Today I sent out a new extra credit assignment to my students (all hunkered down at home and coming to class via Zoom).  The assignment gives one small assignment's worth of extra credit for each hour they spend doing home made PPE for health professionals.  I guess I should have given that assignment January 25th when we all had access to a costume shop and a scene shop rather than whatever gear we have at the house.  So my criticism should extend to myself I guess.

I emailed my Congressperson yesterday to remind him that theatre shops all over the country are out of work and that they have the fabrication capability to help here: sew masks and gowns, assemble face shields, maybe even put together more complicated gear.  It'd need some top down organization though.  Maybe a gap USITT or ESTA could help out with.

I keep seeing ads in my various feeds from entertainment companies: TAIT, Upstaging, ModTruss, Rosebrand all touting their ability to help out and ramp up quickly.  I hope someone besides me sees them. The work is happening.  While looking for stories for the Greenpage I do see articles about costume shops helping local hospitals.  I'll keep my eye out to see if it goes wider.

The New Normal

I feel like I will want to be able to look back at this eventually.  I haven't been doing personal blogging for a myriad of reasons of late but circumstances have changed and it suddenly feels important.

Today marks 15 days since the family has been out of the house beyond walking in the neighborhood.  Two Saturdays ago the boy took me and Mrs. TANBI and his sister to the comic book store so he could show mom the wonders he'd discovered.  That was two days after his school had cancelled out of an abundance of caution in the wake of the spouse of a staffer coming into contact with a suspected COVID-19 patient.  Before the weekend was out PPS had cancelled for two weeks - which ended two days ago.  Two days ago they cancelled through spring break.  The girl's daycare hung in through the following week but has been closed since.  Mrs. TANBI works from home normally now but usually has a trip or two to a local office and those have been stopped for two weeks as well.  The Monday after the comic book store was the start of CMU's spring break and like Thursday or Friday of that week we were told we weren't coming back to campus and that all classes would go online midweek the following week.

That's the frame for the new normal.

I've been out of the house a few more times than the others.  I've made two grocery store trips.  We've been stocking up on frozen and dry goods.  There's a pretty good stock on hand these days and I think the next trip could be a ways down the line.  I didn't do too well on Lysol or hand sanitizer.  We'd bought a large thing of TP before this really broke.  I had a small amount of PPE in my home gear - not enough to matter anywhere else, but enough that I can feel safe, if silly, when I go to the store.  I had to go to the Home Depot once.  I sheared off a bolt on a new yard toy for Leo.  The social distancing at the home center wasn't great.  Yesterday I walked to a place in the neighborhood for takeout lunch.  The boy came with.  In hind-site that felt a little reckless.

So now me and Mrs. TANBI are working from home together.  While we're doing that we're also handling a six year old and a 10 month old.  PPS hasn't really set up any formal distance learning yet.  Their main concern appears to have been getting food to the kids that depend on them for meals.  We're not too worried about the boy's progress.  10 weeks of kindergarten shouldn't be life altering, but we are concerned about the loss of socialization.  He hasn't played with a friend in over two weeks.  Even if that is the new normal it isn't all that normal.  My wife and I are splitting the day a lot like we did when the boy was born.  My work schedule is largely the same as it was then - one of the few times the lumbering pace of change at the university has worked for us.  So I watch the kids in the morning and Mrs. TANBI (MT?) watches them in the afternoon.  "Watch" is a misnomer as often the younger child will refuse to be put down for long stretches and although the older child is capable of entertaining himself his predisposition is to want to play with one of us.

The girl at least still has a two a day nap schedule which is fairly dependable.  We've put together a regular schedule for the boy that involves free play, parent play, creative play, substitute school work, physical activity, and screen time.  Unfortunately the last two are often the same and if not supervised he often just sits down and watches the exercise video rather than moving along with it.  It is all a work in progress.

The constant paying of attention is exhausting.  Both of us should probably be doing more work hours than we are, but after we get both kids in bed unless there is a deadline crushing down we usually just crash.  It is going to take a few more days to get used to the kind of pace we're keeping now.

There's certainly more to say, but I think it is going to be a long stretch with plenty of other opportunities to post.  We'll see if it sticks this time.

Stay home.  Stop the spread.  Save lives.