Warning! Warning! Warning! Link fu post about school reopening and social / emotional /mental health

Look, writing about kids and social / emotional / mental health is, all by itself, no matter how it is done, deserving of a trigger warning. Everyone was (once) a child, which means that reading about the social, emotional and mental health of children reminds one of that childhood and that, all by itself, no matter the content, is hazardous.

So, Warning! Danger!

OK, so I have no idea if I am going to put together a real post about the reopening of schools and balancing social / emotional / mental health of kids vs. you know, killing them / their family / their friends / their teachers. But I am going to put together some links here and see what I think after a bit.

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/14/855641420/with-school-buildings-closed-children-s-mental-health-is-suffering

This is an NPR post from the middle of May. Remember, in the middle of May, things were super dire in the Northeast, and not bad at all in most of the rest of the country. Effective techniques were adopted in Seattle and the Bay area to keep their initial outbreaks from swamping their hospitals, however, which created a cohort of people who were talking and writing about the epidemic as Not That Bad / Manageable, while simultaneously seeing the massive impact on their lives of the measures taken to keep it from getting that bad.

This article quotes a couple of people who had not yet seen how bad it could get personally (Rand Paul, the pediatrician) to counter a quote from Fauci. Then there is a section in the middle about “Sarah” and her daughter “Phoebe”. Dad is mentioned as also having a job in tech, but while Mom has taken administrative leave, Dad is apparently working and the parents have thus seemingly adopted a Trad Gender approach to managing the abruptly worsened workload.

It is almost impossible to imagine that “Sarah”, the mother, is happy with this situation, and for a variety of reasons, we had not yet seen men / fathers really stepping up in a big way to take on their share of the suddenly worsened workload (I recognize that not all men / fathers did step up, and apparently I have SILs who know a lot of people getting divorced. Pretty sure those are not unconnected, however, it could just be that spending a lot of time together forced people to realize that they actually hate each other.

Anyway. Phoebe is

I FUCKING WARNED YOU SO DO NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT WHAT COMES NEXT, ALL RIGHT?

Engaging in death wish verbal expression, and also expressing some deeply problematic perceptions of family dynamics that may or may not have a basis in reality. Phoebe has just turned 5 and her birthday party was canceled. I have NO MORTAL CLUE what any of this has to do with school. Anyone who thinks that a return to school is going to help Phoebe with her Not Caring About Living or Dying suffers from a dangerous degree of magical thinking about the Powers of School.

I mean, on some level, by letting mom go back to work, and putting Phoebe in an environment full of other kids to play with and other adults to pay attention to her, _maybe_ Phoebe will become less depressed and thus less death-wish-y. Maybe. But she might actually have really significant other problems that were going to crop up even without a pandemic canceling her birthday party. And, you know, exposing some family issues that they could maybe use some help with.

OK, diving back in to get more linkage.

Upworthy provided a link to something I have seen circulating in many places

https://www.upworthy.com/school-reopening-kids-mental-health

This is really good amplification; hard to beat the rhetoric or framing. Thoughtful. From a person with current, relevant expertise.

This is a stunningly Say Nothing piece.

https://www.masslive.com/opinion/2020/07/the-case-for-reopening-schools-in-massachusetts-guest-viewpoint.html

Basically, a couple of medical types endorse DESE recommendations, while fully endorsing the Kids Do Not Get It Or Transmit It (much) frame.

I want to point to two particular paragraphs as really egregious:

”Children with emotional, psychological, or developmental disabilities often receive necessary services through schools. Because some of these services were put on hold, continued school closures have been especially detrimental to this group of vulnerable children.

The harms of remote learning have been felt most significantly by children already at risk. Children who rely on school lunch programs faced added food insecurity. Lack of access to technology and online resources significantly limited remote learning. We remain concerned with how school closures will exacerbate achievement disparities across income levels and ethnic and racial groups.”

We offer food and other services to kids through the public school system _because the kids are already there and it is easy_. Reopening the public school system in order to deliver food and other services is NOT easy. Actually it is breathtakingly short sighted and displays poor judgment.

Also, delivering services in this way (at schools, and only to people at schools — so, you know, if you are hungry or in need of social services of any sort but you are aged out of schools, fuck you anyway) is just another example of The Worthy Poor / Respectability Politics. Marginalized people do not want to get what they need while also being put at risk any more than anyone else does. Not a good look for liberals, no matter how Lady Bountiful they feel when they say it.

_Astrid & Veronika_, Linda Olsson

This book attracts really odd reviews, sometimes with basic errors (in no universe is it reasonable to interpret Veronika as a New Zealand writer, and yet, the in NYT review when this thing came out, the reviewer described her thus).

So, you know, here is another odd review!

The body count in this thing is kinda bonkers! I mean, one grows to expect Scandinavian writers to produce stark landscapes, colorful traditional garb and odd food that the people eating it absolutely love. And body counts! But you know usually those are murder mysteries. This is a book that is nominally about friendship. And yet, so many bodies.

SPOILERS!

Astrid’s mother kills herself when Astrid is a young girl.

Astrid kills her own baby, when the baby is less than one year old.

Veronika’s boyfriend dies in the New Zealand surf that he loved so much.

Astrid’s much hated husband “dies” in a care home; it is quite possible that Astrid sped that along, but the book does not say as much.

Finally, Astrid dies at her own hand. If you live in a universe with Astrid, and you are not Veronika, look out! It does not go well for you.

There are a lot of descriptions, many of them involving women passing their hands over their flat stomachs. *shrug*

If you love the “Forced Proximity” trope in romance novels, but are looking for a little something with along the lines of young woman with recent tragedy in her life rescues an old woman from lifelong depression, and ultimately inherits the old woman’s house a little later, this is your book!

Hopefully, you don’t actually need to have things spelled out to you, like, what is up with the whole oh, red hair, that is bad, thing. Also, why can’t these people actually talk to each other with words, instead of with minor gestures and so forth?

This was a Mayberry book selection which we will be discussing in zoom on Monday. Looking forward to what other people make of it. I signed up for it because it was supposed to be a great depiction of friendship. I now have a _lot_ of questions of what the person who recommended it thinks friendship is all about.

Trash Pickup

I know, you are thinking, what could that mean!?!

Just what it says. We live in a place where you get to deal with your garbage yourself. You can take it to the town transfer station — but you have to buy a sticker to use it. Alternatively, you can pay a private hauler. In our case, because _I believe in commodification so so much_, we pay Waste Management. Other people in our neighborhood use Republic (because, duh, Coke and Pepsi) and Mr. Trashman (the local, dare I say it, artisanal option).

Anyway. Our trash day is Thursday. For some weeks now, we have not actually had the trash picked up on Thursday, but received an email saying, uh, yeah, we’ll be there Friday. This week, we got that email and, bonus! Extra special! just for us! Ok, probably not. We’ll be there Saturday, and, fortunately, they were. Because otherwise maybe we, too, would be looking into the local, artisanal option.

Why is this happening?

My money is on: overwhelmed because of C19, since that is the answer to every question. Let’s ask google!

Link fu!

In Philadelphia:

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/coronavirus-philly-trash-pickup-schedule-delayed-recycling-philadelphia-20200717.html

In Sarasota County:

https://www.yoursun.com/englewood/sarasota-co-suspends-yard-waste-pickups/article_adee911c-c865-11ea-9692-2b768f26956f.html

There is a theme! (The Arlington county, VA problem seems to be an electrical outage? Really?!? https://www.arlnow.com/2020/07/13/arlington-residential-trash-collection-delayed/) In general, volume of pickup is up 25%-50% vs year ago, thus, routes are taking longer to run and require more equipment. Basically, overwhelmed due to C19, with a little sprinkling of people who are quarantining because of exposure.