Chadwick Boseman (1976 – 2020)

 

As Jackie Robinson and James Brown

I opened my computer and refreshed Google News.  I read that Chadwick Boseman passed away at the age of 43 from colon cancer.  He had been fighting it for four years.

The news is always reporting the passing of celebrities and luminaries.  At the end of each year, there is an accounting of who has passed.  I always look it over and reflect a bit on those whose work I admired.  During the year, I see others post their thoughts on when a celebrity pass on.  I rarely do.  I have pondered now and again why I am not more effected and emotional about these things.  I certainly admired many of these luminaries and saddened by their deaths.  I just never felt close enough to their work to feel the need to express myself on their passing.  I reserve that for friends and family, people I really knew.

Tonight, was different.   I was taken aback by the passing of this younger man.  Without knowing it, I realized I was fan.  I loved his portrayals of Jackie Robinson in 42 (2013), James Brown in Get on Up (2014), and, most recently, Thurgood Marshall in Marshall (2017).  I have watched each of these movies several times.  He played all three strong historical and very different figures extremely well.

I first loved 42 because of his excellent performance matching brilliantly with Harrison Ford’s equally strong portrayal of Branch Rickey.  I watched it when it first came on cable.  I cannot say I had the same enthusiasm for Get on Up and Marshall.  I did eventually watch both and was amazed by Mr. Boseman’s performances. 

In most of the news releases on Mr. Boseman’s passing, they refer to him as the star of Black Panther (2018).  I also saw this movie and enjoyed it.  But, I really liked his work in the biographical films much more.  Black Panther did, however, have more press and positive reviews than the three biographical films.

I was sorry to hear of his passing.  I realized I knew nothing about him beyond his performances in these movies.  For some reason, I thought he was English mostly because his name was Chadwick.  Tonight, I learned that he was born in Anderson, SC on November 29, 1976.  He went to college at Howard University and graduated in 2000 with a degree in Directing.  He went on to study film in the UK and New York City.  In 2008, he moved to Los Angeles and transition to acting.  42 was his first starring role.  He did not disclose the cancer and kept working.   Somehow, it makes his fine films even more memorable and important to me.  In this biographical films, he certainly left us all a great legacy

I am very sorry to hear of his passing.

The First Day of School

Today is the first day of school in this very different year of 2020.

Normally, first day of school is like the start of a new year, maybe even more so.  People go to school to better themselves, to expand their minds, to interact with others, and to learn.  The essence of school is self-improvement even if attending may not really be a choice for most.

It is exciting for students.  I was always enamored with this time of year as a student.  It was almost magical.  The first day of school is the start of something new.  The first day of school is exciting and full of hope.  It is new teachers, new school supplies, new books, and new clothes.  It is like the opening day of baseball, especially when I was a kid.  Every team has the potential to win the World Series.  Every kid in school has the potential to self-actualize and there is theoretically no limit to how much they can overachieve.  Of course, within a few days, reality sets in and the excitement wears off allowing for routine and, sometimes, drudgery to set-in. 

I was excited when my kids went to school.  I loved their first day of school.  My daughter always sent me a first day of school photo from kindergarten through her teaching career.  Now she sends me photos of my grandson’s first day.  He looks so happy.  Since becoming a professor, I do the same for my grandkids.  This year I will send two photos: with and without a mask.

This first day of school is very different.  We are opening with excitement but it is tempered.  It is tempered because of this lingering pandemic.  We have done a lot of work to prepare to be able to open our university to a mix of online, remote, and face-to-face classes.  We have developed protocols for safety and sanitation to keep our students, staff, and faculty well.  Many students want to be on campus and interact with each other.  Many faculty and staff also want to be back in the classroom and offices respectively.  It is our jobs but it is also a calling and thus a labor of love. 

This being said, there are many of us who are in a high risk categories or live with others are in high risk categories.  Such faculty members are teaching totally online.  Likewise, there are students who are in high risk categories even though they are young or live with an elderly relative.  These students are attend classes remotely.  Some students, faculty, and staff are just plain old afraid.

Our classrooms have been rearranged to facilitate social distancing and thus hold less students.  As a result, some classes have more students than seats.  This requires platooning our classes so that half the class is present and the other half is joining in online.  While in class, everyone is required to wear masks, clean their workspaces as they enter, and not rearrange the socially distanced furniture.  Part of it will feel very familiar and part will seem odd and maybe a little eerie.

So, it is the first day of school.  I am filled with mix of hope, excitement, and concern. I hope all our planning and preparation yields a positive experience for us all.  We are fairly confident we can manage the classroom experience.  We are counting on our students to temper their youthful exuberance and follow the regimen in their free time and on weekends.

It is the first day of school.

Contagion: No Michigan Football 😒

 

The Big 10 has postponed the football season for this fall.  They hope is to have the season in the Spring assuming that the pandemic sufficiently subsides.  The announcement was made on Tuesday, August 11.  The Big Ten was the first of the Power Five Conferences to make the announcement.  The Pac-12 conference followed later the same day.  The other three conferences in the Power Five, ACC, SEC, and Big 12, have yet to make such an announcement.  As of this writing, they still plan on proceeding with the season. 

It is saddest for the players who are in the prime of their football careers.  Giving up a season in any circumstances is unprecedented.  It is not clear how it will influence their development future earning potential.  There is certainly real money involved for those that have a chance to go pro.  Luckily, for these student athletes, their education will still be on track and perhaps even accelerate .

The coaches who have put a lot of effort into training, strategy, and developing and implementing protocols to make practices and games as safe as possible for everyone involved.  I imagine their pay is guaranteed to some degree.  But, they are fierce competitors and would much rather play than be relegated to months more of training. 

At this level, football is a huge money maker and funding most of the athletic departments budgets and provided the lion share of the departments's profits.  All these factors, I am certain, contributed to the decision to play vs postpone for the ACC, SEC, and Big 12.

Apart from putting health and safety over financial considerations, two things contributed to the suspension of the season for the .  First and foremost, football is an up close and personal game.  Players are in each other’s faces on the line of scrimmage and in both blocking and tackling while breathing heavy at the same time.  One contagious player could infect ten others easily.  Secondly, and this is anecdotal to be sure, college football players have better social lives than most other students.  It is hard to stop young people of that age and popularity from having fun as shown by other teams and even general student bodies around the country.  Witness the outbreaks in the student populations at Notre Dame, Chapel Hill, and others this week that had these schools pivoting to online in the opening days of the semester.

All the Big 10 schools voted for the postponement except Nebraska and Iowa.  Almost immediately, Nebraska hinted they might join another conference for this year.  The sports “fans” on social media all jumped all over Nebraska for this demanding that Nebraska be thrown out of the Big Ten.  There was speculation on the Michigan Facebook fan pages that Ohio State, Penn State, and Michigan might join the SEC for this season.  There was another proposal floating around that Michigan and Ohio State should just play each other in a one game season.  I have no clue how valid or far out some of these theories.  I think they are all pure speculation.

Where do I stand on this? 

Well I am a pretty dyed in the wool Michigan fan.  I have been since the 1968 upset of Ohio State in Bo Schembechler’s first year as coach.  I have been a season ticket holder since 1971.  When we lived in Michigan, I attended every game except when there was a family wedding or funeral.  When we moved to Connecticut in 1990, I still bought season tickets but used them less frequently.  When I cannot attend, I watch the games on TV. 

It will be a very odd year to say the least.  I have looked forward to the start of the Michigan season for fifty-two years.  I look forward to the games and plan my Saturdays and weekends around them.  Sure, I will watch other games, but the main course has always been Michigan game.  The “bye” weekends felt empty… now I am facing season full of byes.  At least, we won't lose to Ohio State this year.

I suppose I could watch and cheer for Notre Dame.  My wife, daughter, and grandson are big fans.  Yeah, I could do that but, dang, it was painful to even type this notion.  I have an Oklahoma shirt but that is only because it was on deep discount at TJ Maxx.  Texas is a possibility… but not compelling.  I could watch Michigan replays but I have been doing that all summer and even though Michigan is 36-0, I have grown tired of watching games that I have already seen and definitely know the outcomes.

No Michigan Football.  I am really sorry there is no season, but I get it.  I think they made the correct decision for health and well-being of all involved.  These are crazy times and doing without football is the least of the things we have to be worried about. 

And just like that… It’s August

    

Yikes, it is August.  We are entering the sixth month of the pandemic. 

At the beginning of July, I saw this graphic on Facebook.  I said “Amen,” when I read it.  We needed and collectively wanted a good news month.  But July was anything but that.  Whatever optimism we were feeling at the end of June was wiped out by the surges in several states and the slight increases in many more.  The politicization of the pandemic, civil unrest, the “science is bunk” fake news, and the crazy “no one can make me wear a mask” thing has noticeably taken everyone’s level of weariness up a few notches… mine included. 

I am a bit surprised by number of people that said, “watch this pandemic miraculously end after the elections.”  I have heard this from, what to me, is a diverse cross-section of the population that includes supporters of both candidates, mask wearers and mask haters, conspiracy mongers and non-conspiracists, as well as smart and not so smart folks. 

I am hoping that August will follow the advice that someone gave to July at the end of June.  I hope it does come in, takes a seat, doesn’t touch a darned thing, and keeps quiet. The reality is that we seem to be headed in an opposite direction.  It is very disappointing.  People are attempting to resume a normal lifestyle again albeit a masked, hand sanitized, and socially distant facsimile thereof. 

August will also be a short and busy month.  Classes for the new school year start on August 24.  My university is starting with a mix of face-to-face and online classes.  Of course, depending on the state of the pandemic in Illinois, Chicago, and our campus, we have to be prepared to move everything online if needed.

With social distancing requirements, all of our classrooms have been reconfigured to occupancies of only a third to a half of the number of students the rooms used to accommodate.  As a result. most of the face-to-face classes will be hybrid.  Hybrid?  This is where part of the class attends a Tuesday session of the class while the other half joins in online via MS Teams (Microsoft’s answer to Zoom).  For the Thursday session of the class, the face-to-face and online groups switch places.  To complicate things a little more, some students have opted to only attend online.  This shouldn’t be hard to manage for students or professors.

I think everyone thought that by this time, we would have “flattened the curve” and be cautiously reopening with the proper social distancing and PPE protocols.  We would be starting the school year, at all levels, in a better state than the reality we will confront in a few short weeks. 

Amid all of this, professional basketball and hockey have resumed their seasons that were suspended in March.  Baseball started a shortened season.  Players have come down with the virus.  Baseball games have been postponed, forfeited, or vacated because some teams have too many players in isolation or quarantine or something like that.  To be frank, I am not following it that closely nor am I watching any of the games. 

Football?  It looks dim for many college leagues and probably the NFL as well.  At this writing the Big Ten has yet to make a decision on the upcoming season.  The Division III conference our university competes in has already postponed all fall sports.  They hope to have all sports compete in the spring.  I do tend to watch replays of Michigan Football.  Not surprisingly, I watch games that we win.  We are 31-0 in this fake summer season.  This year, this may have to suffice.

The economy?  Savvy investors made out pretty well in selling off the stocks that home isolation would devastate and buying up securities that would flourish in this new market.  My fear is that unemployment and businesses impacted negatively by this pandemic will drag the economy down at some point.  I think we are close to that tipping point.

A few closing thoughts:

First, we are still learning about this virus as to how it behaves and how it will impact us long term.  Scientists are working furiously on vaccines and treatments.  There seems to be some positive news in the progression toward a vaccine. 

Lastly, are we as a country behaving like a fat person?  The fat person, and I know whereof I speak, musters up some resolve and goes on a diet, loses twenty or thirty pounds over several months, and then happily and proudly proclaims victory.  Yay!  The former fatty returns to their old habits and gains forty pounds quicker than it took to lose thirty.  The fat again person realized they wasted months of dieting effort for naught and will have to start anew from an even worse position than they began.  The start of the next diet is compromised because  their mood and self-esteem spiraled downward because the first one failed.

Sounds like us.  Perhaps, it will all go away with the election.