blogcutter | Entries tagged with fall

What lessons did we learn from the first wave of COVID-19 and how well are we applying them to battling the second wave, now (from most accounts) upon us?

First, it certainly looks as if the authorities did not respond quickly enough when the first wave hit. Let's leave aside for now the historical arguments about letting our health care systems and services deteriorate in the years and decades leading up to 2019 and consider the weeks leading to the lockdown in mid-March 2020.

We were told that the risks from the virus were low unless you were already frail, ill or elderly. We were told that it was more benign than H1N1 or H1N5. We were told that it would do more harm than good to wear a face mask unless you happened to be a health care worker involved in direct hands-on, face-to-face patient care.

The advice on masks persisted for several months after the March lockdown and it was not until some time in July that non-medical masks became mandatory in most indoor public spaces. Of course, some people were smart enough not to take the official advice at face value, with the result that even those little dust masks sold at hardware stores were sold out for weeks!

We were also instructed to stay home as much as possible and stay out of public parks (except for quick walk-throughs), never mind that outdoor spaces are felt to be much safer than indoor ones and nature was beginning to wake up for the spring and the weather was getting a little nicer too. While we did manage to pick up a maple syrup order at Fulton's, we had to remain in the car and were forbidden any access to their trails, even though social distancing would have been very easy out there. As for Gatineau Park? Forget it! Police policed the bridges between Ottawa and Gatineau, allowing only such interprovincial travel as the police deemed essential. This lasted from just after Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau finished her self isolation and managed to spirit her kids across to Quebec until the Monday of the Victoria Day weekend when barricades and checkpoints were reluctantly removed. And don't get me started on all those bylaw officers handing out exorbitant fines and punching out innocent members of the public for bringing their kid to the park while black.

There was of course some advice that was good and reasonable - like washing our hands and keeping our distance from others - which most of us followed and it paid off, at the time at least.

Throughout July and August, re-opening proceeded in cautious stages of phased re-openings. We even managed to re-open schools in September, although there have definitely been some mis-steps and growing pains.

And now? Well, the increases in infection rates are disturbing, to be sure. New infections are mostly occurring in people in their thirties, maybe because most of them are just getting launched and do not feel they can afford to spend too long in lockdown. Some of them do become seriously ill with the virus and some pass the virus on to others even if their own symptoms are mild.

But I'll end on a hopeful note. I do see that the authorities are backing off quite a bit on the heavy-handed measures, looking at them as a last resort (or at least not a first resort) and stressing education, information and individual responsibility and using one's judgement and common sense.

For now, we are limiting interpersonal mingling as far as is reasonable, because it's the right thing to do. It's not always fun, particularly for those who live alone or who have a naturally expressive, outgoing sort of personality.

We'll be doing things a little differently this year - Thanksgiving, Halloween, probably Christmas too. But we'll still mark the occasions somehow.

Anyone for a new autumn or winter hobby?

https://www.ottawamatters.com/local-news/new-holiday-traditions-winter-activities-dr-etches-on-turning-the-covid-19-tide-2768461?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

Current Mood: drained
Current Location: home
Current Music: Where have all the flowers gone?

Back to school. Back to other activities. Halloween. All those things will be happening in the next couple of months and they will happen very differently from how they occurred last year and in years before that.

First, back to school. In Ontario, a majority of parents are opting for in-person schooling for their kids, although a significant minority (in the 25 to 30% range last I heard) have chosen online-only. Supply teachers have some major and very valid concerns about safety, since they tend to go to many different classrooms over the course of the school year. Parents are concerned that the Ontario government has not provided funding for smaller classes, which obviously means more teachers (or at least responsible adults who can oversee them). Wouldn't the obvious solution be to cut class sizes in half (or at least significantly reduce them) and assign the supply teachers to a particular class for the entire year? Classroom space might still be an issue, but the boards of education have portable classrooms they could press into service and the mayor has offered unused space in city buildings as well. Outdoor classes may be an option for part of the year, but obviously there will be days when inclement weather precludes that solution.

Apparently the Girl Guides are back in business too. They plan to hold outdoor meetings this year although it seems door-to-door cookie sales may not be possible. Guides and Scouts have always been, to a great extent, about outdoor activities like camping - in all kinds of weather - so maybe that will work.

And speaking of door-to-door... there's Halloween to consider as well. Will there be any trick-or-treating this year? Masks are very much a part of Halloween but bobbing for apples had become a bit of a no-no even before COVID-19. Halloween parties? Maybe not, although Vera Etches is on record as saying that things like costume parades might be possible. Unwrapped candy or treats? Another no-go area.

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: virtual classroom
Current Music: Monster Mash

Tomorrow is back to school for most of the students in the area. There's also the beginning of a nip in the air, particularly in the evenings as the autumn equinox draws near. But fall is also my favourite season, for a number of reasons. I've always looked on it as a time of new beginnings.

For me, it marks the beginning of my life as a senior citizen, qualifying for free transit on Wednesdays and Sundays, monthly OAS and CPP payments, reduced admission fees for museums, art galleries and tickets to certain events. I'm a great believer in aging in place, remaining at home and relatively independent for as long as possible - though I'm certainly not averse to hiring certain support services to perform task I'd rather not have to bother with, like snow clearing and lawn-mowing!

Gerontologists offer plenty of advice on healthy aging, but they all seem to mention two things: being physically active and being socially active. Oddly enough, mental and intellectual stimulation seems to get shorter shrift, with the possible exceptions of learning a new language or musical instrument.

Some people manage to accomplish the physical and social components in one fell swoop - they join a fitness club or take fitness classes and work out as a group. But that's not really my thing. I do get out for a walk almost every day, whether to the park, the grocery store, the bus stop or in inclement weather just around the corner to check for mail. I also try to do a short yoga routine most days. But the idea of group exercising is really not very appealing, even though the Arthritis Society woman (whom I sometimes speak with at my rheumatologist's office) thinks it would be a good idea. I think the last time I was involved with anything like that was Lamaze classes in the early 1980s!

What about social activities? I'm certainly not a life-of-the-party type, although I do enjoy outings with friends or visiting with our kids and grandkids. As far as more structured activities go, there are my weekly Toastmasters meetings (usually followed by a series of little errands I do on my own) and my memberships in Quarter Century Club, the Retired Members Club of my union, CARP, Ex Libris, Federal Retirees, etc. - which come to think of it is quite an extensive list - but I only participate in their activities if I want to or if my schedule permits, and many of them are only annual or semiannual anyway. I also sometimes enrol in Carleton's Learning in Retirement courses or one-time lectures, and there are several coming up that look tempting.

So I guess you could say I choose social activities according to my own interests and preferences. I've never seen the point of socializing for its own sake. I'm also not very good at or not very interested in casual acquaintanceships or striking up conversations with strangers the way some people are. I really need and value my alone-time and if I don't get enough of it, I want to scream "I can't hear myself think!!!" The way I sort out a thorny problem is to really sit by myself and focus.

It's almost an article of faith that the safest neighbourhoods are the ones where you know your neighbours. But while I'm not averse to exchanging the occasional friendly word or helping out if someone is in a bind, I'm just not up to the physical, mental or emotional effort I would need to expend to maintain regular ongoing ties with other people living in the neighbourhood, people with whom I may have little in common other than geographical proximity.

And of course there are all those basic personal maintenance activities that seem to take over more and more of your life as you move up the age-ladder. I'm overdue for blood tests and should be scheduling a mammogram, and then there's that eye appointment at the Riverside coming up in October... but well, it beats the alternative!

Current Mood: content
Current Location: home base
Current Music: Doors

In a Staples commercial, that time isn't Christmas. In fact, Christmas seems to be a bit of a dirty word these days, even though most people I know celebrate Christmas and not primarily in a religious way, either! No, it refers to back-to-school.

Actually, autumn, back-to-school time and Thanksgiving have long been my favourite time of year. They feel like a time of renewal, even though the leaves are getting ready to fall off the trees, the geese and other migratory birds are flying south, and nature is hibernating and going dormant.

Is it a good time for most families? The implication of the commercial seems to be that the adults are tired of having their kids around, that there's been just a bit too much family togetherness for their liking.

Staples is not the only organization making the link between Christmas and back-to-school. Ottawa's Christmas Exchange has rebranded itself as the "Caring and Sharing Exchange" and started providing school supplies to low-income families. Because for most families, if fall is the most wonderful time of the year, it's also the most expensive time.

I've donated to the Christmas Exchange for a number of years now, following a family tradition. I recall as a kid, my mother would pick up a few extra packages of nylon stockings - a luxury in those days - to donate. The charity has always been non-denominational although I think at one time, they had a policy of dispensing their largesse only to the "working poor", not those on welfare - this notion of "deserving" versus "undeserving" poverty and helping those who help themselves. Or maybe I've got that wrong and the philosophy behind the policy was that the state was already looking after those on public assistance, whereas the working poor tended to get lost in the shuffle.

Although I'm still sending them annual donations, I have to say that I'm seriously conflicted about their expanded role. While it's undeniable that back-to-school can be a heavy financial burden for many families, I firmly believe that most school supplies should be provided by the schools themselves, at least for the elementary and perhaps intermediate grades. After all, half of our property taxes in this province are earmarked to support public education - and I've always considered that to be a valid price to pay to support a public good like that.

When I was at school, notebooks and pencils and paper and textbooks were all provided to us up to grade eight. They even provided ink and pens too, if you didn't mind scratching away with a straight pen - the type with cod-liver-oil on the nib that you had to lick off before the nib would work properly. In grade eight, we actually had a somewhat eccentric home-room teacher who demanded that we use these nefarious pens until our handwriting was good enough that we could "graduate" to a fountain or cartridge pen. Ballpoint pens were strictly taboo, though - perhaps not surprising since in those days, they were very messy and blotchy and leaky things. Anyway, I'm not sure what the rationale was for thinking we'd have neater penmanship wielding a straight pen than if we were allowed to use the more user-friendly fountain or cartridge pens. Whatever the case, I seem to recall he told us some time between Christmas and Easter that we could all start using fountain pens, since if we hadn't perfected our straight-penmanship by now, there was no hope for us!

Nowadays, of course, kids hunch over keyboards and no one worries about their handwriting any more. As for adults, we have fewer and fewer occasions to sign our names and more and more PINs to forget!

But I digress. By the time I reached high school, we had to provide all of our school supplies except the textbooks - but there WERE school fees to cover at least a portion of the textbook cost. And if we lost any of them, we had to replace them at our own (or really, our parents') expense. Only in grade 13 did we have to buy all our own texts (this, I believe, was a change from when my siblings had been in high school a few years earlier, and textbooks were the family's responsibility right from grade nine onwards).

If we went back to having school supplies provided in elementary school, this would make for better standardization - the kids would have the supplies that the teachers wanted them to - and the school board could take advantage of bulk purchasing and economies of scale. And there would be far less stigma and embarrassment for the children of low-income families.

But, you might protest, we don't have unlimited funds here. Well, no. So I'll briefly outline a few of my ideas as to how the school system could save money.

First of all, it's tremendously wasteful that we have TWO school systems in Ontario - one for the "public" schools and one for the Roman Catholics. But I realize that can't be changed overnight, so I'll leave it aside for now.

Secondly, what's with all the bussing? On the one hand, we lament the growing obesity rate of today's children but on the other, we bus children far from their neighbourhoods and supply the transportation at public expense. I couldn't believe it when I read that the public school board was thinking of providing those yellow buses even to high school students - as the Catholic schools apparently already do. Couldn't we reframe how we think about this, and consider it a basic right of most elementary school-age kids to live within walking distance of their schools, and high school students perhaps at a farther distance, but still accessible by public transit? That would save the boards considerable money on transportation. Yes, in some areas it would mean some sparsely-populated classrooms but given that teachers have been bellyaching about high teacher-pupil ratios for decades, is that really such a bad thing? I also think that split grades are not such a bad thing. After all, the old-fashioned one-room schoolhouses were the ultimate in split grades - the older children helped the younger ones and learned responsibility, and many subjects can be tackled by children of various ages, just with a greater or lesser degree of sophistication. I was very impressed recently, for example, with a project on photography that the students (of all ages, K-6 or possibly K-8) at Brooke Valley School in Perth had done. Mind you, I'm not suggesting a return to rote learning and corporal punishment or some of the other aspects of old-fashioned education.

I also have some reservations about full-day kindergarten. It's very expensive. Early childhood education is certainly important, but does it have to be in a classroom setting? There's probably no going back on that one but at the very least, it seems to me that it shouldn't entirely supercede half-day kindergarten for parents who prefer the half-day model. More important, in my view, is preparing teenagers for what they'll do after leaving high school. That includes possible attendance at university, although that should NOT be presented as the only socially acceptable option, and not necessarily something to be done right away, either. What about encouraging a "gap year" as they do in many parts of Europe?

Lots of issues. Lots of possible future blog entries here!

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Location: the school of life
Current Music: Staples commercial

... but it was a beautiful, fall-like day for the Dyke March last Saturday. I found it a congenial gathering, just the right size (unlike the Pride March, which seems larger, more commercial - though I guess in some ways it's a GOOD thing that it's become so mainstream during my lifetime!) Anyway, I liked the friendliness, the intergenerational aspect, the consensual and refreshingly egoless style of the Dyke March. In flavour, it was very reminiscent of the consciousness-raising group I used to go to at the Ottawa Women's Centre during the mid-1970s. The fact that my daughter was performing afterwards in Minto Park and that both grandchildren were along for the ride didn't hurt either!

Fall itself has a rather different rhythm to it for me these days. Back when I was in elementary school, of course, it meant new clothes, new school supplies, a new teacher and group of classmates and often a new school too - although we lived in the same house throughout my school career, they were forever changing school boundaries as one or another school became severely overcrowded and new schools were built. And let me tell you, "overcrowding" had a very different meaning in my young day! I just have to laugh when parents these days complain that their kids' school is overcrowded because their kid is in a class with 25 or 30 other kids - when I was little, that would have been a SMALL class! My kindergarten class had over sixty kids in it (though mind you, there were two teachers). In subsequent grades, classes of 40 to 45 (with only one teacher) were the norm, and a teacher counted herself lucky if she had under 35 kids in her class - even if it was one of those now-dreaded split grades.

When I headed off to university in 1971, university classes didn't get underway until somewhere in mid-September (usually between the 15th and 20th of the month as I recall) and for many students, that meant an extra couple of weeks that they could work and earn money for the next year's tuition - though even allowing for inflation, postsecondary education was not nearly as expensive nor as ubiquitous as it is today. Nowadays, college and university students generally head off to classes no later than the day after Labour Day - which must make life extremely hectic for families who have children (including adult children) at various educational levels!

Once I had completed university, the rhythm of the seasons changed for me again, although there was still that feeling of autumnal renewal during my working life,
even pre-children, as folks came back from holidays and new projects and activities began.

Now that I'm retired, I'm almost finding summers to be busier than the fall, what with all the festivals going on in town - Music & Beyond, Chamberfest and next week, the Folk Festival (which used to be held in August).

Plus ca change...

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: in media res
Current Music: Party for my friends