Back to School During a Global Pandemic Check in

 

Wearing Winter Water Factory tunic, J. Jill Leggings, and Vionic shoes to the drive through zoofari this summer. 

Girls are in Boden dresses, tea leggings, and native shoes. 

I know I have been quiet in this space because my work and life have occupied a lot of my time but all is well here. It is as well as it can be amid a global pandemic lack a coordinated federal response, anyway. I am heading into my third week of what is my 10th academic year at my job! And I turned 40 in April!! Lots to celebrate even if celebrations look different right now... 

I am teaching a new class that was inspired by public lectures I began giving about the history of journalism and the rise of fake news a few years ago. My university awarded me with an "Innovation in Education" grant to develop it into a stand alone course. It is really exciting to have a roster full of enthusiastic undergraduates, even though our class is fully remote. I am working on offering the public lectures and workshops in digital realms since I am not comfortable delivering them in person right now (strategizing grant funds to help... so if you see anything let me know!). 

I also am trying to think through how to execute the archival research and work I proposed in a recently awarded grant from the National Air and Space Museum's Aviation Space Writers Foundation. We did sneak in a trip to DC right before lockdown and I was able to do some work then but it was pre-award and unrelated. 

All of this is to say that I am busy. But we are doing really well. The girls will be remote learning for the first 9 weeks of school, at least. I am curious to see how "virtual" preschool will go. It seems... like it will be interesting (to put it politely!). They begin next week and that should be quite the trial by fire. But we have my family nearby and benefit from their childcare support (as long as we are able to stay relatively isolated from others, as my parents are in a vulnerable age bracket and my dad has some heart health concerns we need to be careful about). 

Wearing a Boden dress, Spanx tights, and Chloe flats

Rosie is in Boden dress, Target boots, and a handmade sweater that was mine when I was her age

The above photo is pre-pandemic at my older's open ballet class. Soon after this, she was invited to join a special invitation only (and FREE!) bridge program that would have had her working directly with the local ballet theater company and then... just like every other opportunity that involved leaving one's home after mid-March, it just vanished from the realm of possibility. So many of us are grieving the small things even as we feel the weight of knowing that what we grieve is small compared to that of so many others. What an incredibly difficult time... I hope I can write more often just to catalog it in a way more organized than my social media chatter. If you are reading along still after all these years, I hope you are doing well too!