At the heart of much speculative fiction
(and fiction in general) is a question.
What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out
there and see what you make of it. Do with it
as you please. If a for-instance is not specified,
feel free to interpret that instance as you
wish. And if you find this becomes
a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a
thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉
The COVID vaccine. It's in short supply. My over-75-year-old landlady gets her second shot today. While getting her first shot, she saw several younger people in line and wondered how they were eligible. (She wondered how to get Luisa and me in for ours.) They told her they were essential workers, but no one was checking, so if we were to lie...
What if the only way you could get the COVID vaccine was to lie about your eligibility? (And, for the sake of argument, I'm going to specify that you wouldn't be caught.)
I'm not advocating lying, by the way. And I don't need to. See tomorrow's post for more about that.
Lately, I haven't been doing much knitting besides the lacy cardigan that has now been renamed the Seven (and a half) Years Cardi. (Ravelry asks for some sort of name for each project. That is what I've renamed this one as.) And for the last few weeks, I've been slowly working the yoke.
On a good week the progress isn't obvious. Last week was not a good knitting week. A couple nights I stared at the TV with absolutely no energy to knit.
I toyed with the idea of just skipping posting today, but then I realized that even if there's not much progress, this is still a record of whatever progress I have made. So, here's what the sweater looks like now...
I'm doing a long-term assignment for an English teacher on maternity leave.
Since all of the English teachers are doing the same thing at the same time, I checked with Ms. W to make sure that the next day we were going on to chapter 3. Alas, her class was behind. So, rather than get ahead of the group, I took a day to "discuss" what we had just read in chapters 1 and 2.
I prepared. I went through the chapters and found some discussion questions and created a slide presentation to help move things along.
I was ready.
Thursday morning, first period.
To break up the discussion a bit, I thought it would be fun to show a short video that references the book. And I found the cartoon I had vaguely remembered.
I intro'd the video by saying that Of Mice and Men is well-known in pop culture. Then I hit play...
We got to the point where Daffy was going to find a real rabbit for the abominable snowman when the buffering wheel of doom appeared on my screen.
Aaarrrgggghhhhh!!!!!
While I attempted to get the video to play again, I asked the kiddos what allusions they caught. They caught the obvious ones, so I was pleased. With them. With my computer, not so much.
(I have two computers going, one with the meet and the other I use to project stuff for the class. It's simpler.)
I did everything I could think of. I did a hard shut down of the computer. Twice. A restart. I attempted to load things, but it just wasn't going to let anything play.
After a few minutes of this, I had the kiddos work on the questions for the chapter that were due. And then I spent the entire period trying to get the stuff to work again.
No dice.
Deep sigh.
Well, at least they had time to get their questions done.
Friday morning, I had second period. Also ninth grade.
I loaded everything. Crossed my fingers...
And it all worked perfectly.
Sigh.
At least my preparations were used for something. Yay?
I'm covering an English class long-term for a teacher who is out on maternity leave. The eleventh graders are reading The Great Gatsby.
On Tuesday/Wednesday, it was time to start chapter 1. But, I did not have a copy of the book. I asked the other teachers, and they did not have a PDF for the book to use for the classes.
(The students can check out a physical copy of the book from the campus library, but that means they have to go to the campus, and as we're doing the distance learning thing, most aren't getting down to campus to do that. Mostly, the teachers are putting copies of the materials needed online.)
This was when it occurred to me I had heard that The Great Gatsby had entered the public domain in January. I wondered if it was up on Project Gutenberg.
...a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library.
It was. So, I downloaded a copy and uploaded that and the links to the students' Google Classroom.
On Thursday/Friday I explained where the copy of the book came from. Just so they'd know.
I uploaded three things: the PDF, the html version, and a link to Gatsby's page. The reason for the third is because from that page, one can download an EPUB or Kindle version of the text that can be sideloaded to any ereader.
As I explained the third link, I asked the class if any of them had an ereader. Crickets. I explained what an ereader was.
I got a few nos. Then one student chimed in with, "My grandma has one of those."
Gee. Thanks for sharing.
And here, I thought the kiddos liked ereaders. Consider me educated.
Last week I took over an English class for a teacher who is out on maternity leave. I don't have to figure out lesson plans on my own as all the English classes in each grade are doing the same thing together. This makes lesson planning really easy.
The eleventh graders are getting ready to read The Great Gatsby. The prior sub (who had done his 30 days so could continue no longer--our subbing credential won't allow us to work any longer than 30 days in one class) had started some of the prelim stuff, and as of Monday they were still getting ready to read the book.
Monday's assignment was to watch a video on the Roaring '20s:
Because distance learning and the way kiddos watch videos, I naturally assigned "notes" to go along with the video. And because I detest the listing of facts (which the students half-ass anyway), I decided to create some questions for them.
I made the questions pretty general. They were like, name something that was new in the '20s, name something that started in the '20s that we still have today, etc. I came up with four rather general questions.
But I decided that I wanted the assignment to be worth five points, so I needed another question.
That's when the influence of too many years of blogging kicked in. I realized what the fifth question had to be.
I had them write a random comment.
Most did well with that. Some tried to be cerebral and told me a fact from the video. Some said they liked or did not like the video. Some said something they found to be interesting.
And some didn't answer that question at all. And... I...
I mean, that was the easiest question of all. A gimme point. They wrote something, they got the point.
Yet, of the 10% of students who did not get the full credit for the assignment, it was because of that question.
(And, seriously? Before we started the video, I went over the questions, and I told them number five was a write anything question.)
I may have to assign random comments more frequently. Just because I'm contrary like that.
At the heart of much speculative fiction
(and fiction in general) is a question.
What if? On Tuesdays I like to throw one out
there and see what you make of it. Do with it
as you please. If a for-instance is not specified,
feel free to interpret that instance as you
wish. And if you find this becomes
a novel-length answer, I'd appreciate a
thank you in the acknowledgements. 😉
Today's question comes out of a weird train of thought I had the other day. I won't go into the whole thing, but I started musing on people who change their name for various reasons. I'm talking about people who for whatever reason feel their name doesn't fit them. Or trans people who switch their name to fit their gender. Or people who pick a more Americanized version of their name to go by. And it got me thinking. . .
What if we were required to use a name that was given to us by someone else? I won't specify who that someone else is, only that if you chose to change your name, you couldn't pick what name you change it to yourself.
This week's sweater progress doesn't look much different than last week's progress:
I had hoped to try it on for you, but when I did try it on, when I took it off again, I dropped a few stitches, and it took me a good half hour to set them to rights again. Rather than tempt fate, I figured I could try it on when there are fewer stitches at the top.
Will I have it finished by next week? No. I can say that for sure. But it's closer.
