This large study from a place that has done very thorough virus control and contact tracing, found that children can be and are vectors for transmission of COVID. Sure, kids under age 10 are “half as likely” as adults to be the vector, but they’re by no means immune. And above age 10, they’re just as likely as an adult to pass on the disease.
I hope this will have major impact on school planning for the upcoming Fall semester.
Seen on a neighborhood walk. Fortunately, we were not attacked by any Trojans.
Source: COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool
This is a neat, if scary, tool. On the lower left, you can choose an event size (anything from 10 to thousands of people). Then it shows you for every county in the US, what are the odds that a COVID+ person at that event?
So for example, in Harris County, at an event with 100 people, there’s a 98% chance that at least one of them has COVID. In a group of 10, there’s a 32% chance. Similar numbers for DeKalb County in Georgia.
The question then, of course, is what to do with this information. It could influence your decision whether to engage in an activity in the first place. Or could lead you to be extra diligent about social isolation and masks after the activity is over, because you know you could’ve been exposed. Or, it might just make you throw up your hands and realize that you’re doomed, if you’re a classroom teacher with six periods of classes each of which contains more than two dozen students.
So yesterday’s decision to consolidate all those years of writing meant I spent a lot of yesterday evening and this morning reading through it all. Which was An Experience, really.
Some of it makes me cringe. It’s clear to me that I am not the same person I was 15 years ago, and some of the posts made me cringe a bit. The intervening years have made me a lot more … well, I don’t like the term “woke” very much but that probably describes the change. My professional life has certainly evolved considerably.
I was far more naive about sharing personal “identifiable” details online and will want to delete or edit some things to be a little less hackable, I think.
But, it was a lovely trip down memory lane to see references to people who are still a central part of my life. And to be reminded of stories and experiences and ideas and projects.
And I might have wept a little at stories about Koshka, my sweet little Manx cat who passed away years ago but will always hold part of my heart.
On the whole, the read-through made me aware I am not the person I used to be… but to be the person I am now, perhaps I had to be that other person first.
It makes me wonder who I will be in another 15 years.
So first there was LiveJournal. And I wrote stuff there… apparently a fair amount of stuff. Then there were bits of writing on Blogger and Facebook. Then I started this blog.
I realized today that it’s possible to import posts from LJ and Blogger into this forum, so I did that. I figure maybe it will be fun to have a longer record of my creative output. Now looking through those old posts, to make sure there’s nothing too terribly revealing or embarrassing there!
My beloved inspired me in this writing prompt, because he shared with me some things he does on unmotivated days. Which is a lot of days for me, lately. I like staying home, and have plenty to do, so this COVID thing shouldn’t be that much of a hardship. But when there’s nothing scheduled outside the house, each day looks so much like the next that it’s easy to drift through life without ever doing much at all.
I do manage to exercise every day. I really don’t like exercise much, and lately it’s worse because I’m on a medication that makes my body stiffen up and hurt when I sit still for long. I’ve learned those symptoms improve when I get moving, so exercise is the best choice… but it really is hard to convince my hind-brain that the treadmill is the right place to be when it’s insisting I should crawl into my den and hibernate until I feel better. So, I trudge up the stairs to the treadmill, muttering “fake it ’til you make it” at my husband, and my workout starts with sluggish, low-resistance movement. Until I start to feel better, and then I’m OK with cranking up the speed and resistance to get a real workout.
On that same philosophy, my sweetie notes that it helps him to keep a short list of small, achievable tasks that will move him toward bigger goals. So, when he’s adrift, he commits to doing something from the list. Maybe that’s all he manages, but it’s something. And maybe once he gets started, he’s inspired enough to keep going. That sounded pretty smart to me.
So, in response to that, here are some small, achievable things I could look to do when I’m adrift?
So, that’s my list in response to his.
Also, I’ve signed up for an online class with regular meetings, as a way of providing some externally-enforced goals and deadlines in my life. I expect I will write something more about these in future.
I have a friend who has many demands on her time and energy, who challenged me to describe the easiest possible backyard herb garden. Her challenge was a “for dummies” approach that “a toddler could do in two hours”.
Not sure that exists, but it made me consider how I might tackle the simplest plan that might be successful over time. Note that as with so much in life, quickest and simplest are not synonymous with cheapest.
Challenges to be overcome with an outdoor herb garden in Houston:
So the not too cheap but quick solution to these things probably involves automated watering with a sprinkler system, a substantial layer of weed barrier on the ground, a shipment of good quality garden soil, several raised beds separated enough to let different herbs grow lushly without competing with one another. And herbs bought as seedlings from the nursery rather than starting from seed.
The order of action might be
There are several easy options for containers, and the ones you use will determine whether you need a layer of cardboard or newspaper under your weed barrier fabric. Basically, the idea behind the paper is that it will be solid enough to kill off weeds and grass for just a short time (maybe a few weeks) but then will break down enough that plant roots can grow down through and past it. So if you choose any sort of raised container that is open to the soil at the bottom, you want a layer of paper or cardboard under it to kill off the grass and weeds. On the other hand, if you go with big pots that have a solid bottom, they can just sit on weed barrier. Theoretically they could sit directly on the lawn, but they’re hard to mow around.
Some ideas for containers
When positioning plants in the garden, remember that big bushy plants like basil, fennel, dill will block light and sprinkler spray so put them towards the back (or the center of a middle of the yard garden with multiple sprinklers). Then put a layer of smaller upright plants and finally put trailing plants like oregano or thyme right up front where they can cascade down over the side.
Really invasive herbs like mint need their own pot, unless you’re prepared to continuously manage them.
So, that’d be how I set up an herb garden quickly in a Houston backyard. Of course, I would probably wait until cooler weather to do it, because I am a wimp…
On my mind today: Learning to shop in a world of remote retail. (inspired by Walmart’s new bid to compete with Amazon Prime, plus by COVID).
It took COVID to get me buying more things online with delivery or curbside pickup, even though I’ve disliked in-person shopping for years – that is, it can be fun to shop with a friend, or to go on a hunt for ideas about new and unique stuff you never realized you needed. But shopping just to supply yourself with basic stuff… every step from parking lot to checkout is fraught with irritation.
But I kept doing in-person shopping because I knew what I was doing. I had years of accumulated sense of where to go to find my desired item in-stock at a competitive price and usable quality. Also had some sense of the politics and ethics of the stores I used, both locally and (for chains) overall.
Online shopping… well, There’s a lot to learn.
Key questions:
No advice, here, just questions…
I have this idea of coming up with basic cooking formulas that would let you improvise with the ingredients you have on hand. Two types of formulas actually. First, flavor profile formulas: typical ingredients, ratios, and seasonings used to evoke a particular style or ethnicity of food. Second, preparation formulas: ratios and steps to combine ingredients to get some typical dish.
So in this case, the flavor profile I was playing with was “cajun”. Cajun dishes all seem to start with or contain the triad of onion, celery, and green pepper, as well as a broad and complex array of spices and usually some form of tomato. I’ve looked up cajun recipes before, and they always seem to have a lot of spices with surprisingly little agreement between recipes about which are the most important of them. I had a jar of Penzey’s Cajun Spice, which I wanted to try out and which seemed like it would vastly simplify the process. So I thought it might shortcut to try the spice combo.
The cooking formula I was working with was basically “brown rice with stuff in it”. Rice with stuff in it is a dish that appears in a vast array of cultures and cuisines, and the variety comes with what stuff and what seasoning you add. Jambalaya is a cajun variant. Variables for this formula would include how much of each type of stuff, how much water, preparation steps, and how long it cooks.
My little balcony garden offered up onions (bulbs and greens) of indeterminate variety (started from rooting a bunch of green onions long ago), parsley (flat leaf italian), celery (thin strongly flavored stalks with big flavorful leaves, grown from the base of store-bought celery), and chard (red and white rainbow chard). This seemed like a strong start.
So I assembled the following ingredients:
Ingredient prep – I lined up the following on the counter in order they’d be used:
Steps for cooking:
Results: Not too spicy, per husband’s specific request, but quite a bit of flavor. The rice is a bit gooey – which can mean a bit too much cooking, or a bit too much water. Made quite a lot – 8 generous servings.
To try next time: Decrease amount of water so rice will be firmer, less sticky. There was likely quite a bit of extra water from all the veggies, even after pre-cooking some of them, and the can of tomatoes would have added water as well.
Today’s intellectual exercise* was triggered by Keith noting that he’d completed our census and sent it in. To which I said** “Great. Complete the massive once-a-decade population count just before a massive die-off”.
So then we speculated a bit about the effect on the political landscape if the die-off was not random.
Which it won’t be – unfortunately, effects will be disproportionate among certain populations. Essential workers (healthcare, food industry, etc) are at more risk. Older people and sicker people. People who decide to defy the isolation recommendations for whatever reason. People who live in higher population density areas (maybe? Infection rate would be higher, but rural folks, when affected, may have less access to life-saving healthcare facilities?).
So you could have a census count, assign representation, then have a population die-off that leaves some geographic areas over-represented for the next decade, along with unknown shifts in the political landscape in those areas either because of non-selective population thinning, or because people change their political attitudes in response to the whole experience.
From a partisan point of view, this could go either way. Demographically, the Republican party is older, and the worst “deniers” appear to be right-wing. But, essential workers probably are disproportionately Democrat. And high-density populations (cities) tend to be more liberal than the surrounding countryside.
It’s another of those exercises that leave me shrugging and saying “I have no idea how this will roll out.”
*We both deal with uncertain situations by doing a lot of analytic speculation about hypothetical sets of conditions and assumptions. I’m sharing that with the larger population in case that’s of interest to anyone else…
** I was especially blunt because hadn’t had much coffee yet this morning.
Scrappy Blog 