Summer's over. Except it really isn't.

I finished with my summer classes last week. By and large they were really good. I find that the summer students we get are typically more motivated and hardworking, and earn better grades, than the regular semester students. (I suppose this is because it takes a special motivation to attend college in the summer: you have one more class required for graduation and it's offered in the summer. Or if you go in the summer, you can graduate faster than an ordinary student.  Or you are an incoming freshperson and you want to hit the ground running in the fall. Or you're attending another school but can get some transferrable credits cheaper and with more individualized attention here.)

My grades are done and in. I haven't had any pleas for mercy or extra credit. (In fact, one of the small number of people who did not earn a good enough grade in my intro class came to my office after the exam to ask me to help her enroll in the same class for the fall, because "Now I think I can pass it." I hope so.)

I'm taking about a week's break to go visit family and generally decompress. Though I will say summer helped cure some of my teaching burnout - it's not me, it's the students, that make me crazy sometimes, and this spring, I just had one class who gave so monumentally small of a damn that it really wore me down. Teaching the same class this summer and having people tell me, "I was kind of dreading this class but it was really fun and I learned a lot!" or "Thank you for teaching this this summer; now I can graduate and go on to the job that is waiting for me" makes a big difference.

Then I come back. The local public schools start August 12. We start August 18, but that week before is filled with meetings - four solid days of meetings, at least two of them 8 am to 4 pm solid days. (We get fed lunch one day, I guess. The other day we're "invited" to go eat at the cafeteria - no notification as to whether we are expected to pay or not, so I'll probably pack my lunch that day).

I don't know. Mid-August feels way too darn early to start school. I understand the reasons: we get a couple days mid-fall break, we get the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, we finish up well before Christmas (and give exams before Christmas break. In the era my parents went to college, exams were AFTER Christmas break, which I would have hated as a student). In the public schools there are a lot of one-off days off. They get most of the Federal holidays (we do not: we get MLK, Jr. day, and Independence Day, and Labor Day, but that's it). They also get random days off for "teacher inservice" or also, I think "parent-teacher conferences." And I guess that last one is only fair; if you're going to expect your teachers to be available between 5 and 9 pm or whatever it is to meet with parents, maybe it's a bit much to expect a full day of teaching that day....but when I was a kid, that was how they did it. (I think the conferences were also optional? My parents always went and I remember a teacher saying something like, "The parents that DO show up, they are usually the ones where all I have to say is, "Your kid is a good kid; they are doing well in their classes" and the parents I NEED to talk to don't show up.")

Anyway. It's hot. It was very hot last weekend. It's going to be very hot when campus grinds back open all the way on August 18. Those first two weeks (heck, the first month or so here) are just kind of miserable because it's so hot. Oh, the buildings are air conditioned but it's unreliable - sometimes a classroom will be "out." Or the a/c will go out in the faculty-office part of the building. Or it will be so cranked up in one room that that room is freezing. And it's hard to adapt and I often walk around with a headache from the variable temperatures.

And frankly, I think a lot of the students are not ready to be back. When I grew up, I was used to a school schedule where school started after Labor Day and let out for the year in early June. And that seemed to make more sense to me. August is kind of an awful month and it tends to be the hottest month in the summer, no matter where you are.

And yeah, I've heard all the arguments in favor of year-round school and I even agree with some of them (and heck, what I do essentially is teach year-round school for college students), but also, I think in some cases, at least for some kids still, there's value in having a big chunk of time off. Or, at least there was when I was a kid - maybe it's different now with the Internet and video games and 500 tv channels. But when I was a kid, we spend the summers playing HORSE, or having big neighborhood-wide games of Kick the Can. Or we'd go looking for frogs or minnows in a stream up the street. Or someone would set up a sprinkler for us to run through. Or I'd get a big stack of books from the library and spend the biggest part of some days reading. Or my brother and I would beg wood scraps from our dad and "build stuff." Or we'd climb trees. Or go looking for weird bugs or snakes. Or I'd beg my mom to let me bake cookies and sometimes she would let me.

A lot of it was learning to entertain yourself left to your own devices. And there was a certain degree of learning to compromise in there - I didn't like playing HORSE that much because I wasn't very good at it and until I had a growth spurt around 12 or so, I was one of the shorter kids. But I played it in the hopes that later on people would want to play hide-and-go-seek or Capture the Flag, both of which I did like. Or, I played because the only other choice was to go figure out something to do on my own, and playing a game that wasn't my biggest favorite was better than going and digging in the sandpile or something.

We were also largely left to our own devices. There were no cell phones, so if someone got hurt or something, you figured out a way to get them back home (carrying one of my smaller friends when she sprained her ankle) or you ran to a neighbor for help (like when one of the older kids got into a hornet's nest and got stung a lot of times and we were worried he was going to have a bad reaction). You figured stuff out, you were fairly independent.

I don't know if kids today are like that or if they have become less like that. I suppose if we had had cell phones back in the day, I could have called Christy's mom and asked her to come and pick her up when she sprained her ankle. Or we could have called Tim's dad and asked for help on the hornet thing. But both of those situations turned out okay, even with us left to our own devices.

And I wonder...you see these occasional stories about a parent who gets in trouble because some busybody sees their kid left "alone" and worries on the parent's behalf that something bad will befall the kid. I have no idea how widespread that is, and if kids are more overprotected today. When I was a kid - in the late 70s and early 80s - by and large we were allowed to roam the neighborhood as long as we didn't do anything to dangerously stupid or anything criminal, and our parents trusted us to know the difference. (Well, smaller kids were expected to stay close to home unless a kid in their teens invited them to tag along, and the fact that one of the kids who babysat my brother and me was the oldest sibling in one of the families we palled around with probably had some influence on the degree of freedom we were given). But I remember walking the 1/2 or 3/4 of a mile to the "creek" as an 11 or 12 year old, going to catch frogs, and all my dad said was, "Don't fall in; it's really muddy right now." Maybe in an era now when there isn't a parent at home to kind of man home base, or maybe now when the world seems more dangerous than it was, it's preferable NOT to have long summer breaks anymore, I don't know.

(Though I wonder: is the world really more dangerous? I remember several high-profile kidnappings of young girls that happened in the early 80s, including one not too far from where I grew up. And they all ended pretty badly. But I don't remember my mom or my dad telling me not to go out, or preventing me from going places; they seemed to know that I was smart and canny and would come running back home (or to a trusted neighbor) if something seemed suspicious.)

Priorities

I know that a lot of people have to work and go to school. And I know some of the stupid rules of financial aid can make it harder to go to school part time.

But for the love of all that's good, I'm just so TIRED of people with lives where their education is their very last priority. I had someone this semester who skipped class several times because he could "pick up a good shift" at the place where he worked....and of course, I am reminded exactly WHICH days those were when I grade the exams he took, because that's where his score tanks. (He wound up failing the class. And this was one of those "But I always earned As in the past in classes!" people).

And I had a couple people go on vacation. Yeah. A vacation they had scheduled knowing full well they were taking summer classes. I tried to work with them (gotta keep the enrollment up) but it was frustrating. I don't get much in the way of "days off" during the summer semester, and having to do stuff like arrange for makeup labs and makeup exams takes even more time.

I realize how fortunate I was as a student: I had just barely enough money to pay my tuition and my room and board. Not a lot of extras, not a lot of frivolities, and I did stuff like getting my shoes re-soled to avoid having to buy new ones. But at least I didn't have to work. (I did, for a little while, a few hours a week in a dorm cafeteria, so I had money to go to the movies and stuff. But I never worked more than 10 hours a week, and the dorm was really excellent about scheduling shifts around my class schedule. And if it had interfered with studying, I would have quit).

I know a lot of our students aren't in that boat - they have families to support or things like that. But we also get a certain percentage who whine about how "hard" they have to work and when you talk to them, you find out they don't have any dependents, but they have a big fancy pickup truck, and a new iPhone, and they want to go to the tropics for Spring Break, and and and. And there comes a point where my sympathy for those people dies: you're making a choice. You could cut back on hours at work and not have all those fancy things and do better in school and not have junk happen like sleeping through an exam-time and then harassing your professor into relenting and letting you take the exam late.

I don't know. Part of it is a sour grapes issue on my part: there's a lot of things I would WANT to do but don't because my responsibilities get in the way and I won't shirk my responsibilities. And there are things I might WANT to buy but then I look at my TIAA-CREF statement or my Vanguard statement and start calculating out how much I still need to be able to retire (and hope and pray there's not hyperinflation) and then figure I'm better off without whatever it is. But I get frustrated with being responsible when I see people NOT being so, and especially when their lack of responsibility means more work on my part.

I suppose I need to be tougher, and tell people, "You made your bed, now lie in it" when someone shirks class stuff and then comes crying to me for an extension or something. I usually am, actually, but with things like missed tests, it's hard and it's kind of painful to tell someone, "No, yes, I know you slept through it, but sorry. No." And then get some kind of sob story about how HARD their life is. (It's the nagging, it's the constant stream of reasons and excuses, that wears me out. Just accept my "No," okay? You understand "No means No" in other areas of your life, right? Then why not accept it from your prof?)

Just gonna say:

I watched most of an interview with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu this weekend.

And I'm just gonna say: I wish our current leader was more like him. Forceful, sure of himself, no BS that I can detect. Committed to defending his people yet at the same time points how the great pains that are taken to avoid collateral damage on the other side. Not unwilling to shut the interviewer up when he gets shirty with him.

Oh, I'm sure there are things to dislike about Netanyahu, and I'm probably seeing this as grass on the other side of the fence, but I suspect we'd have fewer foreign-relations problems (and fewer at-home problems) than we do at the moment if we had someone who was more willing to say what he really thought, rather than what he thought people (potential voters) wanted to hear...

All those people

I admit, as someone who's been a fearful flyer since she figured out it was possible for planes to crash, this kind of thing just horrifies me.

It horrifies me even more that it seems to have been confirmed that Malaysia Air 17 was shot down. Shot down from 30,000 feet. I didn't even know there were surface to air missiles that could do that, that had that kind of accuracy. That's chilling.

All those people. I hope they died instantly and didn't know any terror. And I also feel sad for the people who are the farmers and such living in that area, who had plane parts (and other things) come down in their yards.

What makes me especially sick? The US response to this will probably be a finger wagged at whoever is responsible, and that's it. And the situation in the Ukraine will continue to spiral downward. I'm trying to tell myself this isn't how World War III gets started, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself.

And it doesn't help that there's ugliness elsewhere in the world. (Though I will say, if what I've read about how Israel does its rocket attacks is true, it makes me hate Hamas even more, and feel even more like Israel is in the right - essentially, it sounds like Israel is doing *everything possible* to avoid loss of civilian life on the other side, and Hamas is trying to time its rocket attacks for when Israeli schoolchildren are going to or from school.)

Everything's such a mess right now. And we don't even have strong leadership to try to sort it out or even provide any kind of useful response.

"First World Problems."

There's a trend I see, among some who write/talk about food, economics, and health. One example is Mark Bittman's piece here.

I call it "First World Problems" because I hear people bemoaning how "awful" it is that food is cheap, and I do the confused-dog head tilt: "You'd rather there be a famine going on, then?"

And yes, I understand that the argument they are making is that when food is cheap, people eat more, and they eat more sugary and fatty food. But it's more complex than that. In the US, obesity is often a problem of people who are less-well-off because the cheapest calories for the money tend to BE things like dollar-menu hamburgers. And chips. And soda. Vegetables are expensive. (I think I paid close to $4 for a head of cauliflower recently). And then you have to prepare the vegetables - and if you're living where there's a less-than-ideal kitchen, or you're working long hours, or having to care for children on your own, or or or, it becomes harder.

I'm not saying it's impossible to eat healthfully when you're stressed. But it's harder. Even for me - and I make a good salary, I don't have any dependents I have to care for, and still, there are some days I look at that cauliflower in the vegetable bin and go "Meh. It's 6:30 pm. I'm hungry. I don't want to take fifteen minutes to cut this up and fifteen more to steam it, or forty-five minutes to roast it in the oven" and I go for something faster, like cereal.

But this is one of the things about some segments of our culture I find distressing. We've solved a lot of the big problems, and we're forgetting to be grateful for that.

People mostly aren't starving in the streets any more. Instead of rejoicing about that, we wring our hands about "cheap food" and the consequences thereof.

People aren't mostly freezing to death in the winter any more. But we worry about "cheap energy" and its effect on the environment. And try to do things like ban wood stoves because of the (OMG!) smoke. (I know a few people whose homes are electrically heated. And electricity is EXPENSIVE here, y'all. But they have a wood stove, and they have a woodlot. That seems like "problem solved" but there are some who don't want to let them use the wood stove - or require environmental retrofits that would price them out of being able to use it)

People aren't dying from bacteria in the water. Yet there are some who talk about the hazards of chlorination. I dunno; I'd rather risk the small hazard of chlorine by-products than the big hazard of possible cholera or dysentery.

Lots of diseases have been largely eradicated thanks to vaccines. But OMG, my children are too special for that tiny risk that a vaccine might pose, instead, I'd rather have them face the big risk of getting (whatever disease) and maybe passing it to a kid who couldn't be vaccinated for medical reasons. (I would have no problem with anti-vaxers - well, other than that their children don't really get a say - if there was no such thing as herd immunity.)

(Also, an aside: another way certain forms of extremism are awful - there's concern that polio may show a resurgence in Afghanistan and other mullah-dominated areas. Because apparently vaccines are a tool of the evil West. Sigh.)

And on, and on. I've talked about the whole milk-pasteurization thing before. Okay, I admit it: I wouldn't have a problem with people being allowed to choose and buy CLEARLY LABELED raw milk. But I'm gonna keep drinking the pasteurized stuff. I had ancestors who had milch cows and I heard stories of stuff that can be transmitted in milk. (Again, the kids, who might be affected more strongly, don't really get a say in this, it's their parents' decision. But I maintain that if people know the risks they should be permitted to buy the stuff. But they have to know the risks! And they can't sue the farmer if they get sick from raw milk.)


I don't know. Like I said, some of the people agitating about "oh, we have it too EASY now" almost sound to me like they WANT to see people dying in the streets. I'm sure that's not the case but it does seem to me to represent a lack of gratitude. Me? I'm grateful for Pasteur and Jenner and Salk and all those guys (and they were mostly guys) in the past who figured out ways for people to not die of stuff.

I still love Mike Rowe

Dirty Jobs may have ended its run (but Animal Planet sometimes shows re-runs, especially of the animal-oriented episodes) and Mike Rowe seems to have moved on to other things.

Kind of awesome things. He's promoting the idea that instead of getting a four-year degree in some subject that it will be hard to find a job in come graduation, that a lot of America's young men and women should look towards a more technical education, or a skills education. Or at the very least, be willing to get their hands dirty, to do jobs some might say was "beneath" them, to do hard work and to do honest work.

He's written a whole thing, called the SWEAT pledge ("skills and work ethic aren't taboo") and the idea is, he's helping to fund a scholarship for people willing to take this pledge.

(Frankly, if I had a kid, unless s/he was absolutely driven to a particular field, like I was with biology, I'd strongly suggest they become a mechanic, plumber, or electrician. Good honest steady work, work that can't be outsourced, work where very often, if your boss is an idiot, you can pick up and move to another employer - or become your OWN boss.)

Anyway, here's the pledge, it's one of those things that has gone viral:

“THE S.W.E.A.T. PLEDGE”

(Skill & Work Ethic Aren’t Taboo)

1. I believe that I have won the greatest lottery of all time. I am alive. I walk the Earth. I live in America. Above all things, I am grateful.
2. I believe that I am entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more. I also understand that “happiness” and the “pursuit of happiness” are not the same thing.
3. I believe there is no such thing as a “bad job.” I believe that all jobs are opportunities, and it’s up to me to make the best of them.
4. I do not “follow my passion.” I bring it with me. I believe that any job can be done with passion and enthusiasm.
5. I deplore debt, and do all I can to avoid it. I would rather live in a tent and eat beans than borrow money to pay for a lifestyle I can’t afford.

6. I believe that my safety is my responsibility. I understand that being in “compliance” does not necessarily mean I’m out of danger.

 7. I believe the best way to distinguish myself at work is to show up early, stay late, and cheerfully volunteer for every crappy task there is.
8. I believe the most annoying sounds in the world are whining and complaining. I will never make them. If I am unhappy in my work, I will either find a new job, or find a way to be happy.
9. I believe that my education is my responsibility, and absolutely critical to my success. I am resolved to learn as much as I can from whatever source is available to me. I will never stop learning, and understand that library cards are free.
10. I believe that I am a product of my choices – not my circumstances. I will never blame anyone for my shortcomings or the challenges I face. And I will never accept the credit for something I didn’t do.
11. I understand the world is not fair, and I’m OK with that. I do not resent the success of others.
12. I believe that all people are created equal. I also believe that all people make choices. Some choose to be lazy. Some choose to sleep in. I choose to work my butt off.


I love the whole thing but I especially love #1 - because I see far too many people who feel like they're "victims" of some kind when really, they just hit a rough patch but they have giant opportunity. And it's kind of uncool right now to say you are grateful to live in America, but I'm totally okay with being uncool: I am grateful, incredibly grateful, to live here. Yes, we have some problems but we still have great opportunity and still have great freedom.

I also love #4. I have days when I'm not "feelin' it" when I gear up to walk into the classroom so I do what I can to MAKE myself feel it. Also, by bringing your passion with you,  instead of "following" it, you can better deal with whatever changes or reverses you have in life. I got a gig in a state I had never visited before I interviewed here. In a lot of ways the culture is different from what I was used to. But I wanted the job, I recognized it was a good deal, so I made it work. Again, it's not perfect, there are always problems, but on balance I see things as being far, far better than they COULD be.

The whole theme of the pledge is "taking responsibility for myself" and I think we need more of that right now in this nation. I would love to see people start pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, stuff getting better economically, us electing some politicians who take the Constitution more seriously, and everything getting better and better. I think it will take individual citizens choosing to be this way, though, rather than anything that comes out of Washington DC or anywhere. 

a quick thought.

I have real issues with the whole "check your privilege" idea - the idea, apparently, that you should somehow feel guilty for the accident of being born white (or male, or hetero, or American, or whatever) and should somehow, I don't know, ramp down how you do things in life because of it.

The problem is, in my mind, that kind of closes out some of the opportunity for gratitude as a result of undeserved good things. And as a Christian, I've been taught all my life that there are a certain amount of good things we enjoy that are totally and utterly undeserved.

In another way of saying it: I don't think I should feel guilty that I can afford to comfortably pay all my bills; I should feel *blessed.* And I do. (And yes, I give to a few carefully-chosen entities that help those who are less blessed than I am, so hopefully they can get a hand up and can have a life where they get to earn a decent living and come to enjoy some of the blessings I have...)

I just wanna say

To all of the more left-leaning folks that are around me, and that I follow (or, now, used to follow) on social media:

Kindly take a deep breath.

Thanks.

This isn't the end of "America." My understanding is that it only affects a few corporations, only CERTAIN forms of birth control, and it only affects IF THE CORPORATION WILL PAY FOR THEM. Hobby Lobby isn't gonna fire you for going out and buying it with your own money.

And this seems to affect only a few corporations. For which you don't have to work, and, hell, which you don't have to shop at if you don't want to. (Seriously. I saw someone say she was going to "give up crafting" because of the Hobby Lobby decision. Honey, you might rethink that, making stuff is good for keeping your blood pressure down.)

I'm also so not ready to deal with the anti-Christian snark that's going to come from predictable sources. This is one sliver of Christianity. And okay, I kind of agree with some aspects of it: I loathe the idea of abortion and wish they never happened. (And yet, I recognize it's not a perfect world). 

One way that I'm coming to hate social media: poorly informed people coming out and just spewing moments after something happens. It's all knee-jerk, it's all emotion.

Emotion's gonna be what does us in, I bet.


I....think I'm gonna avoid social media for the rest of the day. Just got too much to do to deal with the outragey outrage.


It also strikes me as interesting that there's huge reactive commentary (mostly snark, very little thought-out commentary that I've seen) about the Hobby Lobby case, and essentially NONE about the unions case (that a public union cannot make non-union members pay fees). I thought that was another decision that some people said would ruin this country if it went "not their way" (which it did.)

thank goodness, voting is tomorrow.

As someone who still has a landline (one of the few) and someone of the lesser party affiliation in my area, I've been barraged with robocalls and "surveys" this past week and a half.

I'm glad it's nearly done.

And a pox on the politicians for thinking this will get people to want to vote for them. Same thing with spamming our mailboxes daily with fliers. I'd choose to vote for the guy who didn't do it but they ALL do it. It sucks.

At least this time we seem to have fewer character-assassinatey ads than some go-rounds.

covered in alligators.

There's a saying 'round here, "up to your a-- in alligators" that sometimes gets translated into a nicer form of "covered up in alligators."

That's how I feel right now. I like teaching summer classes, the money is good, but DANG do they move fast. You have to be super-on-top-of-your-game to keep up. (And I'm worrying about the manuscript I want to be writing - when will I get to that?)

Also, the students are....different. Some are different-good (dedicated, hardworking students wanting to graduate early or to get a fast track to their degree). Some are just different. I have a student I'm interpreting as emotionally needy (I could be screwed up on that) because this student e-mails me multiple times every couple days with questions on EVERYTHING.

Also, the student has made several appointments to come see me (they have expressed a fear that they are failing) but has broken every single one. (At least they e-mail me to let me know they're not coming). I'm guessing this is someone with a lot of fear about "talking to the professor" but I don't know how to fix that - I can't present myself as any more cuddly than I already do, short of coming to class in a teddy bear suit.

Also, I wonder: at what point does it stop being MY problem that a student is afraid to come in and talk to me? A number of other people in that class have, so I know it's not that I present as difficult. And I've always been cordial about answering this student's questions, both in class and through e-mail. But it's impossible to make someone do something they don't want to do but probably need to do (meet with me). And I guess I should stop worrying about it and figure that if they can't be enough of an adult to come in, then that's not my problem.

I also interpret this person as emotionally needy, so I'm wary about reaching out TOO hard - I once had the experience of a student I reached out to suddenly assuming I was her substitute big sister or something and sharing ALLLLL of her TMI problems with me. (She was having some...gynecological issues, let's say. I referred her to the campus nurse, and tried to communicate, without coming out and saying, "I really don't need to know this and I also really don't WANT to know this.) So I admit, I'm afraid that being TOO open will make some students decide suddenly that I am their bestest friend, and that gets really weird and uncomfortable.

How are they against tornadoes?

Joanne Jacobs had a story about an allegedly bulletproof blanket that schools can buy (at $1000 for 3, and I can see an entire Simpsons episode about how the teachers figure out which students are "worth" protecting with a shortage of blankets).

I don't know. For a lot of reasons, this makes me sad:

- there are probably better, more pro-active solutions to the slim risk of an "active shooter situation" than to have the kids cower under blankets.

- Even though "active shooter situations" seem more common than they once were (though I wonder how much of it is filling-the-24-hour-news-cycle), they're still more rare than other threats that kids face

- The blankets are expensive, but some schools will probably feel compelled to spend limited funds on them, at the insistence of parents.

- Teaching kids to cower in the face of danger seems distasteful to me. Yes, I get that in a shooter situation hitting the ground and playing dead may be what saves you, but  honestly? As a kid who was a major worrier, the idea that "someone might come in the school and shoot it up so we have these blankets" would really make me feel uneasy.

- And anyway, kids are already being told, "We suspect you of carrying contraband" (the clear or mesh-only backpacks) or "We think someone is going to bring a weapon in" (metal detectors in some schools). There's a weird siege mentality that bothers me as an adult and I know it would have bothered me as a kid.

- I tend to think it would be better to have trained staff - or, heck, like in some Texas schools, teachers who are licensed and reliable - serve as a sort of armed guard. It wouldn't have to be obvious, it wouldn't have to be adults patrolling with drawn guns, like the kids are Faberge eggs being transported through the Wild West or something.

- There are a lot of other threats that are probably more likely. Hence my title. I grew up in Ohio (I've written before about how I remember hearing about the 1974 tornado outbreak - one that caused many deaths, and in Ohio, many deaths in Xenia). The "cower in place" we learned in school was tornado drill. We'd get into one of the long halls (most of which had glass exterior doors on the end, but no one ever explained how that was OK, at least to my satisfaction). We'd get down into something like what yoginis would call "child's pose," only instead of stretching out our arms in front of us and "peacefully resting our forehead on the floor," we'd clasp our hands at the nape of the neck. The idea was, we were told, we were protecting our brain stems, so that tornado-shrapnel could not snap our spinal cords.

Even at the age of 7 or 8, I knew enough science to fear that was BS; that since the school didn't have a proper basement, they were just doing the best thing they could and if a tornado came through, the only thing to do was to pray it would miss the school, or at least miss the hallway you were in. At home, tornado warnings meant we went to the basement and got under a sturdy workbench my dad had. Luckily, in my town, the safety of those things was never tested.

But in a lot of parts of the country, I think if they're going to make an investment in the kids' safety, far better to do something like have a few reinforced safe-rooms everyone can troop into during heavy weather than to buy those blankets. (And in the photo, it still looks like parts of the kids are exposed; a commenter noted that the most they'd probably do was protect you from stray bullets.)

I know they've also come up with a college-campus version: a reinforced whiteboard a faculty member can pull down and use as a shield, presumably when they offer themselves up as a potential sacrifice to protect their students. (I don't know. Some classes I've had, I frankly don't LIKE well enough to even contemplate that.)

Not sure whether to be concerned or annoyed

Summer teaching.

I have one student in one of my classes who has e-mailed me no fewer than four times (in a week and a half of classes) to try to set up an appointment to see me. They have missed every one of them; the morning it's scheduled they e-mail and push it to the next day.

Which makes me think this is a Highly Avoidant Person. I know about this, as I have avoidant tendencies. (Right now, I have all the receipts from a work-trip on my desk, and I MUST fill out my expense report by the end of this month if I am to get any money back, but I just feel so meh about dealing with the minutiae of paperwork that that involves, and I feel very especially meh about the e-mail I will probably get back telling me how I did it wrong and to go back and redo it. Because they change the rules every year.)

Anyway. I don't know what I can do - for that matter, I don't know if I SHOULD do anything - if it's someone being avoidant. I mean, this is someone who's technically an adult, and frankly, one thing I learned in a hurry in college is sometimes you need to woman up and do the stuff you really don't want to do, because being an adult means that it's on you to do those things.

But it's also possible this person is just the specialest of snowflakes, and keeps finding stuff more "fun" to do than to come in and see their boring old professor and find out that the reason they're doing poorly on tests is that they aren't studying more than an hour in advance for them. Or whatever. Or it's someone whose life is in such a shambles that they can't make it to appointments.

But still. It irks me to set aside a time, and then find out, "NOPE! Set up another time tomorrow." (At least this person has the kindness to e-mail me in the morning, unlike some students who set up appointments, never show, and I'm left sitting there until I feel "enough" time has elapsed that it's okay for me to leave.)

People are funny though. As avoidant as I am about "difficult" meetings, I feel like it's a greater embarrassment to reschedule - so I make the meeting and by God I show up to it. (It may take me forever to get around to making the appointment, though).

Also, attendance has been worse this summer than in the past, which makes me apprehensive. Each week in the summer is like 2 weeks in the regular semester, so missing much can really sink a person fast. And I don't make my summer classes "easier." I know some profs do but I feel like I should make the class as equal as possible to the regular-semester version.

A random thought

You know how some universities catch hell (especially from conservative commentators) for having pop-culture classes, like ones on the Simpsons, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Klingon?

It occurs to me that these kinds of things are tailor-made for MOOCs. (inspired by seeing this. There's even a small charge for the class so apparently the developer has found a way to make it pay.)

Because: the people likely to take those courses are going to be motivated to pay attention to them, because it's a particular interest of theirs. The way MOOCs currently work (at least at most universities), you don't get specific credit for them, so someone couldn't avoid coursework in the natural sciences (say) by taking a course on alien xenobiology or something. And because they're sort of an add-on, people won't feel so much like a university degree is being (further) watered down.

I've said before, some of the ideas promoted as being done via MOOCs, like remedial classes, are a terrible idea. Remedial and intro classes, I think, for most people, need to be in a classroom or at least "traditional" online setting, where there is contact with the instructor and tests and a certain level of accountability. The last thing we need is having people who dislike math and did poorly on the math section of the ACT being herded into a 1000-person class where they don't really see the instructor, where the quizzes may be self-graded, and where it's all on the student to complete the class.

But "fun" classes, classes on stuff that only a very, very small percentage of people (e.g., comic book writers, media reporters, etc.) might actually use in their career - but which lots of people might want to take for fun - could work as a MOOC.

I could even see things like "Shakespeare for the Adult" (a course aimed at people wanting to learn more about the plays, but who are now done with school) or "Art Appreciation for non-artists" and that sort of thing.

But please, don't push intro bio students into a MOOC to learn genetics. That's just all kinds of bad.

D-day

Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of D-day.

I remember learning about it in school. In fact, one year, in grade school, there was a  local veteran who had been in D-day and was willing to talk about it to the school - so we had an assembly where he talked about what it had been like, and then took questions from the kids. This would have been the mid 1970s, so the veterans were still mostly with us, and were still fairly young - in their 50s or thereabouts.

(That's where I learned the D stood for Day. It doesn't really represent anything different. Also, H-Hour, the H doesn't stand for anything different).

It's amazing to read about. The bravery, going out there and doing what had to be done (to turn the tide of the war) even though you knew there was a good chance you'd be killed. Disembarking under heavy enemy fire (and strong winds making the landing harder) and just going, going, going. Because you had to.

And a huge number of men were enlisted in those years. Pretty much every family in the US had someone who was in the forces somewhere. (My mom had an older brother - I never met him, he died when I was a baby - who was in the Navy in the South Pacific). I wonder whether we (Generation X and following generations) are somehow softer, if we could find enough good recruits for that large of a force today. Oh, of course: lots of men and women go into the military, and by and large they are very tough people who get the job done. But I wonder if the average American is as tough now as his or her 1940s-era counterpart.

I suppose, though, given what we are fighting and how we have to fight it now, it's different. In World War II, you were fighting an organized army, that had specific uniforms. They were lead by a leader of a country who was determined by us and our allies to be in the wrong (I would argue that objectively, any reasonable person would find a fascist leader to be in the wrong). But I also think that by and large, the ordinary citizens of those countries were not so much a threat or our enemies... I remember reading about some German POWs who were sent to camps in, I think it was Nebraska? and after the war, at least a few of them asked permission to stay, noting that as POWs of the Americans, they were treated better than they were as recruits in the German army. (And that always struck me: that we were better to our enemy combatants we had captured than their own leadership was to them.)

Now, the enemy is far more nebulous. Rather than being the soldiers of a country, it's more of an ideological thing. (We see Americans who have "gone to the other side" and fought against us, and in some cases we don't know our enemy until he blows us up, or comes damn near to it.) That seems harder to fight, and also there are so many unpredictable things - thinking of the Boston Marathon bombers - they were allegedly brought in under an asylum program, but they turned out to be terrorists as much as the guy on the street in Kandahar who wants to blow up American soldiers.

And yes, there were alleged cases of spies infiltrating in WWII, but you also hear of cases of them being apprehended. (Something someone once told me, I have no idea if it's true or not, but one thing they used was to ask the person to sing "all verses" of our National Anthem. Because native-born Americans would almost certainly only know the first verse, and supposedly someone who received instruction in "how to be an American" might have learned all the verses.)

Also, with the war on terrorism, there's really no way to say, "We beat them and we won." When Hitler killed himself (presumably either because everything was crumbling or because he didn't want to be caught and put on trial), things started to fall apart and ultimately Germany capitulated. And the Allies were able to declare terms of surrender they had to agree to, and essentially we wound up shaking hands and beginning to put life back together. (And arguably, at times since WWII, Germany, or at least West Germany, has been a better ally to us than France was....) But I don't see any way to declare our war with terrorism "over," short of killing everyone who identifies with that particular strain of Islam (And there can always be new converts...) or of ending the hatred of Western culture in some of the world. (Which isn't gonna happen, even if we made huge, Constitution-violating changes in how we all live our lives).

But I also think we've changed as a society. Perhaps we don't have the same backbone we had in WWII. (And oh, how I'd love to see Patton or some of those other general resurrected and put into the fight against terrorism. Maybe they aren't "politically correct" for the new order of how US politics works, but I think they'd do a lot of good.)

But it does make me feel awe to think of what those men did, so many years ago - the courage and the sacrifice. And really, it was what began to tip the war to the side of the Allies winning.

And now, sadly, those men are leaving us all too rapidly.

judging

So, one of the fallouts of the Sterling thing was that apparently Mark Cuban came out and said he was "bigoted."

Because, among other things, he said if he saw a big bald white dude with tattoos, when he was walking down the street late at night, he'd cross the street.

Uh. Yeah.

In my mind, "bigoted" would be refusing to hire a dude just because he had tattoos, without looking more into his background. Or shouting a racial epithet at a kid of a different race from you. Or constantly making "stupid woman" jokes in the hearing of your female co-workers after they've asked you not to.

I'd call what he was talking about more "prejudicial" or "discriminatory" - not as bad as bigoted.

Heck, I judge people all the time. Mostly on behavior (because it's kind of stupid to judge someone by their skin color or stuff like that that they have no control over).

When I was coming back home on the train, I saw a guy in the station. Big huge white guy. Shaved head. Large swastika tattoo on one arm, smaller tattoo of an 88 (which I now know is symbolic in neo-Nazi circles) inside a laurel wreath. He was wearing a t-shirt with the sleeves torn out so it was fairly clear he wanted people to see the tattoos.

And my first thought: "Dang. I'm glad I have a compartment and won't have to sit near him."  And then I looked around, and thought, "I hope he doesn't cause trouble for anyone." (How uncomfortable would it be, to be someone who lost a grandparent or great-grandparent in the Holocaust, to wind up sitting next to that guy?)

I mean, I suppose it was remotely possible they were temporary tattoos, and he was a sociology grad student doing an experiment. Or something. But I kind of think that's unlikely and less possible than he was a guy who is part of a group that is unjustifiably angry at certain other groups and perhaps wants their extermination. And I'd rather not deal with someone with beliefs like that.

And yeah, that's prejudicial, maybe. But I tend to think someone who proudly displays the fact that they're a skinhead (or more than that) is not likely to be the kind of conversational partner I'd enjoy - or have much in common with.

I judge students on behavior. The former military guy who apologizes after inadvertently saying "hell" in class one day - I think more highly of him. (Even if I'm not bothered by the word, and in fact, say it myself sometimes. Just not in class). The woman who tries to stealth text under the table, I think, "She either thinks she's too smart for the class and doesn't need to pay attention, or she doesn't want to be here." The person who ALWAYS has issues, ALWAYS have problems: I wonder how they will get their stuff together enough to hold down a job.

How much of this is bad? How much of this is a problem? I think of the student one summer I agreed to take on to do research after they begged and pleaded me to (even though I knew they weren't so great at keeping up their regular schoolwork). And then they got a DUI. And then they stopped showing up. And then they requested an Incomplete, which they never fulfilled. And if I had just said, "No, your record shows you're not ready for this yet" in the first place, how much frustration I would have saved myself.

There has to be a balance between being a jerk who unfairly judges people harshly, and someone who's just a big marshmallow and winds up being taken advantage of (or worse: maybe not crossing the street to get away from where the skinhead is walking will get you attacked). I don't want to have to accept everything equally.

Some random thoughts

I was visiting family last week.

It's hard watching family -especially parents - age. My mom is still pretty much in good health (she went up on a ladder to put a shutter back up - I was holding the ladder. I tried to encourage her to let me do it but she insisted. Then again - being on an antihypertensive, I do occasionally get moments of dizziness and maybe being up high on a ladder is not so good. But she has borderline osteoporosis (and I can SEE she has shrunk in height), so I worry).

My dad's knees are terrible. Nothing that can be done short of surgery that's not likely to be successful at this point. It sucks. He does PT to try to keep some mobility but I can tell it just really sucks to have such bad knees. (he used to play football and run track, and also hiked a great deal....and then learned when he was 45 or so that he had one leg shorter than the other and was developing scoliosis. He has an insert for his shoe but probably got it too late for his knees)

Their 55th anniversary is this year. Their church does a "silver and gold" Sunday in June; it honors people who have been married 25 years, or 50 years, or 50+ years. They ask for a wedding photo to go in a Powerpoint that's shown at the reception. My parents actually don't have any wedding photos (long story that is best explained as "it was sort of an elopement") but my mom found one from when they were traveling together shortly after they were married.

I was still 10 years in the future at that point, but when I looked at the photo, I thought: yes, I remember when they looked like that. It made me a little sad - I remember when I was small and my dad used to lift me up and hold me in the air so I could "fly," I remember when I believed he could fix anything that got broken. I remember thinking how glamorous my mom seemed. (She wasn't, really, I guess, and I don't think she'd describe herself that way. But she SEEMED glamorous to me.) I remember when both of them had dark hair. (My dad's hair is totally white; my mom's is salt-and-pepper).

When they were the age I am now, they already had both their kids and had been married for 20 some years. My life turned out really differently than how I thought it would when I was a kid. Not that I'm sad about that; it's just interesting to think about "How would things be different if I wound up with a high-school sweetheart or something that I married straight out of college, and had kids, and tried to stay home with them?"(as my mom did, and I think if I had had kids I would have tried to do the same if there was ANY way it could be done)

My brother and sister-in-law are doing the parent thing, but at a later age than my parents even did. The world has changed. My mom talks with some frustration about being referred to as an "advanced-age prima gravida" when she was expecting me. (She was in her early 30s) (One reason they waited so long: they wanted to be financially stable and have bills paid off first).
 
I also look at my parents and wonder at how their lives have changed - my mom is, in many ways, much more of a caretaker now. My dad can still drive, but with his bad knees, it's a lot harder, so she drives them nearly everywhere. She does all the yardwork he used to do. And she does it patiently, and without saying anything, without complaint. I suppose that is how it is when you love someone, and I'm sure it's a lot easier having to be a caretaker for someone in physical aspects when that person is still mentally the same person they always were - they can still talk to you, they still remember all the things you have done together, they can still do a lot of the paperwork type stuff couples have to do. But I confess, I'd still find it challenging to have to take on ALL the household work plus do things like drive a spouse to physical therapy several times a week. I admit it: I'm kind of selfish about my free time and I know I feel resentful sometimes when I feel like I "have" to clean the house and mow the lawn as well as do my full-time job. And I feel resentful when a student makes claims on my time I feel they do not have a right to. I suppose it's different when you're married to someone, and you take the "for better or for worse, in sickness and in health" part of it seriously.

My mom jokes that the vows they said didn't have her saying she would "obey" - I think the Disciples of Christ dropped that fairly early on - but I'm pretty sure they did the for-better-or-for-worse and all of that. And really, that's a good  philosophy of life in general: you have to take the bitter with the sweet. Bad stuff happens and while it sucks, you just deal with it and keep going.

I suppose my life has changed a lot, too. Perhaps you don't notice it as much when you're living it. I admit, sometimes I miss the days when I was in grad school - I had far fewer responsibilities than I do now, when I had to make a difficult decision about something in a lab I was teaching I could go to the prof in charge and ask his or her advice. Now I'm the prof in charge and I have to be the one making the tough decisions and doing things like busting the plagiarists. (One of the deals one of the profs I taught regularly for had going: if one of his TAs caught plagiarism or other cheating, we took it to him, and he brought the hammer down. It was much less stressful, and I suppose the students were more likely to listen to him).

And now I'm staring down a new summer semester - it starts tomorrow. I'm hoping it's better than last semester was; that one chewed me up and spit me out, partly because I had a critical mass of immature people in two of my classes and while it wasn't a LOT, it was enough to really get me down.

more thoughts on education

Some of you might have seen the story about the teacher (in Detroit, I think?) who was fired for using a broom to help her break up two students who were fighting (and who were, apparently, larger than she was). This kind of thing is a lose-lose-lose-lose situation for the teacher:

- the notification system (some kind of intercom) was apparently broken, so she couldn't follow "official procedure"

- if she got in there physically, she could have been injured badly, and/or fired for touching a student

- if she did nothing, she would have been excoriated for "not being caring enough to break up a fight"

- if she used something to try to break up the fight, she gets fired and thought of as insensitive.

You know what? These kinds of stories put me on the point of saying, "Let's just end compulsory education in the US. You don't want to be in school? Fine. Don't go." And also: "You make it so kids who want to learn can't learn? You threaten other kids, you destroy school property, you constantly disrupt class? You're gone. Sorry. Education's a privilege, not a right, and you just lost that privilege."

Of course, we'd also have to somehow overhaul the welfare system so those folks who DO want to go through 12 or more years of education don't wind up supporting a group of illiterates who can't hold down a job. There needs to be some kind of incentive for people to make sure they can more or less take care of themselves as adults rather than expecting someone else to.

But when I hear stuff - and I've even heard stories from the kids at church and their parents, even here, in our fairly little rural district - about kids who make it so it's hard for other kids to learn, or make other kids feel unsafe going to school, I just want to say "Throw 'em out. Throw all the jerks out. Make 'em dig ditches or something for a living."

As a college prof, I'm somewhat lucky: if someone were to get very disruptive in class (it's never happened yet), I can tell them to leave. And if they don't, I can call security (and it's an online system, and we test it monthly to be sure it works) and have security escort them out. I wouldn't do that lightly - a student disagreeing with me or questioning me on something, I'll engage them (especially if the question is something pertinent to class material) and talk with them. But if they were to get too in my face, or actually threaten me or one of the other students, nope. They lost the privilege of being there.

I don't know what the world would look like with compulsory K-12 education ended. There are probably a lot of bad unintended consequences I've not thought of (In some districts, apparently, part of it is to keep the troublemakers off the street, and the last thing I want are packs of "bad kids" roaming through town during the day looking for stuff to do, which might include looking for stuff they could take and pawn). But when kids who WANT to learn are having a tougher time of doing it because some kids in their class are being jerks, and there's little the teacher can do, something's broken.

Oh, I know an "easy" answer is "That kid who wants to learn should be homeschooled" but not all families can manage that - either they feel they lack the level of education themselves, or both parents work, or there's some other factor (like a special-needs sibling who requires a lot of time from the parents) that prevents it. Or sending the kid to private school is not always possible - the nearest Catholic school here is an hour's round-trip commute, and a parent would have to make that with the kid every day. And tiny little kids shouldn't be sent away to boarding school, I tend to think. Perhaps in some cases the family could move, but that's not always possible either.  And at any rate, it seems like once again, the burden is put on those trying to do the responsible thing rather than on the irresponsible parties.

Perhaps it was always thus but it seems of late there are an awful lot of kids who don't respect any adult, or, more often, their parents teach them not to respect any adult, and when the kid gets in trouble at school they claim their kid is being unfairly targeted. (as much trouble as kids can get into at school. When I was a kid, the idea of "expulsion" was whispered about among the kids, but I can't remember ANYONE being expelled, not even the kid who exposed himself to the Home Ec teacher and the entire class).

And yeah, I guess kids to get thrown out of grade schools now, but it more often seems to be something like the little boy who draws a World War II scene where the soldiers have guns (which I would argue is normal and healthy for a little boy to want to draw; that's just how little boys are. Little boys who draw war scenes generally grow up to be normal men, not criminals; my brother, who is now involved with the ministry, drew war scenes and giant-robot-battle scenes as a kid) than the teenager who screams and curses out his teacher in front of the shocked class. Or discipline is applied really unevenly, so the Boy Scout at a suburban middle-class school who forgets and brings his pocket knife to school is in huge trouble whereas the kid fighting with another kid in an inner-city school is largely ignored.


The thing about teaching college is there are penalties that can (usually*) be made to stick - you can throw someone out for breaking certain rules. Like plagiarism. Or cheating. Or even being really disruptive in class.

(*I say "usually" because one of my colleagues who teaches one of the graduate level classes is having to follow up on something - apparently he busted a student for plagiarizing, and at grad student level, that's grounds for expulsion. But then this guy 'walked' at graduation and allegedly got his degree. So I don't know if it was done as a face-saving measure or if this guy had friends in high places or what.)

Slouching toward Bethlehem

Or maybe towards Gomorrah, I don't know.

On bad days, sometimes I watch the news or read news online and wonder what we may be unleashing on the world. What if evil is something that could actually take on a persona, what if it could actually infect people? Do we want to call more of that into the world?

I don't know. I find the idea that a group at Harvard wants to celebrate a Black Mass (And I guess they already did? It was yesterday?) unsettling in the extreme.

I'm not Catholic but I am Christian and I find this both offensive and also kind of scary- the idea of not meddling in things that might just call down evil somehow. But moreover, offensive - as one of the chaplains protesting observed, “Just because something may be permissible does not make it right or good.”

I don't know. I think more and more as a society we seem to be rejecting "right" and "good," and that bothers me on a very deep level. Some people take the idea of "it's all relative, so what does it matter?" Others seem to take the idea of "it's my right to do this, no matter how it affects other people."

From what I've been able to read about this, it's not that there's a satanic group on campus doing this genuinely. It's an outspoken atheist group who is doing it mainly (I suspect) as a poke in the eye to Catholics.

I don't know. The older I get, the more I ascribe to the philosophy of "Don't be an asshole just because you can be one. And don't be an asshole just because someone was an asshole to you in the past." I know a lot of nonbelievers who feel oppressed because America is in some ways still a culturally Christian country. I know cases where Christians have been (to my great embarrassment as a Christian) rude and pushy to nonbelievers.  But two wrongs don't make a right. Being offensive about the thing a large group of Christians consider deeply solemn and meaningful is not going to win you any points. Throwing dung on a person because someone else threw dung on you first isn't going to make that person want to listen to your unhappiness about having dung on you. 

Part of the reason it bothers me is it's just another case of "we're gonna be ugly and irreverent to something that other people are deeply reverent about because we can be" - it's just a childish behavior, like a four-year-old scribbling in his sister's book because she'd rather read than play with him.

The other thing, like I said - and some might call this superstitious, I know some of my colleagues would - I think it's a bad idea to mess in things that might just, somehow, bring more evil into the world. I don't know the history of or the way a Black Mass operates, but it does seem like something aimed at "undoing the good" of a true Christian celebration.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old and sad (I think I am getting closer to burnout than I've ever been) but when I see stuff like this, it just seems so unnecessary. One human tendency that bothers me is going out of your way to hurt someone else because you've been hurt in the past - it just perpetuates the bad feelings. And yes, I'm jumping to the huge conclusion here that some of the people are involved are doing this because they were hurt or mistreated by people calling themselves Catholics in the past, and I could be totally wrong about that.

But also, doing something offensive "for the lulz" (and this is a deeply, deeply offensive thing. I find it offensive and as I said, I'm a Protestant in a traditionally "low church" denomination; I can't imagine how much worse it is for lifelong Catholics) just seems to me to....well, it makes life ugly for no good for anyone. We don't need more ugliness in this world.

And yes, I saw the photos of the Catholics and others praying - trying to fight back the evil, I suppose you could say, with prayer. And yes, of course, Christ is bigger and stronger and tougher than any Black Mass, and the people participating in that thing are ultimately only hurting themselves in some ways.

But it still bothers me because it just reminds me of how diverse ugliness in our society has become.

Trying hard not to laugh, mostly failing.

Sometimes college dining halls are kind of stuck in a bizarre time warp. They do stuff that would be considered kind of dumb and jerky on the rest of the campus.

For example- a dining hall doing a "Black History Month Dinner" of fried chicken. (I have heard of that actually happening.)

While I tend to roll my eyes at the people who get offended at every little thing, I also think there's a point where you have to ask yourself: "Is this cool, what I'm doing? Or is it kind of not cool?"

I will say my old college dorm did a Black History Month dinner of traditional "soul food" - black eyed peas, greens, that kind of thing. A lot of the Black women I knew in the dorm, who were from the North somewhere (Michigan, Ohio, or some were from New England) were like, "Wait, what? I've never eaten this stuff. What's going on?" It was more puzzlement than offense. And I don't think the dinner went over very well. (I like black-eyed peas NOW, after having lived in the south a few years, but I didn't like them then. And I still don't like cooked greens.)

But anyway. A school did a Cinco de Mayo meal with "chocolate mustaches" as the dessert. They also gave away sombreros. And of course, some people are offended.

(I admit, there are probably some HORRIBLE jokes about the chocolate mustaches that were made. I'm not gonna make 'em myself. But I'm saying I can imagine them.)

And while I think the sort of hair-trigger OUTRAGE! makes life today kind of exhausting, I also think.....stereotyping Mexicans as mustache-wearing sombreroed people is kind of a little dumb and not-cool, and maybe wasn't well-thought-out on the part of the dining hall. I mean, especially for Cinco de Mayo, which is essentially a celebration of the Mexicans whupping the tails of the French who were sent there to take over the country. (Wait. Maybe those chocolate mustaches were a joke on the French? Well, carry on then. Though that probably seems a little too subtle.)

(The real joke? The group most offended by they chocolate mustaches....was the Campus Society for the Promotion of Hipsterism.)

I dunno. You have to be so careful, and one person with a candy mold that they can use (but maybe should not) can lead to so many problems.

They need some science

Apparently, Wichita Falls, Texas, is in a bad enough drought that they're talking about (starting next year) treating wastewater and recycling it back into the drinking-water system.

And people are horrified at this. And the news reports talk about it as "drinking toilet water" and similar.

Um, folks?

Do you really think God makes a whole brand-spankin'-new batch of water every year, just so we have virgin water to drink?

(Note to self: possible business idea there for a bottled-water service.)

I hate to tell you this, but there's this thing called the water cycle. Water has been traveling through it since the Earth began. Granted, there weren't any humans there yet at the beginning, and the human population has ballooned in recent years, but - any water you drink is going to, at least in part, have passed through the bladder of an animal at some point in the game. Maybe even a person's bladder.

There's that famous probability thought-problem about how many molecules of oxygen from Caesar's last breath get breathed in by some resident of North America today. Same thing with water.

If the treatment plant does a good job, if they filter and treat it right, you won't be able to tell.

Trust me.

I'd rather use recycled wastewater than be told I can only wash clothes and dishes one day a week, or take showers twice a week.

And I agree: the idea of drinking water that's been in a toilet is unappealing if you think about it. But really, the water we drink now? Especially if it's from a surface source? Probably was IN a toilet at some point in the past 20 years.