Thoughts on 2020... A Beginning

Journaling the Year

Independence Day

It is July 4, 2020, the day that America celebrates its birth as a nation on the Earth the date heralded in the Declaration of Independence penned by Thomas Jefferson. Interestingly enough, the journal of this infamous year should have probably started in January or February; it would have even been more appropriate to start it in March; the month the world shut down.

Why start this journal now? Why on the Fourth of July? Perhaps because this is the first day of 2020 where it seems like time is a luxury instead of a commodity. Perhaps after viewing Hamilton last night, the brain is crackling with ideas. Up until today, it seems like the brain has been working overtime attempting to calculate how to navigate the world that currently exists. So here we sit, July 4, 2020, a day normally celebrated with friends and families firing up grills, eating hot dogs and hamburgers all while watching fireworks brilliantly spark colorfully over the night sky. On this Fourth of July, many of those American pastimes will not occur. Many people will be sitting alone in their homes dreaming of celebrations past, others may venture out with a few close friends, while others may throw caution to the wind and gather putting everyone at risk, but the municipally organized celebrations have ground to a halt. This Fourth of July we celebrate the birth of the nation, but also wonder how will our nation move forward and recover?

December 2019 *A Footnote in current History*

"Sleigh bells ring. Are you listening?" 

Teachers are attempting to teach ever squirrely students of all ages during this month of merriment. Office parties are being held throughout the month celebrating the end of a year and envisioning a prosperous year ahead. Churches are filled will parishioners remembering "the reason for the season"; while patiently waiting to light the middle candle of the advent wreath. All the while families are making holiday travel plans. 

During all this hustle and bustle, a news story consistently crops up over the airwaves, it permeates the topic of news podcasts, and it carelessly tossed aside by certain leaders of our nation. This silent story that originated in a tiny village in China. A story that has changed "normal". This footnote...Coronavirus. 

March 2020

The Month the World Shut Down

March 10, 2020: A Personal Date.

A day of celebration, yet also a day of sadness. On this day, Molly Jane Andrews turned two years old, but her namesake Dorothy G. Jane Andrews passed peacefully from this mortal coil. Dorothy Andrews, better known as Grandma, lived ninety-three wonderful years and decided it was time to move to what the Presbyterian Church (USA) calls the Church Triumphant and her husband waiting there. (Those of us who knew her best believe she bypassed the regular Heaven and moved to Super Heaven.) 

That being said, Coronavirus once again loomed ever-present in the background of daily conversations. The footnotes in podcasts, papers, and nightly news productions were becoming features. Each day as people went to their place of work there was a sense of anxiety. The footnote had crossed over the borders and had been confirmed on the west coast of American shores, but this silent nemesis had seemed to slink its way across the country until it finally permeated every state. 

March 13, 2020: Planning...Closure

This was the day Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools decided it was time to cancel all afterschool activities, including sports because one thing was known about what was now called COVID-19 is that it spreads much faster among gatherings of large groups. 

This was the last track practice that my wife and I attended. We asked the head coach his thoughts about the rest of the school year and he replied, "my faced stapled to the carpet says we won't be coming back on Monday." Three days had passed since the passing of my Grandmother; this was the rapid speed in which COVID-19 was moving through our ranks. 

The CMS school board held a meeting that evening to discuss possible closures and school calendar adjustments. They made various plans and adjusted the calendar because no one knew whether this was a virus that would take its course like the common cold or supplant normalcy. The latter rang true and continues to ring true. Plans in place, calendars updated, afterschool activities canceled; CMS, along with other school districts felt prepared to face this invisible monster creeping into daily life. 

For each district's plans and preparations made into the waning hours of March 13 and at the dawn of March 14. Decisions announced on March 14 would render all these plans moot, for on March 14, 2020, the seventy-fifth governor of North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper, passed the first of his many executive orders closing down all North Carolina schools and non-essential businesses, and requiring citizens to "Stay at Home" because the spread was beyond our calculations and the brightest minds stated that in order to "flatten the curve" all people must "shelter in place"; essentially, all citizens must live in quarantine. 

**Footnote: March 13, 2020, was also the day Breyonna Taylor was shot in her sleep while police were searching through her house. This wrongful death was documented and mourned on social media. It was viewed another moment of police brutality, but "scratch that this is no a moment, its a movement." 

Mar 15, 2020: Remote Learning

"Houston we have a problem..."

Teachers woke up this Monday to discover that for the foreseeable future, which meant until May 18

at the earliest, that they would be teaching their classes online. There were several platforms that were adapted for online learning, but the two most prominent were Canvas and Google Classroom. From the announcement on Saturday to the following Monday, administrators and teachers quickly scribbled to completely reinvent the wheel. It was as if we were the astronauts on the fated Apollo 13 mission; we completely took what we knew and turned it on its head. We learned how to survive in this new learning environment. It was truly as if we all collectively sighed, adjusted, and prayed that some way we might reach our students during this time, and this was only March fifteenth.

...and its only March