mathdreads – Page 40 – Where Vivid Narratives Live

Filming at The Crashbox

One of the reactions to George Floyd being choked for 8 minutes and 46 seconds by a former police officer kneeling on his neck,

was a national call for submissions to The Breath Project. The organizers encouraged spoken word artists to record an 8 minute and 46 second performance to be used as a tool for education and activism purposes.

Normally, I would’ve jumped at writing and rehearsing a performance piece. Yet, these days, I’m far more interested in being behind the camera. Since my roommate constantly breaks out into original protest songs and political rants, I challenged her to perform for this project.

Once she was ready, I contacted the local participating theatre, Rude Mechs, which volunteered its space, The Crashbox, where we filmed her performance. A Rude Mechs staffer scheduled our shoot, set the lights and, using my smartphone, shot her performance while I directed.

The shoot only took about an hour. She ran through it several times while he shot it from two different camera angles.

Although we filmed on a Wednesday, I didn’t view the clips until Friday around midnight while lying in bed. I saved myself some grief by deleting unusable footage such as when she had the script in hand.

Then, I watched several YouTube videos about editing with iMovie. I normally wait until the weekend to venture into a new technology because I know the first day will be agonizing. This time around, I found a better approach. By watching a slew videos the night before, I woke up excited about diving into iMovie with a game plan–after yoga and lunch.

Of course, confident plans merely tempt the devil. Straight out of the gates, I clicked the wrong thing and imported many pictures from my photo album along with the video clips I wanted. Rookie mistake. No problem.

Once I got the clips I wanted, the easiest approach was to merge two of them, which wasn’t as straight forward as merging two audio clips with GarageBand, but I understood the process. Again, the devil found an opening.

Despite the confirmation that the merged file had been saved, the clip description showed “zero bytes.” Not believing what I read, I still clicked on it. Sure enough, nothing was there.

Back to Google, my favorite IT entity. I learned that zero bytes meant there wasn’t enough room to save a file. I’d greatly underestimated how much space a less than 10-minute clip consumed. So, I saved it to the infamous Cloud. Again, I got the message that the file had been successfully saved, but when I checked iCloud, it showed zero bytes.

At that point, I took a bathroom break. When I returned, the file actually had a much higher number than zero. A-ha! So, there’s a lag between the file being successfully saved and having it show up.

Then, I was on my happy editing way. I worked on a script page a day because after an hour, apathy creeped in. Once I finished the rough cut, I saved the file again without any devilish drama.

Yet, for all the effort, our video was around two minutes short of the required length. Stretching it was out of the question. Nor was I interested in returning to the theatre to record more.

As a matter of fact, with the exception of the time limit, her performance was solid and I liked the editing choices I’d made. All I needed to do was make some fine tune edits, learn how to create end credits, and how to upload to Vimeo.

And not a moment too soon. I’ve got a screenplay to revamp and a film festival to screen. Plus I need to plan out the second season of my podcast. Then there’s the seemingly never-ending illustrations that I need to finish for my third book.

Yet, all’s not lost. Once I uploaded the video to Vimeo, I shared it with several friends and family. Then, I took the extraordinary step of entering it into three film festivals.

View the completed project on Vimeo.

The Latest Drill in Dentistry

When my part of the world halted in mid-March, I figured the situation wouldn’t be remedied by March 31st, the date of my latest dental appointment. The clinic texted a cancellation a week later. They only accepted dental emergencies at that time.

Months later, I felt a potential dental emergency brewing among my left molars. Could’ve been the occasional lodged food despite nightly flossing. Even with that good habit, one needs a trained professional to pick and scrape at one’s teeth every six months.

Instead, I trained my electric toothbrush on the troubled spot, gave it an extra flossing and rinsed with a “restorative” mouthwash in the hopes that I could triage the situation. All I could think of was dying from some oral abscess because I didn’t want to catch the plague by going to the dentist.

I’ve never hated going to the dentist. So, this feeling was a new thing for me. If anything, I was rather nerdy about regular dentist trips.

I was far too elated when the dentist’s office texted me out of the blue to schedule an appointment. Similar to the excitement I had as a child when the tooth fairy left money under my pillow. Except for this time around, I didn’t want any teeth to fall out. Bad enough seeing blood after brushing. OK, TMI.

Following the new protocol, the receptionist asked me a series of COVID-19 related questions as part of the appointment process. On the day of the appointment, I parked and sat in the car to call the clinic, letting them know I had arrived. I came as close to my appointed time as I could because I didn’t want to wait in the car too long in triple degree heat. Even though I’d parked in the shade with the windows rolled down, nothing beat good ol’ AC, which had apparently gone out at some point while my car sat mostly idle over the past couple of months.

A few minutes later, the receptionist called. She unlocked the front door, stepped out, and pointed the thermometer gun at my head. All I could think was, “Of course the time I don’t have AC, I’m going to blow this appointment.”

Fortunately, she checked my temperature again once we were inside the clinic after their AC had a chance to work its magic. Clearing that hurdle, I learned that they’d charge me a $10 fee for the extra COVID-19 cleaning, which I was assured most dental insurances would cover. (Ha, not my insurance!) At least my dental/vision insurers had lowered the premium by $10/month, so perhaps, in a way, they had covered it.

Although everyone was masked and had a face shield, the appointment went smoothly. Probably the most enjoyable dental visit ever, because in a sad way, it was a social outing. You know you’ve been in quarantine too long when a trip to the dentist counts as a “social outing.”

I was so excited to break the monotony of my weekly routine that I forgot to hand the dental hygienist my night guard for a cleaning. So, there’s another thing that has to wait until 2021.

Condos & Campers

Austin had an unhoused population prior to the pandemic.

Yet like all other inequities, this has become more visible with a growing population of recently unemployed people under the threat of being evicted. Despite this dire situation, new condos, still under construction, loom in the backdrop of these unhoused campers.

There’s a severe disconnect between landlords and tenants. Somehow, the rise in people who could potentially be evicted, unless saved by government assistance or the grace of charity, has not deterred real estate investors from building new condos. This would only make sense if the people who were camping in front of the new condos were the future occupants.

Even though I’m a former math/science teacher, I cannot follow the logic behind building more housing that very few of us can afford at a time when more of us are under constant stress of being evicted. In other words, who are these people, besides other investors, that are going to buy or rent these new condos?

In my elementary understanding of real estate, lucrative cashflow can be made through monthly rent. Now if the current occupants lose their jobs and/or unemployment is insufficient to pay full rent, then there’s less cashflow. By evicting those tenants, the landlord must still pay taxes and utilities until another tenant moves in. How does that work during a pandemic?

Even with my own rent situation, the leasing office offered my roommate and I a deal: if we signed a 10-month lease instead of a 12-month lease, then we could pay the same amount as we’ve paid for the past 14 months. Why 10 months, you ask? Well, in the prepandemic version of our civilization, July and August were the most popular months to move.

Now, I can somewhat understand that logic. The leasing office is gambling that by July 2021, all this shit will be sorted out and people will have their regular income again. This gamble is not apparently taking into account that this pandemic has triggered a recession. So, instead of trying to incentivize current tenants to remain in place without any rent increase, they should DECREASE the rent.

Wait, did I just type that out loud?

Why yes, motherfuckers, I did! Because I’ve read that in places like Manhattan, those landlords have seen a mass exodus. They’re now scrambling to offer a few months rent-free to attract new tenants. To which I say: LOWER THE DAMN RENT.

What tenants are looking for at this point isn’t a shiny new condo, but inexpensive, hopefully safe, accommodations. Those new condos can come with all the bells and whistles as far as amenities are concerned, but without the most attractive feature, affordable rent, then what’s the point? There cannot possibly be positive cashflow if the rent is calculated based on 2019.

Happy Blursday!

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally reached a destination so many have reported: the Blursdays. I believe people with children, and just one child will do it, reached this destination sooner. It’s where one day blurs into the other with very little distinction.

Since my days vary, but the weeks don’t, I’m a relative newcomer to the Blursdays. I’ve cycled through a similar Monday through Sunday routine since mid March and now find myself in mid August.

Even most holidays are merely celebrated by watching the holiday version of TV. Except for Memorial Day. On that day, George Floyd’s murder sparked worldwide protest against police brutality and the systemic racism which incubates such egregious activities.

The protests and the plague march on.

Now it’s back-to-school season. The composition of the protesters have morphed into educators, parents and students versus politicians who never have to step into a school. Since I’m childfree, my weekly Blursday activities haven’t changed due to the school calendar–only the TV and internet content. (I’m also not on social media, but I trust that’s changing similarly.)

Converging with this perfect storm that’s brewing to wipe us out of our developed nation status, USPS is being sabotaged to undermine the upcoming presidential elections. The safest way to vote during a pandemic is by mail-in ballot. Yet, one political party believes that they will only win if fewer people have less voting access.

At the same time, their favored demographic is also affected. As if being at risk of catching the plague wasn’t bad enough, mailed prescription medications for pre-existing conditions have been delayed.

Not to mention online businesses, small businesses and entrepreneurial side hustlers who rely on USPS to serve their customer orders, using the formerly most cost-effective means. USPS is a highly rated government agency that supports so many other aspects of American life. Yet, some politicians act as if USPS should be run as a business rather than a government-run entity that’s actually part of our infrastructure.

Nonetheless, I’m viewing all this chaos from a slow spinning top, where the scenery around me changes while my reduced activity does not. Who knows where this spinning top will eventually land. It’s amazing to think how so many of us are hunkered down waiting out this waterless flood just to pioneer a country with very little infrastructure to hold society together.

For now, it’s just blurring by a day at a time.

Lammas

Lammas AKA “Loaf-Mass” AKA “First Grain Harvest” is a Christian observation in some countries and a Pagan observation in others that occurs on August 1st. I’ve never celebrated it before, but I serendipitously invited myself to a friend’s house on this day, which conveniently enough fell on a Saturday.

Since I sell CBD, I recently started a new promotion: if someone participated in a Zoom presentation about the CBD company I’m associated with, then they’d receive a free 7ml bottle of sublingual CBD.

Initially, I was going to mail her the bottle, but the very next morning, the news reported how the USPS was backlogged. That spooked me. When I texted her that I’d deliver the bottle Saturday afternoon, she told me to come with an appetite. This turned into more than I bargained for.

My friend lives with her two kids, husband and parents.

Since the quarantine, they’ve been taking this pandemic as seriously as I have. Even though I hugged my friend as soon as she opened the door, the only other person I hugged was her husband. Except he hesitated. “Have you been sick?” he asked, crouching as if he’d pounce on me had I said yes. We embraced one another after I confirmed that I’d been healthy, but just to tease him, I fake coughed afterwards.

I only verbally greeted everyone else, but of course I had to take a picture of the little lady of the house. Plus, I made sure to sit in the same spot and I did not use the bathroom. That last part was challenging since I lived about an hour away. Who knew waiting for long periods of time to use the bathroom during those marathon bus rides as a Peace Corps Volunteer was a transferable skill? Lord knows, I didn’t overstay my welcome.

My friend perfected this homemade apple bread recipe during the pandemic.

As a matter of fact, the bread was the only part of the Lammas offering that we ate.

She cut up communion-sized pieces of bread, read a brief description of the observance along with giving thanks for the first harvest, then we all ate a piece of bread. Short and sweet, followed by a sip of strawberry peach mimosa with Proseco–my contribution to the occasion. I didn’t know how this celebration was normally observed, but I knew mimosas went with brunch.

Afterwards, she fixed my plate: a Colombian rice and meat dish with three types of meat.

Heaven! She remarked how that dish was so easy to whip up and I laughed because it would have taken me hours to prepare.

I’d packed my silver chalice, bathing suit and a towel.

This brunch invitation served as a mini summer vacation day trip. I’d not even had a staycation. So, this counted.

Like any true vacation, there was an unforeseen factor: they’d drained their pool for a cleaning, which was just as well since I’d already made up my mind not to use their bathroom and have too much class to pee in the pool.

Nonetheless the drive, the in-person visit, and libations were all vacation-wonderful. No matter how long a vacation lasts, it’s all worth it to temporarily vacate the humdrum of my pandemic quarantine life.

Survival School

When I exited the public school classroom several years ago, I had no idea the unforeseen bullshit I’d spare myself. There were many anti-educational evils that I grew tired of battling, yet the fucking plague wasn’t among them. Followed by the political push to force in-person education amid the rising number of COVID-19 infections and death.

Now the same illogical political bullshit reasoning that’s putting students, educators and the greater community who interacts with them at a new risk for coronavirus exposure, has used its favorite tool: threatening to withhold money. In the past, reducing school funding for so-called underperforming schools was the illogical course of political action as if providing fewer resources to address academic challenges would work.

Federal, and in some cases state, money is being threatened if schools don’t reopen as if reducing school funding will better educate students. A rational response to in-person education during a pandemic would be to increase funding in order to enhance safety and lower cluster outbreaks.

Now public schools scramble to transform themselves into environments where students can both learn and survive. There’s even talk of open classrooms. I’m guessing that’s in other places that don’t get Texan triple-degree weather nor Arctic blasts that plummet everything to below-zero temperatures.

This is one of the occasions where I’m so happy I already drink and curse. This situation isn’t forcing me to adopt two new vices.

Speaking of vices, just when kids are being forced to return to in-person education, Congress is fucking around with relief money, more children are dying from the coronavirus and the threat of evictions has resurged.

Another vice that’s coming around the corner, but hasn’t been splashed about the media yet is this: even if one survives the plague, they won’t just be a survivor, but in the eyes of health insurers, they’ll be people with pre-existing conditions.

In 2016, despite the fact that I was no longer a classroom teacher, I found myself reprising my educator role even though I was a health insurance agent. Here were some of the lesson objectives I reviewed:

Many Americans voted against their best interest because health care had become a political football: Repeal and replace Obamacare!
That was such a successful campaign until the same people discovered that “Obamacare,” which was later nicknamed “Trumpcare,” were both aliases for Affordable Care Act plans or “ACA” for short. No matter what you called it, this was major medical coverage that didn’t reject people based on preexisting conditions.
Americans who rarely saw the doctor were furious that they were either obligated to get healthcare or pay a fine to take care of “sick people.” In reality, this is the nature of ALL insurance. The people who regularly pay, but rarely use their insurance ALWAYS collectively pay for those who use it. Think about it: if everyone who had a policy needed the insurance company to pay for an event at the same time, the company would go bankrupt.
Healthcare coverage is NOT based on political affiliation. Nowhere on the health insurance application does it ask for which political party you normally vote. Therefore, there aren’t any special healthcare plans sponsored by your elected officials. It’s the same (shitty) coverage for all of us unless you are independently wealthy.

Currently, the sudden rise in “sick people” sent insurance companies scrambling. Almost like magic, free testing for COVID-19 appeared before our very eyes. Even more magical, there was no mass outcry about tax dollars being spent for testing “sick people.” That’s because those “sick people” were essential workers, the elderly, children, people with compromised immunities, people with underlying health conditions and people who originally thought this pandemic was a political hoax.

People across the political map have been infected because Rona don’t give a fuck. The triumphant who’ve battled Rona and won have now joined the millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions. Are we now going to tell them that they’re uninsurable? Will we smugly tell our fellow Americans that if they want better health insurance or even SOME health insurance then they have to get a better job?

By the way, where are those better-paying jobs? The government would like to know that as well since they are loathe to continue the extra $600 for unemployed benefits or a second round of $1200.

As a secondary math/science teacher, I encouraged my students to be lifelong learners. That’s pertinent advice for everyone these days. We’ve all been enrolled into Survival School.

Namibia’s Good Bye

“I don’t care if the Earth opened up, swallowed you whole and shat you out in hell!” Namibia growled as she hurried around the living room, gathering her things before fast walking out the front door. The weathered screen door, still in desperate need of a paint job, creaked behind her as she sprinted down the porch steps two at a time. The crunch of loose gravel beneath her vintage cowgirl boots warned anyone within earshot to beware of the runaway woman train.

She opened her grandmother’s hand-me-down pickup truck like she had good sense, slung her things across the front seat, and closed its tricky driver’s side door without a thought, thanks to muscle memory.

As she put the key in the ignition, she used her other hand to wipe inconvenient tears, which blurred her vision.“Come on, Nellie Bell,” Namibia coaxed, using the nickname her grandmother had given the old pickup. Nellie Bell didn’t give a damn about making a quick getaway. Treat her roughly, your ass would be walking.

Namibia’s phone vibrated from within her purse. She shot a look at the house. “Fuck you, Jamal.”

Namibia checked the rearview mirror as she eased Nellie Bell out of the drive way until parallel with his house. She bit her bottom lip, took one more look at that old house, and rehashed his stupid words. “We are over the red line. We all should have fled the country months ago.”

Well, jackass, consider me fled.

Born Free

One of my sisters, Renee, often takes advantage of my editing skills.

Her latest endeavor was updating the family tree on our maternal grandfather’s side as a member of The Strange Family Historical Society (SFHS). Since SFHS published its first history book over 10 years ago, they’re gathering data via an Excel worksheet to update it.

Beyond editing out the wordiness and reformatting the worksheet, the veteran teacher came out in me. The instructions included two examples of how to fill it out, using two different family members, which added unnecessary complexity. Moreover, there was no visual aid. How could instructions about one’s connection to the Strange family not include a family tree?

Fortunately, I had an illustrating app. I refreshed my memory about common conventions used in a family tree chart: squares for men; circles for women; a horizontal line connecting spouses; siblings all perpendicularly connected below their parents on the same horizontal line.

I added more features for the purpose of this data collection. First, the color coding. White was the default color, especially for the Strange family patriarch, Jessee Strange, who was born a slave and freed as a young teen as a result of the American Civil War, which ended in April 1865. Since all of my great grandfather Jessee’s 12 children were freeborn, those Stranges are referred to as The First Generation.

Half of The First Generation of freeborn Stranges had no children and were depicted with a white background. The descendants of the other half of the freeborn First Generation started wearing designated colors at our yearly family reunion, based on their branch of the family tree. For example, my grandfather, Floyd B. Strange, had lime green as his branch color.

I also numbered our family tree, starting with 1 through 12 for the siblings of The First Generation. Part of the data collection instructions included how to assign each family member a unique number, showing their relation to the Strange family tree.

Using Renee as my example, her unique number is 11-6-1 since our grandfather was the 11th child, our mother the 6th child and Renee the first born. Her youngest child, CJ, has the unique number 11-6-1-3 since he’s Renee’s third child.

As I edited the instruction examples, I was suddenly struck with a profound understanding: my sisters, first cousins and I were merely the 3rd generation of freeborn Stranges. How could that be?

There was no error in the conclusion or even the formulation of the conclusion. All my life, I’d bought into the narrative that slavery was a long time ago. So long in fact that I thought several generations had been free.

At that point, I realized I’d believed the dominant narrative hype, starting with what I learned about black people in American history class: The slaves, Harriet Tubman, Fredrick Douglass, MLK and Rosa Parks. This was back in the mid 80s in NC when Black History month was only a week. (Negro History Week started in 1926, then in 1976 the celebration was expanded to a month and renamed Black History month, but that hadn’t quite caught on yet in my high school. My senior year high school English teacher had crammed the Harlem Renaissance into that week.)

The glossing over and outright omission of the contributions of black people was systemic and served many purposes. First, watered-down Black history guaranteed that a straight-A student like me learned very little about the historical contributions of black people. Secondly, being uninformed, students of all races lacked an appreciation of the genius, innovation and sacrifices of black people. Such knowledge would have fostered pride in black students and respect among nonblack students.

Growing up, I’d always heard the narrative that Black History wasn’t important, not realizing that for the myth of white supremacy to be maximized, then there could be no counterexamples or so few that the “exceptional blacks” were just that.

After the American Civil War concluded, free blacks did not receive their 40 acres and a mule, nor an inheritance from their enslaver fathers. Jim Crow replaced the slave codes. States’ Rights facilitated the inequitable passing of laws to deny blacks basic resources needed to thrive such as education, health care and housing. Redlining carved up communities, dictating where blacks could live. Various repressive voter laws and gerrymandering denied blacks access to exercise their civic duty. Police and courts assume blacks are guilty until proven innocent–if we’re not killed prior to receiving justice. Underlying all of these things are those terrible Gap Twins: Empathy and Economic.

But our salvation lies in our family tree. Within the branches of our family tree are the narratives of struggle and triumph. Until our unadulterated family histories permeate throughout our culture like the latest black-inspired entertainment, the dominant narrative will continue its successful burial of our greatness through systemic racism.

The Next Stage

The week after the March 13th shelter in place declaration, I started live-streaming yoga classes from the comfort of my home.

For several weeks, the yoga instructors also taught from the comfort of their homes, with another yoga instructor in their own home as the “demo” yogi.

Then, due to both economic and political pressure, Texas started to reopen. I’ve not yet bothered to learn the fine differences among the stages, designated as 1 through 5, because my sense of logic immediately rejected the rush to reopen.

The day after the highest number of reported COVID-19 infections, Texas started to reopen. From then on, I’ve not given a damn about which particular stage number we’re actually on. All I know, my livestream yoga instructors returned to the studio and taught class to both virtual yogis and a socially-distanced, reduced number of in-studio yogis.

In-studio yogis had to register online prior to their arrival, wear their masks coming and going to class, and take their showers once they returned home. Originally, they could remove their masks when they were on their mat. Then, due to a change of “stage number,” yogis had to practice with their masks on. Then, yogis had the option to practice with their masks on or off, but the instructors continued to teach with their masks on.

With all the mask wearing, the sale of lipstick decreased 15%. Even the president, who consistently downplayed the pandemic, to the extent that he called it a hoax, was finally publicly seen wearing a mask.

COVID-19 parties are all the rage among college students and other young adults. EXCEPT the coronavirus may be more like a cold rather than the chicken pox when it comes to developing immunity. EXCEPT young people are dying from the infection even though they have no preexisting conditions. EXCEPT this is the plague. Not a hoax.

Speaking of hoaxes…on his deathbed in a San Antonio hospital, an unidentified 30-year-old man confessed to his caregivers that prior to catching the plague, he thought the pandemic was a hoax. Would it be too callous for me to say that he was dead wrong? Or is it now appropriate to have a sick sense of humor?

People who proclaim to be pro-life won’t wear a mask to save lives. Apparently, that pro-life stance is only important when controlling pregnant women.

This is the stage we’re in.

4th of July 2020

This year, more than any other, I heard my fellow Americans pointing out that not all were freed on the original July 4th.

This wasn’t a new idea to me, but we’re now living in the intersection of pandemic, global police brutality protests and the strong light of truth being shined on systemic racism.

And to counterpoint the highly vocal people about how not everyone was freed, there were also people highly vocal about reasserting white supremacy. Yet, most of us, just want to live our lives, which should never be too much to ask.

The pursuit of happiness for most of us was a convenient opportunity to be outside. After all, The Fourth of July landed on a Saturday. Some working people had a 3-day weekend. Some, such as myself, had a regular weekend. So, regular in fact, one would not have known that Saturday was a holiday–except for the Macy’s Fourth of July TV special.

This was the first time I’d ever heard the black national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” played during this celebration. Rumor has it, it’ll also be played at the start of NFL football games. The question remains: When the hell will there ever be another football game?

Nonetheless, I continued my Saturday routine with a few tweaks: call Mom; call older sister who thinks she’s my mom; write; yoga; order takeout; watch movie while eating takeout; illustrate while watching TV, including Macy’s Fourth of July.

Rinse and repeat.

Is that depression talking or merely cabin fever? Either way, it’s definitely not “I’m ready to tear off this mask and go running around in a crowd of other unmasked people.” I still value being safe. I even value my Saturday routine. I guess it’s the lack of variation that’s beginning to weigh on me.