SchoolBitz Chronicles: Day 11: ROY G. BIV IN THE HOUSE

Quick Hits:

Leslie tested positive for COVID-19. She's sluggish, some shortness of breath, but we're grateful she's experiencing it rather mildly.

Her symptoms started two weeks ago with a full week of loss of taste and smell but we didn't know that was a potential symptom. When taste/smell came back, it morphed into fatigue. She went from running 3 miles/day to her not being able to run at all in 3 days time. She's feeling better but we want to share this with you so that you know the symptoms.

Color Week - please fill out the survey on your favorite color.
My thoughts wrassling with "time"

Color Week

Leslie structured this week of SchoolBitz around a color each day. Today, marking the distant, ancient event of Indiana basketball's last NCAA National Championship (won here in this fair city, at the Superdome, in ecstatic fashion) we celebrated the color RED. (all pics at the bottom).

We all wore red.
We listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers and This is Indiana.
We made red jello.
We ate red meat bolognese.
We made cherry blossom pictures in art.
Ruby sorted buttons.
We began a survey asking for everyone's favorite color to construct a bar graph with.

Please fill out this QUICK survey to help us collect more data:

1/10,000th the Width of a Proton

I'm seeing a lot of Twitter jokes about "what day is it?" or "two weeks ago when we last saw each other seems like a decade ago!" I've always enjoyed puzzling over how we perceive time. Smarter people have written more eloquently about this but my own personal perception of time has always been bent by the intensity, the depth of feelings and experiences.

There is, of course, the image of a young person watching the clock slowly tick away as you wait for school to end. Leslie and I hear all the time -- at least when we were all allowed to be out in public -- that we will blink and our kids will be all grown up.

For me, the first epic shift in time perception came from my summer camp growing up, Goldman Union Camp Institute in Zionsville, Indiana. (GUCI for short.) Our camp was never going to win Best Facilities Award but we damn sure won for being a deep, meaningful, even holy community. I know this isn't exclusive to my camp. Being 14 years old in a cabin with 16 other guys, and 3 late high school or college student counselors did something to time. The fights, the dirt and grime, the clean up, the sports, the music, the love - it all just bent time like the sounds of a theremin in the hands of Dr. Madd Vibe. Four weeks at GUCI felt like four months. Living life minute by minute, so closely, so intensely...deepening each second of time so that it felt like an hour. In a good way.

It's not for everyone but at 3am, second weekend of Jazzfest Saturday night, in the pocket to some band pouring their heart into the beat - time slows down then, too. The clock might say the jam was 20 minutes but it feels both short and unending... rippling like a gravitational wave through the totality of time and space, that only moves the arms at LIGO the width of 1/10,000th of a proton. (you gotta check that website out). But I've spent enough time on the spacetime continuum for now (and mangled the science, the metaphors...)

Photo from https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/ligo-gw-interferometer

Being a parent in these times, in this situation - the fights, the dirt and grime, the clean up, the sports, the music, the love...well it's bending time again. Will we look back on this time like I look back on my time at summer camp?