In which I post pictures of bare naked trees

The first week of the semester has come and gone, and I think it went well, all things considered. I ran two lectures, online. I managed to switch between the meeting software, the online whiteboard, the polling software, the electronic textbook, and the classroom management software, in real time. Even if it wasn't always smooth. I managed to record the lectures. And then I managed to edit the recordings to cut out the dead space when the students were in breakout rooms. And then I managed to upload the edited videos to the online learning suite. Magic! I still feel an apple-sized lump of fear in my chest when I think about the fact that I have to repeat it all and teach again this week. On a new topic. But at least that lump isn't melon-sized anymore. With spikes on the outside.In other news, stage four lockdown in Melbourne, to me, looks a lot like stage three lockdown. Back in March, in our first lockdown, I shared lots of pictures of trees in autumn. Now I find myself taking lots of pictures of trees in winter.

In the photo above, the trees are conversing. See how they gesticulate? Elbows bent and fingers splayed? A whole row of gossiping old ladies.

In the photo below, the trees are dancing, arms raised to the sky, swaying with the music in the sunset.

Yeah. There isn't much for entertainment around here, besides trees.

If you look really closely, you can see buds on the trees. Winter only has three weeks left to do its worst, and then we'll be back into spring. Later sunsets. Warmer days. And maybe a retreat back to stage three or stage two. Which will look the same to me, I think. Except with the teenager in school in person again. And the option to tag along on the grocery run, rather than stay in the park and watch the trees. 

I can't wait. 

Stage four

... And just after yesterday's post, new news!

With another 671 new covid-19 cases announced today, the city of Melbourne has gone into strict stage four lockdown. This means:

* Curfew from 8pm to 5am.

    We had been finding the 8:30pm walk to be one of the best -- fewer people on the dark sidewalks, possums in the trees, the occasional tawny frogmouth. No more 8:30pm walk for us. We'll manage.

* You can only exercise and shop within a 5km radius of home.

    This doesn't affect us at all. Except for school for Jonathan, none of us have left a 5km radius since March, aside from one quick trip for me to liberate textbooks from my office. Even so, pulling out the map on the newspaper, I found that there are a lot of cool things within a 5km radius of home.

* All high school students across the state back to learning online.

    Yay! This one comes as a relief to me. One more day of school in-person for Jonathan, and then he'll back to his living-room office for six weeks. I know it's more fun with friends, but at least he won't have to wear a mask all day, or take the train, or risk school closures. 80 schools were closed last week because of virus, including the high school where he did the French program two years ago.

* Exercising in groups of no more than two.

    Families with young children are exceptions, but we don't count. We'll have to take turns going out in pairs. Or solo.

* Exercising outside for no more than an hour per day. 

    Sometimes we have been taking two or three long walks each day, for more than an hour total. I guess we'll have to pay more attention to timing.

* One person making one shopping trip at most once per day.

    This was basically us, until last Saturday when Jonathan wanted to check out the vegan food with Tim. Now it will be us again.

Tomorrow, they will announce more restrictions on businesses that can be open, part open, or must close. I'll probably be teaching online during the announcement. Tim may have his own online meetings. I won't be shut in this round, since I'm already fully online. But watch the economy for future closures. My industry (higher education) is being hit hard.

Maybe I will end with a photo of one of the parks less than 5km from home, taken this afternoon.

We live in a good place for a lockdown.

Little changes

Before we begin, a few spectacular photos from our travel during the last couple of weeks.

Camellias from the garden outside our building.

Fog in the park outside our back gate.

I would have been in Sydney this past week at a conference, had the year been normal. Instead, all my travel photos are taken within a ten minute walk of home.

The state of Victoria has had a spike in covid-19 cases. We shut down again three weeks ago, but the numbers of positive tests keep going up and up and up, reaching record highs every few days. This is most concerning to me because Jonathan is back in school. Only the students in years 11 and 12 are in school in the state, all the others are online. But because there are exams at the end of high school, and the state doesn't want to figure out how to run different exams for different students under different levels of quarantine, they sent the oldest students back.

I am worried. High school is a place to spread viruses -- we all came down with a bad cold in February that had been spreading around Jonathan's high school. If they keep sending the teenagers back, it seems inevitable that we will all get covid. Maybe we will be lucky and not hit hard. But the disease seems so random we cannot know.

The decision is out of my hands, though. By law, Jonathan goes to school each morning, wears a mask all day, comes home.

Masks are obligatory outside of home now. We're all getting used to wearing them as we walk around the park out the back gate.

Possibly as a way of taking control of some aspect of a life spinning into chaos, Jonathan has decided to upgrade his vegetarianism to veganism. Basically that means he has decided to cut out dairy. He doesn't like milk anyway, and doesn't drink it, but he has had to give up cheese. I am not switching to veganism. I am eating all of the cheese that we bought for Jonathan before he decided on the upgrade.

I'm happy to support a new diet as long as Jonathan is taking control of it, thinking about nutrients and balance, and doing his share of cooking as it becomes more challenging. So far so good. Today Jonathan joined Tim at the grocery store to explore the vegan aisle to see what options were available. He came home loaded with non-dairy cheese, cashew-milk yogurt, falafel, tofu. Tonight Jonathan made green curry with tofu and veggies, and it was tasty. Tomorrow Tim will try a variation on pizza with non-dairy cheese for Jonathan. Many of our vegetarian soups and chilies were already vegan. We'll have to give up the pasta bake, lasagna, unless we make an alternative meal. But I guess we'll see whether this will work or not.

The final small change in our lives is that the new semester starts Monday, and this time around I am teaching. It will be my first teaching of the year. A new class. Online. Taught from my bedroom, where I can look out one window to the garden and the camellias, and then look out the other window to the park. And then look at all the faces on the screen. This is how we teach, now, here. And this is how we learn.

Unless we are in high school, year 11 and 12.