In which, although we are not made of sugar, we probably would melt

I find it sort of glum when it’s a rainy day. One of the high points of my retirement is nice long walks listening to audiobooks, on which rain puts the kibosh, so to speak. Not taking that nice long walk means missing out. Fortunately I do have a nice place to take the long walk, quiet streets that for the most part are free of other humans. Hence no face mask, just me and my shadow and my iPhone and headphones. It’s about time to dump the over-the-ears, which act as ad hoc earmuffs. At least there’s that to look forward to. Anyhow, housebound today, again. Feh. 

I sallied forth Tuesday for the first time in ages, launching an attack on one of the local supermarkets. Liz told me that it was quite empty a couple of weeks ago when she went; grocery shopping is a chore that she hates and which I rather enjoy, but the rule in NY is that is if you’re over 70 you have to stay home, and until yesterday she was short of the mark. Now that we’re both in our dotage and hence equally potential quarantine felons, it was back on me. It was my first time masked (shades of “A Weekend in the Country” – we’ll go masked), and my first time traveling one-way aisles, but it was good to get my hands on some foodstuffs again. We’ve been well supplied from a local farm with once-a-week online ordering and curbside pickup, but they don’t grow pineapples or gelato locally… The market even had toilet paper, which we actually didn’t need, but I alerted Catholic Charlie, who lives nearby, and who apparently hasn’t relieved himself since early March. I can’t wait till the plumbing supply stores reopen: I’m going to stock up on bidets in preparation for the next apocalypse.

The Wyoming folks recently did a virtual tournament, and published a whole slew of help docs online. Curiously, they were able to do it without charging everyone an arm and a leg (I’m looking at you, Kentucky), since the software was, all of it, free. I know I’m the only person in the world who thinks there’s a future for long-distance forensics that can somehow eliminate most of the costs and enable less resource-heavy teams to participate, not from homes with dicey wifi and shabby equipment (if any), but from better set-up schools, but I can dream, can’t I? Maybe I’ll end up throwing my own damned tournaments, just for the hell of it. I mean, it won’t cost me anything. 

At the moment, it’s questionable if/how schools will reopen in September. If they do, whew. If they don’t, we all need to get our acts together at a much more rough-and-ready level than TOC. For one thing, PF will be 90% (or whatever) parent judges. Then again, the lack of travel costs will enable lots of college student judging; I would imagine that a tournament might set up an exchange for schools to purchase judges absent the tournament getting involved much in the process. I don’t know. It’s early days yet. I’ll learn more from the NDCA conference. 

In which we debrief on some pastimes

I resisted installing YouTube on my Roku until last night, when the Sondheim tribute gave me no choice. My feeling until then was that the last thing I needed on the widescreen was wall-to-wall PewDiePie, which overshadows much of my opinion of the service. But I have to admit that, in reality, I am not above watching a video or two, but I think of them as snacks during the day, breaks from the main business, a very occasional pleasure. When I watch TV, I watch TV. Big screen, comfy chair, no distractions—I’m in it for whatever it is I’m watching. Lots of people I know watch TV while they read, eat, fornicate, et cetera, which to me distracts from the enjoyment of the program. Then again, when I et cetera I inevitably have music playing, and I know people who never think of music as a background and wouldn’t consider for a moment doing anything when they’re listening to music other than listening to music. (Note: Mozart would be surprised at that, btw.) Anyhow, I’m now set up, and the challenge will be to resist things like endless plunges into Fred Astaire dances and amusement park videos. We’ll see.

By the way, the Sondheim was a joy. I can’t imagine that if you are the potential audience you weren’t watching it, but just in case, check it out. Too bad that now you won’t see the false start: it was really heartening that broadway.com could screw up so blandly. Poor Raul.

On the entertainment front, I caught My Name is Dolemite on Netflix over the weekend. It got great reviews when it was released, and I have to admit it had me regularly laughing out loud. Highly recommended. And rather than pursue the new Hillary Mantel, which I did buy in preparation for finishing off the trilogy, I switched over to Master of the Senate. Sort of the same thing, in a way, with different players. There’s nothing like high politics for great drama. Caro starts off with a critical history of the Senate before dropping LBJ into the mix. God, that Caro knows how to write! Meanwhile Cromwell will have to cool his heels for a while. 

Other commentary: season three of the The Crown was a letdown from the first two seasons, mostly because the history is less interesting, as is the soap element. Colman is great, as is Helena BC, but it’s just not the same as their characters age. Still, it’s not as if I won’t watch again when the next season arrives. I think in the meanwhile I’ll attack the second season of Broadchurch to get Colman’s ER2 cleared out of my mind. That show is, shall we say, different from this one. Say what you will about the royals, there’s no child molesting. Much. 

In which we wonder how the horse died in the first place

All of the reports I’ve seen are quite positive about e-TOC. Predictably the interp events were found a bit lacking, but everyone was glad to have them, and the debate events seemed to work fine. I seem to be the only one on the planet who questions the costs. Granted there are expenses, even for a virtual tournament, but not the same as a physical tournament. At the point where this isn’t factored into the running of a tournament, I’m more than a little suspicious. Still, for me this is probably beating a dead horse, something that is generally frowned on in Kentucky, and nobody else seems to care. It is a truth generally acknowledged that the cost of circuit debate is prohibitive, and everyone tsks-tsks about it once in a while, and whole styles of debate have evolved to criticize it (albeit while being a part of it), but I haven’t seen anyone yet stand up and say that because the system is unfair economically in general, I will simply not participate in it. I can understand that, I guess—if you’ve got it, baby, flaunt it—but virtual debating does leave open the opportunity for debate at a high level that isn’t prohibitively expensive. Something tells me no one will be very enthusiastic about the idea, though. 

Oh, well. I’ve signed up to audit NDCA’s coaches' conference in May, which promises to be mostly about remote debating. Given that there’s no guarantee that we will be returning to normal even in the 2020-21 school year, and given that I run tournaments practically every weekend, it behooves me to be up on things. 

We’ll see what happens. 

In which we spend a rainy afternoon

Speaking of Robbie Robertson… 

Having been retired for over a year now, I have my routines pretty down pat. I’ve been doing lots of writing, as well as retrieving and archiving old family materials and the like. Throw in a nice long walk to listen to my latest audiobook and a good night’s sleep without any alarm other than Tik (pronounced teek) to force me up early, and I’m really not looking to fill any empty hours. Before the quarantine, I did pop down to a movie theater in the afternoon every couple of weeks, because I love movies, but obviously that has stopped. My point is that I find myself feeling guilty if I settle down to watch a movie at home in the afternoon. I should be doing something productive, sez I to me. On the other hand, there was a really cold wet day last week that seemed absolutely perfect to watch The Irishman. I mean, the damned thing’s three and a half hours long, and in a remarkably uncharacteristic move on Martin Scorsese’s part, it’s all about gangsters, so when else was I going to watch it? So I popped some corn, settled myself in, and went for it. 3 ½ hours? Passed like a minute. Never bored for a second. Of course, if Scorsese doesn’t know how to tell a story by now, he’s never going to. The aging/unaging of the actors worked quite well. In fact, the only uncanny valley moments were centered around DeNiro’s not-blue-in-real-life eyes. Suddenly they’d be sticking out more brightly than anything else on the screen. Anyhow, a strong recommendation for your own rainy afternoon. Or sunny afternoon, if it comes to that. 

Robbie R, to answer your question, did the music for the film. I also happened to see this, 

which is fun for old Band fans. And I was listening to an odds-and-ends Band collection from the vaults this week, so I’ve had Robbie up the wazoo. 

Speaking of Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz happens to be one of the few concert movies I’ve ever gotten into. Kaz and I watched it together not that long ago. 

And one other strong recommendation: the Marco Polo app. If you've got distant family, this is a joy to capture not conversations but simply the fun active moments of the day. With an almost-three-year-old in London, daily Marco Polos are a lifesaver. For the record, we use Google Duo for video chats. 

What would we have done if this virus had hit 20 years ago? Or 40 years ago? The bind moggles.

In which we wonder about the audience

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer poses an interesting question. The author clearly states in the text that he intends it to be a book for children, but Twain’s style makes it seem anything but, not to mention that it is filled with pretty grim stuff, including graverobbing and murder and attempted mutilation and homelessness and the like. As for the style part of it, Twain’s use of understatement and overstatement and his coy omniscience would have to go over the head of almost any reader the same age or so of his hero, that is, his stated audience, while inevitably tickling the amusement of the adult reader. As for the plot, maybe in 1876 all manner of vile criminality was one’s daily bread, and no one would blink twice at the things the Injun Joe is up to, but I have to say that the proceedings made me wonder once or twice. A little dab of research on my part did not uncover whether Twain was serious about aiming it at a young audience, but I will say this: I can’t tell you how many times I laughed out loud listening to it. (I mentioned before that it was Nick Offerman narrating very, very well.) Obviously I have set myself up for a visit with Huck in the near future, a book that I will not listen to but instead handle the old-fashioned way. It will be about the umpteenth time I’ve read it. If I happen to find myself on a desert island some day, it will be there along with me. 

I’m falling away from watching The Tudors. The more I see, the less real it becomes. Reading Hillary Mantel at the same time is the key kibosher, given that the facts outweigh the fancy, but the melodrama I watched yesterday of the death of Thomas More was tedious enough to do the work all by itself. And I don’t know if I can watch Natalie Dormer sneer even one more time. No wonder Crumb/Cremuel was so efficient at getting AB’s upper regions removed. I’d volunteer to do it myself at this point. 

For the record (no pun intended), recent additions to the Spotify playlist include songs by KT Tunstall (for which I probably ought to apologize for the poppishness, but an ear worm is an ear worm is an ear worm), Levon Helm (yet again, so take that Robbie), Gram Parsons (sigh), and Graham Parker and the Rumour (new to me). 

And there you are.

In which we point out some changes in the 2020-21 schedule

[Video of the day, entirely for keeping one's spirits up:  https://youtu.be/0-b4M8jssX8]

Assuming that we’re all back on track come September, there will be a couple of changes to the regional calendar. 

First of all, Byram Hills is probably moving to Columbus Day weekend. This weekend has opened up because Monticello is passing on their invitational and hosting a grand prix of debate and speech under the auspices of the NYCFL on November 7, which, coincidentally, used to be the old MHL Monticello weekend. Plus ca change, eh? 

The biggest craziness is in the New Year. The way it looks now is this:

1/8-9 Newark

1/9 Chaminade

1/16-18 Bigle X

1/23 Baby Bump at Hen Hud

Weekend of 1/29: Columbia, Emory, Ridge

Essentially this jamboree is happening this weekend rather than as usual because the Emory folk, who historically pay no attention to anything other than themselves, have been hitting the wacky weed again, and wreaking whatever havoc they can as a result. 

2/5-6 Pennsbury

2/6 Bronx Winter Local, AKA the Re Ducks

2/13 Harvard

Presumably Penn will revert back to Harvard weekend, or at least that was our recommendation to them, since their attendance was equal on that weekend to what it was the earlier weekend, which would now conflict with Pennsbury. Given that the Pennsbury tab room = the Penn tab room, and high schools always take precedence, I would expect this to be a no-brainer on the parts of the Ben Franklinites. 

I could easily see Ridge moving off 1/29 to 1/23, which would mean we’d have to bump Bump, probably to 2/13. 

The rest of the season is where you would expect it to be. 

Let's just hope we do have a season. 

In which we partake in our annual feast of Kentucky vitriol

The TOC was designed to break all 5-2s to a “sweet sixteen” round. If you do the math, this means a field of 72. Of course, the pyramid doesn’t always break perfectly, but the point is clear. To get these 72 champion teams, from Policy or LD, a system for the accumulation of bids was required. I gather that originally the bids were established by looking at any tournament and measuring the number of states represented and the number of teams participating against a preset formula, and then pulling off the top until you reached 72 entrants. Later, this evolved into determining in advance a set of bid tournaments that would provide the field of 72 on a regular basis. Becoming, and remaining, a bid tournament was hotly contested, and argued annually by a group of TOC advisers, with J. W. Patterson, the TOC tournament director, as the final arbiter. 

Things have changed. Obviously this week’s tournament is nothing like any previous TOC, given that where once there was only Policy, there is now everything from Congress to POI and, of course, PF and LD. And there won’t be much scrambling for hotel rooms and dinner reservations. More to the point, the magic number of 72 no longer applies, at least as far as PF is concerned. Even in the pandemic, there are 99 teams "attending" that are fully qualified, not to mention 114 “silver” teams who are not fully qualified. Breaking to a so-called sweet sixteen isn’t happening. 

I balked originally at the whole silver PF thing, and I still eye it as little more than a money grab. Should we have changed the name of the event to the TONC, the Tournament of Non-Champions? Of course, much of my vitriol against it evaporated in the light of the birth of the Middle School TOC (cancelled this year, thank God), where the qualification for entry was not previous success, or even being on a school debate team, but simply sending a check. I love the idea of middle schoolers learning to debate, of learning to acquire the debate thinking skills at that ripe early age. I detest the idea of ten-year-olds developing the idea of competition over all, or participating at a national “event” that has literally no entrance requirements aside from a fat wallet. 

The high school TOC is what it is, and enough schools have bought into it over time that we’re stuck with it. All of its ill consequences, which stem primarily from a bids-over-all slash competition-over-education mentality, are now a fixed part of our universe. What I find curious is that, even when TOC trips over its own feet creating events for non-champions, nobody blinks an eye. I mean, if next year they announce a Bronze PF Division for teams who have never earned a bid, or maybe a Brass PF Division for teams who have never debated anyone but their parents, I’m sure all the potential attendees will be sending in their checks at the first opportunity. Personally, I’m holding out for a pre-school division. My two-year-old granddaughter looks ripe to me for PSTOC, and by cracky, I’ve got the checkbook to prove it!

In which we, among other things, push the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museo Nacional

I’ve given myself the task of updating the Tournament Director’s Toolkit on my website. I find it interesting how small things change relatively quickly over relatively short bits of time, while the big things hardly budge at all. This is going to absorb me for a while, but hey, it’s not like I’m going anywhere anytime soon.

One of the big things I’ve been missing lately is art. Since my retirement I’ve been heading to one museum or another quite regularly. To sate this appetite for the duration, I’m now following museums from around the world on Instagram. I highly recommend the Musee d’Orsay, which does include English translations, and of course the Met, the National Gallery in DC, and the V&A in London if you’re looking for a good starter set. I was sort of disappointed in the Prado site, but the Thyssen down the camino has some great stuff. Maybe I’ll learn something from all of this before the doors to life swing open again.

Doctor Who fans might be interested in this: https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-steven-moffat-penned-doctor-who-short-story-is-a-s-1842678936  It’s young Amy Pond writing about the raggedy doctor. For the record, I was on a regular diet of the Doctor until Amazon dropped them from Prime a couple of months ago. Oh, the humanity! I had gotten to the end of Clara when the calamity struck. It was probably a good thing, though. It gives me something to look forward to. (Speaking of which, I for one would have loved to have seen this guy take the role: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/doctor-who-bill-nighy-turned-607440)

In which we dispense with some entertainments

Nick Offerman, about whom I know virtually nothing, definitely has a Mark Twain thing going. I listened to him read Connecticut Yankee a while ago, and this week I started listening to him do Tom Sawyer. Of course, I am a Twain fan beyond the norm myself, and I can understand Offerman’s commitment. He has almost perfect pitch in his readings; he’s a good fit for Twain’s voice. I highly recommend him and these books. To be honest, I haven’t read Tom in ages, so in many ways it’s coming across as new. And fun. Just out of curiosity I moseyed over to IMDB and found that a search for Tom Sawyer yields 126 results. Hmmm. I have my doubts. I’ll stick to the book. 

And for the record, on the reading reading front, I went in for Bring Up the Bodies. Once you start a series, sometimes it’s best to keep going, especially when there’s not a lot of demarcation from volume to volume. Sometimes you don’t have to keep going, as with the Caro LBJ bios (which read better and more easily than most fiction), because the breaks are discrete periods (which I happened to live through). Sometimes you don’t want to, as with GoT. I ploughed through a couple of them and the monotony of people I couldn’t really track killing/maiming/ousting/whatevering one another finally just wore me out. I liked the main characters, but the supporting cast made my eyes glaze over. Come to think of it, I didn’t like the TV show for the same reason. I thought the books would clear all that up. Na’ah. 

Another one rides the bus; Can some explain the ending to me?

The NY State finals have been kiboshed. This may be common knowledge to others, but I just happened to go to the website on the assumption that it was going down the tubes, and sure enough, glug glug glug. I think that originally we all underestimated the potential for covid-19 to turn the world upside down. We were optimistic that in a few weeks we’d be on the road to recovery. We were wrong. We’re not yet even at the turning point. The States tournament that we thought might sprout up at a temporary site never happened.

Putting aside forensics, I can’t imagine the disruption this is having on students in general. I watched the latest Spider-Man movie last night (Word just put that hyphen in there), and they had a little vignette about students taken away during the blip having to repeat a grade. Cute. We may not be repeating grades next year, but whatever year this is will, overall, be an incomplete, even if we don’t mark it officially as such. The Times today reported that the absentee rate on e-classes is quite high. Equipment accounts for a lot of it, of course, or more to the point the lack thereof, but also I would imagine that a certain fire in the belly has been tamped down. No doubt forensicians have a better heat-containment system in their bellies, but even they are being sorely tried. 

By the way, the Spider-Man movie (again with the hyphen!) was pretty good, although I was a little behind the curve in what the villain was actually doing, or more to the point, how he was doing it. And the ending (the very last one, not the first one or the second one), eluded me completely. One thing about watching MCO movies on disk is that you can speed forward through the credits to the codas, unlike seeing them in person and having to sit there for another couple of hours just so you can walk out scratching your head. This way you get to scratch your head right away. 

Reviews of this and that

Old Man’s War by John Scalzi: My entire connection to Scalzi, who has become one of my favorite and most fun authors, is through audiobooks. Many of them are read by Wil Wheaton, who in my opinion went from being the world’s worst actor (beats there a heart so cold as not to want to crush Wesley on sight?) to the world’s best reader thanks to Scalzi’s work. Old Man’s War is Scalzi’s first novel, and also the first of a series, and in fact was not read by Wheaton, but I loved it. It made me want my afternoon audiobook walks to go on forever. Given my history with Scalzi, I’ve decided to jump over and try to actually read him on (e-)paper, having just purchased book 2 in the series. We’ll see how that works out.

My actual reading reading, so to speak, has been of the air-out-the-brain variety since finishing Wolf Hall, which is major stuff. There was some Rumpole first, and then I’ve been coasting through some early Raymond Chandler in volume one of the Library of America collection, finding the plots hard to grok but enjoying them anyhow just for the pleasure of the words. Chandler can be like that. The big question is whether to go on with Mantel or go back to Caro’s LBJ, or to try something else altogether. I could finish off my Nance Mitford crush… We’ll see, but whatever it is, it’s coming up next.

One thing I do miss during the quarantine is my semi-weekly trip to the local artsy movie theater. I was just beginning to get up a nice cinematic head of steam, reinvigorating my longtime love of movies. I don’t watch that many at home, for some reason, because I’m pretty much too busy during the day and at night there’s too much good TV, not to mention reading reading. Going to the movies in the middle of the afternoon was an event, unlike sitting plopped in front of the TV in the middle of the afternoon. I am beginning to look at late evening as a possible movie time, since I do tend to stay up way later than the missus. Yet another “we’ll see.”

I’ve downloaded some games which I’ve begun playing online with likeminded folks, namely Carcassone, Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan. Well, I think I’ve mentioned before that I don’t really like Catan, but the others are quite entertaining, even though I suck bigtime at them. We spent Christmas in NOLA with a whole bunch o’ folks, and gaming was a big part of it. (So was eating, drinking, and, it being NOLA, sightseeing while eating and drinking.)

Finally, on the music front, I continue to work on my magnum rock playlist on Spotify, AKA Menick’s Tab Room (spotify:playlist:1CzrLTz52lXBVAGs4GNG1p). Additions over the last 7 days include 6 songs by the Blasters and 5 songs by Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper, all of which is rockabilly-based, 2 songs from Steve Miller’s Children of the Future, and 1 Ry Cooder from Boomer’s Story. If you have Spotify you should follow the playlist. It's enormous, and I guarantee that you will like most of it. It's especially helpful in keeping you dancing while being creative in the kitchen. At least, it's helpful to me. 

Good old Rippin' and a bottle of plonk

And then the NSDA went virtual…

No surprise there, of course. And I wish them all success with it since, as indicated earlier in the week, I am starting to believe that there is a possibility of real tournaments being conducted online as a matter of course in some not so distant future, but using resources provided by a team’s school and not individuals. Eliminating travel costs would open forensics to almost everyone. The possibility is fascinating. Whether as a community we will ever do this depends on us, but I do think people might start looking in that direction after the dust clears on covid-19.

I do have doubts about some of the interp activities, though, at least at the moment. I have seen enough performances to know that the physical aspects of them, not to mention the intimacy of performance in person, are pretty much beyond the average person’s computer camera and earpod mic. It’s hard enough for professionals to capture live performance; for the rest of us, it may just not be possible. At worst, a set of performances could be skewed competitively by the quality of one’s hardware, which of course brings us back to the money talks side of the business. Again, solutions can probably be created, but they are more likely to come from within a high school rather than at home. 

But, as I say, I wish NSDA well. They are the glue of our activity, the thing that unifies us however much we may disagree with this or that particular aspect of it. (I’m looking at you, coinflip.) 

*** 

I spent an endless amount of time today getting Delta to provide a credit for my May trip to the UK, but it finally happened. What I would like to do is go in September, but I’ll go whenever as soon as I can. I have a granddaughter to corrupt!

On the entertainment front, since I’ve been home for over a year and developed a pretty set daily routine, I haven’t been put out as much as some others by the quarantine. So I haven’t been digging deep into the archives to find things to pass the time any more than usual. Having just finished reading Wolf Hall, I thought I’d take a break to snack on some Rumpole of the Bailey stories by Emily Mortimer’s father. The only problem with these stories is that there is not enough of them. Each one is a perfect little gem. And anyone who ever saw the TV series with Leo McKern has him way in the front of one’s mind as one reads, although I don’t think that’s an essential requirement. If you haven’t tried them, they get my highest recommendation. 

WAIT A MINUTE! WHAT??? BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IN A RADIO VERSION??? The bind moggles. You never know what you'll find looking something up on Amazon. I also just found a late novel about the legendary Penge Bungalow murders. My fingers have never jumped on a Kindle download so quickly. 

Birthday boys

Two interesting artist birthdays have been splashed all over the art universe this week: John Constable and Vincent Van Gogh. The latter seems easy to love: people who don’t know a paintbrush from a milking machine all know and love Vincent. People gurgling in front of The Starry Night used to block traffic at MOMA for miles (and may still do for all I know, since I haven’t been since the reopening). He’s like Monet; you don’t have to know what he was doing to enjoy looking at it, and don’t forget to stop in the gift shop on the way out to pick up the t-shirt, the mug and a couple of postcards. If you, by some bizarre happenstance, do not recall Vincent, maybe it will jog your memory when I point out that he was inspired by Amy Pond to do some of his best work. If you, by some bizarre happenstance, do not recall Amelia Pond, why are you reading this blog?

Constable is another matter altogether. His dates are 1776-1837, and what he did as an artist was legitimize the painting of landscapes from nature, or maybe better, he legitimized the value of nature as such in painting. He did not invent the landscape painting, but his work transformed the idea of landscape painting. 

The Hay Wain is one of Constable’s most famous and highly regarded works, and it does two of the things he is noted for. First, the setting is real life, and second, the depiction of a farm wagon is also drawn from reality. No gods and goddesses, no idealized classical gardens dotted with little Greek fandangos, mixing of the mythical and real a la Canaletto. This painting, according to the BBC, is the second most popular in any British gallery, right after one of Turner’s gorgeous seascapes. (Turner was born a year before Constable, and there was apparently something of a direct rivalry between the two, although their bodies of work are quite dissimilar.)

When you look at Constables, sometimes you might fail to really appreciate them on their own. To us today, landscape includes Cole and Church and Van Gogh and, well, you name it. Constable’s rather staid works by comparison might not get the juices flowing like some of these others. But when you learn a little bit about his history, you might start to feel otherwise. He brought painting out into the real world for its own sake. And that, in its day was a big deal. And it still is today. If you're looking for an entry point into his work, check out the clouds. They are, in a word, amazing. 

The Class of 2020

This should have been one of the great periods of life for high school seniors. My friends have been talking about all the missed milestones, a conversation prompted by the continuing domino collapse of season-ending tournaments. Graduation ceremonies, proms, the various culminations of four years of sports efforts—you name it, they''re not going to happen, or at best they will happen as mere simulacra. All of this is exaggerated by senioritis, that sense of being done with high school and being ready to move on and having to suffer through the dragging of time that is keeping you from the next step. None of this is fanciful. All of this is true and real.

There is something else beyond rituals that comes with being a senior in the last few months of school. For all practical purposes, aside from a few classes that might still need your efforts, the game is over. And more to the point: you have won. You have made it. You have changed from that raw, unformed ninth grader into, nearly four years later, a Master of the Universe, that universe being high school. You have gone through most of the most difficult business of adolescence, and survived. You have faced every hurdle secondary school can throw at you academically, be it courses you know you’ll never use in your future life or teachers sent directly from Dante’s Inferno to torture you. You have gone through a life-changing period with a handful of others who will not only live in your memory forever, but who may indeed become part of your life for all time. And now it is April, and you still have a couple of months more of school, and you are filled with this sense of universe mastery. It is the air that you breathe, it is the aura that surrounds you as you walk down the hallways. You know every nook and cranny of that school, you know how to get everything done that has to be done, you know where every body is buried and which skeletons are in every closet. It is a heady feeling, and it is one of the few times in your life that you will get to enjoy it.

Except not this year. Not for the class of 2020. Just when they should be enjoying the glow of accomplishment and the pride of position, just as they should be enjoying that magic island of contentment located between one finished phase of life and the next wide-open and even more vast phase of promise and opportunity, all of that has been taken from them. Oh, sure, they still get to feel a little sense of it, but they don’t get to live it day in and day out, striding the hallways in their full Master of the Universe personae. They’ll never really know what that is like. And that’s a shame.

Is this the worst thing happening during the pandemic? Hardly. Lives are literally being lost, more lives than we can comprehend. But that doesn’t lessen its reality. My heart goes out to the class of 2020. You only get to be certain things once in your life. Missing any of those things is a big hit. Missing this one may be the worst. You have my sympathy.