Pandemic: Missed Opportunities or Change on the Horizon?

2020. It has come to this. Face masks for some "in-person" students and teachers, remote learning for others, a blend of the two for the brave Hybrids. COVID teaching and learning is not for the feint of heart, I guess, but there's something sticking in my craw about all of this: Everyone's in a hurry to "return to normal." Just today, Ari Shapiro is advertising an All Things Considered program about how we can "jumpstart" learning after the pandemic, and reboot the "race" to end the achievement gap.

It's difficult to write this, as much as it's difficult to even think it, but I have to say, our system feels broken. It's either that, or I've just never fit our national system. What I mean by that is, I've never understood the drive, in business or education, for more faster more faster more faster more. It's a "race," or it's an initiative in the midst of a culture "war." It's the ceaseless Deleuze and Guattari "desiring machine" hell bent for the end times drive, and I've never liked it. There, I said it.

Educating a nation of 350,000,000 is not easy in the best of times. High schools' schedules are driven by the three-season sports schedule, and the push for excellence just means "more faster" and improved test scores. Imagine an AP teacher suggesting to students that they were going to jettison 50% of the breadth they cover in favor of doing some in-depth work and analysis? 100 miles wide and 1" deep is the American motto. We've never met a gaggle of statistics or test strategies that we can't cram down students' throats five days a week in a rush to a "perform" at the end. And what, then, are we measuring?

Alfie Kohn once asked a great question when he titled a 2004 collection of essays What Does It Mean to Be Well Educated? Clearly, in Kohn's eyes, standardized testing does nothing to help us unravel that knot. Who cares if a skilled Maine wooden boat builder bombed the SATs? I don't. I bombed the SATs. A lot of people I know hated taking those tests, regardless of intelligence. We know this. We also know that the factory model of education reflects a philosophy and approach to education calcified in the late-19th century. And here we are in a pandemic, with all the world's tech-gizmos available to us, pushing, pushing, pushing for schools to "reopen" as usual. 

Students are suffering! There's backsliding academically! Students and parents can't cope! "They" waste time on video games and TikTok! There are myriad social problems lurking beneath these headline proclamations, and few of them can be solved by 19th century models for education. OK, we are providing students with meals. Last spring, during phase 1 of COVID education, local schools here in Hancock and Penobscot Counties were delivering food with the bus system. But is that why schools need to remain open? Providing food? The fact that nuclear families can't cope during this stressful time has more to do with our unhealthy obsession with burdening the nuclear family with our national measures of success. David Brooks has had a profound turn around on the idea of the nuclear family, and he sees it, now, as a social failing. In the COVID case, I see his point clearly: we have nothing else to fall back on to support students and families. NOTHING ELSE . . . except schools?

The weirdest pill to swallow right now is that in the United States–remember, the entrepreneurial hub of the capitalist universe–we typically eschew real innovation in education. That is not to say that we are not adapting. Rather, it is to say that we are adapting to new technologies and possibilities while being stuck in a 19th century schedule and mindset. One of Amy Scott's latest features on MarketPlace has a headline that says it all: "More Employers Are Expected to Shift to Hybrid Workplaces." The alphabet soup of tech companies Americans know and love are going to embrace a new flex model for employees now and after the pandemic. And yet there's a drum beat for schools to return to "normal." This seems like a wasted opportunity. Why not follow the lead of innovative entrepreneurs and invest in a "high flex," hybrid model of schooling all of the time, not just during pandemic times?

Take our local geography in Coastal Downeast Maine for one example. Students sit on busses for ever increasing amounts of time in order to ride in to (overheated) school buildings from tiny, far flung towns on busses that are far under capacity much of the time. I often try to cheer kids up after their lonely bus rides by saying stupid stuff like, "Nice limo, dude." I can't even comprehend the cost benefit analysis of fuel alone while having 5 students ride in on a full-length school bus for a half hour plus each way to and from school. And for what? To play sports? To do theater? For science labs? On some days that's true.

However, during the pandemic, our experiments with online learning have shown that we can grow, rapidly, when we throw teachers and students into new learning environments. In Maine, the MLTI program is now paying off for the schools who fully bought in by providing high schoolers with devices. To be sure, many rural areas lack basic broadband or quality internet accessibility, and that is a concern. However, we still have all sorts of other resistance to "going remote" or doing full-time, online learning. As COVID cases surge, many families are struggling with exposure or risk, and yet we continue to hear a push for in-person learning as the only solution.

With elementary students, there is little doubt that in-person contact is essential. I am not an elementary teacher. However, high school students are transitioning into a world where the most successful businesses and entrepreneurs have already transitioned to online work, on the daily. Wouldn't it make sense for us to begin practicing a more flexible workplace regardless of pandemic times? In our rush to be at work on time, the Maine State DOT spends roughly $15 million per year. This is not including local municipalities. That one cost and commuter push, alone, is staggeringly wasteful.

If we slowed down just a bit, adjusted our work to fit an online plan due to weather, we would be saving towns money. Not only that, roads might not be plowed down into smithereens year after year. Buildings could adjust their heating needs to fit daily use. Skills such as web development, creating digital content, game design, and all sectors of media production could be incorporated into students' skillsets. The list of benefits goes on, and yet, and yet . . .

Something tells me that the U.S. is on a one-way road that knows no other course and that 2021 will be a "Return to Normalcy." If that means careening down a beaten country road at 6:15am in the dark to drop your groggy teenager off for a 45-60 minute bus ride unquestioningly, please don't sign me up. We need to evolve.

Spring Tour 1990

Spring tour of 1990 was a bit of a lark for me. In Manhattan, I had begun a job delivering art in late-January. It fit my post-college lifestyle of itinerant wanderings, and I had done some of the same work in the D.C.-area during my last year and a half of college. Gallery Delivery had a hectic office in Midtown East that also served as the owner's apartment. There, I got daily or weekly assignments, depending on the size of the job. In late-February, I was assigned to my first coast-to-coast drive, and I loved it.

Being a Deadhead, I was no stranger to long drives. However, cruising out West in the winter was a revelation. Grim, gray, grimy, and grunge are a few of the words that come to mind when thinking about the industrial Northeast in February and March. Ick. Better to be in rural areas for outdoor recreation, or, yes, out on some broad Western landscape where the sun is always shining, right? I was having a ball driving all night through Death Valley back to the Sun Belt, making deliveries as we progressed around the nation in a loop.



(Picture of me taking a picture of myself in a mirror. 20th & 21st century navel gazing.)

During that long drive, I was able to discuss the up-coming tour with my boss and company owner (my co-driver). He was open to my taking two weeks off, provided I completed coast-to-coast jaunts immediately before and immediately after my two-and-a-half-week break. Great! I didn't have a single ticket for the Dead's spring tour and had no idea where to score any. That would have to come on the lot in Maryland, I thought. It was to be a celebration of Phil Lesh's 50th birthday at Landover.

Maryland was a bust, and I was over-confidant in my ticket luck. On 3/14, I scored a 3/15 ticket. Later that night, thinking I'd won the lottery, I traded that 3/15 ticket for TWO Copps Coliseum tickets, one for each night. I couldn't believe my luck and spent the next 24 hours looking for another 3/15 ticket to no avail. I hadn't been shut out of a show since Portland, Maine in March of 1985. It was a bitter pill, I thought, until I scored Hartford tickets right before bailing on the Cap Center altogether. I didn't even show up on lot for 3/16 as the weather stunk, and those Cap Center police were just a nightmare.

The trips up to Hartford and Copps Coliseum were glorious. The shows were great, 03/22 being an obvious high water mark, and I was having a good ole time. There was another snag, though, when our small crew was shut out of Albany on 03/24, a Saturday. We drank chilly Molson Bradors lugged back across the border and listened to the show on some bus's big speakers in the lot. It was a damp cold there beside the Thruway, frosting my shoes, and the scene was definitely weird. I hadn't ever really understood much about the lot's excessive growth until the Pittsburgh mêlée in April of 1989, and I wanted to know less and less about it on this night in Albany. However, I had scored N2 & N3 tickets for Albany from friends of mine, and so I was "all in."

Those second and third nights in Albany were some of the best show experiences I had ever had up to that point. I was "in the zone" after Hartford and Hamilton, able to fully appreciate being present, wanting for nothing. It was on the third night of Albany where I reached some of the highest heights I'd ever reach with the Dead. I found an area that was being treated as a General Admission zone, and danced in and out of the portal area un-harassed. If I wanted to concentrate on a song (Dupree's and Row Jimmy, for example), I could post up behind the lower bowl seats. If I just wanted to boogie (Bucket, Picasso Moon, BRRB), I could bop out to the vendors and back in, no harassment from security at all, just a few smiles.

Nassau was nothing like this.

The shows were great, don't get me wrong. The lot scene, though, was much, much edgier. I was conscious of hiding any contraband that would show around the fuzzy edges of my awareness. Thankfully, on 3/28, I ran into some older tour friends. They took care of me by offering a "tailgate" home, as the Nassau Co. fuzz kept coming around trying to break up any vending crowds that would appear around coolers. Vending was a cat and mouse affair. The nightsticks always looked ready.

Inside the venue, the portals were cut off from the hallway by doors. This meant that there was no fluid movement into and out of the bowl area. Rather, once those doors whooshed closed into the hallway, the show was a muffled thump. Do your business, and then get outta there back to the seats. It did not feel like the Deadhead friendly environs of either the Knick or Copps Coliseum. It was a might bit more uptight, palpably so. As a result, this was more of a show where my bro-in-law and I stuck to our seats and the immediate environs.



The Weight surprised me during the Wednesday night show. Then again, while listening, I had the thought, "Why haven't they always done this song?" It was such a natural fit, that it didn't even seem like a big deal. The Thursday night show (3/29) was mind melting, in every way possible. After a drive back into Manhattan that seemed to last five minutes–Zzzzziiiipp–I spent the wee hours in the West Village listening to my first few ever purchased CDs: Live/Dead, American Beauty, Grateful Dead, and Velvet Underground Live 69. Sunrise came quickly.



On 3/30, I decided to stay at home. It was a Friday, and I had had no luck in Nassau lot scouring the aisles for an extra on 03/28 and 03/29. Manhattan brokers were not on my radar screen, though I'm sure some had tickets available for outrageous prices. Instead, I decided that I would lay back, relax, get my act together and tape. The show was to be broadcast on WNEW, and I was prepared with some TDK D-90s I'd bought on sale. Easy peasy. Roll up, prep tape, fire up, and press record when the moment came. I had my feet propped up on the futon couch, and I'm pretty sure that my sister was questioning whether or not it had been a good idea to invite me on as a roommate.

Tuning in as the crowd roared, I regretted my choice as the first few notes of tuning popped up. Help> Slip was coming. Having been shut out of 3/24 was a bitter pill, and this was medicine worse. I'd missed both Help> Slips from Spring Tour? Oh well, I consoled myself, that Eyes> Estimated> Dark Star from the night before was still resonating in my DNA. Would it ever be this good again? I wasn't sure. This was a first set when I could tell that the band was firing on all cylinders, much like the Albany 3/26 show. If that night had had a different setlist, I swear people would view it differently. They just locked in and never let go from the first note.

The 3/30 second set was what broke my heart most for not being in attendance. Playin> China Doll> Uncle John's> Terrapin? Are you kidding me? Everything was note for note Spring 90 perfection. The WNEW broadcast (perhaps to this day my favorite type of Dead recording) featured the bombast of the sound in the hall due to an array of strategically placed mics around the building mixed with the soundboard feed. These always featured a richer sound than pure soundboards, in my humble opinion. Here, the band sounded just great, nailing all the changes and stretching out where need be. Bobby's newer, "icy" tone fit beautifully behind Jerry's relaxed jubilance, riding the fumes of joy for having played with Branford the night before.

The post-Space jamming is just rock solid Dead. I've been derided for noting this before, but to my ears, the 3/29 show loses gas after Space. The sequence following the second verse of Dark Star just seems lackluster. On 3/30, they burst out of space with Miracle into a spirited Gimme Some Lovin'. While that wasn't a show stopper for me, it brings Phil and Brent to the fore with some punchy, up-tempo chutzpah. Then came Standing on the Moon, by far my favorite new Jerry tune, and Not Fade crushes it with high energy. This is the final frame of the three-night run, and it's the best post-Space by far, capped off with a rewarding Attics.



Exhausted from my two and a half week bacchanal, I was content to fall off to sleep by 11:30 that Friday night and start preparing for another trucking journey starting Monday. That tape stuck with me for a couple of months, too. I loved that deep bass and rounded by the crispy high notes, and I played it often on my cross-country trucks. After a trip back to visit Maine around my birthday, I parked in my usual spot over by the river on the West Side. The Hudson Yards were pretty derelict back then, and I could usually find places to leave my car unmolested.

It might have been after another cross-country trip or just after a few weeks of not wanting to deal with it, but when I returned to my car, my heart sank to see a back window smashed out. Gone was my old, Sony cassette recorder, the sort a Watergate-era reporter would have strapped on, and the Armand's pizza box filled with tapes. The distinct and lingering smell of urine and a rumpled blanked indicated that someone had been living in my car, and that didn't bother me nearly as much as the loss of those WNEW tapes.

My next show that year was Bonner Springs, but nothing would ever feel quite as special as Spring 90 ever again. It's difficult to put my finger on, but there was an effortlessness that was fading. I count the ticket hunt and social quality of the lot scene among those things that became more challenging. To wit, I saw 30 shows in 1990 and 2 in 1991.

 I am going to resurrect this blog. It may take a bit, but I'm consolidating.

Can't wait to start writing again.

Stay tuned.