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| Alec Soth |
The boy and I leave today for a couple days camping. Or, that is the plan. We go this morning to put our names on a waitlist at a state campsite about 45 minutes from here. It has been booked solid for many months, but they keep a few sites open and release them to those on the waitlist as they see fit, or as they become available. This plan has always worked for us in the past. So, fingers crossed in wanting witchery.
Some people don't like camping. That's okay, even understandable. The activity seems to work best when there is some partnership in completing the various burdens. A significant amount of the pleasure derived from the proceedings, I believe, can be found in just that: partnership can be satisfying, even when the specific leisure time involves labor.
That's what I'm hoping for: that the boy and I find a pleasant way of working together and being buddies. The Covid-sheltering has been difficult on our relationship. It is challenging to be a parent, a teacher, and a friend, with very little clear delineation between those roles, all while trying to have some sense of space to yourself.
Watching how our local school board has allowed teachers to call pretty much all the shots about how and when students will be able to return to school has somewhat soured my feeling of benevolence towards them, though I have no wish to live in Florida right now, either. It will be difficult for me to ever talk again about how hard their jobs are and how hard they all work and how much they care about the kids. The reality of Covid has disabused me of most of those unchallenged notions.
Teachers are just like everybody else, you have no idea how hard their jobs are...
Cops are just like everybody else, you have no idea how hard their jobs are...
Etc, etc. Ad nauseam.
Yes, they are like everybody else: incompetent when they're not too busy being lazy or corrupt.
Sometimes I'll have Raquel get dressed up in a nurse's outfit just to reaffirm my faith in the working class.
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