"You're a little late, I'm already torn."

It has been nearly two years since I have written anything here. It mostly comes down to time. This past year (before pandemic issues) was especially tough in terms of workload. There are many important issues going on right now. I am working on becoming more educated on racial inequality and how I can support students in my setting. In the meantime, I have been working on my district's Return to Learn team and have been spending a lot of time reading about recommendations for returning to school. So, this work inspired the assignment I talk about in this next paragraph.

One of the short courses I am taking is "How to Make a Poem." I am really enjoying it thus far. The first week's assignment was to construct a found poem, which is a collection of lines that can come from nearly everywhere, even conversations. The writer takes the lines and arranges them in some fashion. I found my lines from an article about mask wearing and its comment section, Twitter and FB conversations related to the Iowa DOE's guidelines, Rand Paul's recent questioning of Dr. Fauci, and a policy statement from NFHS. This assignment also took me to some reading about the 1918 Flu pandemic related to mask wearing.

Caught

Why would anyone try to make mask-wearing a political or freedom issue?

You literally can’t mandate somebody to wear a mask knowing that mask is killing them.

If masks only have a maybe potential to save lives, why not do it?

Some people argue against them because they say they create fear in the public, and that we want to keep people calm.

When all experts tell us to wear them, why would we have our schools ignore it?

We shouldn’t presume that a group of experts somehow know what’s best for everyone.

The virus rides the respiratory droplets like a rider on a horse.  The cloth mask protects YOU from ME.

The Skagit County choir and Springfield Great Clips cases excellently demonstrate the goals of mask wearing

Coronavirus is nature retaliating against the virus of the human race, because all humanity has ever done is screw it up.

We can do this – TOGETHER and UNITED.

Wearing a mask is less effective when people don’t follow other health guidelines too.

I don’t care about other people. If you get sick and die, that’s not my problem.

Selfish attitudes must end.