Back to School
Over the weekend, I spoke to my daughter, who has spent the majority of the summer (the last six weeks since school let out) at our family home, Homeward Bound, in Ithaca. We were there with her and her family for the first week or so and then we headed back West. She stayed on and lived the life of fireflies, lunch in the pool for the kids, husband John doing his job from the carriage house office (a spot I created for myself to write great thoughts, but never spent enough time there to do so), and lake glass collecting on the shores of Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, the fifty-mile long glacial lakes that head the list of middle finger lakes. It’s a great place to summer even though it was a far wetter yet hotter summer than “normal”, if any of us can rightly define normal any more when it comes to weather.
So, Carolyn, John, Charlotte and Evelyn headed back home to Brooklyn yesterday in preparation for the remaining four weeks of summer left before school is back in session. They are not yet done with summer since they will spend a week up on Lake Champlain on the Vermont side with John’s family and there will doubtless be a few days spent at Carolyn’s mother’s beach club on the white and vast sands of the Long Island South Shore sand bar. They will need some time to settle back into Brooklyn as well and adjust to the City under the Delta Variant. The City under Pandemic mode was new last year, but kids thought that school life from home, by Zoom, was initially kinda fun. That view changed rather quickly as the realization that the best part of school was the interaction with other kids (and maybe teachers). My oldest granddaughter, Charlotte, a gifted and serious student who loves to read, was pretty much miserable in Zoom School last year and was happy that it came to an end six weeks ago. The prospect of starting a new year of third grade back with in-person education was very exciting to her at the end of the last school year that six weeks and lifetime ago. I say lifetime, with the realization that the Pandemic world as we know it has undergone yet another change during the summer hiatus and its unclear exactly what the Delta Variant will do to the New York CIty school system after all.
Such a large system with conflicting governing power plays between a mayor on his way out (DeBlasio) and a governor probably on his way out (Andrew’s Cuomo, clinging to his office under threat of indictment and impeachment) does nothing but raise the threshold of anxiety for my poor daughter and her well-meaning daughter. With the Delta Variant raging across the world, the evolving message is that Delta is more infectious and proving to be more impactful in several ways. And of course this is more concerning to school students because while the population of 12-15 year olds is only 25% vaccinated, the number for under 12-years old vaccinated isn’t even an easily recorded number since vaccines are not even available yet for them under normal conditions. That means that Delta’s more infectious way is more concerning for children. Indeed, anecdotal evidence shows that ICU beds are being more taken up by children and young people than ever before. I see more, not less, masks in my granddaughter’s future school year.
Back to School season is such a complicated emotional time for us all. It’s connection to Labor Day is meant to mark the end of carefree summer and the start of labor, i.e. work or school. In business, the seasons of September, October and November are big productivity moments with deals being teed up and agreed and sales being made. We wedge in several of these seasons in the work year and school year because we want to get as much done before the start of the “Holidays”, which more or less start at Thanksgiving and run through New Years. That doesn’t mean work doesn’t happen in December, but just that it happens with less timeliness and tends to be clean-up and closing rather than starting new situations. One of the strangest calendar issues I found was that just as we are getting our pencil boxes set up and sharpened as we approach Labor Day for the Back to School push, the Jewish holidays tend to intercede and occupy a series of weeks depending on how observant the people in question may be. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the high holy days, but then Sukkot kicks in and before you know it you’re into an early Chanukah and your done for the year if you’re not careful. It is important in general, but especially in finance, given the high concentration of Jewish financial executives (at least in New York City), to be mindful of these religious holidays and observances. I’m sure someone has devised a multi-religious calendar that shows that if we observe all Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist holidays (we are a diverse and respectful community of men/women), throw in the National Holidays of the G-20 (we are a global world after all), we are down to a reduction of the 260 possible working days (based on a five-day workweek) to a very small number. I tried to calculate it and then gave up when I realized that something like Ramadan with its no-daytime-work rules and its somewhat more lax nighttime work schedules, were simply too hard to reckon. You all get my point. It’s back to school, as much as your personal observances and needs allow.
I thought being retired meant that I no longer had a back to school mentality at this time of year, but I am proven wrong for several reasons. First, I think about it for the benefit of my children and grandchildren. Then I need to think about it for scheduling family events due to my children’s and their spouses working schedules. Then again, I am subject to the school challenge at the University, so I am directly involved with blocking off teaching times and dates., this year starting on September 1. I just had to have Kim reschedule a Wednesday night neighbors’ dinner to Thursday, September 2nd due to that very teaching schedule. And in the expert witness arena, the raining and pouring has given me three cases to juggle with one in lingering testimony stage (clearly near petering out once and for all), one in the far distant take-your-time work schedule, but one in the hurry-up and can’t believe you haven’t read all the 1,669 pages mode. That last one is very specifically a back to school case because it is very much in need of both a pragmatic real-world AND a theoretical academic perspective. That one has experts clinging to every aspect of the case and is a big enough deal that the expert galley slaves are getting whipped to perform on time.
Luckily I am free all of August to do what needs doing (except for course preparations, which I have luckily mostly already done). September is another kettle of corn altogether. We have, thanks to COVID Delta, decided to cancel our trip to Spain and Portugal, which is a serious bummer, but which probably makes sense both medically and in terms of the uncertainty of group travel to a recent Delta hotspot. That will give me more time for work in September, but to what end? We are going to NYC anyway in September to see the kids, but where will that all leave us for the Holidays? When WILL we be able to get back to traveling without so much concern? The answer is no one knows and we have to learn how to go back to school on how we are going to live our lives and continue to seek pleasure without being irresponsible or just plain stupid.