More like Back to COOL, Am I Right?
No. I am wrong.
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Just what students need at the beginning of the school year. More stress.
I mean, it’s bad enough if your pencil case is stupid or you don’t know what a protractor does or why you need to have a French Curve or you failed to do enough whimsical cartooning on your Pee-Chee.
On top of all that, there’s a pandemic.
On top of all that, there’s been a pandemic FOR QUITE SOME TIME.
On top of all that, there are dumb mean jerks who won’t get vaccinated.
On top of all that, there are Greek letter variants like some kind of death fraternity system. Granted, all fraternity systems feel like death but YOU GET MY POINT.
We’re putting together a back to school episode of the show that will come out on Labor Day and this week I talked to two people keeping an eye on K-12 education. One, a psychologist and researcher at a major university, talked about the trauma kids have been through and the resilience that they seem to have. And she also really wanted people to wear masks in schools. “MASKS, MASKS, MASKS,” she said, speaking in all caps.
Then today I interviewed a principal at a school in Dallas who said that while the students have been through some rough business, her staff was prepared for the mental health difficulties that necessarily go along with something like a pandemic. Her school, indeed her whole district, is defying any kind of Texas state advisory and mandating masks. Because it’s the right thing to do in terms of epidemiology.
Turns out, though, it was the right thing to do in terms of psychology. The masks are putting the students at ease with each other and in the classroom. It’s like how These Kids Today have been raised to wear seatbelts and feel kind of weird without them. So they’re comfortable and they’re safe.
So that’s cool.
Here are some ways people used to decorate Pee-Chees, taken from a fun article in Smithsonian:
The guy who drew the original didn’t remember when last he was asked.
Golden was interviewed for an article in the Spokane Chronicle in 1989, when he was 73 years old. According to the author, the artist “had to be reminded what a Pee Chee is.” After having his memory jogged, he remarked simply, “‘When I look back, it was rather insignificant…It was probably a rush job, I did it over a weekend or some night and that was it.’”
Finding a Way Back From Suicide
That’s the title of an article that is a series of very enlightening and fascinating and beautiful punches to the stomach by novelist Donald Antrim, which I found via kottke. It’s a great article but buckle the fuck up here because it’s triggers-a-go-go.
It’s about receiving electroconvulsive therapy for a deep, chronic, suicidal depression. And it worked.
One day in August, I took a walk with Nurse D. It was dinnertime. The sun was in the west, and the hallway to the dining room was filled with light from the windows facing the Hudson. I’d had five weeks of ECT. I felt stable on my feet, and found it easier to talk. I asked Nurse D. whether she had noticed anything—anything about me that might be different. She said that she had seen changes, they all had. She told me that the doctors and the nurses can see health before the patient feels it. She told me that I was getting well. The muscles in my neck and face had loosened and relaxed, and my breathing was smoother. I took steady breaths. My voice was deeper, and I wasn’t clumsy, only depleted from the treatment. I realized that I had not destroyed my life by writing about my mother. My life was not over. I could stand up straight when I walked down the halls, and friends who visited or phoned told me that I sounded better. People could stand to listen to me! I went to a cooking class—it was a Friday—and picked up implements, and held them, and contributed. We made hamburgers.
Tiny Pretty Things
Also via kottke, this video of miniature human figures with ordinary-sized things that appear huge because they’re with miniature human figures. There’s a tighter sentence out there to describe that. I shan’t find it.
There is something psychologically comforting about seeing people made tiny. Makes me feel like I, like we, are less dangerous to ourselves and others.
But This Guy Is Okay
Matthew Wolff, who is not a wolf at all but a human golfer, recently took some time away from competition for his mental health, because mental health is a real thing and must be tended to and good for him and also et cetera.
It’s not getting much attention. Certainly nowhere near the attention Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles got for making similar calls. Wolff also hasn’t been criticized for it, the article here in the Post by Mark Cannizzaro is very reasonable, while Osaka and Biles were lit up by jerks in the press and social media. I should point out that Cannizzaro didn’t write about Osaka and Biles and golf seems to be his main beat.
So WHY the different treatment?
Could it be because Wolff is less of a star in his sport than Osaka and Biles are in their sports?
Could it be because he’s a white guy and they are women of color?
I don’t know. But it’s hard not to notice.
Pictures of golfers are boring so here are dogs in clothes:
No Newsletter Next Week
I will be OTHERWISE OCCUPIED. Full refunds all around!
I was going to ask what a PeeChee is but decided not to be an ugly Canadian and just googled it. I will say instead that the Donald Antrim article was exceptional and that both my kids are fine and thriving wearing masks in any indoor setting.