Posts

© Catherine Haslag

The Myth of Independence

/in , /by

The definition of independence, obtained from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

I didn’t get out of bed or drive to work in the morning on my own. An alarm wakes me up. Someone who isn’t me designed that alarm. Someone who isn’t me maintains the power grid that powers my alarm clock. My hot shower is possible because of the water heater in my house, who was designed, installed, and maintained by other people. Austin Utilities provides the natural gas and water and maintains the pipes that bring these resources to my house. Someone who isn’t me constructed the bathroom in my house back in 1955, when my house was built by someone who was not me.

Someone who isn’t me paved the road I drive to work in the car I drive, which was built and designed by Mazda. The City of Austin clears the streets of snow and puts down ice melt and sand to make my trip safer.

The definition of independent, obtained from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

What we do today is possible because of those who came before us, who pathed the way for us. We work together to build the communities and world we live in. None of us live in a bubble. There are people who impact our lives that we will never know. The colleague who encouraged your grandpa on a hard day while he served for 4 years in WWII. The neighbor who motivated your great-great-grandparents to immigrate to a small town in rural Missouri in the 1870s. The philanthropist who made an anonymous endowment to your college provided the funds for the scholarship that paid for half of your tuition.

The lie we tell ourselves is that we did it all on our own. That we earned that scholarship without any assistance from another, nevermind teachers, parents, and tutors helped us with our school work. That we got ourselves out of bed and ready for work without assistance. That we take care of ourselves and no one else does. We are interconnected and dependent on each other in this world. None of us gets anywhere on our own. We were all helped by countless others we will never know in ways we can’t imagine.

Interdependence is how a society functions. There is no such thing as true independence if you live in a society. There is no way to be free of the influence of others when you live around others. It’s a myth we tell ourselves to calm our fears, boost our ego, and help us feel safe.

© Catherine Haslag

What I Didn’t Know

/in , , /by

May 25, 2020

I didn’t watch the full video. 8 minutes and 46 seconds. I saw parts of it, but not the whole tape. I can’t watch the video of George Floyd dying, of anyone dying.

I had the privilege of sitting with my feelings on this for a while. To learn more. To take it all in. I began reading. Looking. Researching for anything I could find.

I found a mountain of information. Podcasts. Books. Videos. Theses. Documentaries. Journal articles. Newspaper pieces. Magazine reports. Websites. There was no end to the documentation. What I could read, view, and listen to. New information to learn, to shatter my old misunderstanding, and develop a new, more accurate picture.

I shouldn’t have been surprised by the deluge of resources I found, but I was. It was eye-opening. Once I started looking, learned so much about US history. More than in any class I took. Our history spells out the impact of racism and how far its tentacles stretched. Education, healthcare, housing, travel, restaurants, the GI Bill, voting rights, religion, policing, marriage, redistricting. There isn’t an area of life that isn’t affected by systemic racism. Every person in the United States has either benefited from or been disadvantaged by this disease.

There are many perspectives to history. The white perspective is the primary one told in this country because white is the dominant race, the dominant caste. There is a vast amount of US history that isn’t taught because it doesn’t paint white people in a positive light. This creates an incomplete and unfair narrative of our country, its history, and its people.

Redlining. Gerrymandering. Jim Crow. Segregation. Racial profiling. Stop and frisk. Voter ID. Poll taxes. Travel bans. Internment camps. Reservations. The war on drugs. All forms of racism make it harder for people of color to live their American dream. All efforts to keep the privilege in the hands of white people. White privilege. White power. White supremacy.

Equal rights have not been established. All lives don’t matter until all lives are treated like they matter. Black and brown lives don’t matter in the United States. Four hundred years of history demonstrates this. The evidence is there for anyone to see if one is open to seeing it.

I believe that the United States of America is a great country. I believe in the quest to form a more perfect union…more perfect union for ALL those who call the United States home. I also know that quest is a messy one. We are not a country of saints. Far, far from it. To paint this country as such is a lie and dooms us to repeat our sins of the past.

If you are open to learning about how systemic racism permeates our society, I encourage you to access the Google Docs link below. It is a file that contains the list of resources I found in my research on systemic racism. As I continue collecting resources, I will continue to update this document.

#SystemicRacism Resources Google Docs Link

These resources tell another side of US history, it’s not a pretty one but it’s true. My hope is that the research I have done will help open more eyes to the reality of our nation and those who are mistreated in it because of the color of their skin. My dream is that as we know the fuller story of US history we will break the ongoing cycle of systemic racism.

© Catherine Haslag

Living On the Edge of Science

/in , /by

I teach chemistry. One of the first things I teach my students is about the scientific method, the systematic process by which scientists learn about the world. I wrote the following back in April near the start of the pandemic. I wanted to share it here for your consideration.

Science is the systematic process by which we learn about the world. Scientists are basically professional students and explorers. They are constantly investigating the world around us to learn more about how and why it works as it does.

When you first started learning something, did you instantly know everything about it? At your first piano lesson, were you able to play Ragtime by Scott Joplin? On the first day of Spanish, were you able to speak and read fluently to your classmates and teacher? When you first got behind the wheel of a car, were you able to brake without jerking, shift smoothly, and merge on and off the interstate without concern?

The answer to all of these questions is no. You needed time to learn the keys and the notes on the piano, to learn vocabulary and how to conjugate verbs, and how to coordinate your hand, eye, and foot to smoothly maneuver the car and navigate traffic.

This is what scientists do on a daily basis. They learn, share the knowledge they have obtained, and continue to study so they can learn more. They work with what they know, understanding that tomorrow, they will know more and that may change their working hypotheses/theories about a concept. Scientists are on the frontier of what we know. This is the difference between a scientist and a Spanish teacher – the teacher already knows the vocabulary and how to conjugate the verbs. When they teach their classes, they are regurgitating what they already know. Scientists are not only speaking the language but also expanding the vocabulary and trying to teach others what they know as they learn it. They are on the edge of knowledge.

Most of the science we learn in school and see in the world around us is tried and true. It’s already gone through the process of rigorous testing and investigation. We missed the learning and changing that went along with that process. Coronavirus is on the edge of the science we know. It is still being studied and we are learning new things about it every day. This is why the information changes so quickly. It’s not that science doesn’t know what it’s doing but rather that it is constantly learning new details and getting a better picture of coronavirus. Humans just aren’t used to this rapid change in information and behavior. We like certainty and we don’t have all the information yet about coronavirus to be certain in the situation.

 

© Catherine Haslag

What Happened to Flattening the Curve?

/in , , /by

I have been following the data on the spread of the coronavirus updated daily by the New York Times since I was made aware of this resource sometime in late March/early April 2020.

On April 9, near the first peak observed, 34,699 new cases were recorded and the 7-day average was 31,544 cases (obtained from the NYT page on coronavirus cases linked above). I am writing this blog post on December 2, 2020, though I am not sure when I will be ready to share it online. The most recent data posted on the NYT page is for December 1. It states that 184,294 new cases were reported yesterday (December 1) with a 7-day average of 161,245 cases. As I write this, the NYT reports that more than 13,888,300 people have been infected by COVID-19 and at least 272,100 people have died due to this virus.

Hospitals are overwhelmed and healthcare workers are struggling to keep up with the demand for care.

These are just a few of the stories I found about how hospitals and healthcare workers are currently stretched because of coronavirus. If you do your own search, you are likely to find many, many more.

How did this happen? Back in March and April, the goal was to “flatten the curve.” According to the graph of coronavirus cases reported per day since March, not only have we not flattened the curve, but we don’t seem concerned regarding what the curve looks like at all.

Back in March when the US first began to respond to the pandemic, I realized that there were going to be people who died not because they caught coronavirus but because they had a medical issue and didn’t receive the treatment they needed because of the coronavirus. The person who had a heart attack or stroke and weren’t treated in time because there wasn’t a bed available or enough doctors/nurses to care for them. The woman who’s tumor went undetected because her mammogram was postponed due to all medical staff being needed to treat COVID patients. If our hospitals and healthcare workers are overwhelmed, there may be no help available if you get sick at all, be it from COVID-19 or not.

This is exactly where we are now – if you become ill for any reason, our medical system is so overwhelmed that the help you need may not be available to you. Preventing the spread of the virus isn’t just about keeping people from getting sick from COVID, it’s also about preventing our medical system from being overall so medical services available for all those who need it.

I know everyone is tired, including me. The only things I have really succeeded in doing is putting on the COVID-19 (actually 15 pounds, but still more than I would have liked) and hosting some wonderful Zoom happy hours. I also manage to shower and cloth myself on a daily basis, usually in stretchy, comfy pants. I totally understand the grind that is living in this COVID Groundhog’s day. It sucks the big one, but I believe we need to keep going. Masking. Washing our hands. Social distancing. It’s our only choice if we want to curb the spread of this virus.

2020 has been the longest decade most of us have ever experienced, but I also know we can pull together and beat this. I saw the nation’s reaction after 9-11 and the unity that came out of a horrible tragedy. I experienced incredible acts of kindness, compassion, and community when my hometown was ravaged by massive flooding in 1993. I have seen in my own lifetime how people can pull together and overcome.

When did we lose sight of how to care for each other?

I know we are capable of better than I have seen from us in 2020. I am disappointed that so many aren’t coming together for the safety of their neighbors and community. So many who can’t see the big picture of how to care for each other.

We are capable of better than this.

© Catherine Haslag

Class Reunions

/in , /by

Recently I began to wonder why we still hold high school reunions and how this tradition started. I tried to research this and there isn’t much to be found. About an hour’s worth of research uncovered a few opinion pieces where people contemplate if they are going to their high school reunion and why this is still a thing, a history of reunions at Princeton, a lot of class reunion announcements and summaries of the events, and a few pieces about weight loss and improving your looks before attending a class reunion. Vanity is apparently a cousin to the high school reunion. The best I can determine is that class reunions date back at

Me at my high school graduation.  I was fat and wore glass until my senior year, when I dropped a bunch of weight and got contacts, thankfully.

least 200 years. Beyond that, I don’t have any details as to the origins of this practice.

Today, in the US, this ritual is held approximately every 5 years for most high school classes.  Some small colleges also hold class reunions, but in the US, this event is generally saved to remind us of adolescence past – a tumultuous time that some of us are very happy to leave in the past.

In school, I was the fat, nerdy kid with glasses who had a big vocabulary I wasn’t afraid to use. During my freshman and sophomore years, I read sci-fi books rather than chit chat with my classmates between classes or on the bus. I had zero athletic ability and wasn’t afraid to answer (or ask) questions during class. As you can imagine, this made me really popular with my peers. I was one of those who found their tribe when they went to college. High school wasn’t exactly hell for me but it definitely wasn’t the best 4 years of my life.

When the time came, I decided to attend my 5-year reunion. I hoped to connect with some of my high school friends only to discover the only people who came were those who were still living in the same clique of friends they had in high school. They had all settled close to home after graduation. Some went to college and then settled back in the area after earning their degree. I had nothing in common with them and didn’t feel the need to make small talk (my own personal hell) with people I couldn’t relate to in high school let alone years later. When I found this same scene at the 10-year reunion, I decided this wasn’t for me. I won’t be attending future reunions.

I feel high school reunions try to celebrate who we were, where we came from, and who we are now but fail to hit the mark. When we return to this situation with people we knew in a very limited context, we tend to revert in some ways to who we were in high school I don’t dislike who I was at 16, 17, or 18, but I do really like who I am now. I would rather hang out with who I am now than revisit who I was then. Reunions remind me of school dances with loud music, awkward small talk, and never getting asked to dance during the slow songs. For me, it’s a superficial event that I survive not enjoy. I would much rather connect with a few specific high school friends over drinks or dinner. This provides me with the deeper, more meaningful connection that I crave.

For those who enjoy reunions, more power to you. Have a enjoy remembering that time a bunch of guys from the senior class drove tractors to school during spirit week for “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” day.

I will be there in spirit only.