Weather Discussion Online!

Since many are stuck at home, I thought it would be fun and useful to provide a forecast discussion with lots of images and graphics.  Check it out and let me know if you want me to do it regularly.

My next version will be at higher resolution. 

And I am thinking of doing one where I can interactively answer weather questions....just need to figure out how to do that.....

An Encouraging Weather Forecast

We all need some good news and I will give that to you. 

The weather is going to improve by next weekend here in the Northwest.  Much warmer and even some sun.

But there is also some bad news....we will have to get through a cool/cloudy period first.

Let's face it.  It has been cool and murky this week, a situation that heightened the stress of all the virus news.  Below are the temperatures at SeaTac during the past two weeks, with the normal highs and lows plotted.  Our daily maximum temperatures have been well below normal the last six days.   Like 5-10F below normal.  Plus lots of clouds and light rain.

Tomorrow will be similar and then a much stronger system, with real rain, will hit Monday, associated an unusually energetic upper level trough (see upper level map for 5 PM Monday).   If this was January, we would be worried about lowland snow with such a pattern.

Fortunately, as the week progresses an upper level ridge of high pressure will build along the West Coast and temperatures will rise.   To warm you up, here is the latest forecast for high and low temperatures at SeaTac based on the European Center ensemble forecasting system (running their model many times and taking the average).  High temperatures climb roughly 10 degrees between this weekend/Monday/Tuesday and later in the week.  You will notice that.

The National Weather Service GEFS ensemble of many forecasts shows a cooling trend for a few days, following by warming (see below).  Each forecast is plotted with a line and the black line is the average of all of them.   Warming towards 60F by April 4/5.  

 Southern California will warm into the upper 60s to low 70s....perhaps high enough to slow down the coronavirus there.  Also clearing skies and progression into spring will produce higher ultraviolet

radiation values along the southern tier of the U.S.:  not good news for the virus, which can be degraded or killed by UV.  Below are the forecast UV index for Sunday and Wednesday.  Big improvement over the western U.S.

This is a good time to plant your spring/cool season veggies if you have a garden.  That is my plan this afternoon!

Covid-19: Washington State Leadership in Dealing With Coronavirus

Washington State has immense resources to apply to the coronavirus crisis.

Cordtwain.info

Watch Here ↓

Cordtwain.info

One of the leading university medical centers in the world.
Major biotech firms and a huge foundation dedicated to health science (Gates Foundation)
The world's leading logistics and delivery firm (Amazon).
One of leading brick and mortar food and supply firms (Costco)
World-leading software and machine learning firms and expertise (e.g., Microsoft, Amazon)
One of the leading tech centers in the world.

Our state has intellectual, scientific, technological, and financial resources equivalent to those of many nations.

Might we take a leadership role in tackling this crisis, not only for ourselves, but for the rest of the world as well? 

Could Washington State lead the nation in heavily investing in a complementary approach to social distancing, online learning, and sending people home from work?    Might Washington State fill the void left by an ineffective Federal response?

Importantly, could the current environment of despair and fear, be replaced with a more empowered one?

Imagine the following path in the future.

One in which local businesses and academic, put state capabilities on an immediate "war footing" to address the threat.

On March 18th, The University of Washington and major regional biotech firms, with the financial support of the Gates and Bezos foundations, announce that they will rapidly build the capacity to provide 100,000 tests a day for the coronavirus in Washington State, with results available within hours.  This includes the purchase of several Roche cobas 6800 systems that will have the capacity of processing over a million tests per month.  Such testing capacity is expect to be in place by April 10.

Governor Inslee announced on the same day that the test will be immediately available to all doctors and hospitals and that 50,000 test per day will be dedicated to random sampling of state residents.  Testing at this level began on April 3rd.

Governor Inslee noted  that anyone with a positive test will be experience mandatory quarantine.  He further noted that a new state fund will cover the salary of any quarantined individual.

"South Korea showed that potential of coupling massive testing with quarantine, and we will take this approach to a new level", announced the Governor.

The Governor also noted that all skilled nursing and other retirement communities will require all patient and caregivers to be tested, as will all visitors. " We must take all steps required to prevent our most vulnerable citizens from being exposed to this threat".

Jeff Bezos, leader of Amazon, announced on March 17th that Amazon would deliver food and other necessary supplies without delivery charge during the next 30 days.  "We will extend this offer, if the situation does not resolve itself," said Bezos.   "And considering that many people are home-bound, we will make all content on Amazon Prime freely available to the general public.  Amazon runs the biggest supply chain system in the world, and we will use it to assure food and other supplies will reach all home-bound" patients", said Bezos.

Costco also joined the effort, with a temporary program of no-cost delivery and the new ability to pre-order and pick up orders outside of any warehouse.  "No Costco shopper need to enter a store to purchase any of our products", noted Costco CEO W. Craig Jelinek.

A major issue had been the relatively simple modeling used to predict coronavirus spread and deaths, and their relative poor performance.   On March 16th, a joint effort between the University of Washington, the Gates Foundation, and the data analytics groups of Microsoft and Amazon was initiated to produce state-of-science predictive modeling for coronavirus by early April.   "

Microsoft has huge capacity in predictive analytics and machine learning, with particular expertise in the medical area.  Coupled with the expertise of the University of Washington and others, we will build the capability to more skillfully predict the trajectory of COVID-19 using the increasing volume of data assets" explained Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

By June the effects of massive testing and quarantine, coupled with the isolating of the most vulnerable elderly and infirm as well as social distancing, resulted in a significant decline of new cases, with regional loss of life in Washington State far more limited than initially expected.   The beneficial role of  warmer weather and contribution of the large pool of now-immune young people who had mild or little symptoms may also have been important in lessening the impact of COVID-19.

Addendum:  Why Massive Testing of the Population is How We Get Out of This

Social distancing may be a useful, short-term stop gap, but in the end something more effective is needed.   Social distance can buy time, but it is essentially kicking the can down the road, and society can not keep it in place for long without undermining its ability to function,  Economic activity will collapse.

The key aspect of social distancing is to prevent large portions of the population from getting in contact with an infected individual.  It does this by shutting down all avenues of interaction and gathering.    It is a blunt tool with significant negative impacts (e.g., cancellation of schools or degradation of teaching).



Far better to use a more precise tool:  massive testing.   Find the infected individuals and take them out of circulation.  Much more effective and less damaging.  This allows society to function, but it requires the ability to give  tens of thousands of tests per day or more, something that is technologically well within our reach.

Another issue with social distancing is that you can never cut off interactions completely--leaving a continuous base of cases and as soon as you pull back the restraints, the virus can explode again.

Source: Cordtwain.info

Coronavirus Outbreak Affect Weather Forecasting !

Weather prediction is an essential technology that both protects the economy and saves lives.

National Weather Service personnel are considered critical personnel and are still working, but they are dependent on numerical weather prediction models, which in turn are dependent on the quality and quantity of weather data going into them.

And it appears that one important data source is declining rapidly in volume, aircraft observations.

And such observations are particularly important for the West Coast of the U.S., which has a vast ocean to our west.

To produce a numerical weather prediction, a three-dimensional description of the atmosphere needs to be created, something called the initialization. Over land there are lots of surface observations and balloon-launched weather observations (radiosondes), but obviously there are far fewer of these  over the ocean.  In the old days of numerical weather prediction, forecast skill was less downstream of oceans because of the large oceanic data voids.

But this situation changed profoundly with the advent of weather satellites and the use of weather observations from commercial aircraft.  The oceans now had substantial numbers of observations, driving a rapid increase of weather prediction skill. Weather satellites are now the dominant source of oceanic weather information, but aircraft observations (known as ACARS observations or AMDAR) are quite important.

The distribution of aircraft observations in January 2020 is shown below (courtesy of the the European Center --ECMWF).  The number of observations is shown by the colors (red and orange are the most).   Importantly, the are a large number of observations between the West Coast and Hawaii, most of which are at important jet stream elevations (30,000 to 40,000 ft).  There are also considerable number of observations from flight going between North America and Asia.

As noted by this graphic from ECMWF, the number of aircraft observations has grown rapidly due to more flights and increased numbers of aircraft with the appropriate weather sensors.

A number of studies have examined the importance of aircraft observations for weather prediction.  As illustrated below, automated aircraft observations (AIREP) are about fourth in importance overall (more important than surface observations!), and data denial experiments at ECMWF, in which they reran forecasts without using the aircraft observations) indicated a decline of forecast skill in the upper troposphere (again roughly 30,000 to 40,000 ft) by about 10% and some degradation near the surface (by roughly 3%). 

Not the end of the world, but significant.  But what about regions downstream of oceans?  Could the impact be larger?   That is an analysis I have not seen.

But there is a problem, particularly for us on the West Coast for short-term forecasts and for the entire nation in the longer term.  There is a huge decline of air travel going on now.   And the decline in air travel is about to plummet.

Hawaiian Airlines will soon cancel most of its flights to the mainland, and Alaska is planning on pausing on about 70% of its flights (some to Hawaii).   Flights to Asia are down profoundly already.  The latest statistics from the FlightAware website indicates nearly 16,000 flight cancellation today, with nearly half cancelled out of San Francisco and about a quarter at SeaTac and LA (red colors below).   This is only the beginning.

So how much degradation in forecasts will occur as aircraft observations profoundly decline? To what degree will the impacts be greater for land areas downstream of oceans?

Considering the key role of satellite observations, one might expect the degradation to be modest, but perceptible.

The latest forecast skill statistics over the Pacific/North American area (called the PNA region) available from the National Weather Service for the five-day forecast of near jet stream level (see below) does not suggest anything significant at this point (particularly since there is a lot of natural variation in forecast skill).  In this plot, 1 (top) is a perfect forecast and several forecast models are shown (black--US GFS, red-European Center, green-Canadian), orange-UKMET).

Numerical experiments to determine the impact could be done, but will probably be relatively low priority.

Aircraft in flight at 9:30 AM this morning (from the wonderful FightAware site).  This is already well down from normal, but a lot more than will be flying in a week

In the longer term, the impacts on weather prediction will be substantial for other reasons.  Weather research and communication is being profoundly degraded.  Major meetings and conferences have been canceled (including the NW Weather Workshop) and research is made difficult and far less effective.  We are all trying to work at home and use online communication, but the degradation is real and will increase with time.

Source: Cordtwain.info/News

Coronavirus: Indonesia has succeeded in making 20 million Chloroquine (coronavirus drugs) Trump is very supportive

Public statements by the US and Indonesian presidents have sent demand for the drug – usually used to treat malaria – rocketing

 Information Covid-19

Update Today:

Info COVID-19 Indonesia

POSITIF     SEMBUH    MENINGGAL

Yet its effectiveness against Covid-19 is at best unproven and in the wrong hands it can be fatal

First they came for the vitamins, then they came for the face masks and the hand sanitiser. And then they came for the chloroquine.

Ever since the coronavirus was discovered, more and more customers have been coming to the Iskandar Muda Pharmacy in Medan, Indonesia, looking for ways to keep themselves and their loved ones safe.

In the past two days, customers have been arriving in droves in search of chloroquine, a drug that derives from quinine and is usually used to treat malaria.

“At first we were confused about why people wanted it, then we saw that [President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo] had announced that it was a possible treatment for Covid-19,” explained pharmacist Maria. “It all made sense.”

© Aisyah Llewellyn A pharmacy sign in Indonesia says ‘All masks, alcohol and hand sanitiser are sold out’. Photo: Aisyah Llewellyn

On March 23, Indonesia’s president announced the country had ordered 3 million chloroquine tablets. Chloroquine comes from the cinchona tree which grows widely across Indonesia. “There is neither a cure nor an antiviral to Covid-19, but in drawing from the experiences of countries, chloroquine can be used to help patients recover from disease,” Widodo said. He added that the tablets would be distributed to patients through hospitals.

There is no chloroquine at the Iskandar Muda Pharmacy, even though Maria reported up to 50 customers a day trying to source the drug. But increasingly grim statistics are helping to drive the demand regardless.

As of Wednesday, Indonesia had reported 790 infections, 58 deaths and 31 recoveries. However, studies this week suggested the true numbers could be far worse. The London-based Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases estimated as few as 2 per cent of Indonesia’s infections had been reported. That would bring the true number to as many as 34,300, more than Iran. Other modellers have projected a worst-case scenario of 5 million cases in the capital, Jakarta, by the end of April.

Indonesia’s geography may make matters worse. Its health care system is highly decentralised, given that it is a sprawling archipelago of more than 17,000 islands with 260 million people, and is already under strain with a shortage of staff, beds and protective equipment.

© Reuters Indonesian President Joko Widodo inspects a hospital handling Covid-19 cases in Jakarta. Photo: Reuters

PRAISED BY TRUMP

Widodo is not alone in his praise of chloroquine. US President Donald Trump has also been regularly touting it on social media and in press briefings, despite any comprehensive evidence that it is effective against coronavirus.

In fact, a study by the Journal of Zhejiang University in China found chloroquine and a similar drug hydroxychloroquine had little effect on the coronavirus. In its study of 30 patients with the coronavirus, 15 were given hydroxychloroquine and 15 received conventional treatment like oxygen and bed rest. Of the 15 given the drug 13 shed the virus within a week. Of the 15 given the standard treatment, 14 recovered within a week, while one patient remained infected.

While a study on such a small scale can’t be considered definitive either way, even White House insiders are sceptical of the two drugs’ benefits in treating the coronavirus. Coronavirus task force member Anthony Fauci said any evidence so far was only “anecdotal”.

Even so, trials of the drugs have started in New York and public health experts in France are considering using them for extremely ill patients. Eight hundred people are taking part in trials as part of a wider initiative across Europe involving 3,200 patients.

Meanwhile, as potential demand surges across the globe, India banned exports of hydroxychloroquine on March 25 with immediate effect.

© AFP US President Donald Trump has regularly touted the use of chloroquine. Photo: AFP

MORE HARM THAN GOOD

The problem with chloroquine’s sudden rise to fame is that while it remains unclear if it can help those with coronavirus, it could actually cause more harm than good if people buy the drug and self-medicate. There have been reports of poisonings in Nigeria and the United States, where one man in Arizona died on March 24 after ingesting chloroquine phosphate, which is also used to clean aquariums and fish tanks.

The side effects of chloroquine include problems with heart rhythm, dangerously low blood pressure and damage to the body’s muscles and nerves.

For Dr Corona Rintawan, an emergency medicine doctor who is now the head of a task force in Indonesia run by Muhamadiyyah (the second largest non-governmental Muslim organisation in the country), self medication with chloroquine is almost a bigger worry than the virus itself.

“I am worried [about people poisoning themselves] and I think most other doctors are too,” he said. “I think the government must have regulations about chloroquine buying and implement them. As long as there are online shops selling chloroquine, people will be able to order it freely.”

A number of sellers of the drug have popped up online in the past few days, making regulations a challenge. It is also difficult to stop people from trying to source chloroquine through any means possible, given the psychological toll the virus is taking on people around the world, according to Irna Minauli, a psychologist based in Medan.

“If we look at the vicarious learning model theory, people learn by what they see other people doing. So if they get information about a drug that can help them and see or hear of people trying to buy it, they will do the same,” she said.

© Reuters Workers disinfect areas of Jakarta, Indonesia, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus disease, Covid-19. Photo: Reuters

DISINFORMATION

This information, or disinformation, about chloroquine has spread rapidly on Indonesian social media according to Santi Indra Astuti, a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Science at the Islamic University of Bandung (UNISBA) and the Head of the Research Department of Mafindo, an online fact checking civil society organisation.

“Right now, we’ve found that hoaxes regarding coronavirus are spreading massively,” she said. “In terms of quantity, it is overwhelming. We have collected data regarding Covid-19 hoaxes since January and recent data shows that the number has risen to 201 in eight weeks.”

Mafindo has volunteer fact checkers in 18 cities across Indonesia who have been data mapping Covid-19 hoaxes and compiling an online resource to debunk them.

Astuti said chloroquine disinformation had become a new issue in recent days. “We found that the information about chloroquine has been spreading, most of it through WhatsApp. It became our concern that doctors or whoever was quoted in the messages have not yet been proven as reliable sources. The discourse regarding chloroquine itself is still ongoing, so we are collecting information about that and publishing it so that people know what’s going on. Overall, our fact checkers reported that hoaxes regarding alternative medicine, herbs or medicine have been rising this past week.”

When asked how Indonesia’s health authorities can best ensure that Widodo’s latest comments don’t set off a chain of illicit chloroquine purchases, Corona said that they need to, “Put out statements that people should not buy it through the media.”

This was echoed by Astuti, who said Mafindo had “received a call for collaboration from local governments and administration, as well as related institutions such as health units, religious groups and professional associations to share information and fact check strategies”.

“As the situation in Indonesia gets worse, we need to combat it online,” she added.

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Source : Cortdwain.info

United Way Partners With Sedgwick County To Begin COVID-19 Screening

Screening County To Begin Sedgwick Covid-19
 © cordtwain.info 2020
Provided by Wichita-Hutchinson Plus KWCH-DT

WICHITA, Kan. (KWCH) The United Way of the Plains partners with the Sedgwick County Health Department this week to begin COVID-19 screening.

This resource is available to all Sedgwick County residents, including those who don't have a physician or health insurance. A simple call to 211 will you get help.

During the screening, questions include whether you've been in close contact with anyone who's tested positive for COVID-19, if you have a fever of more than 100 degrees, and if you've had a recent decline in your ability to breathe.

The United Way is screening Sedgwick County residents for symptoms like coughing, fever and difficulty breathing to cut down on the call volume to 911.

"The health department contacted us here in the last week, and we've been taking those calls as they've asked us to do," United Way of the Plains President and CEO Pat Hanrahan says. "(Tuesday's) volume was one of the highest. We're averaging about 50 phone calls an hour. That means one call every minute."

If you have COVID-19 symptoms, the United Way will connect you to healthcare professionals in Wichita for additional screening and testing. The organization also encourages everyone to monitor their own symptoms to slow the spread of the virus.

Continuing Coverage: COVID-19 in the Big Bend

Continuing Big Bend Covid-19

© Provided by Tallahassee-Thomasville WCTV

By: WCTV Eyewitness News

The COVID-19 coronavirus has caused many local governments in our area to enact measures such as curfews, call for state of emergencies and limit services such as dining at restaurants.

Below you can find how each county across the Big Bend has responded to the coronavirus pandemic. This story will be updated with new information daily.

If you see any information that is missing, send an email to web@wctv.tv.

Curfews

Several Big Bend counties or cities have enacted curfews during the COVID-19 pandemic. Click on the county or city name to learn more about the curfew.

Midway

Leon County Stay-At-Home Orders

In an effort to halt the rapid spread of COVID-19, some counties have enacted stay-at-home orders in an effort to have people go out only for essential travel/business.

Leon County COVID-19 Cases

Below is the number of cases reported by the Florida Department of Health in our local counties. The numbers were last updated at 6 p.m.

Calhoun - 0

Franklin - 0

Gadsden - 1

Hamilton - 0

Jackson - 1

Jefferson - 0

Lafayette - 0

Leon - 8

Liberty - 0

Madison - 0

Suwannee - 0

Taylor - 0

Wakulla - 0

For more on the Florida Department of Health's COVID-19 statistics, click here.

The Best Way to Improve the Literacy Rate in America

Poverty is not an accident. Like slavery and apartheid it is man-made and can be removed by the actions of human beings.  ~Nelson Mandela

A while back, I was reading about a Stanford University study about brain waves and how different teaching methods affect reading development. They looked at brain waves as teachers worked to teach their students to read and their findings were actually the opposite of what I would have expected.

Of course, I've never tried to teach children how to read, and I never will, but there are a lot of preschool and kindergarten teachers out there who are expected to, despite the overwhelming evidence that early reading instruction actually damages a child's reading future. What I do, what is appropriate for children under seven, is read to them, write down the stories they tell me, play stories with them, tell stories as they happen, encourage dramatic play, write the rules we make together and post them on the wall where we can all reverently "read" them, and make sure there are always books among our loose parts.

This Stanford study talks about things like phonics and whole words and the rest of the stuff direct instruction focused teachers do with the children in their charge. So let me be clear, this wasn't a study about how children best learn to read, but rather on how teachers can best "teach" children to read in schools. This is the kind of research that Carol Black equates to studying the orca whales at Sea World and claiming to understand orca whales, but that's not the point of this post.

As I reflected on what I'd read, I thought about how high stakes standardized testing is increasingly narrowing our public school curricula to the point that they we focus almost exclusively on math and literacy. Then I asked myself: what problem are we trying to solve, especially when it comes to literacy? So I looked it up. I checked several sources. There are lots of different ways to measure literacy, but most agree that our average literacy rate, as compared to other nations, has declined over the past couple decades, a timeframe that matches exactly with the advent of No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Common Core and other federal interventions into our public schools. Perhaps these efforts aren't hurting our literacy rates, but they are failing to reverse the trend.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do anything; I'm just saying that we appear to be doing it wrong.

Meanwhile, tracking quite closely to the illiteracy rate, one in five American children now live in poverty. I'd like to suggest that instead turning our educational system upside down and spending billions on unproven efforts that may actually be eroding our children's ability and desire to read, maybe we should spend our billions on doing something about the 22 percent of our children (and fully 50 percent of public school students) who go to bed hungry each night. We know that poverty is directly linked to lack of success in school. There is nothing we could do that would have a greater impact on education in America.

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Catching Up / Indiewire's 25 Most Anticipated /PGA Awards 1917 / SAG Award Winners Announced Last Night / ACE Award Surprise-Parasite 2020

CATCHING UP

In the blur that has been the last couple of weeks of Oscar nomination announcement buildup and then the subsequent parsing...some notes and stories that I would have normally included in this space got left behind...so...time to catch up:

Mark Cousins article about the death of the late great Buck Henry is here from Indiewire.

Kris Tapley talks with The Two Popes Oscar nominated scribe Anthony McCarten on The Call Sheet Podcast.

Indiewire reports HBO and Bong Joon-ho are developing Parasite as a project for the premium channel.

The Film Stage on Pedro Almodovar's Pain and Glory.

Damien Chazelle's new Netflix joint will be featured at the Berlin Film Festival.



INDIEWIRE'S 25 MOST ANTICIPATED

Indiewire writers Eric Kohn, David Ehrlich and Kate Erbland published their collective list of 25 films that they have high hopes for on Jan. 11th.  I took a look at their list to continue to try to get an early bead on what might be in the TFF #47 conversation as we move toward spring, Cannes and ultimately the summer season when Telluride Film Fest energy grows and grows.

Consequently, here are the films from their list that seem TFF-y or that are just on my own personal wish list (presented alphabetical as is done in the original post):

Ana de Armas who will star in Blonde (photo via Indiewire)

BLONDE- Andrew Dominik's thinly veiled examination of a Marilyn Monroe-like character played by the currently red hot Ana De Armas (Knives Out).  From Netflix.  Release date: TBD.

DUNE- From director Denis Villenueve.  Villenueve tackles the Frank Herbert sci-fi classic and will certainly have a different approach than we can find in David Lynch's 1984 version.  Villenueve's fairly consistent presence at Telluride makes this a possibility ...or maybe more a wish on my behalf.  From Warner Bros.Release-Dec. 18th.

THE FRENCH DISPATCH- Wes Anderson is back.  A film reportedly about journalism and journalists with Anderson's usual array of regular stars (Willem Dafoe, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Saoirse Ronan) and a batch of new talent (Timothee Chalamet, Elizabeth Moss).  I expect that some version of the film will bow at Cannes, which as TFF followers know, doesn't preclude at Telluride play.  From Searchlight.  Release: TBD.

I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS- Directed by Charlie Kaufman.  Could Kaufman return to Telluride after screening Anomalisa there in 2015?  Could be.  Jesse Plemons and Jesse Buckley star.  From Netflix.  Release: TBD.

MANK- Director David Fincher's first feature film gig since 2014's Gone Girl finds him directing a script written by his father about the genesis of the film classic Citizen Kane.  Gary Oldman stars as Herman Mankiewicz, the screen writer of the film many regard still as the greatest film ever made.  At this point, it's the film I most ardently hope makes it to Southwest Colorado over Labor Day weekend.  From Netflix.  Release TBD.

Chloe Zhao (photo via Indiewire)

NOMADLAND- Chloe Zhao's follow up to The Rider.  I had this on my 2019 watch lists and that, obviously didn't happen.  Now I'm expecting a Cannes debut and a possible awards friendly release date.  Frances McDormand stars.  From Searchlight.  Release TBD.

ON THE ROCKS- Sofia Coppola re-teams with her Lost in Translation star Bill Murray.  Rashida Jones is cast as well in this father/daughter film.  Coppola screened Lost in Translation at TFF in 2003.  Could this mark a return for her?  From Apple.  Release TBD.

Check out the rest of the Indiewire 25 here.


PGA AWARDS 1917

The Producers Guild of America announced their winners for films and television for 2019 on Saturday night.

Sam Mendes 1917 took the film top prize which might mean that the World War I set film that is shot to appear to be essentially one take is your front runner for the Best Picture Oscar.  Indiewire reports that the PGA winner is a 72% successful indicator of the eventual BP Oscar winner.

1917 beat out three TFF films that were also in the running: Parasite, Marriage Story and Ford v Ferrari.

Toy Story 4 was named the PGA winner for Animated Feature while the producers named Apollo 11 the Best Documentary of the year.

The complete PGA story is linked here.


SAG AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED LAST NIGHT

Telluride 2019 had a good night at the SAG Awards last night with TFF #46 film actors scooping up two prizes and a TFF film also won Best Ensemble.  Here's the rundown of winners for film:

Best Supporting Actress: Laura Dern/Marriage Story
Best Supporting Actor: Brad Pitt/Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood
Best ACtress: Renee Zellweger/Judy
Best Actor: Joaquin Phoenix/Joker
Best Ensemble: Parasite

The Parasite win was something of a surprise and positions it along with PGA winner 1917 as the two most likely front runners at this point for the Best Picture Oscar.  Though, I wouldn't rule out Once Upon a Time...just yet.

Now we wait to see what the DGA and WGA do.



ACE AWARD SURPRISE-PARASITE

The American Cinema Editors group surprised the film world on Friday awarding Bong Joon-ho's Parasite as the best edited film drama of the year.  Parasite beat Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, Ford v Ferrari, Marriage Story and Joker.

Jojo Rabbit won the Eddy for Film-Comedy.  Toy Story 4 won for Animated Feature and Apollo 11 won for editing for a Feature Documentary.

The complete list of nominees and winners is linked here from Awards Watch.

Need a recipe here

Hard Work And Suffering A Kids

Teaching preschool is hard work. It is physically and emotionally demanding. At the end of a day in the classroom I'm done.

This is not a complaint, but rather a statement of fact. In almost any other job there are times, even entire days or weeks, when it's possible to just phone it in, but that's not an option for preschool teachers. The routine physical demands of up and down, of playing, of lifting and carrying, being on your knees all day, day-after-day, take their toll. I don't know any teacher who has been at this for any length of time who doesn't experience back and joint pain. And it's even more taxing emotionally. At any given moments we're listening with our entire selves, consoling, counseling, coaching, or otherwise supporting highly emotional people through what for them is a crisis. We pour ourselves into these children because it is our job, but also because we love them. More often than not, I finish a classroom day buoyed and proud by the work I've done, but I'm also wrung out in a way that nothing else wrings me out.

I love the work. We love our work. It's hard work.

Earlier this week, I wrote about people who worry about the children we teach. They worry that if we leave them to educate themselves by asking and answering their own questions through their play that  they will never learn about hard work. This is BS of the highest order, of course. Indeed, I've never seen a playing child who was not working hard. They show us they are working hard in the intensity of their concentration as they try to add one more block to the top of their tower. They show us their work ethic as they fully engage in the intense back-and-forth of negotiations over who is really going to be the queen. No one works harder than a child who is struggling with a puzzle or with balancing along a curb or trying to summon up the courage to take a leap. They are always working hard to process the confusing world around them through their dramatic play, their storytelling, and the strong emotions they wear on their sleeves.

No, children who play show they know everything they will ever need to know about hard work. What they may not know about it arbitrary suffering. It occurs to me that this is really what people are saying when they "worry" about play-based education. Life is hard, the reasoning goes, it is full of all sorts of things you don't want to do, but you must do them nevertheless so, in the name of teaching this lesson, we must require young children to suffer at least a little by commanding them to do things they don't want to do. What's missing in this argument is that children, just like all humans, are already doing plenty of things they don't want to do. We don't need to go out of our way to create arbitrary, even punitive, suffering, like say (for many of us at least) algebra, in order to "teach" this hard lesson. Our first communications are cries of pain or hunger, of suffering, of experiencing life as suffering. It's such a self-evident lesson that even infants know it. Manufacturing lessons in suffering strike me as unnecessarily cruel. 

As a preschool teacher of a certain age, I don't necessarily want to squat and lift. It hurts my knees, but of course I do it because some amount of suffering is required to do this thing I love to do. Hard work and suffering are built into life no matter what. The answer is not to "get used to it" as the worriers would have it, but rather to play, to spend life doing things you choose, things you love, because that's the only thing that stands against the suffering.

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The Urge To Destroy In This Year 2020 ?

The nineteenth century anarchist theorist Mikhail Bakunin famously asserted "The urge for destruction is also a creative urge." This concept came to mind recently when I came across a tree trunk that had clearly been vandalized. I suppose it could have been an animal or some other natural phenomenon that created the hole in the trunk, but it sure looked to me like the work of human hands, and it did not strike me as the result of any sort of creative urge.

I live in a densely populated urban area where I am regularly confronted by the human urge to destroy. Graffiti I can understand as the result of a creative urge, but branches ripped from saplings, litter, and over-turned city bikes? Not so much. I imagine that someone could argue that destruction is a precursor to creativity, like slums that must be bulldozed to make way for palaces, but it's a stretch. The most one can say for random human destruction is that it can, maybe sometimes, like in the case of graffiti, be considered in the benevolent light of creativity.

Every day in every preschool classroom, the urge to destroy is nevertheless evident. Even if it isn't part of the creative urge, it is, apparently something deeply human. Paper is torn into tiny bits and scattered on the floor, carefully constructed block towers are joyfully toppled, pages are ripped from books, toys are dismantled in ways that they can never be put back together. Some of it is accidental, of course, but as a boy once replied when I asked him why he had intentionally broken something, "I wanted to see if I could break it."

When I passed around to the other side of the tree with the vandalized trunk, I saw that it was notable in the sense that it's trunk was bizarrely deformed, looking something like one of those candles in a Chiati bottle stereotypically found in an Italian restaurant. It was strikingly different from the trees around it and because of that it roused my curiosity. It occurred to me that perhaps it had been curiosity, the primal scientific urge, that had caused someone to begin picking a hole in the trunk. If the trunk was so different on the outside, one could wonder if the interior was equally deformed.

I think it's safe to say that much of the "destruction" we see around the classroom can be marked up to curiosity, even if misguided, but that still leaves the question of broken bottles, wantonly discarded fast food wrappers, and knocked over bicycles. I suppose some of it could simply be chalked up to laziness, although psychologists tell us that there is no such thing. Feelings of depression, alienation, disenfranchisement, or just plain old anger at the world seem more likely causes of this sort of destructive behavior.

A psychologist friend told me that he was once engaged to treat an eight-year-old who had been referred by his parents for his "destructive behavior." The boy slumped into a chair and started the conversation by declaring, "I'm bad because I'm sad." If only we all could be as insightful as this kid.

Humans destroy to create, we destroy to explore, we destroy to express despair, and perhaps we are sometimes unconsciously driven to join the universe's unstoppable quest for ever-increasing entropy. As teachers and parents, we are too often poised to punish, to scold the child for something that he's broken, but it's never that simple with us human beings.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

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Not Teaching Your Child With This. . !

I never pretend to know what kids will learn on any given day and, honestly, any teacher who does is either deluded or blowing smoke. No one can possibly know what another person is going to learn. You can hope. You can plan. You can lecture yourself blue. You can even, if you're especially clever, trick someone into learning something, but the idea that one person can "teach" something to another, except under narrow circumstances, is one of the great educational myths.

There is a quote that is most often attributed to the Buddha, but is more likely of Theosophical origins, that goes: "When the student is ready the master will appear." I like these kinds of quotes that persist because they are true even when they can't be traced back to the utterances of Buddha, Socrates, or Einstein. This one is even so true that there is a corollary: "When the master is ready the student will appear."

Some days I accidentally "teach" something to a kid. For instance, I once improperly used the term "centrifugal force" (when I actually should have use "centripetal force") while a child was experimenting with a hamster wheel and the kid, months later, was still misusing my term while performing his experiments, even as I repeatedly tried to correct him. But most days I teach nothing at all except, perhaps, what I convey to my students by role modeling. I've tried, believe me, to convey specific information to kids, like when I tell them that dirt is primarily made from volcanos, dead stuff, and worm poop, but most of the time the only things that stick are the things about which the kids are already asking questions.

And still, despite my utter lack of "teaching," the kids who come to our school are learning. How do I know? I watch them. I listen to them. I remember when they didn't know and then I hear them saying and see them doing things that demonstrate that now they do. And even though I'm not teaching them, they mostly learn exactly what I want them to know.

What do I want them to know?

The joy of playing with other people.

The frustration and redemption of failure.

Emotions come and go and they are important.

I'm the boss of me and you're the boss of you.

Our agreements are sacred.

It's not only important to love, but also to say it.

It's not my job to "teach" these things. It is my job to love them and to do what I can to create an environment that is stimulating, beautiful, and safe enough: a place where children can ask and answer their own questions about the world and the people they find there. A place not of teaching, but of discovery. We call it play and it's everything.

I've just published a book! If you are interested in ordering Teacher Tom's First Book, click here. Thank you!

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!