Parents Weekend in New Orleans
Spent a whirlwind weekend in New Orleans where Kitten #2 goes to college. It was Parents Weekend (I’m not sure if there should be an apostrophe in there) and it was great to see her in her element among people who will be close friends for decades to come, all in a great American city dedicated to good times and gluttonous eating. I exercised little dietary discipline, and so I will not weigh myself for a week in order to avoid the great hit to my fragile ego.
As we are a still a nation dealing with a pandemic, regional approaches to the plague are interesting and vary. New Orleans—like much of the South—was in the grip of the virus over the summer, which caused clucking nannies elsewhere to point at the Southrons and declare them reckless, etc. Now the South (including New Orleans) is in a much better place (see here), while the northern nannies are in the midst of another surge. All of this leads me to a couple of conclusions. 1) that masking and social distancing have comparatively little to do with controlling the virus at this point—vaccination and testing are the main tools and 2) that we really ought to be pushing harder to move past some of the performative aspects of mitigation.
Don’t get me wrong. I am a mask wearer. I pretty much always have one with me, and when I’m going to be indoors (not at home), I put it on. I support mask mandates from private businesses and I am generally accepting of government mandates from the State level down. Federal mandates give me the willies. As of right now, I don’t become eligible for my “booster” until 24 December, so I suppose I’m operating on the safe side until then.
When I am somewhere that does not require the mask, I do not look with scorn upon non-wearers. That said, I DO look with scorn upon those who do not follow the direction of competent authority, like the jackass on the plane next to me to New Orleans who wore his neck mask beneath his nose virtually the whole flight, and who bitched when told to put it over his nose. Twice. I don’t want to wear masks on planes, but I also don’t want it to be a rule that some people don’t think applies to them.
New Orleans also had a requirement to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter restaurants. Was this a burden? Absolutely not. I was happy to show it, and then proceed to ingest unsafe amounts of fatty, caloric food. I have a feeling this is going to be the case soon on US domestic flights, and I’m all for it. If they DO impose it AND keep the mask mandate, well then I think that’s silly.
I guess what I’m driving at is it LOOKS like we have turned the corner on this, but it is not yet over. We’re going to see some of the restrictions begin to disappear, and we’re going to see people emotionally invested in them fight to keep them. But it is time.
College Basketball Returns
The “Wahoo” in the name of this Substack refers to one of the nicknames affixed to the University of Virginia, the preferred one as far as I’m concerned (not a fan of “Cavaliers”). I am a graduate, and I am somewhat of an unbalanced (or is it imbalanced) fan. I have season tickets for football, but my expectations of success there are limited. Basketball is another story.
I pretty much spend the first week of April until the second week in November miserable that there is no college basketball. And then it starts.
For UVA it was 9 November, when the plucky Midshipmen from the United States Naval Academy came to Charlottesville and kicked our ever-loving assess from wire to wire. Now here’s the thing. I love UVA like air and ice cream. But I at no time agreed to suspend disbelief and just cheer all the time without a critical eye. The “oh, but there just college kids” was never convincing to me AT ALL, and now that they can profit off their image and likeness, it is absolute rubbish. So, criticizing players is flat out fair game.
Also, UVA has had a really, really good program for about eight years now, including a national title. Coach Tony Bennett has achieved sainthood among some of the fanbase for the prominence he’s brought to the program and for well, being a saint. He seems like an awfully nice guy and he appears to run a clean program. But he isn’t infallible.
A lot of forums where UVA fans congregate are dominated by the “Tony can do no wrong” and “it’s wrong to criticize the kids” crowd. But Tony CAN and DOES do wrong. One of those things is that his teams can be a little flat in the beginning of the season. One will hear a lot of “well, that’s because his defensive scheme is complicated” and this year “well, he’s dealing with a lot of new personnel”. Sure, but so is Coach K — he pretty much does every year — and his team is once again off to a great start.
One loss is not the time to lose faith, I get it. But a loss to Navy isn’t nothing. As I write this, UVA is in Houston for a game against #15 University of Houston. We could go a long way toward getting things right with a victory. But by the time this piece comes out, the result will be known.