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Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air, under the tent, and around Baltimore.
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This is your daily news briefing of the goings-ons at Arts and Ideas.
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Today, I really lived under the tent.
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We had a very long JC, well, relative to what we've been having,
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and then a school meeting after that, which actually wasn't all that long,
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and then just some conversations after the school meeting, which is not unusual.
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So, with that kind of intro, also today is Talking About Tuesday,
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so I've made a separate little podcast on the side.
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It's a little rambly, so make sure you listen to that on the 2X Speed version.
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Also speaking of 2X Speed, there's a presidential debate tonight,
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so if you're into that kind of thing, it's cool to watch.
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But I personally will be watching it on 2X Speed.
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Not only do you get through it in half the time,
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but it's also much more energetic and exciting.
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If the candidate you support is a little slow and you probably know what I'm talking about,
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then 2X Speed is a good way to go.
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Alrighty, moving into the goings-ons here.
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So, it was another beautiful day, a little humid.
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As I said, we had a long JC, a couple of interesting cases.
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One involved, so yesterday I mentioned having to break up a chair.
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Well, today's case was about a student who was kind of angry
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and threw a chair across the room, and it broke,
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and so then we had a JC about it.
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The student was quite calm and quite accepting of what happened,
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and in fact even included that they had been cursing a bit,
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and so we added that.
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And so the student even said, "You know what, maybe I should replace the chair.
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Pay for the cost of the chair. Seems reasonable."
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But the team thought about it and was like, "Well, really the issue is anger.
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How can you handle dealing with your anger?"
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And so we have a contemplation corporation, which is not only dealing with anxiety,
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but also anger and stuff.
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It's got a budget, so it should have a budget.
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It did not get a budget yet. It needs to have a budget.
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Anyway, so the suggestion is to the student to go to the next contemplation corporation meeting
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and talk about what can be added for some good anger management.
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You know, maybe just some punching bags. Who knows?
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So that's kind of emblematic of how we like to do things here.
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You know, the student didn't have any intention of breaking a chair,
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understood that that was clearly bad. It was just so forthcoming and so calm.
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It was great to see.
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The other case was a little bit more complicated. It had to do with COVID-19 stuff.
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Some students were outside, masked, but they were roughhousing a bit,
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and we had a rule about physical games needing to adhere to safety protocols,
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and so people wanted to use that rule,
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but it was kind of pointed out that we weren't really clear what those protocols were.
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Most people had in mind that they couldn't touch each other,
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and that might be a little harsh or not.
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So it was like a 20- or 30-minute debate about whether the rule really would apply or not and so forth.
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Eventually it was decided that probably there's a spirit of the rule that should,
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and so went with it, and the students accepted it.
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And then the action that they had was to actually attend the school meeting that happened today
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where we were hoping to address this inadequacy of the rule,
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and so that would be a great opportunity for them to speak up and participate
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and at the very least would understand that there's this new rule.
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So they did come to a school meeting, and I don't think they spoke up about it,
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but they were certainly aware of it when it was done
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because they got to leave the school meeting as soon as it was done.
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And boy, was there a thunder of hooves. It roams the heart.
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Anyway, what else happened in school meeting today?
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Well, Caroline has something about solar printing workshop.
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It's kind of an in-person thing, but she got an approval for that
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and announced that people can sign up there.
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We passed the year-long clerkships.
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Basically it's very similar to last year's clerkships.
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One notable exception is that our man Declan is now a staff relations clerk,
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so if you have troubles with staff and you don't feel like talking to the staff directly,
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go look up Declan. He'll be more than happy to address it.
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And currently he's also JC clerk, so if a staff needs to be written up,
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he can tell you all about it. Alrighty. Cool.
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We also passed a rule about rolling chairs.
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So last year we had some new rolling chairs that came into our building.
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We put them around, and then the rolling around on the tiles really chewed up those tiles.
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I mean, our cleaners are really great with wax, and so it kind of came back.
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But last year when we had them re-waxed in the middle of the year,
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it was like two weeks later they were no longer well waxed
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because these chairs just strip it all.
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I think basically our students, they come out in the field a lot,
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have a lot of dirt come in, and then you grind that dirt right into the tiles,
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and well, it's not so good.
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So we passed a rule about rolling chairs may only be used on carpeted areas
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or sufficiently large area rugs when indoors.
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That last bit, the when indoors, was originally absent from the motion,
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which was from me. Not intentionally, but it gave some people a lot of pause
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because of the blue rolling chairs on the outside.
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People love to go down those ramps on the blue rolling chairs.
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So we added the when indoors, and everybody was happy. Yay!
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We also passed an amendment to the check-in meetings to have basically,
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so for example, our first check-in meeting, which will be tomorrow at noon,
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in case anyone's wondering, 16 and older is kind of the headline.
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But if someone was over 15, maybe like 15 and a half,
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it makes a lot of sense for them to come to that meeting, I think.
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And so if someone is, so kind of like 15 seems like a border age
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between going to the 16 or going to the 12 to 15,
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and so it's kind of left up to them.
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But there's also a default list that's generated.
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And so that default list is set so that if you turn 16, for example,
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by the start of next school year, then you're part of the 16 group,
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which makes a lot of sense to me, particularly as our graduation is set up.
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If you turn 18 before the next school year, then you can graduate.
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So we do allow 17-year-olds to graduate,
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but only if they're actually going to be 18 before the school year starts.
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I think that's a reasonable cutoff based on what we've seen before,
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and I think that kind of filters down to all the different ages.
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Anyone, any school meeting member,
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can attend any of the check-in meetings that they wish,
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so it doesn't preclude them from being elsewhere.
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It just sort of says this is kind of the information that you might want to have.
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All right.
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As before, I mentioned we did replace the rule about physical games,
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and said now it says all intentional physical contact is prohibited.
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So hopefully that clears things.
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You know, that might be a little more strongly than we need necessarily,
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but I think it keeps a nice separation,
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and we can always revisit it as needed.
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Anyway, so that is more or less what's been going on today.
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I believe tomorrow we have no doubt a history lecture.
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I don't actually know what it's on.
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Let me see if there's anything mentioned up.
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Oh, yes, it's on rubber.
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So Josh is very excited to present his research on rubber tomorrow.
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There is some disturbing history about it,
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but also lots of interesting connections and intersections.
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So if you want to know the history about rubber,
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tune in to the history talk tomorrow.
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Also tomorrow at 12 for those online and in person who are 16 and older,
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and really turning 16 before next school year,
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you should attend the check-in meeting.
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So check your age, and if that criteria applies,
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please be online at 12, or if you're in person, here under the tent.
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That sounds like an exciting time.
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It's always great fun to talk about it.
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We're here to just kind of go for the 16 plus.
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It's sort of going over graduation stuff, next steps, past schooling, flex time.
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And, of course, this year we'll be talking about how any of that relates to the COVID stuff.
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All right. Well, I've been going on for holy crumb bums.
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Wow. All right.
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I need to learn how to remember when I was doing like two minute things.
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I'm like up to 10 minutes.
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I got to start paying for this time.
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All right.
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You have a great day, and thanks for sticking around if you're still listening to this.
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You're a mighty trooper. I love you.
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Have a great day. Be cool, and see y'all later.