Reassuring people in fear during COVID-19


It's October of 2021, and I am continuing my project of trying to reassure people who are in fear. COVID-19 is still a big problem, in spite of the fact that vaccines have been available for a long time. People like me kinda figured that it would be all over by now, but we were wrong, and there are still people out there getting sick, and dying from it. It seems an awful shame, but it's just human nature in action, a kind of human nature that I've seen all of my life, fear. I'd like to help.

No, I don't have all the answers, I can't wave a magic wand, and it's actually not true that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. There are a lot of terrible things in the world that you would be wise to fear. Getting a horrible contagious disease is the one that's on my mind mostly nowadays, but the list goes on and on.

So, here's my "fireside chat". I do this on the internet, and when I see people IRL (In Real Life) I try to keep the same reassuring tone. I'm not Franklin Roosevelt (and if you knew FDR you know that I'm no FDR), but I'm inspired by people like him.

When I first started teaching, back in 1996, I was surprised at how much reassuring that I needed to do. I had imagined that sharing technical information would be most of the job (it was teaching computer software), but I spent most of my time reassuring people who were frightened. Telling them that "there's nothing to be afraid of" or "the computer won't bite you" are the things that seem logical to say, but they're the worst things to say. These people needed gentle reassurance.

A good friend of mine helped me with my vocal production. I genuinely wanted to help, and I wanted my voice to sound that way. I have a slightly-nasal baritone, and I learned to lift it up a little bit to a softer tenor. I listened to reassuring voices, from Mr. Rogers to Jeff Goldblum. Sometimes people get scared.

Thank you for joining me on my fireside chat today. I'll be back soon, and we'll talk some more.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more