Pine Press
April 2020
Brought to you by the MSU-SHC Education Committee
Sounds of the SHC Compiled by Kiran Lantrip from Raft Hill Here are your music submissions for the month of April. Just a few this month, but we’ve got some goodies in here! Check out the Spotify playlist at the link here. Faye Webster - Atlanta Millionaires Club - Apollo Little Mix, Twice, Tinashe - Hedrick ‘Blue Monday’- New Order and Justice’s album ‘Woman Worldwide’. It all flows together and they even made a visual demonstration for the live show called ‘Iris’. I highly suggest it. - Vesta
HAUS LUV Compiled by Kiran Lantrip from Raft Hill Lydia I love you so much you keep me going every day - Howland Haus <3 Dylan ~ thx for being such a positive light in our home!! - Orion Audrey - Happy birthday beautiful! Thank you for everything you do. Orion wouldn't be home without you. You ROCK! We love you!<3 - Orion Welcome to toad lane Mia, we're so happy to have you here with us! - Toad Lane Shoutout to Cassidy for keeping everyone safe and stylish with your handmade face masks! We love and appreciate you! I’d rob not one but TWO large banks for you - Vesta
Quarantine Activities Compiled by Danny Olweean from Bowie Katie G from Toad Lane - I’ve been learning how to draw digitally and all my haus mates and I have started growing our vegetables for the greenhouse we’re building with new comm! Emily from Vesta - Writing lots of letters!
Emma from Howland - Lots of doodling, some printmaking (much harder to do at home), working on my photoshop skills!
What Does It Mean to be an Education Officer? Compiled by Cassie Feith from Miles Davis “I see the role of education in two ways. At face value, education informs members of the happenings, culture, and future of the SHC. But I also see education as a proactive role, building the community rather than just describing it. I think some great examples are the planned consent trainings and skillshares.” - Danny O. from Bowie “To me, being the education officer for my house gives me a part of responsibility with, and as well as other members of my house to come together and share information with each other for the good of the group. For me, it’s an opportunity to be a part of something bigger than myself, for others.. not just I.” - Evelyn C. from Rivendell “To be an education officer is to keep up with the goings on in the rest of the organization and bring news back home to the rest of my house. To act as the voice of my house in the education committee. Education officers work to keep the various people throughout the houses interconnected.” - Soli B. from Ferency “Being an education officer has been a fantastic way to meet new people and build up the cooperative community through continuing education. My favorite part has been updating the house constitution and working with my housemates to come to a consensus on our house's vision. Helping settle conflict and creating the pine press are also
rewarding. The picture is from Austin, Texas on the NASCO trip!” - Thad S. from Bower “To me, being education officer means acting as steward of our house's constitution, resolving conflict, and helping build buy-in through informing our membership on the function and goals of our organization.” - Kiran L. from Raft Hill “I think the best part of being an education officer is having the opportunity to help the development of our intentional community through active participation.” Jonathon S. from Orion
“I enjoy being Vesta’s education officer because I love to be in a position of service and contribution to my house, from attending education committee meetings to being able to spread info to and from my house. One project I did recently as education officer was to make a Vesta house manual. It is a physical binder that has any info you would need about being a Vesta resident. I love my house and love to serve and represent it in this position.” - Emily T. from Vesta “Being an education officer to me means that it is my duty to assist the house in learning meaningful lessons related to being a good cooperative member and a good citizen... and to attend bi-weekly meetings :)” - Amy P. from Howland
“Education officers connect the Co-ops, allowing for cooperative action and events to be planned between houses and keep their members up to date on all things SHC. They also produce the Pine Press, the newspaper of the MSU co-ops. This position allows you to have your hand in the planning of SHC wide events and keeping your own house informed.” - Billy K. from Hedrick
Coronavirus in MI: Visuals By Jonathan Sheehan from Orion About a month ago, I wrote about some misconceptions and useful sources on information relating to the ongoing pandemic. Since then, our world has changed greatly. The biggest shift since then in terms of the previous article is face mask recommendations. The federal, as well as various state and local governments are now recommending that everyone wear a face covering when proper social distancing is not feasible. Today, I would like you to reflect for a moment how much our nation and our lives have changed over the past two months. This is an historic struggle, one that will likely define a generation. Despite the restrictions on daily life which we are all facing, I write today with cautious optimism. It looks like Michigan is starting to beat the virus, however ideological values threaten the long term feasibility of effective prevention methods. Putting personal feelings aside, the data from Michigan is showing a flattening curve, indicating the proper course of action. The county-by-county data is from The New York Times, based on reports from state and local health agencies. To start, let’s compare the case plots for Michigan and my home state of Massachusetts. Both states had some restrictions in place, leading up to stay at home advisories on the 23rd/24th of March. Case counts mirrored each other for some time.
Michigan’s social distancing rules are considered some of the strictest in the country, but obviously they are working. Even compared to a state that is taking definitive actions, Michigan is drastically slowing the buildup of COVID-19 cases. When we look at the most populated counties in Michigan (with pop. over 200k), we see a similar flattening trend.
In this plot of the number of cases per 10k residents, we can see how the nature of the pandemic changed over the past month. Most notable is the slowing of the spread in Wayne county at the top. This also shows how biased the virus is towards densely populated regions. We look at cases per 10k residents as well as total cases, as it helps put things into context. Some of these highly populated counties, at the bottom of the graph, aren’t even in the top 10 for cases per 10k! Despite this, the top three most populated counties also have the most cases per 10k inhabitants. This clearly shows how our densely populated urban areas are getting hit worse than most suburban and rural areas.
In the above plots, we can see the number of cases per 10k people is highest in the metro Detroit region. In the figure to the right, the coloration is based on the natural logarithm of the per10k number. This is done to highlight subtle variations, making the county-by-county differences more noticable. Doing this also shows counties with no cases, shown in grey. In both cases, a lighter yellow is low, and a deeper red/orange is high.
To end on an optimistic note, I’d like to highlight the new cases per day in both Michigan and Massachusetts. Remember, the states were in similar positions in late March to early April, including when the respective stay at home advisories were in place. In these plots, the orange region encompasses the 14 days after the announcements. By two weeks, everyone who will be showing symptoms is. Thus, most people who were diagnosed after this point were infected during the stay at home order. You can add a few days to the end of this to add a testing lag, but the trend is obvious: Michigan did a good job following the rules, Massachusetts did not. Due to the delay in displaying symptoms, we don’t know how what we do today affects us until two weeks later. Clearly what we did in Michigan at the beginning of this crisis management worked, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. Unless we continue adhering to guidelines, there's nothing to stop another surge.
Collage by Jarek Troyer from Vesta
Thanx 4 reading!! WE LOVE YOU