[music playing]
CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
Welcome to a new show, a new week,
and for many of us, a new civil time.
Speaking of time, it has been two years
since America started shutting down because
of the coronavirus pandemic.
In fact, it was on March 16, 2020
that the US government announced a two week plan to try to slow
the spread of the disease.
The shutdowns and stay at home orders that followed
stretched for more than a month, but the disease itself
continued to spread in waves in different times of the years
afterward, and at different levels of severity.
COVID-19 was first identified in China in late 2019.
By March of 2020, the World Health Organization
had officially declared the disease a pandemic,
meaning it had spread around the world.
And even though that was still early days,
the effects were rippling widely and quickly.
Here's a clip that CNN 10 aired on March 13, 2020.
The US Capitol is now closed to visitors.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has closed.
The National Basketball League has suspended all of its games.
The National Hockey League announced
the same thing yesterday.
Major League Baseball has suspended spring training.
March Madness has been canceled.
Disneyland is closed.
Around the world, there have been cancelations
and closures like these, sometimes
including countries' borders.
And international stock markets have seen
dramatic swings and losses.
Back and forth messages and mandates on masks, jobs
lost, and many regained, vaccines developed faster
than any others in history, outbreaks and immunity,
working from home and on the front lines, remote learning,
controversies and consequences, supply chain disruptions,
and soaring inflation.
The ripple effects of the pandemic
continue to impact our lives today,
even though the number of new COVID cases
is either holding steady or falling
in almost every US state.
Health experts don't know if another dangerous variant,
another version of COVID, is on the horizon.
The Omicron mutation that hit the US late last year
was less severe and deadly than previous waves of the disease
even though it was more contagious.
Some doctors have suggested this might have signaled
that the disease was turning a corner,
that COVID-19 was becoming something
milder like the cold or the flu that people live with.
Time will tell if that's what's happening.
People and nations are hopeful it is.
And COVID restrictions are being lifted
in countries around the world.
By the end of this month, Hawaii will
be the only US State that still requires students
to wear masks in class.
That's been one controversial restriction of the COVID
pandemic just like the remote learning that became widespread
when schools shut down.
Differences in access, parents needed at home, lower test
scores, impacts on students' mental health,
these were some of the criticisms
of distance learning.
But it did allow students and teachers
to still see and communicate with each other
throughout the pandemic.
And that's one thing that's currently
helping Ukrainian teachers and students
with their nation at war.
- [non-english speech]
IVAN WATSON: An all too familiar scene for parents who lived
through the COVID pandemic.
NADIA PAVLENKO: [non-english speech]
IVAN WATSON: Children fidgeting through a Zoom class
about the solar system.
NADIA PAVLENKO: [non-english speech]
IVAN WATSON: The difference here,
most of these Ukrainian school kids
are refugees reconnecting with their classmates
and teacher online.
In the last two weeks, the students and their teacher
fled to different countries to escape
Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
How old are your students?
NADIA PAVLENKO: Seven, eight.
IVAN WATSON: From Poland, Nadia Pavlenko teaches her students
online classes, even though the school
stopped paying her salary.
NADIA PAVLENKO: [non-english speech]
IVAN WATSON: None of us know what will happen next,
she says, but these classes with my children
are like a bridge to my past life in Ukraine.
They help us feel connected.
War time distance learning.
There's a lot of this going on right now.
Do you think the online classes are helping these kids?
ALEXANDER PARCALAB: Very much.
It's helping them and mental health
to fill the routine that the life is still going on,
that it's not the end of the world.
IVAN WATSON: Alexander Parcalab is
a schoolteacher who fled the Ukrainian city of Odessa
to neighboring Moldova.
In the morning, he teaches students from
his Ukrainian school online.
ALEXANDER PARCALAB: Children ask me if I am safe, where I am,
with who I am.
They were asking me before me asking them.
IVAN WATSON: In the afternoon, he
comes here, a makeshift school for Ukrainian children
in the Moldovan capital.
Half of his online students fled across borders.
The other half are still in Ukraine.
ALEXANDER PARCALAB: The first lesson
in Zoom, I said that you should be this first domino
to help somebody.
Maybe your mother need help, maybe mother's friends
need help.
And this is what can I do.
I cannot change the world.
But I can change me and change the mood of my mother.
And it will be like a domino.
IVAN WATSON: These girls say they're looking forward
to starting online classes with their Ukrainian classmates
on Monday.
Liana says she wants to find out where
her classmates traveled to and to make sure
that they're healthy right now.
Eight year old Timur Zhdanov and his father Artem
stayed behind in Ukraine.
Were you surprised when Timur's teacher said, hey, we're going
to continue online learning?
ARTEM ZHDANOV: Honestly, yeah.
I think that they're feeling this strong connection
with Ukraine and then want to support us as much as they can.
And also a new generation of Ukrainian people.
IVAN WATSON: A new generation that may grow up
in exile, relying on technology to stay
connected to their homeland.
CARL AZUZ: 10 second trivia.
The Calder Act of 1918 was another name for what, Daylight
Saving Time Act, Time Zone Establishment
Act, Standard Time Act, or Hour Back and Forward Act?
[music playing]
The law named for Senator William Calder
established all of these things, but it was
named the Standard Time Act.
It's time to save daylight, y'all.
I always notice a lot more negative news coverage
of the time change in the spring when we lose an hour of sleep
then in the fall when we get it back.
Why does this tradition persist more
than 100 years after it began?
JENNIFER GRAY: So why don't we change
the clocks ahead one hour in the spring
and back one hour in the fall?
Well, it's actually to reduce the electricity consumption by
extending the daylight hours.
[music playing]
In the US, we change our clocks at 2:00 AM on the second Sunday
in March.
That begins daylight saving time.
That's when we spring head.
On the first Sunday in November, we change our clocks at 2:00 AM
again.
That's actually just going back to Standard Time.
Believe it or not, this started with an idea
from Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin did write an essay suggesting that people could
use less candles if they got up early
and made better use of daylight.
In 1918, the Standard Time Act established time
zones and daylight saving time.
But not all states participate.
To this day, most of Arizona and all of Hawaii
do not change their clocks.
Over 70 countries across the world
observe daylight saving time with notable exceptions
of China and Japan.
In 2007, we actually changed the date
of when we set our clocks back an hour to the first week
in November.
This helped protect trick-or-treaters by giving
them an extra hour of daylight.
One of the other lines of thinking
was that we would have a better voter
turnout on election years.
Experts say each time you change your clocks,
it's always a good idea to change those batteries
in your smoke detector and always
look forward to fall when you get that extra hour of sleep.
CARL AZUZ: In 1914, the Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest
Shackleton did not succeed in his expedition
to cross Antarctica.
His ship, the HMS Endurance, became trapped in
and later crushed by the ice.
Though Shackleton and all of his crew
survived after a nearly two year ordeal,
their ship was lost until now.
Modern day explorers just announced
her discovery almost 2 miles deep near Antarctica's
northern coast.
The endurance is incredibly well preserved in the frigid waters,
her name visible and legible, her wheel
looking like it did in 1914.
And she'll be photographed, mapped,
and studied, but not moved from her final resting place.
[music playing]
Sticking with the nautical theme,
a Minnesota couple who loved lighthouses
decided to build their own in the middle of Minnesota.
So no water anywhere around except for a small lake.
But the view of the woods is said to be amazing.
Took them two years to build this.
It has six floors, bedrooms, bathrooms, a crow's
nest that's 50 feet high.
And while it won't save any ships,
it is available for rent at about 300 bucks a night.
A good place to stay guests say is an oasis, a sight
to see on a landlubbers basis, a delightful house illuminating
renters faces, a bright nautical light in some unlikely places.
Sailors may prefer the beach, but in others' cases,
if you want something different for a change of paces,
just sail through the woods with wakes of snow on your waists
as you take the maritime to navigate from the rat races.
I mean, why not?
I'm Carl Azuz.
Schalick High School gets today's shout out.
Hello to you our viewers in Pitch Grove, New Jersey.
And thank you for your comment and your request
on our YouTube channel.
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