mod_wsgi: NameError when importing Django templates folder

I want to link to my initial issue submit at the asgiref module because I thought it was a problem on that side. Well, I’m not sure where it is… For some more comments see this: https://github.com/django/asgiref/issues/157

Summary what I did:

• new Linux install with Ubuntu 18.04, sudo apt-get install python3.8 python3.8-venv
• installed mod_wsgi in accord with the docs
• started a new Django project with a dedicated venv and everything worked fine up to the point where I introduce a project-wide template folder and point to it in the settings.py

Insert this:

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        ...
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR,'templates'),],
        ....

    },
]

Then I get this:

[Tue May 05 19:57:52.653410 2020] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 10734:tid 140655679445952] AH00491: caught SIGTERM, shutting down

Exception ignored in: <function Local.__del__ at 0x7fece48a09d0>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/www/my_app/.my_app/lib/python3.8/site-packages/asgiref/local.py", line 95, in __del__
NameError: name 'AttributeError' is not defined
Exception ignored in: <function Local.__del__ at 0x7fece48a09d0>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/var/www/my_app/.my_app/lib/python3.8/site-packages/asgiref/local.py", line 95, in __del__
NameError: name 'AttributeError' is not defined

[Tue May 05 19:57:52.815381 2020] [mpm_event:notice] [pid 11050:tid 140050920782784] AH00489: Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu) OpenSSL/1.1.1 mod_wsgi/4.7.1 Python/3.8 configured -- resuming normal operations

[Tue May 05 19:57:52.815626 2020] [core:notice] [pid 11050:tid 140050920782784] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2