I insisted on teaching a class yesterday. All my classes have been cancelled. I won’t be teaching this spring. I’ve got two nineteen-year-olds and fifteen-year old here, under this roof for the foreseeable future. I have long bemoaned that neither of my girls knows much about U.S. History. And . . . we’re all stuck here. Why not devote one hour per day to ‘class time?’ I bought a U.S. History text book. I’ll read one chapter ahead every night and speak to the topic off the cuff.
It also struck me that our little countryside hold out was reminiscent of “The Decameron.” People escaping the plague-infested city and telling stories to each other to pass the time and avoid infection. I ordered a copy of the book on-line, but neither it nor the U.S. history text will be here for a few more days. But fortunately, they’re all available on-line.
The course unexpectedly allowed my younger one, to shine, to the detriment of the two older gals. Which dynasty was contemporaneous with Rome? "Han." She knew it. Who was the founder of the Holy Roman Empire? "Charlemagne. " Nailed it. We’d worked together on her history papers this year. She knew this and you could see how happy she was to quietly show her prowess. Yesterday was all about the pre-Columbian Native Americans. Today we did, comparative China and Europe up until the Columbus' voyage.
“The Decameron,” is now, urgently au courant. One immediate takeaway that helps calm one perhaps is that Florence in 1348 was indescribably worse than New York, 2020. How terrifying it must have been without any recourse other than prayer or flight. I tried to get the girls to imagine a disease that resulted in one out of every three people you know falling down dead. The narrator describes the horror of that Florentine hell and one is immediately grateful that our own, contemporary tragedy isn't on the order what these ladies and gentlemen were quarantining themselves from there in the Tuscan countryside.
Wednesday 3/18/20
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