Guilty Thoughts While on Lockdown

I have a confession to make: I really don't mind being on lockdown all that much.

I'm sure for some people it is maddening. For an introvert like me, however, no big deal. Sure, it would be nice not to worry about how many trips I make per week to the grocery store. Or not to wear a mask, as I have now taken to doing.

But let's face it, I more or less like reading books. When there is no pandemic, I spend my time reading and working. When there is a pandemic... I spend my time reading and working. I don't require a lot of social interaction, and although I like my neighbors, colleagues, fellow parishioners, etc, etc, I would be lying if I said that I deeply miss all that human contact.

But I feel a little guilty about feeling so complacent. For one thing, I'm not sure that this doesn't simply reveal a character defect of mine! But quite apart from that, I know that my ability to feel complacent rests in many ways upon my own good fortune. For instance:

I have a job that can be relatively easily moved online and done from home.
My family has been healthy.
I live in an isolated, rural area that has not been nearly as hard-hit by the virus as other places.
It would be nice to go someplace occasionally, but let's face it, there isn't really anyplace to go in Houghton even in the best of times!

I suspect I might feel differently if I were a front-line health care worker who had to show up everyday in mid-town Manhattan, where the usually bustling life around me had suddenly shut down.

Not that I have nothing to worry about, mind you. All of higher education is shaking in its shoes at the fear of what next fall could bring.

But for now, I just work and read books. It could be worse.

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A Warning Against Drink

I have gotten several things read over the last few days, but I keep forgetting to post any of it. Some more Gotthelf, but also a couple of other things. I'll try to break them up in order to get a few more posts out of them! Last Friday I finished another Gotthelf novella, Wie fünf Mädchen im Branntwein jämmerlich umkommen . That title does not translate very well into English, or at least I don't think so. Something like, How Five Young Women Perish Miserably Due to Brandy (or literally "in brandy"). It is an early work of Gotthelf's and a piece of social criticism. When Gotthelf was writing (1838), the canton of Bern had recently liberalized its system for granting licenses to operate a pub. At the same time, new methods of producing cheap brandy from different sources, including even the ubiquitous potato, were developed. As a consequence, inns and pubs sprang up throughout the countryside, creating a new temptation for poor...

Dursli

Back to Gotthelf! I have already mentioned that I re-read Gotthelf's novella about the five young women who were ruined by drink. Last week I also re-read the second of his two early novellas tackling the problem of rural alcoholism, Dursli, der Brannteweinsäufer, oder Das heilige Weihnachtsabend ( Dursli the Brandy Drinker, or The Holy Christmas Eve ). This story also warns against the pubs springing up all over the Emmentaler countryside and their consequences for the rural poor. But it is also--even more than I had remembered, in fact--set in the broader political context of the times. Gotthelf begins the novella, in fact, before he ever even introduces the main characters, with about a 10-page discourse on the problematic reception in Switzerland of the ideas of the French Revolution. Its call for equality and freedom, he says, is naturally interpreted by the poorer classes not in terms of true Christian equality and freedom, but rather as a ...

"Plague Time" Essay Contest

If you are a major or minor in History, Political Science, Augmented History, Humanities, or German Studies, you are eligible to enter a brand-new essay contest being sponsored by the Department of History and Political Science. Details available here . And if you aren't a major or minor in one of those areas... it is not too late to become one now !

Plague Time

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