Wittenberg: For the Students Who Were Planning to Travel to Germany with Me

Nineteen Houghton students were supposed to celebrate Easter with me this morning in the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany (the church spire is in the background of this postcard view of Wittenberg, with Luther's statue in the town square in the foreground), where Luther is said to have launched the Reformation by nailing his 95 Theses to the church door.

That trip unfortunately did not take place, one of many things to fall victim to the coronavirus pandemic. I hoped that perhaps the church might put its worship services online, but that appears not to be the case. However, I did find a short clip of some Bible readings, followed by the organist playing Widor, and ending with some prayers. (The readings and prayers are in German, of course.) So if any of you students are reading, you can get at least a small glimpse of the church, and can hear the organ.

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E-mail Wit on a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

It seems as though practically every business where I've ever bought anything in the past decade sends me e-mails about their products, specials, deal-of-the-week, etc. Normally I delete them immediately, without a second glance. But one this afternoon made me hesitate. I received a "Walgreens Weekly Ad" e-mail. Its subject line read as follows: "We can't stop lowering prices." So instead of hitting "delete," I sent a quick reply: "In that case, I think I'll wait and shop next week." I have no idea whether or not that reply will go to a real e-mail address and be read by an actual human being. But I hope so.

Non capisco!

About once a week I get an e-mail from something called the Italian Cultural Institute in New York. I don't know why. I know nothing about them and have no idea how I got on their mailing list. But I generally take a quick look at the e-mail, because every now and then I see something interesting. The other day I got one of these and saw what appeared to be a potentially interesting lecture today. It was by a professor named Stefano Jossa, currently at Royal Holloway, the University of London. He was going to be speaking on his new book, in Italian, but the title of which in English would be The Most Beautiful in the World: Why Love the Italian Language . It sounded intriguing, it was free, all you had to do was register and get a Zoom link. So I did. It turned out that the lecture was actually being sponsored not by the Italian Cultural Institute in New York, but rather by the one in Montreal. But who cares, right? As long as it's not in French, which didn'

The Blessing and Curse of E-mail

I am, in fact, deeply grateful for e-mail. It allows me to be in ready contact with colleagues both in this country and abroad, and to pursue opportunities I would otherwise never be able to. But then there are days like today. My e-mail has been increasingly difficult to keep up with for the last year or so. But just before supper this evening, I looked at how many e-mails I had written and sent today. The total: exactly 100. By now, of course, it's a bit more than that. I spent much of the day trying to reschedule a student trip to Germany that was canceled due to the coronavirus crisis. We were going to travel over Easter; now we will try it next fall instead. Probably about half of the e-mails were related to that. I don't even want to know how many words I wrote today. If they were a book.... Now it's back to real work, reading the first half of Goethe's Sorrows of Young Werther so that I can put together a mini-lecture for my Humanities students

Plague Time

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