Tired After a Full Week

I am recovering after a week of seminar discussions about Dietrich von Hildebrand. They were quite interesting but made for a long week. I generally had about an hour to read some Gotthelf or answer e-mail in the mornings, then a few hours of seminar until 1pm, with 2-3 more hours after lunch. Then in the evenings I would catch up on my reading for the next day's sessions and grade some exams for my online classes. There is something about spending that many hours a day in computer Zoom sessions--especially with the weather as hot and muggy as it was last week--that makes you tired, even without grading exams late into the night.

I did manage to make it through Hildebrand's book on The Heart, so I got to add that to my list of books read this summer. Yesterday and today I also read a short book by Peter Handke, Lucie im Wald mit den Dingsda (Lucy in the Forest with Some Thingummies). I'll have to post about Handke sometime, because I'm working on a paper on him (well, at least in theory I am working on it...). I've read about a half dozen books by Handke and couldn't really say that I've been all that enthusiastic about them, although I did like this one, which was almost like a children's story.

I have read a few other things the last couple of weeks that I'll make note of one of these days.

This morning was also of course church, with the usual masking and social-distancing precautions. We have had pretty low attendance since re-opening. I'm not sure if people are nervous about coming back or if some of them aren't aware yet that we're open again. On a hot day like today, some folks may not relish the thought of sitting around with a mask for an hour. Since we aren't allowed to sing, it does mean that my work at the organ is not too difficult.

I'll have to see if I can get back in the flow with my Gotthelf research this week. It's easy to lose momentum over the summer.

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Plague Time

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