Plague Time

...you would arrange for a bunch of riots to break out by people destroying property and protesting the police.  In the middle of a pandemic.  In response to a case that the authorities actually seemed to be handling well, with action being taken against the guilty parties. My country is going crazy--first the anti-lockdown protests, now these new riots.  Maybe folks have just been shut up at home for so long that they are looking for something to do. Not only my country, though.  Apparently there were also protests in London and Berlin, in solidarity with the American protestors.  As if they don't have enough to worry about in their own countries right now?  (It shows, though, that even at our current nadir, America still has an outsized profile in the world.  Can you even imagine Americans protesting an instance of police brutality in some mid-sized British or German city?) Strange times.

I just re-read another of Gotthelf's early works, Die Wassernot im Emmental , a description of a terrible flood of the Emme River that occurred in the year 1837.  (The Emmental is the valley of the Emme River, and it is the area where Emmentaler cheese comes from -- i.e., Swiss cheese.)  Interestingly, the flood (and Gotthelf's account of it) even gets a mention on the very brief Wikipedia page on the Emme . Gotthelf, a pastor, describes the flood as a "sermon" of God's, who speaks to us, he says, not only through his Word, but also through Nature.  He describes the terror and suffering that the flood caused, and how it brought out both the best and the worst in people afterwards.  He treats it as a kind of parable, showing not only God's judgement but also his ability to bring new life to the devastated land the following spring, just as he can cause new life to spring in the hearts of humans, if they listen to his voice. I found it interesting to read...

Someone pointed out this very interesting debate over lockdowns the other day.  One author argues that the lockdowns have caused far more harm than good and will go down as one of the great policy mistakes in history; the other counters that they have in fact saved numerous lives and that things would be far worse without them. Both writers are sensible and make good points.  It's not short, but it is interesting reading.  I incline toward the lockdowns-have-been-necessary side of the debate myself, because I am persuaded that coronavirus is indeed considerably more deadly than an ordinary flu.  But it is a good argument, and especially worth considering now that we are facing questions about how and how quickly to open things back up again.  In general, it nicely illustrates one of the central problems of public policy, how to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty.  (The same problem, incidentally, explains why the pandemic is and must be a ...

I am not making as much progress on things as I need to so far this summer, but I did manage yesterday to finish re-reading Der Bauern-Spiegel , the first novel by my man Jeremias Gotthelf, pictured above.  The title means "The Peasant's Mirror," but I might translate it into English as Reflections on a Peasant's Life , which captures the idea of "mirror" but indicates its (fictional) autobiographical character. This first novel is in fact the source of the name "Jeremias Gotthelf," because Gotthelf wasn't really Gotthelf at all (it was a pseudonym), but rather Albert Bitzius, a Swiss pastor in the first half of the 19th century.  His book purports to be the life story of a man named, you guessed it, Jeremias Gotthelf.  Readers were persuaded that Gotthelf was the real author, so the name stuck, and Bitzius took it as the pseudonym for his future work, which was extensive. The story is a powerful social critique of a practice that was co...

Another post for the nature lovers out there, though not as cute and touching as the last one.  I sat down yesterday evening to do some work, planning to grade some exams for my online classes and take care of a few other things, including posting to this blog.  But it was not to be. On Saturday evening while I was working, I was disturbed by a number of little beetles flying around the lights in the ceiling fan in our bedroom.  There were enough to be annoying, but not more than that.  I killed about 30 of them.  Tiny little black things, maybe half a centimeter long on average, drawn to the light but also liking to hide, harmless as far as I can tell. Sunday evening the same thing happened.  Not quite as many, though, maybe 15 or so.  Active again at the same time, after dark, mainly from about 9-11pm, then slowing down.  I was pleased there were fewer and figured that something had hatched and would scatter itself to the winds. Somethi...

I didn't have 15 of them, to be sure.  But when I looked out the front window after getting dressed this morning, I saw not one, but two rabbits out on the front lawn.  They weren't very large, so I assume they were still young.  But I saw them do something I don't think I've ever seen before: play with each other.  They would run toward each other, and then one would hop over the other, bouncing off its back as it sailed over and while they made a kind of squeaking noise.  It was really quite funny. After a minute of that, they stopped and went back to eating dandelions, not fresh yellow ones, but old ones that had gone to seed, the kind you used to blow the heads off when you were a kid.  They bit them off at the base, so that the stems were sticking straight out of their mouths like a straw, with the heads at the end.  And then, phwoosh, in they went, nibbled right up--like a person sucking in a spaghetti noodle.  (Not that any of us would...

Students know I have an interest in Switzerland--I am planning to teach my Switzerland class again next spring.  I have not yet been able to find anything about it in English, but was just reading an article in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung --the Zurich newspaper, and (incidentally) my own favorite--about a new casualty of the coronavirus pandemic: the Appenzeller Landsgemeinde. The Swiss canton of Appenzell continues to practice one of the world's oldest forms of direct democracy, the Landsgemeinde , or cantonal assembly.  Once a year, the citizens of the canton gather in person, outdoors, in order to vote directly on the canton's most important matters of business.  They do this by raising their hands. The cantonal government has just decided not to hold this year's assembly due to public health concerns.  While it would apparently have been possible to devise a system involving measures like social distancing, the government was concerned that vulnerable parts o...

Summer is here, but I am having trouble getting into a good work rhythm.  I have a number of things to do this summer, in particular some essays to write about Jeremias Gotthelf that are supposed to appear in a new Gotthelf Handbook that is under preparation.  But so far I am not making much progress. I blame it on the college, though.  Not only am I teaching a pair of online courses, but all faculty have been required (in part) and encouraged (the other part) to  "attend" a number of Zoom workshops this week, devoted to planning for the fall semester, when we must be prepared to teach both face-to-face on campus and also online.  These have been taking up quite a bit of time. Plus, I still can't get into my office except once a week to return some books and pick up others to replace them. And then there are the interferences that I can't blame on the college.  Yesterday I had to write a book review, which was my own fault, since I'd offered to do ...

It is past time--you have all been waiting with bated breath--to announce the winner of our "Plague Time" Essay Contest .  And we have one!  The Department of History and Political Science is pleased to announce that the winner of the contest, for his essay "Plague Time: God's Judgment?", is... ...Blythe Gilbert!  Blythe is a rising senior, a double major in History and Political Science, and he will be writing a senior honors project next fall on Italian Fascist foreign policy under Mussolini. In his winning essay, Blythe ponders the fact that earlier generations of Christians, in the face of plague and pandemic, would have wondered what brought this terrible judgment of God down upon them.  Drawing upon examples from Byzantium and the Puritans, he concludes--inspired by Martin Luther's experience with the plague--that Christians today, facing the coronavirus pandemic, should ask themselves not, "Why is God punishing us like this?," but rat...

Most of you are probably not familiar with Abraham a Sancta Clara .  He was an Augustinian monk in the late 17th century, a very popular preacher who became "court preacher" at the imperial court in Vienna.  While holding this position, he lived through the terrible plague of 1679. Afterwards, he wrote a book about the plague, "Merk's Wien!", which translates to something like, "Pay Attention, Vienna!"  I thought this seemed like the kind of thing to read these days, so right after the college canceled classes and sent us all home for the rest of the semester, I ordered an old used copy from Germany. It never arrived, and it never arrived, and I grew ever more despondent, until finally on Thursday I e-mailed the seller to inquire about it.  Not ten minutes later, the day's mail came... and there it was. I've started reading it, though I'm not very far yet.  Its consistent theme is memento mori : remember that you must die.  The sty...