I am numb. It's the drowsy weakening numb I thought I put behind me. When I was sick, really at my worst, I felt this numbness as I sat and the news washed past me. It's the feeling of being unable to use any of your skills. That the world is spinning off-balance, and if you could just fix it if it wasn't out of reach.
A touch of that came back this week as I was watching everything happen. We're not clear yet in our county, though we're supposed to go green this Friday. And so this felt very much like I was watching the world break again just beyond my grasp.
I tend to believe that most evils of this world come not from the heart but from the mind, and that the most toxic rationales for acts start from some falsehood or bad information or ignorance. It's a simplistic justification on my part, that if we laid out all the thoughts of hatred and bigotry we could point out ‘there, there’s where you’re mistaken,” but it helps me to believe we who try to spread knowledge no matter how trivial are doing good work, keeping such hateful ideas from taking root. But in times like these it is depressing to know that we have so far to go to extinguish the ignorance that helps animate this.
The Articles I Learned from This Week
The Articles You Could Learn from This Week
The poetry of Langston Hughes 1 2
Frederick Douglass: "What to the slave is the Fourth of July?"
Didn’t You Learn Anything From the Last Time?
1
Identify these sources of depictions of the underworld.
A. This Mayan text describes the underwold as having a ball court ruled over by the lords of Xibalba.
answer: Popol Vuh
B. This religion's text the Avesta depicts the dead crossing over hell via the Chinvat Bridge.
answer: Zoroastrianism
C. This Aristophanes play sees the title creatures acting as a chorus in hell saying the nonsense line "Brekekekex koax koax."
answer: The Frogs
2
His design for the Stratton Center was rejected in favor of a design by Eduardo Catalano.
A. Name this Finnish-American architect and son of fellow architect Eliel.
answer: Eero Saarinen
B. Saarinen's did design the squat cylindrical chapel of this Cambridge, Massachusetts university.
answer: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
C. Catalano's designs for MIT were in this style, featuring large monocolor geometric concrete structures.
answer: Brutalism
3
"This is it!" recorded by volcanologist David Johnson, was a message that followed a 5.1 magnitude earthquake, and was his last transmission before this mountain erupted.
A. Name this peak in Washington which erupted in 1980, losing over 1000 feet off its height.
answer: Mount St. Helens
B. Mount St. Helens is now preserved as a national monument in this mountain range.
answer: Cascade Mountains
C. Johnson was employed by this government organization which monitors volcanoes.
answer: United States Geological Survey or USGS
4
To raise the prospects of a Republican election, this lightly populated state was added to the union in 1876.
A. Name this Centennial State.
answer: Colorado
B. The Colorado electoral votes counted because of three southern states whose results were in dispute, prompting a commission which agreed that this Republican won the election.
answer: Rutherford B(irchard) Hayes
C. Hayes' election came at the cost of this governor of New York, who won a majority of the popular vote.
answer: Samuel Jones Tilden
5
During a three-day rainstorm, four writers constructed various tales in the Villa Diodati after being inspired by works like Fantasmagoriana.
A. John Polidori's work created during this time was the progenitor of this genre, later writers who featured the creatures in this genre include Bram Stoker and Anne Rice.
answer: vampire stories
B. Polidori was inspired by this writer's Fragment of a Novel, which was later added to his Mazeppa. During the rainout, he also added the third canto to "Childe Harold".
answer: George Gordon, Lord Byron
C. During her time in Villa Diodati, this author wrote the first draft of a horror novel she subtitled The Modern Prometheus.
answer: Mary Shelley