The Gloaming

 Here's a picture I snapped the other night as Janet and I were heading home. It seems to fit my mood. Yesterday I emailed the administrators at Champlain to let them officially know that I'm retiring after the spring semester. Yes, I've officially entered The Gloaming. This morning my dear friend Cyndi told me that the place wouldn't be the same without me, and I replied that that's the great mythology. Instead, by next fall I'll be a vague memory. However, that's OK, and foolish and counterproductive to think otherwise. As Marcus Aurelius reminded us, "Soon you will have forgotten the world, and the world will have forgotten you."

Here's a shot of Sodom Pond (which is right across the street from the Adamant Coop) in the gloaming. There's a little break in the trees as you wind around Sodom Pond road, and I'd hate to think how many times I've stopped in the middle of the road (one of the advantages is driving around on Vermont's dirt roads) to take a picture, although I don't know if I like any of them as much as I like this one.

2025 Readings 91

 I just read Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (Graphic Edition). This book has been all the rage for a few months now, although this was the new graphic edition. My friend Sandy had received a copy on his birthday, so I decided to pick up the graphic edition for myself. I'm looking for books for my new Images of Fascism film class, and I'm going to pair Snyder's book with Jason Stanley's How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (which I discussed earlier in this series of posts on 2025 readings). I liked Snyder's book very much, although it's difficult to read it at this moment in time (although, of course, it's the perfect moment in time to read it). I'm amazed when I hear people, many of them in the main stream media, who make tentative statements about how we seem to be on the road to authoritarianism, when it's absolutely clear that we're already there. So many of Snyder's lessons are absolutely chilling. 

For instance: Lesson 1 Do Not Obey in Advance

"Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."

This may be a fairly obvious bit of advice, although so few people seem to understand it, but it's so damningly true. US corporations and most of the media and seemingly all of Congress have raced against each other to give away freedom with both hands. 

Or: Lesson 2 Defend Institutions

"It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about - a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union - and take its side."

I gave a talk last spring on American Exceptionalism and how dangerous the concept is (beyond the fact that it's just a big lie). The collapse of our institutions is partially a result of our belief that they simply couldn't fail - we're Americans, right?

I'm not going to discuss all of them, partially because you should go buy this book, actually, buy several copies and give them as gifts. However, let me just mention one more, mainly because it really hit me: Lesson 9 Be Kind to Our Language

"Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books."

I think this one jumped out at me so dramatically because I see how my students are so completely unprepared to follow this particular directive.

Anyway, Snyder's book is heartily recommended. The illustrations from Nora Krug are also alternately delightful and heartbreaking.

Crossword

 The other day I received my first Debs Foundation Newsletter, which all the cool kids who support the Eugene V. Debs Foundation get. I don't support a lot of philanthropic organizations - at least as many as I would like - but I'm happy to support the Debs Foundation and the Scudder hospital in India. I've usually just volunteered my time, but as my body has broken down that's more of a challenge. I need to be more creative in finding ways to support projects that I think are important.

Seriously, I was tempted to make a mad dash back to Indiana to attend this event. In my rich imagination, I figured that Bernie and I would just carpool there and back.

I didn't expect to find a crossword puzzle, which I need to tackle soon. I should just turn Janet loose on it - she has mad crossword skills. Hmmm, what's a seven letter word for Indiana's second most famous socialist?

2025 Readings 90

 I promised myself that I was going to read Augustine's City of God this summer, and, although I read a chunk of it, I didn't finish it, so that goes down as a failure. However, I did read Augustine's Confessions, which I been meaning to tackle for years. Part of it relates to the epics project, because Augustine did reference Virgil's Aeneid quite a bit, and I'm using that as a hook in one of my chapters. However, more importantly, while I may be a remarkably flawed person of faith, I'm still a person of faith, and the Confessions is simply one of the great works on faith and coming to terms with one's faith that has ever been produced. 

I'll just include one brief section on the challenges of trying to force faith, when you believe that it's time for you to have faith:

We sat down as far as we could from the buildings. I was deeply disturbed in spirit, angry with indignation and distress that I was not entering into my pact and covenant with you, my God, when all my bones were crying out that I should enter into it and were exalting it to heaven with praises. But to reach that destination one does not use ships or chariots or feet. It was not even necessary to go the distance I had come from the house to where we were sitting. The one necessary condition, which meant not only going but at once arriving there, was to have the will to go - provided only that the will was strong and unqualified, but the timing and twisting first this way, then that, of a will half-wounded, struggling with one part rising up and the other part falling down.

This reminds me of a famous scene when the Chinese monk Xuanzang (the inspiration for Journey to the West) had his own battle with forcing faith in a cave in Afghanistan, where he hoped to see the shadow of the Buddha. So, yes, this will also doubtless find its way into the epics book.

I'm, unofficially and fairly casually, working on my list of books to bring to Sicily. Augustine's Confessions is definitely in that list.