Day 38, April 23, 2020

Gatherers of Salt

I am lucky to work at a college with so many dedicated and compassionate people. I was at a meeting today... which, in the era of the pandemic, means, I was on Zoom with a group of my peers who were all in their respective homes accompanied with their children and partners and pets, and together we talked about things that impact our students.

The Sawmill River

I started the meeting by reading Neruda's "Keeping Still," which I shared an excerpt of yesterday. You can read the whole poem here. It is a beautiful poem, and I was so moved that I almost could not finish reading it out loud. Life has been such a sustained frenzy since the start of work from home, that I choked at the idea of us stopping, even if only for a moment, and pausing in all the commotion so that "the gatherer of salt would look at his hurt hands."

I have been insulating myself in the cloak of work, the role that I play for the college, for faculty, for students, and it has been freeing in that I am able to avoid the fray of partisan politics, the proclamations of the misinformed, and prioritize what is important in the moment, the things I can address, the things I can solve, the salt I can harvest. Those things make me hurry as I put out proverbial fires (and light ones in my wood stove). All of this commotion prevents the "huge silence [that] might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves, or threatening ourselves with death." 

Mortality takes on a different resonance in this era. Each morning I watch the map of the state that the Boston Globe updates every day and I watch how the waves of infection swell in Boston and the suburbs, and slowly make their way west. I worry about who I will miss, who I haven't spoken with, if I will remember everyone. But perhaps, more than anything, I yearn for Neruda's twelve seconds of quiet, to let that all go for a moment to just listen to the earth, to look at my hands.

"Now I will count up to twelve

and you keep quiet

and I will go."

Leo

The daffodils are up, but still quite chilly! 

From Our Friends:

From Cindy Snow:

Smith's Floyd Cheung helped faculty, students, and staff create a "renga," a Japanese form of collaborative poetry. It is beautiful and haunting. You can read it here. 

From the Montague Reporter:

The MR is back in print and being USPS mailed to some households, but you can still access the paper free online here!

From the It Gets Better Project:

Franklin

Their page: Moments of Joy is filled with stories from around the world to brighten your day. And who doesn't need that?

Today's Online Teaching Tips:

From LinkedIn:

"Suddenly Teaching Online? Free Resources to Help Faculty Affected by Coronavirus," an list of "courses" that are free covering basics and some more specific applications. 

From Teaching Tolerance:

As Ramadan begins, we remind educators that social distancing may make this month especially difficult for Muslim families and students. Here are some resources for teaching about Ramadan.

From Magna Publications:

A live seminar April 27th: Trauma-Informed Pedagogy: Teaching in Uncertain Times. Use the coupon code: 428MOS in the cart for free access.