Items

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  2020-04-16

  Zoom Book Club

  The last time my book club met in person, March 2020, we talked about what we would read next. I noted that I had a few books about pandemics already on my shelves and we should read one of those. Camus' "The Plague", "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" by Katherine Anne Porter, "Journal of the Plague Year" by Daniel Defoe, "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel García Márquez... why did I have so many books about plagues...? We decided on Defoe and I said "Well, maybe we will be meeting by Zoom next time." The group was incredulous (I live in a small rural town in South Dakota) that we wouldn't be able to meet in person in April. If I had read this book in non-plaugue times it certainly would have been good read but it took on a lot of added meaning when I read it at the beginning of the quarantine. Thermometers may change but people never change.
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  2020-05-31

  idek

  it’s funny to think how this all started as a joke. i always knew that this was real and it was happening, but no one really took it seriously, no one thought that i could really happen to them. however, over the past months, it has become clear how the virus has affected us, in a way that no one ever really thought it would. the past few months for me have been, for lack of a better word, different. with all the uncertainty and all the time, i find myself questioning it all. it was like waking up from a dream, i second guess myself, wondering if it was all really happening. but then, i look at the movie tickets pinned to my wall, expired; my backpack, sitting in the corner of my room, untouched; and my textbooks lying on my desk, collecting dust. and i realize, yes, this was really happening. i don’t know if anything i have said holds any significance or meaning, or even if it makes and sense. but this is a time of senselessness, so i guess it fits right in.
• 
  2020

  Disney+ Documentary Shows Uselessness of Borders

  Both “Elephants” and “Into the Okavango Delta” follow movement of a herd of Elephants and scientists respectively as they travel about through Botswana, Namibia, Angola, and Zambia. The movement between the countries seemed so effortless that it really got me thinking how useless borders really are.