COVID-19 Neighborhood: Taking a Walk to Buy Groceries During a Pandemic (In Jackson Heights, Queens)

Taking a walk in Jackson Heights, I stitched together a video as I walked to the grocery store — an essential trip I must take (which has made me ponderous, and sad).

Taking A Walk Today — Spring 2020 in New York City, the Epicenter of the Coronavirus Pandemic

Step outside in New York City and you will see folks wearing surgical masks. Just a month ago that would have looked strange — but it has become the norm almost overnight. Heeding the injunction to stay indoors by my local officials, I still have to venture out to buy essentials like rice, beans, canned chicken and tuna, and other provisions. I have become a maestro at making simple dishes with few ingredients! On my walk, I maintain a six-foot distance but it is hard to keep the mask on my face (it slips down my nose). I am afraid to touch anything — but I know I am safe and I feel privileged.

The Pandemic Has Blown the Lid Off of Social Inequalities that Persist in American Society

What about people who have to commute every day by subway or bus? What about people with kids to feed — how are they coping with this crisis? The pandemic has thrown the lid off of social inequality — that before COVID-19 was easy to brush off — but lays itself bare. In this video, I walk past storefronts, people rushing by, and I think, and I ponder. I hope our city makes it through this chaos, this interruption. I am hopeful. Though. I think we can come through rejuvenated — and I hope we can become more generous, more connected to our neighbor. And oh. Try my mom's potato salad!

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Quotation on Love and What it Conquers

Love conquers all

— Virgil, Roman poet (70 B.C.E. - 19 C.E.)

Source: Virgil, , and Robert Coleman. Ecologues. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Print.

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Quotation: On Those Who Blindly Persecute Others

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Jesus, the Nazarene (Luke 23:34)

Alternative thinking:
Or should we? Why is their ignorance a condition for forgiveness? When Jesus says this line in the Gospel of Luke, it is at the moment the Roman soldiers tear off his clothing to ready his body for crucifixion. They also take his clothes and "cast lots" for who will get what of Jesus' meager possessions. It is a brutal scene, one that includes the crowd who shout "He saved others; let him save himself . . .".
The crowd represents us —
the humanity that denied Jesus. So Jesus is talking to us in this passage. On a broader note, Jesus is referring to what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil." The Roman Soldiers, the crowd, Pontius Pilate, the temple priests, and those who betrayed him — were they all calculating killers, hell-bent on ridding the world of a man from Nazareth who claimed he was the son of God? Arendt's argument is that evil is ground down to its basest, most formless level. We do not know the two soldiers who tear off his clothes and who cast lots — but they are the best representatives of the banality of evil in the story of Jesus. The brutality is so harsh, so physically brutal — it lays bare the extent of evil as this persistent "thing" that can materialize in a moment. 
Jesus forgives. And I am not sure why. 
Their crime is not something to be explained. To rationalize. And perhaps Jesus knows this. And accepts it. But doesn't condone it. Freed from it. We see it. As evil. For what it is. A heinous crime. Perpetrated against another human being. The woman battered and beaten in the park. A child killed by a stray bullet. A woman who has died alone. Violence perpetrated by hatred and racism. Jesus says, "Forgive them. They know not what they do." But he did not say, forget.   
Note: The translation from Luke's Gospel is the King James Version of the New Testament

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Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash

Philosophy in the Classroom: Friedrich Nietzsche's Concept of "Eternal Recurrence" Paired with Groundhog Day — the 90s Movie Starring Bill Murray

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In this post, I re-package a previous post I did on Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence and turn it into a meaningful High School English lesson for Ninth and Tenth graders.

The demon on your chest — would you curse the demon or embrace your fate?      

      A while ago, I posted a passage from Friedrich Nietzsche's book The Gay Science on my website. I was really struck by a section of the book I call "The Allegory of the Demon." It's a thought experiment and Nietzsche has his reader think about how does one live out their life? How would you live your life differently? What if you had to repeat your life over and over again without change? Would you "gnash your teeth" or would you embrace it? 

      I thought the passage was dense enough and short enough, to elicit a response in my Ninth and Tenth grade English classes. So, I created a lesson to think about Nietzsche along with a classic 1990s movie — Groundhog Day. None of my students had heard of the movie, and their knowledge of Nietzsche was slim — but we dug into the reading and I was pleasantly surprised by how much critical thinking we were able to do with such a small passage from World Literature. So. I put together the lesson on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here is the outline of the lesson:

Philosophy in the Classroom Lesson Plan: Nietzsche and Bill Murray in Groundhog Day 

What is the meaning of life? You and your students are sure to come up with many answers to this question. Get your students engaged in philosophical inquiry by presenting them with Friedrich Nietzsche's concept of "eternal recurrence," paired with clips from the movie Groundhog Day (1993) starring Billy Murray and Andie McDowell.

This resource includes the following features:

Essential Question: What is the meaning of Life?

Supporting Questions: How does Friedrich Nietzsche provide a possible answer to this question. / How can I apply abstract ideas to everyday life?

This resource includes the following features:

The text of the story is included in this resource.

• Teacher's notes on using this resource
• 7 reading comprehension questions
• 1 Entrance Ticket
• 1 Movie View Guide
• 1 Writing Prompt
• 3 Editable Google Slides handouts
• Further Reading List (To go deeper into the topic with your students)

Suggested Uses:

1. Ninth or Tenth Grade High School English Curriculum
2. World History Course on the History of Ideas
3. Introduction to Philosophy Course
4. Literature Course
5. Ethics Course
6. Introduction to Philosophy Course
7. Student Advisory Course
8. A Lesson on the "Meaning of Life"

Suggested Classroom Time: 3 Hours + Independent Worktime for Students' writing

See a companion lesson "Plato's Allegory of the Cave in Plain Language" - on searching for truth in a crazy world.

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Quotation on Accepting Gifts in a Polite Manner (And Why You Shouldn't Look in a Horse's Mouth, Anyway)

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

- Traditional Saying

The saying comes from the practice of a customer looking into a horse's mouth to determine its age.

Image Credit: "Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth". Editorial cartoon shows Uncle Sam examining the teeth (labeled "Wall St. Interests") of a powerful horse (labeled "Central Bank") offered by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich. By 1909, most people thought the American banking system to be badly in need of reform. Aldrich advocated the establishment of a Central Bank, a proposal opposed by progressive Democrats who saw it as an attempt by the financiers of Wall Street to gain control. Published in The New York Times, Dec. 1, 1909, p. 10

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On Writer's Block — A Journal & Rant

In this book, Journal of a Novel, 

Steinbeck talks about how he overcame writer's 

block to write his epic novel East of Eden.

John Steinbeck famously stalled starting East of Eden by carving a wooden pencil box for his personally carved pencils. He couldn't begin writing a great novel without having both decent pencils and a handsome box to his crafted artist tools.
     I am not that bad, but I think every writer worth his salt battles with writer's block.
     The problem is not WHAT to write but HOW to write what you want to write. The writer is not usually void of ideas, but once settled on one idea, there comes the conundrum of infinite ways to approach the topic. What's the title? Do I write in the first person? Who is my audience - middle age blue-bloods, or pimply adolescents? Do I use accents or write in plain English prose?

Then, there is the security factor. Do I think the piece is gonna be good or not? Will people read this?
     Then, when the work has started, and your pen is moving at a well-clipped pace, eventually, at some point, there comes a stall. The great lull, I call it. Or just boredom. I think this is why most Master theses and Doctoral dissertations go unfinished.
     "It seemed like a good idea," the grad student laments. What's left: piles of research, jotted notes, emails to directors, and an unfinished manuscript.

Connecting thought to idea to word
to sentence to a paragraph . . . can be daunting.

Sometimes, it is the ending that gets ya. 
     Virginia Woolf famously dreaded ending her novels because it felt like a death. I can relate to the visceral, human connection to a work in progress. The writer feeds his work, his blood, tears, ambition, and time. Ink. Pencil graphite. To finish the opus seems too much like divorce - or even worse, death.
     Woolf finished Between the Acts and sometime later stepped into the stream behind her house, heavy stones sewn into the lining of her blouse.
     Now, I don't think I am that bad. But, I can relate to Woolf's decision. Perhaps she was tired of dying. She had written through many deaths.

I can relate to John Steinbeck, better. 
     It wasn't that he felt like he couldn't create an epic American Genesis, but the task was so monumental maybe he thought he would get bored or give up. Woolf killed herself, by contrast, not because she completed a great piece of work but just because it was completed.
     Once the publisher tidies up the manuscript, the text is no longer yours. Once I press submit, it is as if the narrative births itself and leaves the cage of the author.
     One way I helped alleviate writer's block was to start actively contributing to my blog. Writing a blog entry is a way to floss my writer's teeth. To write and publish automatically is a way to remind myself I can create something that is not monumental but, at the same time, hopefully not trite. I try to aim for funny, pertinent - or just plain good, dammit.

When I am really feeling it, I go to Twitter and microblog. 
     Wow. What a catharsis. I am energized that Roger Ebert feels the same way. He recently wrote a blog piece on why he tweets. I think he writes his blog and tweets a helluva lot because it lubricates his gears so he can step up to the plate for the big stuff.
     Now, you may say, all this is the same thing as carving that wondrous wooden box to put your pencils because you don't want to get into the nitty-gritty of writing. There's a blog post about this, by the way.

But, I instead write something every day rather than nothing.
     So, here's my something.
     Maybe, you can relate? Lemme know, dammit. Why do you write? When do you not write?

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Quotation on Human Existence: To Be Or Not To Be

To be or not to be. That is the question.

Hamlet — William Shakespeare

Photo by Max Muselmann on Unsplash

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