dual personalities

This week whizzed by as they are wont to do. A snow storm arrived more or less on cue, but the university did not deal with the storm as it has for the last 25+ years, by assuming everyone is capable of deciding on their own whether they can make it to campus for class. Instead, we received almost hourly “campus alerts” telling us that we could arrive by 10am or by 1pm, or go home at 3pm or 4pm, but that classes weren’t canceled. Yesterday morning, when the storm had just started and we had only gotten about 1″, I got an email from two young men telling me that they couldn’t come to class because they lived off campus and their driveway had been “plowed in”. They asked to attend class via Zoom. I’m sorry to say that I mocked them openly (though I did let them Zoom). I told my students that I was old enough to be their grandmother, and if I could make it to class, so could they. They seemed a little shocked by my attitude.

Here’s a shot I took out the dining room window this morning. It’s pretty typical of winter here and looks like any number of other pics I’ve posted. In other words, this snowstorm was nothing special.

Yet something has changed. Perhaps we’re so used to canceling things due to Covid that we have become hypersensitized to threat. What if I slip? What if I fall? What if my car crashes when I’m going 25 miles an hour due to the snow? What if I hurt myself shoveling or have a heart attack? (Those last two are good questions for the over 40 crowd but 20-year-olds?) I’m not a big risk taker myself, but this is getting ridiculous. We are creating a generation that is either afraid of everything or happy to seize potential disasters as an excuse to get out of obligations. I think Rousseau had the right idea (and if my DP has already quoted this, well, it’s worth reading again):

“The child raised for his station, never leaving it, could not be exposed to the disadvantages of another. But given the mobility of human things, given the unsettled and restless spirit of this age which upsets everything in each generation, can one conceive of a method more senseless than raising a child as though he never had to leave his room, as though he were going to be constantly surrounded by his servants? If the unfortunate makes a single step on the earth, if he goes down a single degree, he is lost. This is not teaching him to bear suffering; it is training him to feel it. One thinks only of preserving one’s child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to preserve himself as a man. to bear the blows of fate, to brave opulence and poverty, to live, if he has to. in freezing Iceland or on Malta’s burning rocks. You may very well take precautions against his dying. He will nevertheless have to die. And though his death were not the product of your efforts, still these efforts would be ill conceived. It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live. To live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of our existence.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

I promised myself that I would only post positive things, but sometimes I think it’s important to notice negative trends. I’m noticing.

Last night I rewarded myself by watching Little Kidnappers (1953) that my DP recommended yesterday. It was delightful! Those little boys were great (especially the youngest one). Although I knew I hadn’t seen the movie, as I watched I had a sense of déjà vu. Finally, I figured out that I had seen the made-for-TV 1990 remake starring Charlton Heston and Bruce Greenwood. It’s not a bad movie, but it doesn’t compare well with the 1953 one. Although shot on location somewhere in Canada, the family was much too well-to-do and the period costumes overdone.

In 1904, when the story takes place, most of those people living in the Nova Scotia hinterland were barely eking out a living. They didn’t dress like this:

Oh well. I suppose they simply wanted to update a beloved movie that teaches tolerance and kindness. We can forgive them their overblown production values, though I do wonder how they fit in the idea of the grandfather going barefoot and saving his boots for special occasions.

It’s time for me to gear up and go start shoveling. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. Our next door neighbor and his snow blower do most of the work anyway. He’s a wonderful neighbor and a real blessing! I may gripe about the state of the world, but there are still plenty of good, kind people out there and I am grateful!

*Longfellow, “Snow-Flakes”