Can you feel it
No school for Samuel: MLK Jr. Day, then two “snow days” (temps below zero °F). And he has a stomach bug. He’s lain on the sofa, except to puke. It’s been our day’s work to keep Daniel from harassing him.
During one glorious moment, Samuel ran to the toilet to puke, but Daniel was sitting there already, doing his business, so Samuel puked on Daniel. I was so proud of them both for going where they were supposed to go. We tossed Daniel into the shower.
Abel has done some puking, but that’s normal.
More about the weather. I’ve made a list of books about natural/ecological disasters, for this coming reading year (it begins in May). One book per month. Some, I’ve already read portions of. The list also is inspired by the SoCal fires.
- Maclean, Young Men and Fire
- Stewart, Storm
- Egan, The Worst Hard Time
- Hughes, In Hazard
- Steinberg, Acts of God
- Krakauer, Into Thin Air
- Grunwald, The Swamp
- Stewart, Fire
- Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts
- Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica
- Jacobsen, Nuclear War
- Weisman, The World Without Us
One might complain that some of these disasters aren’t so “natural,” that humans are to blame for them. I agree. So would van Inwagen, who minimizes the distinction between natural and freely chosen evil. And so would various authors on the list (especially, I gather, Steinberg and Davis). But the point isn’t to allocate responsibility; it’s to imagine stuff and people getting burned up, or blown or washed away. There’s grandeur and pathos in these disasters. My former tutee at IUSB, an old Black woman, recalled how a tornado hit South Bend and she and the other children were dismissed from school to go die at home. They ran to their houses, into the wind. That’s like something out of Their Eyes Were Watching God, a colleague said, not a little incredulously, when I told him. Yes, exactly.