Happy Birthday, J. S. Bach - 335 today!
It's the autumn equinox now. Not that we really have
'autumn' in Australia, where the seasons don't follow the European pattern,
though we pretend they do. But we certainly have a time when day and night are
balanced, and this is it.
I'm also at a point of balance in the self-isolation:
seven days done, seven days to go. Some of the tension has eased. I hear that if
symptoms are going to appear, they are most likely to appear in the first five or
six days. But that's only a probability, so I'll stick it out. Cuisine Corona
again tonight: spaghetti and tins. With vodka and orange.
It's midnight. I'm a terrorist, holding Sydney in fear. I've
blown up a famous building, the Opera House, or the Harbour Bridge. I'm alone,
hiding in the house, with my AK-47 sub-machinegun. The house has been
discovered and surrounded by police and the Army. There are sirens and
helicopters. But I have a way to break out: a black Aston Martin car waiting in
an underground garage with a secret exit! Soon I will zoom away and be free...
At that point I wake up, with my mouth dry. It's 1:30 in the
morning, dark and silent except for a cool wind. It takes a while to get back
to sleep.
My COVID-19-self-isolation reading for the last
few days has been a terrific new book by Terry Irving, The Fatal Lure of
Politics. It's the biography of a
remarkable intellectual, Vere Gordon Childe, who's definitely one of my heroes.
In
the first week of self-isolation there were simple, though sometimes difficult,
tasks. The first was getting over the jet-lag. This was familiar, and couldn't
be avoided. Energy was low, it was hard to concentrate, and sleepiness came at
the wrong times.
A
grey, damp day, as the last couple of days have been. The garbage collectors,
our unsung heroes, pass by with their truck, working in a light rain. Why does
wet weather depress the spirits? In Australia, the driest continent, land of droughts
and devastating bushfires, we should be singing for joy and dancing in the
streets. (At 1.5 metres' distance, of course.)
Like
so many others, I've been trying to understand the pattern of response to the novel-coronavirus
epidemic by the right-wing governments currently in power through most of the
world. Including the most prominent and most analyzed of all, president Trump.
Friday the thirteenth day, no less... But nothing bad has happened, apart
from an epidemic. Today the news went round that the United States has the
largest number of cases of coronavirus infection in any country, 85 000. Known
cases, that is. At the same time, president Trump's approval rating has gone
up. It's good to know the American electorate can recognize forethought and
intelligence when they see it.
Today is Day 14, and at 9 a.m. tomorrow I will
feel that it's OK to leave self-isolation quarantine. I haven't had symptoms, I'll be fairly confident
that I'm not a carrier of the coronavirus and so can't infect anyone.
But I certainly can be infected. The epidemic
is still growing in Australia so the danger is actually greater than it was
when I went into isolation. I'm in a high-risk group, and this virus does kill.
So I'm going to step very carefully indeed while the epidemic lasts. As
everyone else should do. No Kaffee-klatsches, no concerts, no court
appearances, no cavorting on the bloody beach...
Changed
situations for learning
The epidemic, and the lockdown responses to it, have shifted the ground for great numbers of students. School closures meant a vast number of families suddenly had to do home-schooling and distance education. University closures have driven students online, even more than they were before. With social distancing, peer groups have been disbanded and many of the opportunities for informal learning have gone.
The epidemic, and the lockdown responses to it, have shifted the ground for great numbers of students. School closures meant a vast number of families suddenly had to do home-schooling and distance education. University closures have driven students online, even more than they were before. With social distancing, peer groups have been disbanded and many of the opportunities for informal learning have gone.