* I think one of the reasons I seem to be more susceptible to the slings and arrows of everyday life this fall is reviewing stuff for Policy and Law and being regularly confronted with:
a. Stuff I remember from childhood (and thus, bringing up some of the unhappier memories like being unpopular in school, and also the doom-and-gloom stuff we heard - though I will note, the fact that bald eagles are NOT extinct (despite something I was told in school in the mid 1970s) is good news)
b. Evidence of human unpleasantness: The Elixir Sulfanilamide Tragedy. Sulfa was one of the first antibiotics* and it should have been a miracle drug, except for a batch turned out by the Massengill company - it was dissolved in diethylene glycol, which the operating chemist claimed not to have known was toxic to humans (and no animal testing was done; apparently it is also toxic to mice, which would have been a warning). Apparently they just put some raspberry flavoring and shipped it out.
(*And one I can't take; makes me come out in terrible hives and causes psychological side effects)
A hundred people died as a result. Probably agonizingly as it causes renal failure. The chemist wound up killing himself before he could go to trial; the head of the company made a famously-callous statement: "We have been supplying a legitimate professional demand and not once
could have foreseen the unlooked-for results. I do not feel that there
was any responsibility on our part."
And yes, it did lead to legislation being passed that hopefully prevented this stuff from happening again (but I guess about 10 years ago there was some evidence of diethylene glycol showing up in imported toothpaste....)
And yeah, also, the news of this morning: being confronted with the phrase "killed and dismembered" (in regards the missing journalist) within five minutes of waking up does not set a cheerful tone for the day.
And I wonder, thinking about the low-level unhappiness I feel reading and teaching about things like the Elixir Sulfanilamide Scandal, how do people who have to teach larger horrors - things like genocides - manage? Or do they have the satisfaction of kids to go home and hug, or the sense that maybe they're able to promote a "never again" message and maybe help prevent it happening again?
I don't know. I doubt any of my students will ever be in the position to run a pharma company where they decide "Hey, this untested med, let's check it before we ship it out" and fundamentally do a George Bailey Saving Mr. Gower's Bacon thing by finding something very wrong with it before someone is harmed....
* In response to my tweet about "How do you teach history with all its horrors, and not despair" a follower tweeted a link to Good Bones, a poem that is somewhat related. (I had never seen that poem before).
And, yeah, yeah: "...chirps onabout good bones: This place could be beautiful,right? You could make this place beautiful." but it seems I've been trying for a long time and either the ugliness is too great or my efforts are too small, because the best thing I've managed to do is, I don't know, replace one of the creepy clown paintings with a poster of a hot UPS guy....
(Yes, I'm back to working through the first season of The Good Place. I think I'll have to watch it again once I've run through the first two seasons; I think I'm focusing more on the storyline and the jokes and less on the bigger questions. I will say I laughed for about five minutes last night over "I once saw him eat electrical tape off the roll; he thought it was Fruit Roll-Ups that had gone bad")
I suppose the other answer is that maybe my ambitions for "improving the world" are too great, and I need to focus more on the things I CAN do, but those things feel maddeningly small.
It's similar to the frustration with the "Be the change you want to see in the world" line; I've been trying for a long time and it still hasn't got where I want it to be. (And also, I feel like some others need to step up and help some times)
* I dunno. Maybe I do need a day out on Friday to refresh myself. The cynical or perhaps more-socially-conscious side of me snarls that I'm trying to paper over the ugliness of the world with self-indulgence and I really don't NEED any more yarn or books or anything.
*And again, I find myself circling back around to my feeling of "George Bailey was lucky" - yes, it didn't happen until he was in extremis but at least he saw that he mattered to people, that what he did mattered in the long run.
(I graded exams yesterday. People did not do as well as I had hoped. I cannot really tell if it's people being sloppy or careless or if I am not teaching the material adequately. About half the class did fine; but half did not. Granted, a few of the half that did not were people who tend to skip a lot. And in some cases the exam seemed hastily done, like the person didn't have or didn't want to take the time it required. (this was a take-home exam that people had a week to complete)
* Maybe I need to start walking around my neighborhood again with a trash bag and just pick up trash. Even if it doesn't stay picked up for long, it feels like SOMETHING. I used to do that but then I got busy and felt like "someone else needs to pick up the slack"
Though granted, my Bad Neighbors (The "YOU'RE DEAD TO ME" couple I wrote about before) have a Bad Dog who acts like the entire neighborhood is his territory, and who escapes regularly, and Sunday afternoon he got out as I was putting down my trashcart, and he ran at me and barked a lot, and it WAS NOT the "hey play with me" bark with the wagging tail and doggy smile, it felt more like a "I'M GONNA MESS YOU UP!!!" bark and the dog's whole posture was aggressive....and I am afraid of unfamiliar dogs, having had some bad experiences as a kid.
So maybe I can't even do that, I don't know.
* Today was a "rest day" from exercising and I slept right up until my alarm went off which tells me that I'm both overtired and that the time-change needs to come because it's too dang dark in the mornings right now.
* I need to find something more to feel hopeful about. Sometimes this world just feels like such a bad old place.
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