It's been a rough couple of days in NC and the Southeast. Sometimes, when you teach, the concepts seem so far away; other times, it echoes the current moment. This week, we spent classes examining the ideas of collapse, cycles, and restructuring. It felt far away but still relevant on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then they canceled school on Friday, and now it's Sunday, and our Mountains up the road are in a heartbreaking disaster. Around NC, one of the best teaching colleges in Appalachian State (where I went to school) and the town of Boone is a small college town that so many have connections to in our community. Asheville, the Metropolitan center of Western NC, has no water, cellphones, and only one road out or in. It's heartbreaking for the state and community, and the images that come out leave me speechless. I will start Monday with it, with the hope for empathy and compassion from the students and how all the civilizations that came and went may have had a heartbreaking moment, just like what is happening to our neighbors.
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Drew, I'm so sorry to hear of all of this destruction. I'm sending positive thoughts for the resilience of those people.
And I like the idea of a conversation around "heartbreaking moments." This is intriguing because I'm always looking for ways to make the people of the past more like . . . people to my students. We had a wonderful conversation in class recently on cave art. A week later we explored the power of language and shared frustrations at not being able to express our thoughts (LOVE the "Why does Language Matter?" activity.). One of the students finally said, "No wonder they painted on the cave walls. How else were they going to get their ideas across?"
Now I plan on stealing your idea about heartbreaking moments - what might some have been? how did they cope? what changed because of it?
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I am also sorry to hear about this. I am just about to get to the "Why Civilizations Collapse" part of Mesopotamia and after reading this all I could think of is communities survive when they are designed to help each other. A strong civilization survives when it has the resources to help it's people and a willingness to do so. Empathy and compassion are the bedrock of the second part. You are doing good work.
