So how are you doing after this spring?

If you are reading this, you have survived until past summer solstice of 2020. That in itself is a feat. The year is not over though, and we still have things to do, virus to beat and oppressive systems to tackle. Because who knew that when sending people home from work to save as many as possible, taking away their livelihood and not offering them proper health care would lead to dissatisfaction with the government? That is just one of the many surprises of 2020.

I am not going to go into all that though. There will be books and books written about this year for a long time to come, and for historians it will be a turning point to return to. The virus revealed the weakness in capitalist systems, the robust greed of the top 1% and the strength of their investments, the fragility of welfare systems around the world, the tension of racism and the systematically distributed poverty, and the mechanisms that have kept all of this balanced on the edge through force and violence. And that is before we even look at the way the virus has ravaged the weakest of the refugees still stuck in camps, or how it has disturbed supply chains around the world. The global village is just a series of weakly linked nodes after all, and when the links break, which nodes end up starving may surprise you... (By the way, here is an article from WebMD that reveals how capitalism was the main problem with the meat shortage in the US. Export was kept up, while President Trump wrote an order to maintain production because there might be a national shortage. WebMD? That is where I go to understand what the bump on my nails might signify, not for articles on the problems of production specialisation in late capitalism. I guess we all revealed new depths this year.)

And yeah, I used click-bait language. Because the internet has struck again, and shown us how the same trolling skills that can force women out of their homes of fear for their lives, or send the police to innocent strangers, can fool a president to thinking that he would meet hundreds of thousands packed in to listen to him despite the danger of infections from this global pandemic. The internet is a force that can move mountains, if its people can just agree on which mountain to move.

Anyway, I just wanted to say hi. I have been pretty much alone for months and not written to you, because I have been depressed and didn't want it to leak too much out the cracks until I felt better. So instead I did things to make me feel put together. Productivity always does that, but I haven't been able to focus enough to write. I did manage to teach and supervise, and my students were brilliant! I am so happy to teach smart, nice, funny people, and get to hang out with them while teaching. It is a gift, and even more so in bleak times. However, I did something non-work related that made me feel like I was doing something worth while: I knitted. I have always loved to knit, and I normally have a pair of socks on the needles, to feel productive while I binge-watch something. This spring I have finished three adult pullovers, three childrens' pullovers, and two large scarves. There is an unfinished pair of socks and a baby jacket tucked away here somewhere, and I am looking for my next big project. Finishing something physical, something that has both beauty and use, is immensely satisfying. Giving it away and knowing a person I love can feel that love is even better. If I am doing that I can handle watching the news too.