Weeknotes-03-14-26-03-20-26

This Week:

• It’s Spring break at Hartwick so things are a bit quieter.
• Alanna went to the conference of the Human Biology Association to present a research poster, so I flew solo with the kiddos this week. I’m very proud of her for continuing to be an active member of her intellectual sub-discipline and showcasing her interesting work.
• Lots of camp planning!
• I spent some time on some long overdue NAGPRA work.
• I finished reading Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here." Alanna read it during Trump I and has re-read it since, and praised it as a book with a rich analysis of the mundane reality of American-style fascism, and I finally picked it up at her urging. She’s absolutely right (of course she is!), in that it’s a book that locates the strands of American life, culture, and economy that are conducive to authoritarian fascist takeover, and it is shockingly prescient in the ways that the current world is mirroring its insights. What I noticed was Lewis’s writing style, which begins in a Mark Twainian satirical mode, with a rural pastoral setting populated by eccentric and charmingly humorous characters, but gradually shifts towards a frighteningly realist, almost journalistic accounting of the violence and displacement wrought by the fascist government of the folksy, homespun bigotry of Buzz Windrip. Hard, but rewarding reading.