1. Slowly recovering from being sick last weekend. Fortunately, we had Thursday off this week.

2. Monday was a special review / writing mastery day, so for one of my classes, at the students’ request, I recited all the Presidents for them (I’d previously mentioned that I knew them all and promised to demonstrate one day), along with their dates in office. They were duly impressed and, I hope, understood that it’s not as daunting as it might seem (the dates are easy; just start at 1789 and add 4 or 8 years as necessary, except for the few who died or left early).

3. My Economics Book: “People talk about automation destroying jobs, but just look at the textile industry in Britain at the dawn of the Industrial revolution! 7900 weavers were put out of work, but 30 years later there were 320,000 people employed in the textile industry! See how machines actually create jobs?”

Me: “But, those 7900 jobs were skilled labor; those 320,000 are mostly unskilled. So, instead of 7900 semi-independent workers, you have 320,000 interchangeable human cogs.”

4. I find that tends to be a blindspot among economists of the Austrian school (free market, libertarian types): there’s a strong focus on prices and employment figures, on how many goods are being produced and how many jobs created, but very little on the kinds of goods or the kinds of jobs, and what sort of life they allow people to lead, whether they increase one’s individual autonomy, and so on.

So, they’ll explain how giant chain stores like Walmart create employment and bring down prices, but they won’t consider whether working for a soulless corporate monolith is healthier or gives one more control over one’s life and work than working for a local mom and pop store.

5. By the way, my frequent criticism of course materials isn’t meant as a reflection on my employer: I don’t know that you could find an economics or history text that I’d be completely satisfied with (though granted, some of them are worse than others).

I don’t follow any particular economic school, by the way; I’m not well versed enough in the subject for that. I just try to look at each question straight-on as much as possible.

6. Re-reading The Divine Comedy for Lent. So far I’ve reached the Eight Circle and just passed the Hypocrites, who are forced to wear fair-seeming cloaks of lead and walk the round of the circle for eternity. I’m always struck by Dante’s mastery when I read this book, his care in matching the tortures and placement in Hell with the sins, along with the scrupulous fairness in placing allies and enemies down in Hell and Heaven alike. Then there’s the subtle characterization on Virgil, and the striking tenderness of their friendship (topped, of course, by that tearjerking moment in Purgatory when he vanishes without a word while Dante isn’t looking). A rare case where a focus on contemporary politics fail to date the story.

7. Something I’ve noted before is how Hell becomes increasingly oppressive as it goes on; not just that the torments grow worse, but that the grimness and nastiness of it all gets harder and harder; the action slows down, and you practically feel the cold and sickness and dark pressing in upon you as the poets get closer and closer to the frozen center of the well; like a long winter evening that seems to drag on. It’s a relief to finally be quit of it and starting on Purgatory, as was no doubt intended.

Then as we climb higher and higher for the rest of the poem, there’s a sensation of leaving all that dark and misery farther and farther behind us; a finished tale of no more account. It’s a powerful effect, and certainly one of the things that helps elevate the poem to its supreme position: the very structure of the story reinforces the themes again and again.