The breaking news around here, at least for a lot of people, is that the local university's traditional rivalry football game has been postponed and possibly cancelled. The rival university supposedly has "covid issues," which one source says is 600 cases. Rival is a larger university than the local one, and the local hit 276 yesterday; the 38 new cases is the highest daily number so far. If the conference has to reschedule too many games, they may just punt. I should apologize for that but spending the morning in a Zoom meeting then dealing with a homeowners' association issue this afternoon should give me license to do lame puns.
The morning Zoom meeting was with the board of the local quilt guild. As webmaster, I am not officially on the board but since each meeting generates changes I need to make to the guild website, it's easier to be there in person, though Zoom makes it in virtual person. The covid-19 pandemic continues to generate lots of changes. Cancel this, postpone that, and so on. The big thing was cancelling the biennial quilt show scheduled for April 2021. Assuming 2022 is closer to some sort of new normal, we can try again then, and just move the shows from every odd-numbered year to every even.
Refurnishing the house (from the furniture stored in younger son's bedroom or the basement) continues. We may actually be able to move out of the guest room and back into the master bedroom soon. When we can get out and go shopping, we need to get my mother a new bed. I told the husband we're getting a new mattress and box springs for the guest room. I am embarrassed to say that the bed in the guest room is one he had when we got married 35 years ago, which means it could well be 40 or more years old. The carpet tiles arrived today, too. We decided to put off putting them down until tomorrow. I'll post photos when that's done. It is interesting how nice the finished rugs look given they're made from squares.
The size of the wildfires out west is staggering. None of the people I know out there have had to evacuate ... yet. Some of the photos they've posted of orange skies look as if they're out of some fantasy movie. Dozens of people are missing. I can see how they'd be more worried about containing the fire. Not to make light of the situation, but I did read one humorous post about the fact that the number of fatalities on one location was one less than had been reported because one of the bodies was determined to have been an anatomical skeleton. I'm glad they checked and didn't accidentally give it the name of a missing person who might show up later.
The local university's Board of Visigoths, er, Visitors met this past week. One continuing issue has been the number of buildings, monuments, and the like named after people who enslaved people or otherwise promoted white supremacy. The university does not bear his name, but it was founded by Thomas Jefferson, an owner of enslaved persons reputed to have fathered several children with one of the enslaved women. They can't take Jefferson's name off the institution (check out what's happening with Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia; the "Lee" is Robert E., Confederate general), but there is a statue of him prominently placed at one of the entryways to the university. The Visitors decided that what is needed is to "conceptualize the statue." Here's how one of the news reports put it:
The Board passed a resolution authorizing University leadership to work with historians and other experts to contextualize the statue, which stands on the north side of the Rotunda. While the resolution acknowledges the accomplishments of Jefferson as both a founding father and the founder of the University, it calls attention to his ownership of enslaved people, usage of enslaved labor to build the University and other “contradictory writings and actions.”
“The life of the founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, is a complex one,” the resolution reads. “It is apparent that crucial to improving the racial climate is to reframe the historic landscape to tell a broader story about all of those who contributed to building and operating the University over its 200 year history, including recontextualizing the monuments to its founder Thomas Jefferson.”
The BOV did not specify a timeline or further details for contextualizing the Jefferson statue.
Your guess is as good as mine how they will end up actually doing it.
What with Zooming and wanting to get in a morning walk (made it 5 miles before I ran out of time to shower before Zooming), I did not actually read the front section of either daily paper. Maybe there will be more news worthy of comment tomorrow.
1 comment:
"Conceptualize" seems like it should be "contextualize." "We acknowledge that Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, like many large landowners of his time, and built this university with the gifts of forced labor." 'Gifts' is not be the right word either.
Give that Jewish slaves helped build the pyramids back in the day, and Jews are still marginalized in many locations, I wonder how long it will be before Blacks are less marginalized in this country than they've historically been.
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