Good Men and Absent Women in Camus' The Plague

So already, this is not the first time I've written about Camus' The Plague* in this blog. It's not even the first time during the current coronavirus pandemic. 

I don't always assume that ignorance and evil are connected. But anytime ignorance promotes human fatality generally--and treats as "normal" and acceptable high numbers of fatalities within historically oppressed, under-served American groups, that connection must be made. It's not just ignorance of COVID-19 and best ways to control its spread that's problematic; its also ignorance of the ongoing effects of the longtime systemic oppression on some groups' health and well-being. Much is known about both of these, at least by those who make it their business to know and understand. The all-too-common problem is some people's willful not-knowing about either or both. And that problem is as ugly as the bloody-mawed rat on the adjacent book cover.

Here's what Camus had to say about it:

"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole, men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance that fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind; and there can be no true goodness nor true love without the utmost clear-sightedness (131).** 

Personally, I think we shouldn't forget that some people--few, but some--are both ignorant and malevolent. The powerful ignorant who view plague or coronavirus as a means of ridding the country of people whom they deem "undesirable" are a threat to us all, but, obviously, more of a threat to those they deem "undesirable." If only these willfully ignorant didn't cling to their blindness with such righteous fervor.

There's something else, though, that's been bothering me--over the years, and more so in the last couple of days. Yesterday, I read and posted on my Facebook page a really wonderful essay about the The Plague by Tony Judt that was published just two months after 9/11. The way that Judt elucidated how each of the book's major characters chose to respond to the plague in Camus' allegorical novel reminded me of the character-centered small-group activities I so often assigned while my various classes were reading the novel: in collaborative reading-and-thinking groups, the students in each of the small groups became experts on one major character's response and character, and then shared that expertise with the whole class. 

Then as now, though, wonderful as their work often was, I felt that we were missing something: the women. Plenty of women were affected by and continued to live their lives and think their thoughts during the German occupation of France during World War II, which The Plague, among other things, represents allegorically; many women were part of the French Resistance. 

But still women are at best peripheral in Camus's novel. There's no Dr. Deborah Birx figure, outnumbered but present, among the town officials discussing whether to use the word "plague" to describe Oran's affliction, whether to close the gates of the city. I don't know whether to chalk it up to "the times," to Camus, or to both.

But I can't help thinking that women were less interesting or important to Camus than men. One could argue that when Camus said, "men are more good than bad," he was merely adhering to the convention of using "men" to represent all people. But I'm not so sure about that. The three women in The Plague who are significant enough to be mentioned multiple times are never referrred to by their names, and are defined only in relationship to particular male characters to whom they are very important****:

• there is Dr. Rieux's wife, who leaves Oran to convalesce from an unnamed illness at a sanatorium just as the rats are beginning to die;

• there is Dr. Rieux's mother who arrives to keep house for her son while her daughter-in-law is away, and who responds "calmly" to the news of the dead rats with "'It's like that sometimes'" (14);

• and there's the French journalist Rambert's lover, who is back in France, where he yearns to return to reunite with her.

If 1940s Oran is indeed a place where only town fathers and never town mothers would have been involved in formulating a response to a public health crisis, then I might be asking for fabrication rather than history. But if the women were at the table, let's put them there. And if they weren't at the table, let's imagine a few of them there, or at least in a few places nearby, like the other parts of the room, the house, or the town office building; or on the street outside. To whom would these women have listened? On the basis of what they heard, what might they have done or said, and with what effect?

The word "ignorance" has passive and active definitions. From the passive viewpoint, it  simply denotes a lack of information or education: I don't know what/that I don't know or could know, so I neither ask nor act. From an active viewpoint, however, it refers to my willful disregard or ignoring of something, my choice not to pay attention: I lack knowledge or understanding because I chose not to pay attention to what might have illuminated me, what might have brought me out of my passive ignorance. Furthermore, if I'm not clear-sighted, I'm all the more apt to continue not to pay attention to that which would enlighten me.

Helen Hunt as an American Journalist in Poland

Dr. Rieux's mother embodies so much quiet goodness, so much understanding of "life" as she endures without need and anxiety during the plague outbreak in Oran. But there has to be more than one way to be a good woman, a useful woman in the city of Oran in The Plague. I've been watching World on Fire***** on Masterpiece Theatre; so far the women are hardly in the background--and so much is at stake.

* Bookseller image on AbeBooks.com web site: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22401071410 
** Camus, A. (1991). The plague. New York: Vintage Books.  
*** Photo accompanying post on Think: Opinions, Analysis, Essays entitled "Trump's coronavirus response is questioned daily. But Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx aren't infallible" by Ying Ma, published on April 27, 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-coronavirus-response-questioned-daily-dr-fauci-dr-birx-ncna1192266
**** Photo accompanying post in India Today entitled "15 quotes by Albert Camus on God, Truth and Absurdity": https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/albert-camus-quotes-953074-2017-01-04
***** Photo accompanying post in Salon entitled "'It's our foundation myth': PBS' 'World on Fire' challenges the World War II narrative we know" published on April 5, 2020: https://www.salon.com/2020/04/05/world-on-fire-masterpiece-pbs-world-war-2-peter-bowker/?ref=hvper.com

Eden in Lockdown--A Poem Revised

Untitled Drawing by Scott Ketcham

So already, on March 16, I posted a draft version of "Eden in Lockdown." 

During the next weeks, a number of you responded to my request for writing help by commenting on the post itself, sharing thoughts about it on Facebook, and emailing me at home. With your permission, I posted your emailed comments in the comment section after the blog post. Members of the No Name Poets, "my" poetry writing group," also made suggestions at one of our bi-monthly Friday morning meetings. Thanks to all of you whose thoughtful reactions, questions, and suggestions really did guide my next efforts.

Here is the poem in its "final" version. And I'm glad to say that in Boston, the plight of the homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been ignored.

Eden in Lockdown

        "Eden is that old-fashioned House

         We dwell in every day . . .."

                                    Emily Dickinson

We hadn't known we were in Eden
'Til we learned we couldn't leave it.
But we had time on our hands,
Something we seldom did,
Something we seldom took into our hands
When the choice was ours.

So what to take into our hands,
Given the perils of touch itself,
What to shape to our most 
Private self or public need
When separate was essential
To our inseparable fates,
When dreams deferred fast to fear,  
Given the magnitude of truth:
That the future was in all our hands? 

I took ground beef into mine:
Meatloaf on the evening of the first day—
And it was good.
On the morning of the second day,
I bundled newspapers for recycling,
Filed clippings in folders where I'd never look,
Created order without meaning,
Knowing balms could not protect.

I told myself what was still good:
Spring just days away,
Robins flocking to the neighbor's hedge,
Electricity surging through power lines,
Keeping us warm and within reach,
Softening exile at the edge of the unknown.

Best to be placed on house arrest
When one calls someplace home.
On the third night, when the March wind
Silenced the whispers of spring,
I thought of those sentenced to the streets
For whom Eden might be memory,
Mockery, or myth,
Until I took my comforter into my hands
And, tucking it under my chin,
Almost slept.       

Earth Day Turns Fifty

So already, I know this doesn't look like much to you. But it's such an important place for me. This is the area where, as a ninth grader at the Newman Junior High School in Needham, Massachusetts, I planted a tree on the first Earth Day in 1970. 

Back then, this space was an empty lot between the school and a baseball diamond at the edge of a town park. Today, the baseball diamond is still there, but it's been invisible from the edge of the school campus for many years. 

Whenever I can, I come back here on Earth Day just to see how things are going with the trees. One year, I brought my mother with me, and as we surveyed the growth together, she asked me which tree was mine. 

I explained that I had no idea whether my tree had actually survived, given that it no doubt had had to compete with all the other ninth graders' trees for sunlight and other resources: we must have planted more than one hundred trees that day of educational social-action activities connected to saving the Earth from people's mindless or short-sighted missteps.

I can't remember what kind of tree I planted that Wednesday in 1970. And I have no idea what a fifty-year-old tree looks like as compared to trees that are younger. But I can remember it was a gray, balmy afternoon--as we planted, we talked about how good it would be to get the trees in the ground before the rain started. Today I stood out there in my winter jacket and my anti-coronavirus latex gloves, and the gray of the sky wasn't the kind that heralded a warm spring soaking; it was the all-too-usual pale gray of these days that impress with their sameness.

According to an Earth Day restrospective article in Coolook News written in 2018, Walter Cronkhite referred to the first Earth Day as "'a unique day in American history … a day set aside for a nationwide outpouring of mankind seeking its own survival.'" And twenty years later, according to that same article, Charles "Kuralt referred to the planting of 59,000 trees as 'an apology to the Earth.'" I don't know if I felt the need to apologize in 1970--I mean, I was only fourteen--but I did know air pollution was an expanding problem.

That said, Cronkhite's words about humans being a species seeking its own survival rings oh so true in this pandemic moment. In "The parallels between the coronavirus and the climate crisis" published in today's Boston Globe, John Kerry not only illuminates the similarities between the urgent COVID-19 and climate change situations, but makes clear that there's at least a partial causal connection between the two. 

If ever there were two issues that require global cooperation to foster the coherence and creativity that might mean human survival, these are the two. Staggering as the challenges are that we face, we can meet them--and thus survive them. That's if we're allowed to meet them, and if those in charge help rather than hinder the survival efforts. We have no shortage of smart people who know how to solve these problems. Unfortunately, maybe even tragically, we're still short on people who are really good at getting people to change their behavior on the basis of what those smart people know to be true and useful. And we're still short on people who know how to create and support a systemic effort generally. Then there are those who don't believe change is needed and/or oppose systemic change that would benefit all.

In a blog post entitled "Earth Day 2020: Recognizing the Positive Improvements on Our Environment,"* Institute for Integrative Nutrition's content editor Rebecca Robin says the following after detailing the positive effects that so many people's sheltering at home has already had on the environment:

"Over the past month, we’ve felt and experienced a great deal of loss that cannot be compensated nor justified by environmental improvements. However, these improvements can serve as inspiration to help us reflect on the way that we live and treat our earth every day and how we want to treat our earth moving forward. . . . This catastrophic event has shown us that our changed behaviors can have a crucial impact on not only our personal health but also the preservation of earth and everything it offers us."*

So here's the challenge: what will it take to get us to stick with some of our changed behaviors--more collective than ever--that are having a positive impact on the environment? Will we fervently re-embrace our old habits--so many that are pleasurable and social--and forget all those solitary, "slower" habits we've discovered and developed during isolation--and actually come to enjoy? Will we pressure one another to "get back to normal" or will we give one another the space and time to decide which old and new aspects of ourselves we want to integrate and bring forward into the post shelter-at-home world? 

Some of this is going to be a matter of leadership--many of our current leaders will first and foremost want us leave our homes and to start spending money fast and everywhere. But the more difficult part of it on a daily basis is going to be intrapersonal and interpersonal. Rest assured that we will feel pressures, some coming from other people, some from ourselves.

On Earth Day 1970, it was easy and pleasurable to do something good for our stressed planet--even though I don't think I focused much on why we were planting trees. I think I've gone back over the years because I've increasingly understood what's at stake. On Earth Day 2020, I understand more than ever how interconnected our destinies are. That's why even though it takes so much energy to leave home and be safe these days, I still did my annual errand. And I still love the memory of that first hopeful, hands-on Earth Day.

*Robin, R. (2020, April 22). Earth Day 2020: Recognizing the Positive Improvements on Our Environment [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.integrativenutrition.com/blog/2020/04/earth-day-2020-recognizing-the-positive-improvements-on-our-environment

From Hair to Eternity . . . But First, Let's Live!

So already, in this COVID-19 era of staying at home and raising cocktail glasses to computer web cams, I've been amazed at how much of the conversation of participating women has been about hair--their own hair. Every Zoom cocktail hour begins with hair-related apologies, anxieties, and tales of miraculous deliverance from near hair disaster. I'm among those women: I've pointed out to several online groups that the webcam on my computer points directly at that place on my hairline where my gray roots are most evident. Several women have bragged about how they successfully cut their own hair, despite so many online warnings against such audacity. They tempt the gods, I think.

The men seem decidedly less obsessed with and less worried about their hair. Which makes me wonder what they aren't sharing. I do know that had they been numbered among Rabbi Akiva's students (who would have been men only) back in the first and second centuries CE, they might have been worried about winning a zealous argument about the proper interpretation of some passage in the Torah.

So wait a minute. Who's Rabbi Akiva, and why am I bringing him up? Some of you know from my previous blog post that I've been counting the omer, or counting and paying spiritual attention to the days between the second day of Passover and another lesser known Jewish holiday, Shavuot. I'm still so new to this practice that I've chosen to place adjacent to this paragraph a graphic* meant for a Jewish child to use to keep track of the daily ritual of prayer and preparation.

I've found it really hard to understand this ritual, and just the other day, I came across some additional information that further baffled me. My imagination led me to expect that the time period between two holidays commemorating uplifting, defining Jewish events would emphasize excitement about both the newness of freedom (courtesy of Passover) and the imminence of revelation (courtesy of Shavuot). Instead, I learned it was a season of mourning. What????

Yes, mourning. With a set of traditions, including not having weddings or haircuts until the 33rd day of this 49-day period, which is the Jewish holiday of Lag B'Omer, this year celebrated on May 12. Hmmm . . .

Why the mourning, I wondered? Because of plague. As Michael Singer explains in "The Tragedy of Rabbi Akiva's Students," 

"One story in our history radically changed the nature of the counting of the omer from a joyous anticipation of a prosperous harvest and the yearly re–enactment of revelation at Mt. Sinai, to a time in which we mourn. In the Talmud we are taught that during the period of counting the omer, the 12,000 pairs of students of Rabbi Akiva perished on one day (Yevamot 61b). The initial reason the Gemara gives is that they did not have kavod (honor or respect) for one another. The Gemara then presents the opinion that they were struck down by a mysterious plague. I believe that both reasons for the death of Rabbi Akiva's students can be read harmoniously. It was precisely because of the breakdown of civil discourse and respect for one another that they were afflicted with the plague and died."**

Jules-Élie Delaunay's "Plague in Rome" (1869)

What????? After all those newspaper editorials connecting Passover plagues with the COVID-19 pandemic, here we were in yet another annual Jewish season in which plague was foregrounded--and at exactly the same time that all of us are still much afflicted by the scourge of the novel coronavirus. Not only is Kavod continuing to be absent from the national discourse, at least as we observe it nightly, but there's a dangerous absence of collaboration between nations--and the global, the national, the regional, and the local are utterly interconnected when it comes to COVID-19.

When I told my husband Scott about the story of the death of the 12,000 pairs of students, he wanted to know who Rabbi Akiva was and why the story had not simply said that 24,000 of his students died. I explained that Rabbi Akiva was a great Jewish teacher and that it was common for Jewish students to have study partners. After a further question about where all of these students studied--some big room somewhere, or in how many different cities in arenas, maybe--he asked an important question: "If he was such a great teacher, why did all of his students fuck up and die?"

I thought about his question after we both stopped laughing. Holden Caulfield might have asked that question in just that way. So might have my former colleague and good friend Betsy Grady, who, with her masters in anthropology and doctorate in education, is always ready to challenge assumptions about good teaching and learning. Maybe Rabbi Akiva really did bear some of the responsibility. Because let's face it, something really big went wrong here. Then again, whenever I've thought about teachers' responsibilities in the years since Donald Trump became president, I've wondered what lessons students were learning from the President that they brought with them to the neighborhood and the classroom. Teachers are only some of the people who educate students.

My Last AP Class on a Field Trip

I also did a little math. I taught for almost thirty-five years, and even when I estimated that I might have taught at most two hundred adult and student learners in each of those years, I calculated that I still would have taught only seven thousand students in my whole career. Rabbi Akiva must have had really large classes! Maybe class size was part of the educational problem: he just couldn't see the brewing kavod problem. [By the way, he had other students, too, after the twenty-four thousand died; one of them in particular is honored on Lag B'Omer.]

But this whole topic of how we disagree and why we choose to argue, try to persuade, and aim to win is really important. Too often, those engaged passionately in debate are not trying to win for the sake of the welfare of people and the world, even if that's their purpose at the start. Once they experience their opponents as attacking their integrity, not just questioning their conclusions and reasoning, their motivations for continuing to argue can change. Winners often gloat and dismiss. Resentments and divisions build. Things get personal that began as intellectually, spiritually, and socially responsible. Discourse may die, sides may get chosen, and revenge may even get plotted. People who have much more in common than not, who generally share common concerns and commitments, become bitterly estranged. And what they might have achieved together, given the power of their minds and the strength of some of their agreements, is lost, to the detriment of the community.

Rabbi Michael Singer puts it this way**:

"Could this have happened to the students of Rabbi Akiva? The Talmud could have easily only attributed the tragedy of Rabbi Akiva's students to a plague, whether natural or at the hands of the Romans. Instead our sages chose to first ascribe it to a loss of kavod as a powerful reminder of what can happen to us when we forget how to conduct discourse grounded in honor and respect. So divided and torn over their disagreement were the students*** of Rabbi Akiva, that they might have lashed out at one another with hurtful words, severing the dynamic unfolding of Torah, and leading only to polarization, defeat, and death."**

Scott's not Jewish. But because he refuses to pay more than $8.00 for a haircut, he really does need a good haircut right now--much more than I do, frankly. But I doubt any of us will be getting haircuts by May 12. Well, I hope not. 

Scott's Bad Hair Hidden

But some of us might, and that really scares me. I just watched the President's daily alleged coronavirus update. I'm sure Rabbi Akiva grieved over the deaths of his students. I can't say I believe our president grieves over the lives lost to date from COVID-19. I hope while he's busy making his nightly campaign speeches coronavirus updates, others in our government are talking constructively across their political differences because I do believe they--public servants from both parties--really do want Americans to live.

* https://www.chabad.org/kids/article_cdo/aid/377309/jewish/Countdown-to-the-Giving-of-the-Torah.htm

** Singer, M. (2006, May 13). The Tragedy of Rabbi Akiva's Students. Retrieved from http://www.jtsa.edu/the-tragedy-of-rabbi-akivas-students
*** Photo from Blog: S. (2011, July 3). That One Friend [Web log post]. Retrieved April 18, 2020, from http://snehabhatsepo.blogspot.com/p/about-me.html (Blog is entitled Rendezvous.)

COVID Time: Routine Disruptions

So already, in my last blog post, I talked about some routines that were getting me through this time of sheltering in place courtesy of COVID-19. I write just two weeks later to say that two routines I made a big deal about--my reading and writing routines--have largely gone by the wayside. Don't be fooled just because I'm sitting here writing this blog post today.

Right now, wearing a mask and washing my hands are the two routines most crucial not only to my well-being, but to my sense of well-being. Given that I can't always shelter in place because I periodically need to buy groceries, drop off medication to my dad, and collect my mail from my building's well-traveled lobby, my most important routines are intended to keep me safe.


It surprises me what routines are most important to my emotional and spiritual safety right now. I've always looked at those necessary chores I do every morning--making the bed, showering, brushing and flossing my teeth, washing the breakfast dishes, straightening the living room--as things to get out of the way so my day could really begin. Currently, though, the fact that I can do do them in just the ways I have always done them makes them feel more like blessings than chores: one more day of feeling gloriously, monotonously healthy and normal. Each morning I've been marveling at my good fortune in being physically able to do my "household work"--too many others at present can't--and giving thanks that COVID-19 hasn't changed everything about the shape of my days.


I felt all of this so strongly of late that I pulled out the prayer book I was given in 5725 (it's now 5780) by the Temple Emeth Religious School. I've been rereading--yes, I guess I'm praying--those morning blessings that thank God for having "made of our bodies wisely" (13) while acknowledging that our bodies don't always work perfectly. Imperfect and mortal as our bodies are, Jews are supposed to give thanks (many do!) for all the days our bodies work correctly--and we definitely give thanks when they recover from those times when they can't or don't work as they are designed to. By the way, the next paragraph of the prayer assures that God at some point "will take life from me, but only to continue it in another world" (15).

There is one routine that I wrote about two weeks ago that I have continued, and that routine is walking near the salt marshes close to Wollaston Beach. It's been especially uplifting to walk near the marshes because spring just refuses to pay COVID-19 any mind. Most recently, during these COVID-19 peak weeks, I've walked wearing my mask, something I didn't feel the need to do a few weeks ago, but I've still been down there, along with the other salt marsh enthusiasts (we're fewer in number than the beach enthusiasts, and that's a good thing at this moment). The marsh isn't greening just yet, but that white speck you see in the middle of this picture is an egret--the first I've seen this spring. And yes, there are blessings for such sightings :

"On seeing the small-scale wonders of nature, such as beautiful trees, animals, and people [Note: there's another blessing for seeing large-scale wonders of nature**]:

Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam, shekacha lo beolamo."**

At such a moment, some people--myself included--might also think to say the Shehecheyanu, the Jewish prayer reserved for very big firsts, and sometimes for periodic, anticipated firsts that signal having made it through to a new season once more. Translated from the Hebrew, the prayer is "Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season."*** During the pandemic era, I'm all for those blessings that thank God for "our" being alive and for nature's being alive.

It was good that Passover came during the past week, and I'm suspecting many of those celebrating Easter today are feeling similarly buoyed by their religious tradition, even if this year has required a different kind of celebration. At my age, the Seder is indeed a routine, and as such, it grounds me in something even if my "Seder for One" was a new experience, a spiritual innovation. I love that it got me to turn off the television, turn my attention to another crisis, and pay attention to something important, ancient, familiar, and relevant.

I've just begun another Jewish routine, one that's much newer to me. For the second time in my life, I'm counting the omer. This involves saying--remembering to say!--a particular blessing every evening that specifically notes which of the 49 days it is of that period stretching from the second day of Passover to Shavuot, the holiday that commemorates Moses' receiving the Torah from God on Mt. Sinai. It also involves, for me, being mindful and spiritually directed. I've followed Rabbi Simon Jacobson's The Counting of the Omer guide once before--thought the questions Jacobson asked were really good, was glad that I could think more and journal less, and enjoyed trying to put my self-reflection into action since each day follows reflection with an exercise to prompt action--a good thing for me since I tend to think rather than act. Of late, I've had some very positive feelings about a lot of people--gratitude,  admiration,  love, sometimes some combination of these. I'd like those people to know, and that means I must act.

So as I began the 49-day reflection-and-action routine the other day, what struck me almost immediately was how different it was to be approaching this process this year, given the "requirements" COVID-19 has created for all of us. The first day asked us to "Examine the love aspect of love; the expression of love and its level of intensity." I don't think my cousin Nancy is counting the omer, but I do think she did a great job of doing the first day's task: "Find a new way to express your love to a dear one."**** Thank you, Nancy, for coming with me today to visit my parents: like so many elders in America, they are currently quarantined in their senior living community. You were an awesome visitor at the window.

Today's exercise bid me to "Offer a helping hand to a stranger."**** Oh, the irony of the moment--that helping hand better be a metaphorical and not an actual hand! But I have an idea. If I can figure out how to do it, you'll read about it here. Stay well, everyone, and thank you for reading! And may your own routines comfort and sustain you during this unique, challenging time.

* Brecher, C.M., compiler and arranger. (1960). Graces, hymns, and blessings. NY: Ktav Publishing  House, Inc.
** https://reformjudaism.org/practice/prayers-blessings/daily-blessings-wonders-nature 
*** https://reformjudaism.org/practice/prayers-blessings/shehecheyanu
**** Jacobson, S. (2013). A Spiritual Guide to counting of the omer: The forty-nine days of Sefirah.  Brooklyn: Meaningful Life Center.