Month: March 2023

Try to read up to the end of Chapter 37 (Part 5: Toronto) in Station Eleven.   And, take a look at the rubric for our second reflection essay: “Last Days.”

Another bombogenesis/storm event is scheduled to land tomorrow morning in the Bay Area.  To minimize risk and inconvenience, let’s get together tomorrow to talk about Severance via Zoom.  Check your SFSU email account for proper link to join etc.  See you tomorrow morning!

For Tuesday after spring break (3/28), let’s talk about Ling Ma’s fantastic debut novel – – Severance.

Enjoy your recess!

“The spoliation of the church’s property, the fraudulent alienation of the State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances of reckless terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation. They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a “free” and outlawed proletariat.” – – Karl Marx, Chapter 27, Capital Vol. 1

Let’s finish reading The Water Knife for Tuesday, March 14.

For Thursday, here’s our asynchronous event:

“She saw the world clear,” Maria says to herself early in the novel.  “For once, she realized she was seeing the world clear.  No wonder Papa kept himself pretending.”

“Seeing the world clear” seems to be important to all the main characters (Angel, Lucy, Maria) in the novel.  Choose one of these characters and explain what “seeing the world clear” means to them.  Why is it important to see things this way? What’s the problem with not seeing things this way? Do you see evidence that this ambition might be more complicated or contradictory for your selected character?

Write a couple of paragraphs in your existing google doc – – separated from the rest of your work by a heading like: “For Thursday, March 9” or “The Water Knife,” etc.  Probably no more than 500 words.  Try to complete this by Sunday night so that I can take a look at your work by Monday.

Bonus: If you’re interested in reading Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, click on this link.  (Password: Desert).  Once you download the file, you should be able to read it in either Apple Books or Kindle.

Thanks to some damn pathogen, I’m about 48 hours behind on everything.  Let’s forget about Thursday (3/2) and move on.

For Tuesday (3/7), read up to Chapter 14 in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife.  These are novels we’re reading, but once again it seems as if reality is finally catching up with fiction. (If you have difficulty accessing the NY Times, remember you already have a digital NY Times account if you’re an SFSU student.)