2,303 words
I attended a small (about 160 students per grade) Midwestern high school only ten minutes from a metropolis, but the neighborhood had large houses with high property taxes and the district had gerrymandered the auto-enrollment zone to keep the school about 90 percent white with a smattering of Asians (several boys named Tenzin). Read more …
The Plowman in the Library
Hans Holbein the Younger, The Plowman from Dance of Death, 1524-26.
1,697 words
I’ve spent the last 21 days in quarantine. To be honest, staying inside these last three weeks has been relatively easy for me. After all, I spent most of my time in college by myself reading books in the university library. Looking back at my experience in college, I think my real education came not from the lectures or assigned readings, but from the books I decided to read on my own out of interest and curiosity. One such book was a prose version of Piers Plowman, the 14th-century poem attributed to William Langland. In many ways, the themes of this poem reflect both my times in college and the last three weeks spent inside my home during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Read more …