little stabs against entropy

I wonder if the Romans mused, as their civilization crumbled around them, "Hmmm... maybe we could go back to the Old Ways." Or did they keep bludgeoning their way forward, rejecting classic and proven Ways of Being in favor of the latest trends in communication, education, consumerism, warfare, whatever?

As devastating as the fall of the Roman Empire might have been, and as many similarities as I may draw between that little landslide and our current catastrophe, they had nothing on us in terms of the range and speed of our trajectory toward destruction.

I suspect that ONE antidote to cataclysm is a return to selected Old Ways. This is not just prudent for education (let's leave aside the Back to Basics Movement for a more general return to What Works), but for the sake of our planet. The old Mecology theme song from one of the filmstrips we watched in my little rural school rattles through my mind now (I can't find it on YouTube, but I'm sure my contemporaries can sing along with me. One of the environmental suggestions was to plant flowers in old tires).

It's easy, when I'm teaching, to get caught up in details. I'm an English teacher, after all. The ability to comprehend and utilize nuance is part of what I'm trying to get across to my students. Being sick furthers my tendency toward the particular. Then I like to blow the whole thing up to the macro level. Only humans with an understanding of nuance, who can think, communicate, listen, integrate new concepts with their own habitual responses, and then TAKE INFORMED ACTION will be equipped to deal with the implications of their choices for the environment, for the state of this fragile planet we inhabit.

Yes, Rome is falling all around me, but I'm still doggedly prescribing grammar remediation and insisting that students follow through on the writing process to the wicked, monotonous end so that when they "publish," they don't embarrass themselves. I'm also insisting that the lights be turned off in rooms with no people in them, and turning off the water as I brush my teeth, and reportedly taking issue with wasteful hospital practices while still under the effects of Versed. I have no memory of it, but coming out of one of my seven surgeries, I was adamant about recycling something. My mother finds it charming. I find it scary but reassuring in some weird way that I have environmentalism as my default setting.