English 10

We are all enmeshed in a critical cyclone of Nature and Humanity. I am in awe of the power that this unthinking, dispassionate, self-duplicating, parasitic virus has had on the human world and the way it has drawn out our vulnerability as animals. Despite all our technology, medicine, in spite of every symphony, every keystroke, the calculus of thought that inflates the conviction that we humans are masters of the universe, Nature has demonstrated that she can drive us behind closed doors, disrupt our systems of wealth and currency, rub acid into wounds of inequality, upend institutions, unseam the tapestry of socialization. Simultaneously, we witness a racial justice movement that forces us to consider the roles we play in U.S. society, as New Yorkers, as Long Islanders. And, just as the emergence of COVID unglued myriad systems and institutions that are so comfortable and familiar that they are entirely taken for granted, so does the very public call for racial justice deeply stir our own private wells of morality and ethics, comfort, stability, experience, memory. Elements of each of these crises are new to our shared human story. However, we have seen pieces of this narrative before. Themes of Man and Nature, Crime and Punishment, Justice are hardwired into the marrow of our history because they are intrinsic to our very species. What is the Writer’s response to the Natural crisis? To a Man-made crisis? Well, writers write about it. They create and recreate. They breathe perspective, focus, shape into the amorphous dust of experience. This year, we will spend time reading and discussing pieces that reflect crisis, nature, justice, crime and punishment, and redemption.