The effect of social distancing on work

After observing my reaction to my changed work situation--doing everything through email and Skype, I have come to a conclusion: our social interactions are very important in the smooth running of our institution. I’ve had a couple of difficult situations in the past week. They were rendered more difficult to negotiate because I have not been interacting with the people involved socially. All we had to go on, so to speak, was the interaction about the difficulty.

I think we need to make a greater effort to make our interactions mimic our social relations. Also, we need to be more gentle in our virtual communications that we might be if we had other, more social contacts with the people involved. We need a lot more patience, because we can’t necessarily just go down to someone’s office to get an answer to any question we might have. And we don't have lunch with them or coffee breaks.

I believe that the body is so important in our social and professional relations. The shift to virtual everything will diminish our bonds. This is especially true in education. I have a friend who is a Montessori teacher. Can you imagine trying to do Montessori, a theology of the body pedagogy if there ever was one, virtually?

I'm not a Carthusian.

Symbiology

Alfred Hitchcock, of course, was Catholic. There are interminable discussions about the quality of his Catholicism. There is no doubt that his work is often permeated by a Catholic ethos and Catholic themes. More rarely, his works are explicitly informed by Catholic culture. I Confess, of course, is about the seal of Confession.

Another film that is explicitly Catholic is The Wrong Man (1956), staring Henry Fonda,  Vera Miles, and Anthony Quayle. We watched it the other night.

[spoiler] There is a scene--the climax in fact--where the resolution occurs because of a Catholic prayer. You can't get more explicit than that film about the power of prayer.

The point of this post, though, is about the content of one of the features. One of those famous people and talking head analyses of the film and of Hitchcock. One of the "experts" said something like, "The Wrong Man is the Hitchcock film with the most explicit Catholic symbiology in it." First of all, what is "symbiology?" I'm thinking he meant "symbolism." Besides that, though, there is nothing symbolic about the Catholicism in the movie. A mother asks her son to pray. He prays--before an image of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus no less--the resolution happens.

People are funny.

On a more practical note...

Ever since I was in junior high I have wanted to live a simpler, more natural life that included organic gardening, handicrafts, living in the land, etc. That is why I have been attracted to the Crunchy Cons and Caelum et Terra.

Yesterday my wife and I had a conversation about how to better put that into effect. One of the conclusions that we came to was that it is best to use what you have to make what you need, rather than buy things. 

The context was my intention to build a cold frame out of done old windows we have, and some raised garden boxes. I had ordered almost $200 worth of wood. 

It became clear, especially after talking to our son, that we had enough scrap wood from an old project that I could just build the cold frame with that. It wouldn't be as pretty, but it would certainly function adequately.

Also, we didn't really need the boxes.

My grandfather was a master at cobbling materials together that he had lying around. I realized that it is not only frugal, but rewarding to do the same.

Here is the cold frame:

Here is a wheel barrow made from an old bugger and a bin. It has the advantage of a detachable bin!:

When the handle broke on our push broom, instead it buying another, or even another handle, I attached an old pole from a broken "umbrella" clothesline we've keep around for decades:

I think this is fun!