[Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

[Goncu, Artin]

Hi Helena and all,

Yes, I am still in Chicago.  I retired from my post in 2013 but Heriberto (my spouse) works for the EPA here and is very active with the union there.  Both for that and for personal reasons, we have stayed here.  I (used to) travel, mostly going to Turkey for regular gigs.  Actually, I just returned from there in mid March leaving every work project in the middle in order not to lose my chance of coming back home.  Good thing I did that; Turkish Airlines stopped flying to the US in late March.

Situation in Chicago, unfortunately, is not a good one.  I follow our governor’s briefings on a daily basis.  It is said that this and next week will be the hardest for us.  The numbers of new diagnoses and the deaths are on the rise.  There is not sufficient numbers of many different kinds of supplies, and the governor is in a constant struggle to receive some federal aid…

People, especially those of us over 60, are asked to stay at home.  We can go out for shopping and exercise and for walking dogs.  Everyone is encouraged to wear masks when they go out.  People are explicitly asked to stay away from one another in almost all shopping places.  The floors are marked to make sure that people follow this rule.  Most business has come to a halt.  From what I can tell, only grocery and hardware stores, and pharmacies are open.  All schooling is online.  There is some rumor that some schools may close early for the year..

Situation in Turkey…  One former President once said that there are no homosexuals (sic) in Turkey because it is against the national character..  Like that the current one and his government denied the Covid-19 problem for a very long time.  After the pressure from the World Health Organization and other institutions they began to report some numbers.  According to my own sources, nobody knows exactly how many people have it and how many died.  Only a few days ago I read that in the region of Bergama alone 800 people died.  And some people saw mass graves but none of these was in the news…

Situation in Armenia is more contained based on informal reports I receive.

So far, I only lost a beloved aunt in a nursing home in Long Island, and hope that this disaster comes to an end before it causes more damage and loss.  For whatever it is worth, Heriberto and I started local organizing here with neighbors and small business owners with the purpose of extending support to those who are in need.


All the best, artin

Artin Goncu, Ph.D
Professor, Emeritus
University of Illinois at Chicago
www.artingoncu.com/





From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Helena Worthen
Sent: Tuesday, April 7, 2020 5:07 PM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Cc: djnh.ltd@gmail.com; Sally Mju <sallymju@gmail.com>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: General check-in?

Hi, David — on this list I use my academic U of Illinois email, which still works,  but we don’t live there — we left Illinois in 2010. Artin Goncu just responded in this list — maybe he can tell us what he sees in Illinois.  Artin, you’re in Chicago, aren’t you?

We left Viet Nam about a year ago. The labor law there was changing (pulling more power into the center, but also strenthening local representation) and our department was changing to become more of a HR and Business Administration department. I don’t know if Uyen or Dinh ever joined this list; they participated in the CHAT Re-Gen discussions, Uyen (Sally) as a student in HoChiMinh City and Dinh from his afterschool program (based on Vygotskian concepts) in Phan Rang. They might speak up if they can —I’ll nudge them by copying them.

Joe and I are in a bubble in Berkeley, CA in an old residential neighborhood with lots of walking paths and good fruit and vegetable stores.  We just did a 3rd draft of our book on contingency in higher ed. We’ve been touched by the wildfires (one county to the north) that covered us with stinky smoke for a couple of weeks last fall, and by the various droughts that resulted in water rationing, etc. but these were all geographically local and we could walk or drive away from them and pretend it didn’t really happen. As compared to this. I swing back and forth between feeling joyful to see deer in the street and hear birds singing and other signs of less traffic and pollution — and on the other hand, becoming aware of two kinds of grief, one because of individuals who have died or who are vulnerable and  probably will die, the second because of the challenge of imagining what kind of world the  next generation will live in, and what will be lost to them because we were never able to communicate it well enough.  I find myself imagining the emotions of Jewish families in Europe as the menace of facism became clearer, and those of the indigenous people of California — the Miwok, for example, and the Chochenyo, who lived right here where I am now — and saw their languages disappearing as their population was killed and dispersed.

This second kind of grief seems to be something people can talk about - it’s collective, cultural. Not unrelated to this list!

Finally, David, since you encouraged me to write: yesterday our son-in-law went grocery shopping for us at an enormous food emporium and brought home three large cucmbers, four ripe tomatoes of middle size, and a plastic bag of hearts of romaine.  How much did it cost?  $18.00.

With best wishes to all — Helena Worthen
helenaworthen@gmail.com<mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>
hworthen@illinois.edu<mailto:hworthen@illinois.edu>




On Apr 7, 2020, at 2:02 PM, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com<mailto:dkellogg60@gmail.com>> wrote:

Helena--

Situation in China, courtesy my sister-in-law: life in Beijing is pretty much back to normal at least on the face of it. People are going out to their work units (but there is more work from home than before the crisis). Classes still largely taught from ZOOM. My nephew is in Shanghai, where the situation is somewhat tighter (proximity to Wuhan). Wuhan opened up for real yesterday--people can leave (I lived there for two years in the mid-eighties, but I can barely recognize what I see on the news now....) I have students in Chengdu (who attend my class via ZOOM). People are mostly shopping on line with delivery to the gate of the housing unit rather than to their flat (as we do here in Korea). Air quality better than it's been in decades.

Situation here in South Korea: We just extended our lockdown for another two weeks. This is in response to a few days of new infections over a hundred, but the infections are mostly (80%) Koreans from the US and Europe who want to live in a place where the medical system has not broken down or is not in the process of breaking down. There are still some "hotspots" of community transmission, but these are almost all connected with churches or PC cafes. Schools reopen on the 16th, but only online. We have elections in a week, and there is a lot of campaigning going on, including the usual street based campaigning (the right wing opposition campaigns around the curious notion that the government has done absolutely nothing, and the government ignores everybody who is not an actual virus). People shop in stores, and there is no panic buying or disruption of supply chains. The main changes in economic life seem to have to do with transport, and it seems like this too will be permanent (electric scooters are everywhere now). Bowing instead of shaking hands is really not a bad idea, and coffee-shops always were over-rated and over-priced....

But what about you, Helena? (One of the things I have learned on this list is that you get more or less what you give--people tend to use what you write as a model for writing back!) Are you still in Vietnam? Your address says Berkeley and your email says Illinois--those are three very different venues for the virus and the economy. Can you give us a brief account of the situation in each?

Stay safe, wherever you are!

David Kellogg
Sangmyung University

Book Review: 'Fees, Beets, and Music: A critical perusal of Critical Pedagogy and Marx, Vygotsky and Freire: Phenomenal forms and  educational action research
in Mind Culture and Activity

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

Some free e-prints available at:

https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/QBBGIZNKAHPMM4ZVCWVX/full?target=10.1080/10749039.2020.1745847

New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: "L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works Volume One: Foundations of Pedology"

 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270



On Wed, Apr 8, 2020 at 4:30 AM Martin Packer <mpacker@cantab.net<mailto:mpacker@cantab.net>> wrote:
Hi Helena,

I share your concerns. And, despite its challenges, this situation seems a great opportunity to apply our distributed expertise(s). I tried to get some discussion going in a group concerned with the Anthropocene, but people seemed disinclined.

Martin

Here’s the first message that I sent…

The current situation is producing important evidence about the probable consequences of the strategies proposed to mitigate climate change. Satellites are showing significant reductions in pollution:
https://www.space.com/italy-coronavirus-outbreak-response-reduces-emissions-satellite-images.html
Experts are suggesting that as a result the coronavirus may save more lives than it takes:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2020/03/11/coronavirus-lockdown-may-save-more-lives-from-pollution-and-climate-than-from-virus/#4a39bb3c5764
So when skeptics ask “How can you know that reducing air travel will help with climate change?” there is now clear evidence with which to answer them.

Also in China:
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/04/811019032/why-chinas-air-has-been-cleaner-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak

At the same time, I am starting to wonder whether the current health guidelines regarding coronvirus are culturally biased. Can they work in ‘collectivist’ cultures (to use the shorthand)? The CDC guidelines, for example, include the recommendations to “Stay home when you are sick,” but also that other members of the household should “Avoid close contact with people who are sick” and should “Choose a room in your home that can be used to separate sick household members from those who are healthy. Identify a separate bathroom for the sick person to use, if possible.”
This advice is simply not practicable for many households in Colombia. There are not enough rooms; there is no second bathroom. In addition, many infants and young children here are cared for by grandparents, or even great-grandparents (many women here have a baby when young, so an infant may have a grandmother who is in her late 30s and a great-grandmother in her late 50s). The evidence shows that children don’t become very ill, but they do get infected and they can infect other people, among whom elderly caregivers will be the most at risk.
So I don’t think social distance and auto-quarantine will work in Colombia. Consider what the Chinese did: they went door-to-door to identify infected family members and removed them to massive collective quarantine setttings. People in the West considered this to be draconian, even cruel. But it made sense: much more cross-infection occurred in Chinese homes than in places like restaurants.
Unless the authorities can come up with strategies that are more appropriate to local circumstances and practices, there is likely to be a rapid and elevated peak of infections in Latin American countries.

And I see there is a related point here, on ageism:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200313155256.htm







On Apr 7, 2020, at 1:56 PM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com<mailto:helenaworthen@gmail.com>> wrote:

Hello, XMCA-ers -

I don’t remember ever having read that this list was going to shut down or even be allowed to fade away. So now I’m writing, as if in the dark, to the whole list.  We’ve now got a major — maybe “the” major crisis of the anthropocene on our hands and the distant but connected network represented by the conversations on this list seem to me to be a treasure more precious than gold - and I’m not speaking metaphorically.

I am concerned about some of the people who have been pillars and resources on his list, people whom I have reached out to over the years and heard back from with information and perspectives that I would never have been able to access on my own. Where are you now? What are you doing? Are you safe and healthy? Do you have information about friends who are unable to read or respond to this request?

I hope to hear some responses to this message.

Take care of yourselves, please —

Helena


Helena Worthen
hworthen@illinois.edu<mailto:hworthen@illinois.edu>
21 San Mateo Road, Berkeley, CA 94707




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