Go home early
Things
look pretty deserted at 4:09 pm.
The college officially closed at 4 due to a snowstorm that apparently will continue at least through Wednesday.
The student side of the parking lot emptied really fast, while the faculty abandoned ship a bit more slowly. For me it wasn't a big deal, since my class would have only gone on for another hour.
After stopping at Arabica for a coffee for the drive home I decided to take Pearl Road all the way rather than risk a big tie-up on the freeway. It was a good decision, slow but steady.
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Genocide memorial
Driving home I listened to a story on NPR about a memorial in Rwanda commemorating the genocidal attacks in 1994.
There
was mention of an area in the building where bloodstained clothes were draped
on ropes, creating something described as "wrenching, and also beautiful."
It raises the question of how to portray horrendous things in a way that reaches people's hearts rather than making them turn away in emotional self-defense.
Images I remember most clearly from my visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. are piles of personal items—shoes, and eyeglasses. These moved me more than the stark photos of emaciated bodies, in the same way that the clothes in Rwanda reached the reporter in a different way than the actual skeletal remains also part of the memorial.