The lady of the pigeons. On the lookout for an image of a global crisis.

READING COMPREHENSION.

Pre-reading.

1.What can you see in the picture?

2. This picture was taken from a video that got viral and circulated in watspat recently? Have you seen it? Do you know the story?

3. What other videos or pictures did you get? Choose just three or four, those you consider more interesting?

4. How did you feel the first week of lock down? Did you feel different the second week? The third? Have your feelings, attitudes, routines changed from the beginning till present day? How?

5. I am sure your parents, grandparents or great grandparents have told you about the Spanish Civil War? Can you find an image that represents that War? Look on the internet , copy and paste on your task document.

6- Do you know, remember, any important historical events? Do you link them to a particular image?

7- What is the Cold War? 

7- Vocabulary. Find the meaning of the words in bold before reading the text. Make a list.

Read the test.

    Drizzling end-of-March Tuestay on the second lock-down week. The first week took us by surprise, we could just see the surface , the fun part. Funny videos meddled with pseudo-information that minutes later became fake through the mercy of another whatsapp. Of all the hundreds I got in my mobile device, I found one that I particularly enjoyed, probably because I could see some poetry in it. It was a video of a woman in Benidorm. She was alone in the middle of the street pushing her shopping cart; no people, no cars, just flickering lights and eyes on adjacent buildings. Somebody was recording the scene from above, from a nearby balcony, and you could hear the people behind the camera laughing and commenting on this woman and the dozens of pigeons that made her advancing a military mission. Now, they were standing on the asfalt, the woman in the middle. You could imagine her in the verge of something at the crossroads of laugh and panic. Then she managed to step forward with decision to get to the other side of the street and all the hundreds of pigeons followed. The scene lasts no more than a minute and finishes abrubtly with this lady still prisoner of the birds. This scene made us laugh for a few seconds until its impact was substituted by the effects of dozens of more videos .

    The image of the “lady of the pigeons” has an indisputable funny side but if we look closely or from a different perspective, we can get to  conclusions of who we are and where are we leading to with tamed nature taking control of humans and taking us back to the beginning of times. This is the second week. The puzzlement tinged with enjoyment seems to be subsiding and giving way to a new awareness. We start to realize the limits of our confinement are not simply physical and we start to feel , in many ways, the weight of history. From time to time, and sometimes, all of a sudden, something happens worthy of being linked to a year and be kept in history books. Then, historians use these data to draw their conclusions and publish books. To make it short I will just name two that we all bear in mind: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 or the attacks to the Twin Towers on 11th September 2001. These events gave us, momentarily, a role in history. For days or weeks we could feel that we were part of something, that we belonged somewhere. And all this is stored in images. When I first saw the planes impacting on the Twin Towers I was having coffee with some friends at a local bar. I will always remember the image that was going to be reinforced into our retinas by constant repetition. I was much younger in 1989 but I still remember the images of people doing away triumphantly with what was the physical symbol of the Cold War. Out of the debris the young generation born under the auspices of restrictions emerged with freedom imprinted spirits. For years we have been offered pictures for what we had to keep, some powerful ones we will keep forever, like the ones mentioned.

    What will be the picture representing this period of global crisis? I chose my “lady of the birds”, but others would opt for an image of the so much reproduced coronavirus with its spikes and everything. We have the feeling that we are going through one of the most important moments in contemporary history. I am not afraid to say that we have just crossed a line, or the line. We are leaving something behind, and forever. The only thing we do not have yet is a picture to keep in store. We have, instead, thousands, millions of them, that are being distributed non-stop through invisible channels. Previously, we talked of World History when we meant European History. The line we have crossed has for sure at least two implications. The first is that from now on history will be a global matter. The second, that we will not be able to take nature out of the equation. That is probably what makes it so hard to find a single picture that sums up the complexity of a phenomenon that is so widespread, has no specific setting and in which nature, and not humans, takes the leading action.

Andreu Torregrosa


ANSWER.  

1- What would you say this text is about? Choose one.

a. A woman that feeds the pigeons in Benidorm.

b. About the way we remember things by linking them to an image. It is difficult to find an image that represents this event because of its characteristics. 

2- Why did the author of the text (me) choose this particular picture or video?

3- Why does the author say that after the second week we start to feel the weight of history? What do you understand?


4- What two historical Events are mentioned in the text? What are the images linked to them?


5- What are , according to the text, the characteristics that make this event different from other previous historical events?
 

6- What do you think of the text? 

WRITING PROJECTS:

6- Write a diary with at least three entries where you explain your daily routines, how do you feel, what do you think, what have you read, what have you seen, learnt, etc.  This is a completely new experience for all of us. I am sure it will affect us. We don't know how yet. What do you think? Is it hard for you. Do you think you can learn anything? Is it easy to share a place with your family? Have you changed routines, habits? You can include pictures. Each entry should have at least 120 words.