More poetic thoughts for these awful times.....

These are lock-down times for us all, and for most of us they are essentially unprecedented.  We, or at least I, sit at home, gazing out the window wishing for normalcy.  Would you agree with me, that we are in a time to contemplate the meaning of things, the things that really have meaning?  And, in the absence of other ways that seems even nearly suitable, I try to write my thoughts in verse.  Whether anybody else will think that's appropriate, at least here are examples that seem apt to me.


Gravely, gravely

Gravely, gravely came the news

Of viral pestilential blues

Whence deaths and disabilities

Were nearly universal woes

The toll too great to read the roll

The land beset with sighs and cries

The toll, the toll--we scan the rolls

Of names that once were lively souls

The list grew daily as did sighs

For those who’ll ne’er again give smiles

A roll too long to be all told

Oh, land beset with sighs and cries!

Some day, some day, will names be few

Of deaths that pile, by ones and twos

To add to graves from yesterday:

Then, fertilizing fields of grass

Producing flowers and fragrant dews

Graves once beset by sighs and cries

As the Tombstones Wear Away

(From a walk in an old Massachusetts graveyard)

From tombstones in the graveyard, our history wears away;

Weath’ring very slowly, yet eroding day by day:

Of children falling ere they played, inscribed are many named;

They had brief lives, then passed away, so soon, and ne’er were famed.

Of others passing in decline are memories waning, too,

As tombstoned records of their days are slowly eaten through:

Ah! and since our Earth itself’s a slowly aging ball,

The time will come when no one’s memory exists at all.

Drink Your Clorox!

Drink your Clorox while you can,

UV your innards ‘til they tan

Since soon you will be sure to hear

The spoil-sports telling you to fear:

Advice from higher-ups to shun,

The President’s will leave you stunned!

But no! Since as you conk you're rid

Of need to fear the bad Covid

So, drink your Clorox now, before

The groceries will have no more!

This corona is not a beer, and hard to bear!

Corona Quakes

As our earth shakes

In viral trembling

Pandemic makes

Us fear assembling

Yet let’s insist

Without distorting:

We must persist

In not cavorting!

Keeping distance--

Yards spaced apart

Gives resistance:

Advice that’s smart

That bugs unseen

Could cause such terror:

A fear so keen

Of each mask wearer!

Yet this will pass

As do they all

The end at last--

A passing pall! 

But let it not

From memory fade

Lest we repeat

This grim parade!

The plague of our times.....

What can one do when hunkered down in a plague, something we've not really seen in any of our lifetimes, at least in the wealthier part of the world?  One is to try to express in some way other than dry prose or statistics, what one is thinking.  In that spirit here are a couple of verses, written in the expanse of spare time that we while away, to keep us from worrying too much in these times of plague:

Corona Masking

If all of us would wear a mask

Which, we’ve been shown’s a simple task,

Then none of us would be a loner

While all are safer from corona

A mask like that’s a snap to make

A sane precaution all should take:

With scarf, bandana, or worn-out Tee

I won’t harm you, and you not me!

A Grey Corona Day

I sit here on a grisly day, the clammy wintry kind,

When snow blows cheerfulness into a grisly pall;

A virus called ‘corona’ seems lurking all around,

And causing eerie symptoms, of any kind at all

We can’t be sure how deadly this bug might really be

In most it passes quickly, with sniffles and that’s it

But some, the ill or elderly, are made to fear they’ll see

A fever, cough, or breathing lapse, their final earthly fit

So, while they say that many won’t know they’re sick at all--

A headache it may be, or touch of wat’ry eye,

It only takes a cough to make one’s spirits fall

Since if for some it may be nothing, for others they will die!

To find uplifting thoughts is what we need to do:

To laugh, to smile, or tell a humorous tale,

Recite a verse, perhaps, or maybe even two,

And if also adding music--improvement will prevail!

Corona relief (sort of), in literature

For those of you idle enough to be browsing blog pages during our corona crisis, welcome to our site! 

The site is germ free, but not wiped clean, because, to pass the time in which you are forced to stay put in your house, reading blog posts instead of something more useful to do, here are some relevant reading suggestions:

1.  Albert Camus' The Plague.  Takes place in North Africa, and relates what happened when the country was stricken by a rodent-borne plague.  A short, readable, sobering tale.  Available of course, in English translation

2.  Daniel Defoe's  A Journal of the Plague Year, published in the 1700s, about what happened in England in the 1600s when the plague struck.  Apparently somewhat fictionalized, but still sobering, diary-like account.

3.  Boccaccio's Decameron.  Light relief, as a series of tales are told in turn by members of a group of young people holing up in the countryside outside of Florence as they flee the plague in Italy. 

On Reappearing.....

Holly has done her typical great job of Mermaiding, during which time we have moved from State College, in central Pennsylvania, to western Massachusetts, near Amherst.  We have close friends here, including an also-retired anthropologist from UMass whom we've known for decades.  We hope to resume regular posts very soon.  But unpacking takes precedence!  Where the h*** is that cord and plug that we need for this keyboard?

Unsurprisingly, there will be things to write about.....once the unpacking is done.  There are even things to rant about (though we'll try to restrain ourselves....somewhat).

So, this is just a place-holding reappearance note.  First, we have to find things wherever we packed them, including various cords and plugs so we can use our computer before it runs out of battery power....

Meanwhile, in addition to looking for cords and plugs, we will try to out-wait the external virus, and will try to avoid creating any electronic viruses in our next post......  We hope all of our readers are safe and virus-free!

This is nearly unprecedented in our lifetimes, and shows our vulnerabilities as individuals and as a species.  Hopefully, it will motivate young people to take up the study of viral and other infectious disease dynamics--and lead to the removal of unsanitary or risky circumstances that lead to this sort of pandemic.

Hard times bring out the best in us: Let us learn from that!

This epidemic, or pandemic, is new to most of us in the western world.  We had to answer exam questions about such things, perhaps, in history class.  But it was abstract.  It happened then, to other people, less advanced than we perhaps, elsewhere, of some other language, way back when.  Well, now we are they!

Can we manage through this with minimal damage, but then remember--remember the good that such trials achieve, and keep them as part of the COVID legacy?  Of mutual care and concern. That would, in some tragic sense, be a good, maybe the only good, that can come from it.

Our daughter and her husband and their infant daughter live in a Ground Zero of the epidemic, in  northern Italy.  They are in a small town, but the number of deaths even in their town has mounted. A neighbor has died of it.  At the same time, many there have rallied to help each other through this, including a local doctor, a friend of theirs, who is running herself ragged, in a burdensome protective space-like suit, caring for the many stricken.

A scientist colleague, someone I've never actually met in person (only in an online science discussion site) offered to send financial help to our daughter and her family.  People are writing to check on each other's well-being.  Very nice!

The toll will be substantial. Jobs will lost (our daughter and her husband are musicians who live in part on the classical music gig economy), but economic loss won't be all.  There will be a psychological toll as well.  How long will it take to recover that?

Even so, the local mutual aid, and the strength of extended families and neighbors, will be gains, if the lessons are remembered when the dust has settled and the dead are underground, no longer visible reminding the survivors of what happened.  Maybe wars have had similar effects on survivors in the ravaged areas?  After the fact, unfortunately, but at least getting something good out of something awful.

Can those of us for whom this is just a minor annoyance (where will we get some toilet paper or do we have to use newspaper?) remember it, too?  If not, what will be the cost of our neglect next time something like this comes around?