The Sad Feast of Fools

1 April 2020

Sixties rock band Traffic plays in the background.  “…eyes as sad and deep as you,” as I sit at the kitchen table crafting this. Right now, I am trying to get my head around the projected number of deaths from the coronavirus.  The projected mortality just keeps going up with each briefing.  Hundreds of thousands of Americans will die.  The anticipated minimum death toll will exceed the population of Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan combined. The reality of how desperate the situation is sinks in bit by bit or should I say stone by mighty stone? 

In reality I have been limiting my news consumption.  But I do listen NPR’s disease update each afternoon.  I do not listen to the (p)Resident’s briefings.  Put simply I don’t trust a word he says.  I am ambivalent about Brix and Fauci will be quoted extensively the next day. Advice keeps changing.  When I see articles in publications, they are now saying 10 feet is probably a better distance in practicing social distancing.  Apparently, the droplets can hang in the air a little longer than previously thought. Also, masks are probably appropriate for everyone going out.  The fact that this has been discussed amongst the top medical professionals in country for weeks now, but was not communicated to us because they wanted to keep the supplies available for hospitals, leaves me with befuddled. At best.

Enough of the grousing. Here is my big accomplishment of the day, I cleaned out the medicine cabinet.  I dispatched a box of Tavist-D with an expiration date of 2008.  Also, numerous bottles of Robetusen DM (sp?) with one teaspoon left (and with expiry dates more than five years ago) they went too. The 200 different hotel sized cream rinse bottles have left the building.  All the hotel soaps, those I kept.  I also kept the lotion bottles.  I am washing my hands quite frequently.  The hand lotion bottles may help some of drying of my skin.  

I finished reading John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River. I would highly recommend this volume.  There are so many thematic elements and literary devices that I just loved.  Basic story, a cook in the Northwoods is involved in a bizarre accidental death and must run from a maniacally violent deputy sheriff for decades. There are so many vignettes of life that I have observed from a distance that it kept me engaged for all of its many, many pages. 

I hope this finds you all well.  Peace.  Faith.  Acceptance. Survival.