Billy Collins Captures the Way It Is in Some Days

Photo by Daniil Silantev on Unsplash

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins writes in a folksy contemporary style that has endeared him to many a fan. His poem Some Days is typical of the light touch he uses to amuse us while providing a morsel to chew on afterwards.

In between this intro and the poem I thought I would throw in a couple unrelated items for you to think about. The first is an article I read on Medium titled, The Deepest Hole in the World. I don't care much for publications with limits but I suppose they're there for a reason. Medium is free of advertising so they need rely on other methods of rewarding their contributors.

The second is this little item that surprised me, found on the CDC website. If you came of age in the Sixties, do you recall a flu pandemic that killed a million people? Probably not, because we were distracted by a Vietnam War, riots in the streets and assassinations (MLK and Bobby).

According to the CDC the estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older. It also states that the H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus. Seasonal H3N2 viruses, which are associated with severe illness in older people, undergo regular antigenic drift. There is not a lot of detail but you can read about it here and find links to other past pandemics.
See: 1968 Pandemic (H3N2 virus)

* * * *

And now, Some Days by Billy Collins.

Some Days
Some days I put the people in their places at the table,
bend their legs at the knees,
if they come with that feature,
and fix them into the tiny wooden chairs.

All afternoon they face one another,
the man in the brown suit,
the woman in the blue dress,
perfectly motionless, perfectly behaved.

But other days, I am the one
who is lifted up by the ribs,
then lowered into the dining room of a dollhouse
to sit with the others at the long table.

Very funny,
but how would you like it
if you never knew from one day to the next
if you were going to spend it

striding around like a vivid god,
your shoulders in the clouds,
or sitting down there amidst the wallpaper,
staring straight ahead with your little plastic face?

Wuhan and the Coronavirus--How Much Worrying Should We Be Doing?

Wuhan U of Technology. Photo by Benjamin Chris on Unsplash

The story that caught my eye was the one that said Wuhan is a city the size of London. That's a pretty good sized city. Why have we never heard of it? Well, because China has boatloads of large cities, and not just Shanghai or Beijing.

It's really hard to gauge the degree one should be worried about this new virus strain that's causing shockwaves around the globe. Are we looking at another bubonic plague that wiped out one-third or more of Europe?

Currently this particular virus has struck more than 2000 people, and killed 106. The hysteria it has engendered shows that we live in a very different world than 14th century Europe in the days of the Black Plague.

Back then we had no pharmaceutical industry. We hardly had any understanding of how disease is transmitted. There were no antibiotics, no vaccines for anything, and no comprehension of the role of cleanliness with regards to health care. And no Twitter to spread the panic immediately in all directions.

Acttually, Wuhan is a fairly important city in the grand scheme of things. This is partly why the story has made such an impact. You can read more about Wuhan here, and see a nice map showing its relationship to the rest of China's big cities.

A second reason this story has shaken people is that it is a virus transmitted from person to person. According to the World Health Organization (WHO) cholera still kills thousands of people each year, with some estimating the death toll to be 100,000 or more. That is a lot of heartbreak. Yet, for the most part the cause is bad water in specific areas remote to us, so we seldom if ever think about it, because it's not happening here.

Coronavirus Info

Artist rendition of the Wuhan coronavirus

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) coronaviruses are nothing new. They have been around for years in various strains. The CDC site states: "Human coronaviruses are common throughout the world. Seven different coronaviruses, that scientists know of, can infect people and make them sick. Some human coronaviruses were identified many years ago and some have been identified recently. Human coronaviruses commonly cause mild to moderate illness in people worldwide."

For more info about coronaviruses visit the Coronavirus page from the CDC.

What's interesting is how these different organizations present the information. The CDC and WHO strive to present facts for the purpose of keeping people informed. It's science and data. Because they know that whatever they say can trigger a panic, they try to be careful with their words.

On the other hand, the media loves hysteria. It sells papers, garners eyeballs. And so we find this inflated story now going viral: WHO Has Admitted an Error in Its Assessment of Wuhan Coronavirus Risk. If you read the story carefully, you'll see that WHO has not determined that the future of humanity is at risk.

At the end of the article we see the organization is always going to be on the hot-seat in these matters. If they react too fast, they get criticized for stirring up the hysteria. If they react too slow, well.. It's the old adage, "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."

Meantime, life goes on... 

Lions and Tigers, and Swine Flu… Oh My!

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. ~ H. P. Lovecraft.

Evidently a lot of people are seriously concerned about the swine flu which has penetrated our shores. The Washington Post gave it a full page of coverage and in one hour yesterday there were 10,000 tweets on Twitter pertaining to the latest details of this potential epidemic. A search on Google News for swine flu revealed more than 33,423 news articles about the potential pandemic.

There may be good reasons for concern when it comes to these kinds of things. The 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic killed more people than World War I which preceded it. In fact, that flu killed more people than the Black Death Bubonic Plague of 1347-51.

Children would skip rope to a nursery rhyme about the flu that went like this:

I had a little bird
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
and in-flu-enza.

The number of actual deaths in Mexico from flu has been less than 200 and only 26 attributed to the strain of flu being called "swine flu." Ironically, while we're telling Americans not to travel to Mexico, the European Union is beseeching its people to forgo travelling to the U.S.

If all this flu news is giving you the blues and you want to keep current with it all, here are some steps you can take to track the swine flu.

I have not lost any sleep over this except to worry a little whether it's possible get infected thru online social networks. Actually, maybe someone will suggest that MySpace and Facebook are helping ameliorate the spread of the disease since we do all our socializing online now instead of face-to-face.

For the record, if you're especially concerned, the Center for Disease Control has a lot of good information available, too. And don't worry about those pork chops in the fridge. They'll be just fine.

To fear is one thing. To let fear grab you by the tail and swing you around is another. ~ Katherine Paterson.