I hope this post doesn’t sound frivolous at a very serious time for our country, but I keep thinking of literature related to plagues and sieges, and I’m realizing that even the most devastating stories have a note of comfort and reassurance.
The film How to Survive a Plague, about the early years of the AIDS crisis, may not be reassuring about Dr. Fauci, who is on the news every day now (he certainly had a chance to learn a lot), but it is very reassuring about what ordinary people can accomplish.
Geraldine Brooks’s novel Year of Wonders is a fictionalized version of what one town in England did in 1665 to halt the spread of bubonic plague. Albert Camus’s beautiful The Plague is the last word on how plague highlights and reflects moral sickness in society but also how some unlikely people surprise themselves by rising to the occasion.
The moral sickness angle makes me think of the reason impoverished school districts are reluctant to close right now: free lunches for children suffering food insecurity. America has many chronically hungry children.
A 1908 novel by Arnold Bennett also comes to mind because of the way life just goes on under the 1870 siege of Paris. It’s called The Old Wives Tale. Although the siege is only a smallish part of the story, you might find it relevant. I read the book at least twice and really liked it.
If you have other recommendations, please add them in Comments.
Anyway, I was planning to make this a photography post. So here I am in a lax self-quarantine (because of age) and starting off with the tombstone of a 33-year-year-old New England soldier who died in Louisiana in 1863. I’m glad we can send a warm thought to Charles W. Stuart today.
From the sublime to the ridiculous: floating gloves permanently lost at the end of the season.
Also, murals in Providence that I’m seeing now in the light of current news. (Still pretty hard to make sense of the one mentioning Esperanto!)
Also in Providence, a cute little replica boathouse next to the Narragansett boathouse, where health-conscious rowers congregate early every morning.
My friend and former boss had her quilt “Explosion” accepted into a show in Watertown, Mass. I took another photo at that show, which I’m saving for a post about border policies.
I really liked how pretty the plants along the side of my house look even past their season.
Next are two cozy and comforting libraries, one in Arlington, one in Concord.
Finally, a comforting cappuccino. Is there a theme here?
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