I don’t think it was quite this antiquated, but close…
In 1957 I was at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. It’s where Winston Churchill* gave his landmark Iron Curtain Speech and it’s where I contracted the H2N2 influenza which was, as they say, going around. It, too, was a pandemic but on a much lesser scale than this scourge straight out of Revelations 6. Boy is it going around.
The word infirmary brings to mind Dylan songs and weird scenes from foreign movies with skeletal people hacking and wracked with pain. But that’s where I was, the infirmary at Westminster, not St. James or Juarez, and when I awoke one day, at the foot of my bed was a surreal scene; backlit from an open window, gauzelike curtains floating in the breeze, were some spectral figures. My father, mother and stepfather. I recall thinking I must be dead as nothing less would bring these people together.
“What are you doing here,” I croaked.
My mother, always one to cut through the bullshit, said, “They said we’d better come. Your temperature was over a hundred and four.” At least that’s what I remember. So it caused them to drive the 150 miles, in separate vehicles I’m sure. I won’t speculate as to mood ie: relief, terror, anticipation. But they came. That was nice.
At any rate, the fever broke and I went on to a life of various accomplishments and/or disappointments. I remember sleeping in the trunk of my primered 1949 Ford during Hell Week at Westminster while my fraternity pledge colleagues dutifully scrubbed bathroom floors with toothbrushes and submitted to similar humiliations. I needed my sleep. I also didn’t wear a freshman beanie—such a rebel.
Maybe that exposure to a badass virus has given me some immunity—that and drinking bleach as That Guy suggested. Small amounts. With salt and lemon. But then that guy is lagging behind in electoral votes as I write this. The other guy, the one who put his arm around his granddaughter on national TV and said, “This is my son Beau, no stranger to politics,” is leading. And some are ticking off the points in Revelations 6 with furrowed brow and tight mouth lines.
Indigenous Peoples Month reading…
November is Indigenous Peoples month. Which I’m sure brings them a wave of joy and forgiveness for “the other peoples” having drawn up over 400 treaties and then having broken Every Single One. Well, what’s a government to do when oil or gold or real estate value is discovered where the Indigenous Peoples were force-marched to settle down? Some treaties were broken out of sheer boredom I imagine. What do you want to do today, Seth? I dunno Hiram, break some treaties?
Well, shoot. Custer Died For Your Sins. It’s a book, an Indian Manifesto, by Vine DeLoria. It’s instructive. He wrote it in the sixties and updated the foreword in 1987. He blasts stereotypes and analyzes the differences between the Indian “plight” and that of Blacks and other minorities, with irony, wit and a bit of sarcasm. I’d say this book is not for everyone, but it is. It sure is. Deloria, a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux Indian, attended rez schools, escaped to various universties and received masters degrees and a law degree; this isn’t his only book, it’s one of more than 20, many of which advocate that the U. S. government own up to its promises and responsibilities. In that respect, Custer Died For Your Sins is for everyone. It’s got a nice index in the back, and the pages from Abernathy to Zimmerman make for some very interesting reading. You owe yourself this actual history in essays. Especially this month.
Another super nonfiction book, Lasso The Wind: Away to the New West by Timothy Egan, exposes some little known massacres (of whites by whites, among other ones) and the boondoggling and scraping bare of the west that never was The West. Mining that left huge lakes of pure poison that gain gallonage by the month and will overflow or are overflowing. (Anyone for Revelations 6?) And so on and on and on. The writing is captivating, and the facts are incontrovertible.
Hey, I’m not taking any morality stance; I’m among the guilty. So no chastisement here except maybe me on me. The covid has me in a bitchy mood. Oh, my phone just gave off a little signal; it says that JB just won the presidency. Well, maybe a new clean slate? A great Hope? Could be we’re fresh outa those but why be cynical? Especially heading into the holidays of November and December. Happy. Merry. Gobble. All that. All I want is a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. And a new electric Hummer (for the ecosystem).
*The first known use of the term “OMG” was in a letter to Churchill over 100 years ago.