Month: April 2020

For What It’s Worth

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The song has been running in my head since I heard it early this morning as I tromped up and down the hills around my foothills home. The pain of the steep hills has been replaced by the pain of my broken mind. I’m not depressed, am I? “Children what’s that sound, everybody look what’s going down” reminds me of a flushed toilet with its contents circling before disappearing. Maybe I am depressed.  Thank you, Buffalo Springfield and my playlist.

The song became an anthem for the anti-war crowd in the late Sixties and early Seventies but was not written as such. It was written to protest a curfew put into place around the famed Whiskey a Go-Go, a West Hollywood music venue. The status quo (read conservative adults) had become upset about the noise, loitering and traffic congestion caused by crazy kids high on life, “Young people speakin’ their minds, are getting so much resistance far behind.” The culture clash became known as the Sunset Strip curfew riots and featured counterculture clashes with the Los Angeles Police.

My thoughts, my thoughts…. In the late Sixties, I was not a member of the counterculture. I was still the proud, flat-top sporting, John Wayne adoring, “my country right or wrong” conservative.  I’m still proud just not as conservative as I once was.  My country can be and has been wrong.

I grew out of my flat-top during my high school and college years but no one would have confused me with a long-haired hippie freak.  I ignored protest music for the soulful sounds of rhythm and blues and Beach Music, and bells and Jesus sandles for Weegins and stifly starched khakis.  Afterall if it didn’t effect me why should I worry…well, I’m worried.

Because of my worry I have become the aging, white-bearded, balding hippie, embracing those things I should have embraced fifty years ago, although I still toke on cigars rather than weed and find the conservative drug of choice, beer, and Jack Daniels, more palatable…beer and Jack Daniels separately, not mixed. Certain libations transcend social and political orientations.

I had flirted with the left but hadn’t gone ape-shit liberal until my Autumn years when I found Jimi Hendrix and Janice Joplin more in line with my musical and political taste than Florida-Georgia Line. Country?  That ain’t country.

It always begins with the devil’s music…even if it was from the Sixties.  Having ignored it in my youth it was as if I had discovered Coronado’s Seven Cities of Gold.  First, it’s Rock-n-Roll and before you know it, sex and drugs along with a good dose of liberalism are rearing their radical heads.

I’m a little long of tooth for “free love” and “psychedelics” but my middle of the road liberalism seemed to fit better with what I believe are the ills facing our world; global climate change, hunger, lack of clean water, wage inequality, unchecked capitalism, and a government that reminds me more of a Russian oligarchy.  Funny…my change coincided with the birth of grand children.

My thoughts ramble, I am astounded.  “Something’s happin’ here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.” Those people I considered liberal in my childhood and my early adulthood have become the status quo of today, the conservative adults wondering what has happened to the youth of today…or their aging hippie teacher.

This from the former blue jean, mini-skirted, halter topped or John Travolta “catch me, f@#$ me” leisure suited crowd, now nattily dressed in their dark blue suits and red ties. They are now the conservatives resisting social and political change, many to the point of embracing any conspiracy related to the evils hiding under their beds.

My “outlaw”, dope-smoking brother even became the paragon of the conservative status quo, forgoing Seventies drug use and briefly flirting with Tea Party politics.  Well, he is still a tee shirt, cargo pants kind of guy.  At least he wears his UNC cap “fore and aft.”  I believe it might have something to do with marriage and business ownership.  Settling down?

My characterization is unfair, my brother is the epitome of the too-often quoted, “social liberal, fiscal conservative.” He helped start and continues to support a food kitchen and other social programs.

The give away is his musical tastes.  They are “neo-hippie” and “Americana”…kind of like mine. He doesn’t think modern country is country either.  It seems his square pegs won’t fit in my round holes…maybe I should take a look at my own square pegs.

Truth?  We don’t stray far from each other’s political or social beliefs. We enjoy many of the same things, and share a live and let live attitude.  I just find it necessary to give grief to my younger brother.

What amazes…and concerns me are the protests popping up.  I should say the types of protests.  Stanchly conservative, dare I say right-wing reactionaries…protestors dressed in camo and battle gear, sporting assault-style weapons have replaced hippies putting flowers down the barrel of rifles.  What?

Make Love, not War does not seem to be their mantra. I think the lyrics from Dylan’s All Along the Watchtower, might fit them better.“All along the watchtower, princes kept the view.  While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.”  It seems they want to keep the masses in view…and under their thumb.Based on Isaiah, I like the Hendrix version the best.

It was just a few years, months ago, the same folk were shaming “liberal” teachers for walking out of their classes for more pay and smaller class sizes, global climate change idiots led by a sixteen year old, railing against Black Lives Matter, and cheering when Native Americans were arrested or water blasted for protesting an oil pipeline through their native lands. Oil pipe…peace pipe…hum…water pipe.

The hippie legions from fifty years ago are either rolling in their graves or wondering what kind of bad shit was in those edibles or ‘srooms.

“What a field day for the heat.  A thousand people in the street.  Singing songs and a carryin’ signs.  Mostly say, “hooray for our side.” 

It’s time we stopped.  Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.”

Stephen Stills was quoted saying, “It (For What it’s Worth) turned out to be indicative of what was about to happen.” And I would add, “Continues to happen.” The only changes are the participants and the battlefields they argue over.

“There’s battle lines being drawn and nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”

***

Added note:  I don’t want to be  accused of viewing history through rose colored granny glasses.  Not all left led protest were peaceful and the violence was not necessarily prompted by the minions of the status quo.  At least the police didn’t face protestors with AR-15s.

I decided to include All Along the Watchtower….

YouTube.  Jimi Hendrix live in Munster, 1/14/69

Buffalo Springfield, YouTube Vid of them at the Hollywood Palace in 1967.

The Flower Power photograph is by Bernie Boston, taken during “March on The Pentagon”, 21 October 1967.

Featured image is of protesters of the Michagin shelter in place order.

 

The More Things Change…

/ cigarman501 / 7 Comments

…the more they remain the same.

Doing a little light reading…taking a little look-see at the Bubonic Plague.  Wow…the greatest of all pandemics.

I’m bored.  The better half is watching the Hallmark Channel which is like the greatest all-time worse things to do during a self-quarantine due to our most recent pandemic.  Oh, it’s baseball season…but it’s not.  At least it is the Hallmark Mystery Channel.

As I did my light reading, I could not help but notice similarities in our reaction to our present pandemic, Corvid-19, and the way our fourteenth-century forefathers reacted.  There may be something to this “history repeating itself.”

What concerns me is that despite some seven hundred years of information and knowledge-gathering, we do not seem to be any better prepared to deal with it scientifically than we were then.

A brief history lesson.  The Black Death probably came from Central or East Asia along what was known as the Silk Road.  Traders transported their goods to major European cities but also carried stowaways in the form of rats.  These rats carried other stowaways, fleas.  The fleas carried a bacterium, Yersinia Pestis.  The fleas require a live host, the rats, and when the rats died, the fleas carrying Y Pestis simply jumped to the next closest host…another rat or a person.  Y Pestis carrying rats caused the Bubonic Plague.

During the Middle Ages, even the late Middle Ages, hygiene was…not…very…hygienic.  It wasn’t as bad as it has been portrayed but the flea carrying rats found a fertile environment to procreate in and an overcrowded population in cities chock full of hosts.  In other words, soap and water would have helped during these times as would a goodly amount of D’con had it been available or the invention of a better rat trap.

“Healers,” monarchs, and religious leaders never connected the plague with rats, fleas, and Y Pestis.  I want to give them a pass.  They hadn’t developed past barbers overseeing bleedings, leeches to help keep the four humors of the body in balance and the burning of incense and sulfur…as well as rosemary, amber, musk, and fragrant flowers.  When they walked, people took their scents with them, carrying packets of herbs…the beginning of the perfume industry.

What is our excuse?  Despite advanced warning, people in high places chose to ignore the danger in hopes it would go away with the April warmth and humidity…we’ve been through two Aprils, and it is still here.

I ask the question because we would rather latch on to any conspiracy theory rather than science.  We would rather believe the opinion of a college dropout trying to sell advertisements on YouTube or on certain “news” channels or an Indian with a ‘piled high and deep’ degree in military science rather than epidemiologists with an MD following their names.  I digress.

We need a Jew to sacrifice to the purifying flames of a good ole witch burnin’ like in Ivanhoe.  Maybe we can use vestal virgins to keep the fires going.  We seem to be stoking the fires of disharmony, willing to burn our country to the ground instead of pulling together, not that our European forefathers were any better…but then we do benefit from scientific knowledge over superstition.  Don’t we?

Consider this, many Europeans at the time believed the supernatural, earthquakes and conspiracies were to blame.  God’s wrath, bad air released by earthquakes and the Jews, friars, witches, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers, and Romani were to blame.  Scapegoats, we must have scapegoats! 

Like those going before us, a large group believes, “It couldn’t just be a virus?”  There must be some ulterior motive behind it, even though the science says otherwise.  At least our forefathers knew nothing of viruses or bacteria.

One widely held Middle Ages’ conspiracy theory was that the Jews were poisoning the water supplies.  Some old Jewish guy was seen feeding cracked grain to the ducks probably.  Christians had good reason to wonder, I guess.  Jews didn’t come down with the black, oozing lymph nodes as often as Christian Europeans, but no one considered Jews bathed more often and kept their homes clean and free of rats.  Hygiene, simple hygiene.

There is a parallel right there.  Have you seen the news shows and YouTube videos teaching us how we should wash our hands?  Seems after seven hundred years we would have progressed farther.

Another point to ponder, Jews lived separately from Christians in a type of “mandatory” self-quarantine before the Black Death hit and had a higher survival rate as an added result.  The Christian response was to burn them out…homes and entire towns.  They would have done better to have burned their own towns, killing the fleas and the rats that carried them.  That would have slowed down the plague more than burning a witch or a Jewish town or two.

Our response to stay home orders or quarantine?  Marching men, blocking traffic with automatic weapons.  Gonna shoot that bad, boy virus?  No, but you can’t force me to tempt fate…or the health of my family and friends.  Much love to the healthcare worker who stared some of them down.

At least we are not burning Jewish towns but violence against Asians has risen.  Chinese bioweapons are poisoning our air supply with 5G carrier waves after all or is it, Bill Gates?  When he squints behind those hornrims, he looks a bit Chinese.  Scapegoats, we must have scapegoats with a conspiracy theory or two…just like my European forefathers.

An interesting fact during the Black Death.  The poor had a much lower incidence of survival.  They were already compromised.  Broken down by poorer diets and a harsher lifestyle, the serfs were the first to die from God’s wrath and went to their maker in much higher numbers.

Is there a parallel there?  I’m sure if I looked at the great flu pandemic of 1918-1919, I would see the same thing.  The poor dying in greater percentages.  I can see men sitting in their tall office buildings shrugging their shoulders and nodding in approval of “survival of the fittest” while their workers died, or men in business suits saying sacrificing our family members for the good of the economy is an honor.

During the Corvid-19 scare, we are seeing it again.  Compromised groups, groups without access to healthcare, people we call “essential workers” are being sacrificed for the greater good of our economy.  We are seeing high numbers infected by racial profile and interestingly, among grocery workers.  Along with them are the aged and those with underlying issues.  People we should be protecting instead of shrugging off as simply a statistic of “selective” Darwinism.

The response of some, “Well it’s not Corvid-19 killing these people, it’s their underlying conditions.”  Really?  You should go bleed yourself…a gallon should end the problem.

Every pandemic has caused major social upheaval.  Corvid -19 will be no different.  The Black Death led to the rise of towns and the middle class, the collapse of feudalism, the Reformation, just to name a few historical changes.  You should read about the changes caused by the Black Death to get an idea of what might be ahead for us.   Don’t I’ll write about it eventually.

The first thing you should keep in mind, the Black Death only peaked in the mid-1300s, it didn’t go away.  It came back repeatedly.  Corvid-19 will spike again if we choose superstition over science.

***

Superstition is not the best word, but I don’t know what might be.  We have a cult that believes nothing put forth by our scientists, medical doctors, or news reporters and that a robust stock market somehow helps us all.

The picture of the rat…I personally have nothing against four-legged rats if they stay in the wild.  I don’t like the two-legged version anywhere.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0KTel1ZOkEs6ionAjK8k5jwlt8q9QKXKdsazPkJQYrwJD2ZPhwsMtCpZs

Questions With No Answers

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Before social distancing became the in thing, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in thirty years…jeez…more like forty.  I was excited to see her…considering our history excited is not the best descriptor.  Thrilled is a better word.  I was thrilled to see her.

We had a short-term tryst back in the day…just scratching certain itches.  Nothing heavy, a “friends with benefits” kind of thing before “friends with benefits” was a thing…it was the “free love” Seventies after all.  As I think back, I realize there was nothing free about love or even its unreasonable facsimile, lust.

She didn’t recognize me, even when I tried to explain who I was.  Despite the empty feeling in my stomach, I didn’t push it.  She seemed anxious in a bad way.  I think she’s had a stroke or is self-medicating…am I being narcissistic?  Maybe it was my beard, the balding head?  No, I believe there was something wrong.

She seemed frail and infirm.  A woman who once strode through the world confidently was reduced to little shuffles reminiscent of a Chinese woman who had had her feet bound.  The strong alto voice lacked volume and power.  The tall, long-legged, pleasing body seemed to be collapsing in on itself.  Always slender in a good way, she was much too thin.  Maybe it was me looking back on memories through my rose-colored reading glasses.

We remained friends after we both moved on to other places and people…at least I thought we had.  At some point, she seemed to disappear…but, not from memory.  I’ve thought of her often over the years wondering what happened to her.  Wondering if she was happy.  Remembering how foolish I had been.

I wondered if she had moved to a distant part of the world.  Whenever I asked friends, “Have you heard from….”, the answer was always in the negative.

In the mid-80s she decided she was gay and fell under the influence of a “stereotypical” lesbian woman.  You may substitute whatever “stereotype” you wish.  This woman is much more than a stereotype and stereotypes are such oversimplifications.

Still, the time was the Eighties and I was shocked and full of questions.  I’ve often wondered if she crossed over because she was truly lesbian or was it because she had been wounded so many times by people of my gender…or was it I was such a bad lover and friend I drove her to it.  Insecure much?  Ah…yes!

She stumbled and fell over several relationships during those late Seventies and early Eighties.  I wonder if I helped to trip her up as she attempted to recover.  An unwanted splinter under the fingernail of life.  You can tell she is an enigma, she always was.

Are my concerns more about me and my own guilt?  Is it about my own narcissism?  Is it my over-inflated self-importance?  Questions I can’t answer.  Maybe questions I fear to answer.  My greatest question, “Are you happy?”  I hope the answer is yes.

There are questions I can’t even ask.  My friend has dropped off the face of the earth even though she lives exactly where she has always lived.

I think about the crowd we ran with during those thrilling days of yesteryear.  Those days we were lucky to survive.  Those of us still alive have remained in touch.  More so as we have gotten older.  It is as if she has cut all ties with those days and the people who inhabited them with her.   Maybe she wanted to move forward while the rest of us are pulled toward the past.  I know I once did the same thing when my own mistakes became too much of a burden.  Memories too painful to remember…except you do.

Questions, more questions.  Answers, no answers.

***

Don Miller’s author’s page can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0813oF-UzSxgl3eyxNYLytu5JhnD70NuizUBdFlbjT2LTyVAXjPEBJZZE

I’m Havin’ a Birthday….

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Seventy years ago, today, April 9, the world was blessed with a bouncing baby boy…me.  Said with a big grin, “I remember it well; it was a clear and crisp Easter Sunday”…I actually don’t remember anything about it.

If family stories are to be believed, my father went to bed on April the eighth moaning about an early morning Sunrise Service he really didn’t want to attend.  Ernest got up earlier than he intended.  I got my mother up quite early.  I was weeks ahead of my arrival date.

True to form, I have little patience, but I did make them wait until I was ready to emerge and conquer the world.  I understand it was a long day, especially for my mother.  I was worth it, I’m sure, but I am still waiting to conquer the world and time is running out.

Freaking seventy?  Where did the time go?  Wasn’t it just yesterday I was standing to wait for the bus to take me to my first day of school?  When it comes to birthdays, time flies whether you are having fun or not…I’m having fun right now, I’m just having it slowly.

As I sit typing away, I don’t feel seventy…until I get up maybe.  The fibrous materials holding these old bones together will protest the rapid movement associated with standing and walking but compared to many of my peers I’m doing okay.  I’ll run (eye roll) and walk three and a half miles as the sun creeps above the horizon.  I’m pretty proud of that but in the back of my mind, I hope I survive the day.

The mirror tells no lies.  I look at peers and wonder, “Why do I look so much younger than they do?”  Then I’ll look in the mirror and wonder, “Who is that guy?”  Maybe it’s the harsh light…of reality.  Wasn’t it just yesterday I was the good-looking kid with the crewcut?  Now I’m the old balding guy with the big nose and ears.

Did you know the only body parts that continue to grow as you age are your ears and nose?  If I live long enough, I’ll resemble Dumbo the Elephant.  A little boy points, his voice shrills with fear, “Look, look Mom!  The old man just tripped over his ears?”

I expect I might trip the light fandango through the memories of previous years.  I try to be forward-thinking and there are plenty of warm and fuzzies but I’m thinking about family and friends I have lost over the years.  They flash across the face of my mind.  Snatches of people, some in black and white.  The problem is as you get older, the list grows longer.

No!  I’m not lamenting my birthday.  The alternative is not good.  My memories are all happy ones, a young boy surrounded by family, blowing out the candles on his cake.

I am lamenting the quarantine.  It’s been six weeks since I’ve seen my daughter’s family except in pictures.  I remember the last time I saw the grandbabies.  I can feel their arms wrapping around my legs…maybe I shouldn’t go there.

So, it’s my birthday.  One of those momentous ones.  Born in a year ending in zero it’s too easy to keep up with them.  I’ve heard all the trite sayings about age being just a number,  I’m not old I’m a classic, etc., but the fact is the road ahead is much shorter than the road behind.  The Bible says I am living on borrowed time so once more I’m going to try and make this trip around the sun a bit more momentous…I’m not going to jump out of any airplanes.

Happy Birthday to me and a bit of Jimmy Buffett.

“Trip Around the Sun” is a song by American country music artists Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride in August 2004 as the second single from Buffett’s album License to Chill.

Don Miller writes poorly at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?fbclid=IwAR0uOIommkv9nnhPm29GnLeOczmiq5eFTsr_nl-20jF2_0Bt_8fAOyIqkT0

 

Boy! I Say, Boy! You Can’t Quarantine Stupid

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In 2015 I wrote about our Southern reluctance to embrace change.  In the post, “Sot in our Ways”, using a regional pronunciation of the word set, I chronicled our propensity for looking backward.  The phrase forward-thinking is not a part of the vocabulary for many who surround me.  With the invasion of the Corvid-19 virus, I’ve found we haven’t changed in the five years since the original was published…in fact, we’ve become even more resistant with the current political environment.

Our Foghorn Leghorn sounding “guv’nah” (No insult intended, I like his Southern accent.  One should look for something to like in a person)…our governor, Henry McMaster, seems to be resistant to the idea of issuing a “stay at home” order, making my state, South Carolina, a bastion of coronavirus dissent in the region of the Southeast.  Governor McMaster has instead called on all South Carolinians to “use common sense.”  I am afraid…very afraid.

To his defense, according to Charleston’s Post and Courier, Governor McMaster doesn’t believe he can legally issue a stay at home or shelter-in-place order on what I assume are First Amendment grounds.  Judging from the number of people driving around and on the lakes, I would say a large percentage of his constituents agree with him.

Consequently, at this time, he has issued twelve executive orders, closing schools, and other nonessential businesses…wait, schools aren’t essential? Despite these executive orders, SOME have ignored the orders at worse, or tried to find ways around it at best “cuz yur takin’ way mah rights”.  No, you can’t quarantine stupid.

The governor closed furniture and shoe stores while deciding liquor and gun stores were essential.   I wonder how many spouses of either gender will be drunkenly maimed or killed by newly purchased firearms before the quarantine is over.  “Put on your high heeled sneakers….”   (I heard this morning there has been a spike in domestic crimes.  Who didn’t see this coming?)

Breaking News:  As of 5:00 today, April 7, we will be under a “Home or Work” order which will change little that wasn’t in place at 4:59.  It does limit the number of people who can be inside of businesses at one time.  It does not force church closures but it is suggested.

As a retired history teacher, I am quite familiar with our last major attempt at dissent…that was in December of 1860.  I hope our modern-day dissent doesn’t reap the same outcomes ‘cause the last one didn’t go too well.  South Carolina lost 18,000 to 21,000 men, or one of every fourteen white South Carolinians in the Civil War, due more to disease than by shot, saber or Minié ball.  It seems we didn’t keep very good records concerning our slave or civilian populations but I’m sure you could add a few of them to the overall number.

Sorry, back to modern times.  While the US response to the budding pandemic was slow, a great many states in the South were even slower to react against Corvid-19, not just South Carolina,  There are eight other states reluctant to issue stay at home or shelter-in-place orders, none Southern unless you count Arkansas.  We have a large portion of our population who believes not staying at home is somehow “standing up to tyranny”.  I did not know a virus could be so tyrannical but explains why gun stores are still open.

Southerners just don’t like being told what to do by that damn Yankee “gubment” in Washington or its ‘flunkies’ in Columbia.  It doesn’t matter if sheltering might be a good thing to do, might save lives.  It’s the principle of it all, I guess.  Ain’t nobody tellin’ me what to do no matter how stupid I look or if it kills me.  Remember the famous last words, “Hey Y’all watch dis!”

As I drove through the nearby town of Travelers Rest, my facemask and latex gloves already in place, I noticed the downtown streets were somewhat deserted.  That was because everyone was at Walmart or down the road at Lowes.  Lines to the Chik-fil-a Drive Through stretched out to the street.

I used to like my Walmart; it had a higher class of a redneck than most.  Not sure now.  Social distancing be damned, the parking lot was wall to wall with no one particularly concerned with keeping a six-foot cushion.  When I broke down and grocery shopped this early Sunday morning I saw few wearing gloves and fewer wearing masks.  Social distancing?  Not likely.

I think we are confused by the social part of social distancing.  Our teachers did a great job teaching what it means to be social…not so much on distancing.  It’s the opposite of being social.  We shouldn’t be social.  I’ve heard physical distancing used, maybe Guv’nah  Leghorn should use the term.  “Boy!  I say, Boy! Maintain your physical distancing!”  I don’t think it will matter…someone will hear physical and think it means we should get freaky. 

It’s all a government coverup anyway.  Right?  A test run to sweep away our rights just like when the United Nations was invading us during the Obama years.  They’re here to steal our guns….  They didn’t get yours?  You didn’t see them?

Friends and former student’s social media posts make me wonder how we became so susceptible to conspiracy theories.  I remember intelligent kids…maybe I’m losing my memory or maybe they weren’t as bright as I thought.  They don’t seem to know which is going to kill more of us; the virus, the new 5G network or the Democrats attempt to crash the economy to get at Trump.  Let’s combine a few conspiracy theories, shall we?

You did know the coronavirus was created by the Chinese government to weaken our economy. driving down the stock market so they can purchase what little of the United States they don’t already own?  Or, is it part of a human depopulation scheme by the world-class villain, Microsoft’s Bill Gates?  Or, did it stem from a tainted batch of children’s blood that the world’s liberal celebrities drink to stay young?

None of those are correct and have nothing to do with a tainted, undercooked bat sandwich either.  It is a Turkmenistanian bioweapon transmitted over the airways by the 5G death ray, all financed by George Soros, and genetically engineered by Bill Gates to target conservatives only.  I’m sure there is a counter-theory involving the Koch Brothers and liberal bones being burned and crushed into fertilizer.  

Attempting to be humorous, I posted my theory with a LOL emoji in response to a meme.  I had people agreeing and commenting on what that dastardly George Soros might do next.  “For real?” Mentally I see many nodding their heads in agreement.  I actually saw a similar theory expressed today.

Dammit, folks! Everything is not a conspiracy.  Sometimes things are just…things…a deadly coronavirus is just a deadly coronavirus.  Every attempted change is not a bad thing.  Do you resist changing your underwear?  Don’t answer that, just think about it and if you don’t, do so now.  Personal hygiene is important even if not taking the quarantine seriously.

Six feet, wash your hands, keep your hands out of your nose and mouth, stay at home unless you are an “essential.”  For sweet Baby James’s sake, self-quarantine for the good of mankind.

From a smart former student, something I found hopeful,                                                    “It’s okay to take this Coronavirus pandemic seriously…and still find joy in life.  It’s okay to worry about what will happen next week, next month, or next year…and still, make jokes and laugh with friends.  It’s okay to be fearful… .and still have faith that God’s will is going to be done.”

Be hopeful, just be smart.

Addendum

Before my Southern friends and family tar and feather me, I do know there are idiots and conspiracists in all regions.  It is not just a Southern reaction.  I pick on “us” because I know “us”…and if the shoe fits….

The quote is from Katie Orr, a former Tamassee-Salem student, now a teacher, and mother.

Don Miller’s author’s page may be found at https://www.amazon.com/Don-Miller/e/B018IT38GM?

The image of Foghorn Leghorn https://www.pinterest.com/susiewjones/foghorn-leghorn-best-cartoon-ever/

If you are interested in reading ”Sot in our Ways”  https://cigarman501.wordpress.com/2015/09/24/sot-in-our-ways/