By Scott Shephard

Warning: This is one of my longest posts of the year. And, I guess some would say, it’s political in nature.

On a normal day, when I’m not focused on editing photos, listening to audiobooks, reading camper forum discussions or binge watching “Schitt’s Creek” with Deb, my mind is typically all over the place. Streams of consciousness comes in floods. Today’s post may reflect that, though there is a connection between each part. I would say that the connection is implicit so I’m not going to give it away. There are 4 chapters in my post today.

Chapter 1: Blame the Jews

In 1347, a ship carrying trade goods from the Crimea arrived in Italy. The ships also carried rats which themselves carried a bacterium called Yersinia pestis. The rats jumped ship, the fleas on the rats found human hosts and the humans, who lived in profoundly unsanitary and crowded conditions, spread a new disease to each other. Thus began the Black Death, the most lethal pandemic in human history. It may have killed as many as 200 million people by the time it was done.

Centuries before the development of germ theory and the promotion of the value of sanitation, people of the late middle ages looked to many causes for their ailments. Sick? You’ve got bad blood. So let’s bleed a pint or two out. Sick? The planets must be in just the wrong alignment. (The word influenza comes from an astrological terms that referenced the “influence” of planets on our health.) Sick? You’ve been spending too much time in smelly places, such as swamps and toilets. (The word malaria means “bad air.”)

But the most astounding cause of the Black Death? The Jews were sneaking out at night and poisoning the wells that Christians used. The problem was that the Jews used the same wells and were dying in the same proportion to their population that Christians were. But who needs science and logic when the world seems to be crashing down on you? It’s always been convenient to blame “The Other” for problems, hasn’t it?

Skip ahead to 2020. Causes of COVID-19? The Chinese, of course. Or Democrats. Or - brace yourselves - the investor/philanthropist George Soros. Yes, he’s Jewish and a democrat. That’s almost like Mars and the moon lining up to do their evil.

Chapter 2: Seatbelts Save Lives

The Vikings lost miserably last week. You’d think that would be enough to color my mood. I got over that but I am still troubled by the PSA I saw more than once on Christmas day in which our governor encouraged everyone to wear seatbelts because, as she suggests, ”they save lives.” They are also required by law. Masks, in the era of COVID-19, are largely optional if you ask our governor, however. Not wearing a mask might in fact be the ultimate expression of individual liberty. WTF! That’s all I’ll say about that little bit of hypocrisy.

Chapter 3: The Masque of the Red Death

I found an audio version of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” a while back and listened to it. To make a short story shorter, a plague has swept the land and Prospero, a rich guy, decides to throw a party for his friends. He welds the doors of his castle shut to keep the plague out. People party but they all get mortally sick in what today would be called a “super spreader” event. The problem: someone on the inside had the plague. No one lives happily ever after in this Poe story.

Skip ahead to spring, 2020. Our president boasts that “he shut the US borders to China” and many, many lives were saved from COVID-19. To his way of thinking, he’s a modern day hero. The problem is that A) Tens of thousands of people continued to come from China after the borders were “sealed” B) COVID-19 came indirectly to the USA from China - perhaps from western Europe and C) Over 300,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the USA. 3740 people died yesterday. Prospero, the star of Poes’ story, could have taught our president a thing or two about sealing “borders.”

The Final Chapter: The Meaning of Life

In Albert Camus’ The Plague, there is a character who finds meaning in a time of plague by counting peas all day long. From the outside, it seems pointless and nihilistic. But the character seems satisfied, if not happy, doing what he does from sun up to sun down.

I don’t know about counting peas but I’ve read that puzzle makers are having a hard time keeping up with the demand these days. Blame COVID-19 for the increase in “puzzling” behavior. Because I don’t do puzzles, I can’t relate to what drives people who do. I know that it’s both a visual and intellectual process. And maybe it’s a distraction from the politics, separation and uncertainty that seem embedded in our lives these days. Puzzling is as absurd as counting peas to me. But, as my mother used to say, “It takes all kinds to make a world.”

All that aside, I would say that I’m lucky in that my friends and family are still safe and well. Furthermore, as a somewhat reclusive retiree, my life has not been uprooted. Right now, if you ask me (to borrow heavily from Shakespeare), life does more than “creep in this petty pace from day today.” It is more than a “walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage.” Life is not “a tale told by an idiot . . . full of sound and fury.”

Clearly, I can tell you what life isn’t. But the meaning of your life? Well, you’ve got to work that out on your own. For me the meaning of life exists in my senses, my aspirations, my memories, my friends, my family and even in my fears and weaknesses. Overall, the good outweighs the bad and I’d choose life over the alternative any day. I hope you agree.

2021 looms on the horizon. The future is a promise made to us and, if we let it, it will be a thing of beauty.

Canon R5 1/180 f/6.3 320 ISO