State of reading

This is the stack of books I have read since May.

the (four) books-for-fun are on the top, the remaining (eight) books are books for edification/continuing education.

I finished "America's Forgotten Pandemic" today. I ordered a copy after reading the Kolata book on the flu; she drew on it for some of the background in her book. It was....a pretty harrowing read. The worst was reading the accounts of the men who sickened on troop ships, either going "Over There" or coming home.

Crosby devoted some attention to the account of Private Robert James Wallace, who survived the flu (and the war) and apparently wrote his experiences later. On the crowded ships it was impossible to find space for all the sick away from the well, and a lot of the men were sent up to lie on the deck. Wallace was one of them; he recalled his mess kit, puttees, and a few other pieces of kit being washed overboard while he was too unwell to account for them (and he got cussed out later by a higher-up for having lost them. I know "that's the Army for you" but I also admit that kind of thing is the sort of thing that just...bothers me, as a conscientious person, getting chewed out for something that was beyond your control)

Anyway, when he finally got moved indoors (these ships were apparently repurposed civilian ships; Crosby comments that he was moved to what had been a salon for paying passengers). A nurse came to him and asked him if she could wash his feet for him.

And I admit, that was one of the points where I teared up. Both because of her comment - as she removed his socks and asked him how long it had been since he had put them on, and he reckoned twelve days. But mainly because the image of someone coming to wash someone's feet - well, that resonates with me; the whole scriptural allusion and the fact that for several years running the Maundy Thursday service at my church had a symbolic version of it*.

Later, a fellow patient asked Wallace to call the medics, because he needed water. Wallace was too weak to get it himself, and he called for help again and again. Eventually the other man told him "Don't bother any more....I won't need it" and by the time the medics arrived the man was dead.

(*of course, this year we didn't HAVE a Maundy Thursday service. Or an in-person Easter service)

And other things, harrowing in the sense of "history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme" - repeated waves of disease, many starting in the weeks following big celebrations or get-togethers. Masking, and people who refused to wear masks. Quarantines, and apparently some people breaking quarantine. In some households, nearly everyone being too sick to tend to themselves, in some cases a child being the one having to care for everyone. Schools being closed (In those days, no instruction whatsoever - at least now there can be some semblance of distance education, at least in families that have a device and the internet), public venues being closed. Also "rhymes" in the fact of the science so often being wrong - there was talk of "useless vaccines" being produced (most against what what known as Pfeifer's bacillus, which caused pneumonia in some but wasn't the proximate cause of the flu)

I will also note a couple of things:

First, some patients reported intestinal disturbances, and that makes me wonder if the whole idea of "stomach flu" got started then. You hear people still talk about that - when what we call "stomach flu" is really often some kind of norovirus or some other little gastrointestinal virus that isn't really an influenza.

And also - some reports of neurological issues. People's personalities changing after they recovered. The comment about how Wilson - even before his debilitating stroke - seemed listless and disinterested (after having been someone who apparently drove himself hard) after recovering from the flu. And I wonder - yes, I know coronavirus and influenza viruses are very different viruses - but if we don't fully appreciate some of the neurological toll serious viruses may take?

At the end, Crosby addresses the "forgotten" pandemic idea - that not much history was written about it. His argument is that the war took precedence, and in those days pandemics were a more common thing (there had been a flu pandemic around 1890, and ironically that may have been what protected older people - they had some degree of immunity). But I also wonder if people just wanted to forget the horror of what happened - I know after the coronavirus pandemic is over, ten or more years hence (if I am still alive; if we actually see an end to this), I will not want to tell some young whippersnapper what it was "like" to live during that time.

He also addresses the "Lost Generation," though of course many of those writers (the men at least, though I think Gertrude Stein was an ambulance driver in France) were more affected by what they saw in the war. (Then again: Katherine Anne Porter wrote a series of short stories addressing the 1918 pandemic, "Pale Horse, Pale Rider" - which I want to read some time, just....not quite yet.)

It was a worthwhile read, I think, but very difficult (Emotionally more than structurally/vocabulary wise, though it is more densely and academically written than Kolata's book)

***

So that makes eight continuing-ed books; I draw nearer to my goal.

I think this one will be next:

More natural history/geography, and I need a rest from death and disease for a bit.

I do plan to read more than ten; I am thinking this fall while I am holding my "distanced" office hours (especially the ones I do from home), I can have a book going while waiting for students to "show up" to the Zoom meeting room).

I have a LOT of academic books I've bought down through the years and not gotten around to reading. I guess maybe that's my big pandemic activity - doing a lot of catch-up reading. Not as sexy or cool as writing a symphony or designing knitting patterns (or writing King Lear or developing The Calculus), but I guess it's better than nothing.

As for fun reading: I am about halfway through Taran Wanderer (the next book in the - what would you call it? Quintogy? Of Prydain novels) and I'm *almost* done with a John Dickson Carr mystery called The Crooked Hinge (which is really good - the "detective" - well, the amateur detective - is basically a pastiche of GK Chesterton and he is very entertaining. The story is good too, just enough creepiness and hints of the occult/supernatural which looks like they will be rationally explained. I may finish this one tonight...>)