It must be time to post again- I should reread what I've posted up until now, but well, I'm lazy.
Mardi Gras came in 2020, and it is highly possible it brought COVID to my home town.
There is no real way to know- NOLA is, after all, a port and a huge tourist attraction. People come and go, and post-Katrina, I think it would be fair to say a number of people from "elsewhere" came to save NOLA from itself (or thought they could), and those people would have to go back home every now and then and bring in the virus.Who knows.
In third grade, we took Louisiana history. We had a lovely and well organized history book that was interesting to most of us. We, being post-war baby boomer kids, were exposed to history all the time. Louisiana is rich in history- some good, some not so good. And though we had no context, we were ages 7 and 8 and still had imaginations. What other state had so many flags? Pirates! Cajuns! So many wonderful projects to do for history. And the obligatory laying of wreaths at our founders.
We learned about disease, too. Being a swampy, tropical, mosquito infested city, we actually were known for having experts in tropical medicine.
In my early childhood, there was polio. Mothers hardly knew what to do about it, so they made you wash your hands before coming in to eat, and made you come inside in the summer at dusk. Mothers knew the disease could come for their children at any time and without any warning. They prayed for relief.
We all got the childhood diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, rubeola, impetigo. We were given obligatory tetanus and pertussis shots and a smallpox vaccine. The polio vaccine took a while.
We stood in line in first grade (or so) for the first polio vaccines. No one was allowed to cry. Some parents attended to give the stern parental stink-eye to the whiners and runners. Since back then every parent was YOUR parent ("in loco parentis" for you legal types) and tattled mercilessly to your mother. So you'd suck it up and stick out your very skinny arms to get the shot. No one was let off. And we were sacrificed on the altar of modern medicine that was attempting to rid the planet of the scourge of highly communicable childhood disease. (By third grade there were sugar cubes. That worked.)
We got to feel invincible. So invincible that people would actually refuse to vaccinate their children one day.
And yet, NOLA is in the midst of a pandemic. And it's a no-herd-immunity-go-until-it-can-go-no-more disease.
The City that Care Forgot also forgot that those little invisible microbes don't care about parties or dances or graduations or mothers or grandmothers, etc. They just invade your body and brain and lungs and no one can save you- yet. But soon. Soon people who have studied a great deal will figure out what to do.
Eventually it will end. But NOLA is a vulnerable city all of the time. We are huggers, and kissers, and people who love other people. We love to share food, and we love to be alive. You'd think those positive human enthusiasms would spare NOLA some grief. But this time, it will not.
My prayers for my beloved city and my precious friends who live there still. This will pass, though the cost is yet to be revealed. But it will pass. And we'll drive to see you when it is over.
Mardi Gras came in 2020, and it is highly possible it brought COVID to my home town.
There is no real way to know- NOLA is, after all, a port and a huge tourist attraction. People come and go, and post-Katrina, I think it would be fair to say a number of people from "elsewhere" came to save NOLA from itself (or thought they could), and those people would have to go back home every now and then and bring in the virus.Who knows.
In third grade, we took Louisiana history. We had a lovely and well organized history book that was interesting to most of us. We, being post-war baby boomer kids, were exposed to history all the time. Louisiana is rich in history- some good, some not so good. And though we had no context, we were ages 7 and 8 and still had imaginations. What other state had so many flags? Pirates! Cajuns! So many wonderful projects to do for history. And the obligatory laying of wreaths at our founders.
We learned about disease, too. Being a swampy, tropical, mosquito infested city, we actually were known for having experts in tropical medicine.
In my early childhood, there was polio. Mothers hardly knew what to do about it, so they made you wash your hands before coming in to eat, and made you come inside in the summer at dusk. Mothers knew the disease could come for their children at any time and without any warning. They prayed for relief.
We all got the childhood diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, rubeola, impetigo. We were given obligatory tetanus and pertussis shots and a smallpox vaccine. The polio vaccine took a while.
We stood in line in first grade (or so) for the first polio vaccines. No one was allowed to cry. Some parents attended to give the stern parental stink-eye to the whiners and runners. Since back then every parent was YOUR parent ("in loco parentis" for you legal types) and tattled mercilessly to your mother. So you'd suck it up and stick out your very skinny arms to get the shot. No one was let off. And we were sacrificed on the altar of modern medicine that was attempting to rid the planet of the scourge of highly communicable childhood disease. (By third grade there were sugar cubes. That worked.)
We got to feel invincible. So invincible that people would actually refuse to vaccinate their children one day.
And yet, NOLA is in the midst of a pandemic. And it's a no-herd-immunity-go-until-it-can-go-no-more disease.
The City that Care Forgot also forgot that those little invisible microbes don't care about parties or dances or graduations or mothers or grandmothers, etc. They just invade your body and brain and lungs and no one can save you- yet. But soon. Soon people who have studied a great deal will figure out what to do.
Eventually it will end. But NOLA is a vulnerable city all of the time. We are huggers, and kissers, and people who love other people. We love to share food, and we love to be alive. You'd think those positive human enthusiasms would spare NOLA some grief. But this time, it will not.
My prayers for my beloved city and my precious friends who live there still. This will pass, though the cost is yet to be revealed. But it will pass. And we'll drive to see you when it is over.
