I had hoped to make this journal a virus free zone, but the pandemic is too much a part of our lives, even though my life has not seriously been affected and I do not know anyone who has the virus.
The lovely scene of nautical social distancing was taken I believe this morning by Steve Earley from SPARTINA near Oriental, North Carolina, on his spring cruise. The Drascombe belongs to his friend, Curt. You can follow Steve and SPARTINA’s track at:
I just finished rereading Katherine Anne Porter’s PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER, a collection of three short novels first published in 1939. All three are good. The last, which gives its name to the collection, is a masterpiece as proven by my remembering it in detail for more than a half century between readings.
The story, Pale Horse, Pale Rider, is set in 1918, encompassing the end of WWI and the Influenza pandemic. I am not going to tell you more. You can buy the Kindle edition for $9.99. You can also find used paper editions. Some for a reasonable price. One on Amazon for the far from reasonable $1,012.90. That is not a misprint. The story is one for the ages and very much one for this age.
It caused me to be curious about the numbers of that pandemic. From Wikipedia:
In the U.S., about 28% of the population of 105 million became infected, and 500,000 to 850,000 died (0.48 to 0.81 percent of the population)
An estimate from 1991 states that the virus killed between 25 and 39 million people (world wide). A 2005 estimate put the death toll at 50 million (about 3% of the global population), and possibly as high as 100 million (more than 5%). However, a reassessment in 2018 estimated the total to be about 17 million, though this has been contested. With a world population of 1.8 to 1.9 billion, these estimates correspond to between 1 and 6 percent of the population.
I did the math about our current pandemic.
As of this morning the NY TIMES reports 1,300,000+ cases of Covid 19 and 82,476 deaths in the US; 4,200,000+ cases and 292,067 deaths in the world. That is a lot of dead people and the numbers are doubtlessly lower than the true total and going to get higher. However the current population of the the US is around 330,000,000 and the world is about 7.8 billion and the number of deaths in the US so far represent less than 0.03 percent of the population. In the world far less than 0.01 percent.
If my math is wrong, please correct me.
PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER brought to mind Albert Ryder’s famous painting, variously known as ‘The Race Track’ or ‘Death On a Pale Horse’.
Ryder also painted many eerie seascapes. This one reminds me of CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE adrift.
And last, under the heading, Wretched Excess, an ad I saw for a new 45’ catamaran with all of the comforts of home for those who really don’t want to be anywhere near the water. Imagine being on that sofa during a gale. Imagine being on that boat during a gale. No. I can’t
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