…remember when? [DOT 10/5/20]

there was a time...

…so, it might be hard to tell at the moment but it’s sunday…which for some of us is something we like to think of as a day of rest…but for others is a serious affair that involves a lot of paying attention to various frameworks of wisdom & principle handed down from generation to generation in the fond hope that by doing so we might bestow upon the earth a better crop of humanity with each iteration

…being as I’m kind of an agnostic by inclination…& I originally hail from a different small corner of the globe than most of you so might be distracted by one particular aspect of an upcoming anniversary that isn’t necessarily of interest to everybody (or I guess possibly anybody) I’ve wound up kind of thinking maybe it might be nice to offer some options of a sort at this point

…so…you could go with option #1 – it’s sunday…you’re feeling pretty good all things considered…give yourself a break…here’s a little shy of a dozen things the NYT recommends as suitable weekend reading

Joanna Gaines on empire building. A look at the future of travel. Walks that help us cope. Val Kilmer. And more.

…if you like you can bail on the next bit & just scroll until you hit the cartoons which should tell you the comments are about to hove into view…nobody will blame you…least of all me

…why, yes…since you ask…it is in fact possible to cram yet more unsuspecting trios of periods into a single page of improperly punctuated text & pictures…so…at least there’s pictures?

or there will be…go on…there’s cartoons later…I promise…

…full disclosure, though…might be some scrolling involved…maybe we should see if myopicprophet can arrange a “skip-to-the-bottom” button for those who find the little digit showing the comment total too small to click on as a way of jumping straight to the good bit at the bottom of all the doom & gloom & endless links…but while you’re on your way past & before I get to the profusion-of-links-it’s-probably-best-not-to-get-me-started-on thing…if you’ve nothing better to do I’d like to bend your ear about a couple of things I’ve been thinking about lately

…you may have noticed in the last few days that we’ve been marking 75 years since victory was declared in the European theatre (that’s how they spell that in Europe…when in Rome, you know?) at the end of WWII…which has got some people nostalgic…& inclined to draw parallels…particularly when they hope to get a little of that goodwill to rub off in a wartime-president sort of a way

…but there’s another anniversary coming up of a slightly older vintage…namely 200 years since the days of the lady of the lamp

Nightingale 2020

nurses know shit, people…

…but if I’m honest what’s catching me a little harder than I expected is this…if we want to compare the onslaught of this pandemic upon an unsuspecting & largely innocent global population…the Crimean War is a much better model than (with all due respect) the horrific butcher’s bill we all get to blame on a bunch of officially historically-verified for-real Nazi bastards…& that was Nightingale’s war…& what’s fucking killing me (in that hopefully-not-literal way so much seems to be hitting so many of us lately) is that most of the lives she saved in a conflict so memorably profligate in terms of mortality that it’s best remembered for a knowingly doomed rush headlong into the uncertain embrace of a rather more certain death

oh, the wild charge they made…all the world wondered…

…were saved because she managed to force the people in charge to face the reality of the unnecessary loss of life they were causing principally by having their heads entirely up their ass about the necessity of callously writing off the lives of those under their charge…or leading it, as the case may be…while they sat there directing things from the famous rear echelons…& the kicker is…she did that shit with a presentation & a bunch of statistics

https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2010/aug/13/florence-nightingale-graphics

…it’s honestly a fascinating story in a lot of ways but I confess…when I look at the approach being taken to some of our current circumstances some 200 years later I’m finding it a little hard to see the part where we show signs of remembering that sometimes what saves the most lives is listening to the people who are at the sharp end of trying to save those lives rather than the passing whims of the opinionated assholes busy driving them to their graves unnecessarily in pursuit of some supposedly more valuable prize…& this is a rather better place to read about it than this post, to be honest?

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