RAIN

“Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never Is, but always To be blest.
The soul, uneasy, and confin’d from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.”
― Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

It is late April and a soaking rain will continue throughout the day.  Just what we need to wash winter out of the land.  Moisture to make the buds pop.  Staying in all day is OK because with the virus shutdown we weren’t going anywhere anyway.

In looking up Pope’s quote on hope I discovered that “hope springs eternal” is sometimes used to denote sarcasm.  The prez says he was being sarcastic when he said it might be a remedy for people to ingest disinfectant to treat coronavirus.  I’ve seen the tapes.  No, he wasn’t being sarcastic.  He was serious.  In the meantime, calls to poison control centers have surged.  I assume it was because some people took him seriously.

In Georgia, where the governor has opened up the state for business, you can go bowling or get a tattoo.  I guess it doesn’t matter that Georgia did not even meet the first stage standard for re-opening guidelines put out by the White House.  Even Trump criticized the governor.  Imagine that.

The number of dead from the virus in the last three months now is close to all US combat deaths during the Vietnam war.  Twenty-six million are out of work.  Hogs and poultry are being euthanized because packing plants can’t handle the volume.  Dairy farmers are dumping milk, and farmers are plowing crops under.  Just like during the Great Depression.

The rain continues.  I can hear it on my roof.  I can see it coming down on my lawn and woods through my window.  The sound is hypnotic.  Time to curl up and hunker down.

No one knows when this will be over.  I believe in some ways it will never be over, and we’ll have to adjust to a new normal.  Which might be OK.  This crisis has exposed the flaws of the old normal.  The inequities.  The injustice.  The tendency to disregard science and believe what we want to believe despite the facts.

In the meantime, rain falls.  Spring will pop.  Hope springs eternal—no sarcasm.