Some kind of iris: Glynn Wilson

The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson –

MARION, N.C. — If May flowers spring from April showers, and adversity is followed by good fortune, then maybe the month of May in the year of the Big C might be a harbinger of better days ahead.

We could all use the scent of some flowers about now after two of the most gut wrenching months in human history, at least in my lifetime.

Of course Baby Boomers like me never had to face the Nazis in the trenches of Germany or France in World War I or II, or the concentration camps or gas chambers the Jews faced in that war. I never had to endure the horrors of guerrilla war in the swamps of Vietnam either.

The economic crisis we faced with the oil and gas shortages in the 1970s was a minor inconvenience compared to this. We came very close to a debilitating global economic meltdown in 2008, but most people didn’t really feel the full impacts of what could have been a world changing event. The United States government just printed more money and handed it to the banks, so the ATM machines just kept on working and we all managed to get by, even the real estate sales people who just had to find another way for awhile to make their fortunes.

Nobody had to resort to eating shoe leather like they did in Birmingham, Alabama back in the 1930s during the Great Depression.

In the season of March winds a couple of very long months ago, news of the coronavirus started out almost like fun in the Florida panhandle, right as we moved from the Conecuh National Forest for winter to spring near Pensacola.

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April brought not only showers, but according to the Washington Post. April brought death.

“April’s coronavirus death toll surpassed the Vietnam War’s, and it tested almost everyone…”

“April was death. Bodies stacked, mothers and fathers discarded in bags piled onto refrigerator trucks in hospital parking lots, dumped into mass graves. People leaving this life without farewells, without a last look of love, without a touch.”

“April was cruel. There have been worse months in the history of human beings, but not many. An average of 446,000 people died each month from August to October in 1942 during Germany’s mania of industrialized murder, the Holocaust. In the United States, the deadliest month was October 1918, when about 200,000 people succumbed to the flu.

“The new virus is a swift executioner. In the war in Vietnam, 58,209 Americans were killed between 1960 and 1975. In the battle against the novel coronavirus, 58,760 Americans died in April alone. Both crises leeched into existing fissures, exacerbating political and social divisions. But the war analogy goes only so far; in this conflict, we have no big guns, no ready defense. All we can do at this stage is hide and try to manage the damage.”

I thought I was a goner at one point, scrambling to get my affairs in order and preparing a final resting place.

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But according to the old proverb, adversity is followed by good fortune, or as the saying goes, “April showers bring may flowers.”

I now find myself sitting in a camp chair sipping good coffee on top of a hill in rural North Carolina overlooking a quaint little valley below, with the Blue Ridge mountains off in the distance on the horizon and a clear view of Mount Mitchell.

For the time being at least, I’ve found another safe haven to ride out the COVID-19 storm.

According to the latest numbers, 3,513,507 people that we know of worldwide have contracted the coronavirus, and 245,544 have died. In the U.S., 1,167,264 have it, and 67,605 have died.

In North Carolina, 11,664 people have tested positive, and 430 have died, that we know of.

Testing is still hard to come by in many places, so we will never know the real numbers.

While it looks like we may be turning a corner and at least getting used to the stay-at-home, stock up on rice and beans situation, some states are planning a radical experiment to reopen everything to try to get the economy going again. There is a lot of pressure to do this, even from right-wing protesters who still believe the first thing President Donald Trump said about it when he called it a hoax and a conspiracy theory on the part of Democrats to sabotage his reelection in November.

They never stopped to listen to a word uttered by top U.S. health official Anthony Fauci, and apparently won’t hear from him, since the White House has refused to allow him to testify before Congress.

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It doesn’t take a Nostradamus to predict what will happen next. As people start to believe things can “go back to normal” because government and business leaders tell them so, and people start believing this nonsense about going back to “business as usual,” the coronavirus death toll curve will spike up again.

If we could just stay the course for a few more months, there might come a time when we could bring back a sense of normalcy. But to do it now, while the death toll is still rising, is sheer madness.

People are just now getting used to stocking up on groceries and staying home and not driving around like crazy every day for no good reason. The air is cleaner as a result. We may even have a chance to bring on the coolest summer in years.

If we stop now, this crisis will inevitably drag on through election season in November, and who knows how bad it can get?

I’m not even going to venture a guess at this point. I’m just going to try to smell the May flowers, enjoy the view of the mountains, and remain far away from cable TV and all the pundits and prognosticators, who inevitably get it wrong on a daily basis anyway.

It is my hope that you all find a way to do the same and try to find some moments of peace and solace in these still difficult and trying times. We are not out of the woods yet. Stay the course. Hold fast. At least some of us will break on through to the other side.