Tuesday's Gone

bouquet

With the wind. And, I sure hope Wednesday blows in some warmer weather. The air was a wee bit chilly today. Above is some of my craft florals. I was crafting one day and just threw everything out on my bed and started taking pictures of it all in a pile. It was fun.

I watched a documentary on Typhoid Mary this evening on Nova. I have never watched an episode of ER, Law and Order, CSI, American Idol, Survivor, but I will watch endless reruns of Seinfeld and I love a good documentary. I used to watch the Biography channel but I have not been into that for a couple of years. I am also a big fan of Funniest videos and the MXC on the Spike channel once in a while.

I like to watch shows about things like Mary Mallon because I have heard the nickname through the years and I knew what typhoid was but I never knew the story. What did I learn? How darn scary it must have been for her. She was basically ostracized to Brother Island without any legal representation or help at all. In this version, it shows what can happen to a poor victim. Although when she is freed a few years later, she goes right back to cooking and starts another epidemic of typhoid. So, can you feel all that sorry for her? It shows how the government (the Department of Health) or the legal system can basically railroad a person.

What else did I learn? That New York City slums in that timeframe was more crowded than Calcutta is today. (Ironic that the url I chose to depict Calcutta is called Irishhealth, because Mary Mallon was Irish.)

I try to teach my daughter to believe in mankind. To have faith that there is good in people and that justice prevails. And then I am whacked to my knees by something as riveting as this. This documentary has me reading up on the immigrants and their plight and now I am sunk into despair with Calcutta, India. Was it only five months ago that Indonesia was hit with the tsunami? It seems like a year or so ago. The world moves on. But what of the poor people laying in the street hour after hour slowly losing hope? Rotting away.

We have teenagers driving Volkswagens trying to conserve gasoline, while they criticize the elder couple in their Lincoln Continental. Later in the evening, while the elder couple are sleeping in their bed, the teenagers are still driving up and down the boulevard looking for their friends, cruising through the fast-food places, throwing away half their sandwiches and fries. Isn't this the American way?

How many foreign countries hate us? But, would they live any differently if they were us? Would we hate us if we were born over there? Why did (do) millions migrate to this country? They say the next great power will be China. Will millions migrate to China? Wasn't it Great Britain in the 1800's, USA in the 1900's and next the experts say is China.

What else did I learn from the Typhoid Mary documentary? That today with Aids, SARS and other infectious diseases we are not much further along in the humane treatment of our fellow human beings than we were with Mary Mallon in the early 1900's. Medically we have made leaps and bounds, but personally we all get scared. And fear is a very powerful foe.

Edit: Wednesday, May 25th. Here is an excerpt from an article about quarantine:

1916
When an epidemic of poliomyletis strikes New York residents, authorities begin forcibly separating children from their parents and placing them in quarantine. Wealthy parents, however, can keep their stricken children at home if they can provide a separate room and medical care.

This is where I begin to see red. Right about where it says "Wealthy parents, however...."

Coming from the speakers: Tuesday's Gone by Lynard Skynard.