Pale Horse, Pale Rider: Pop Culture in a Time of a New Corona Virus

I am an apocalypse girl from way back.  I love a good dystopia better than almost any utopia.  I have scared myself with end of the world narratives while my peers were watching scary slasher movies.  But has all my reading/watching prepared me for this time?

At this point, it's hard to know.  So let me just record some reflections this morning.

--Yesterday my writer friend (whom I've hired to be a tutor for my school) and I talked about how pop culture has prepared us for this time.  But we were talking about our love of Frontier House and other PBS shows that put people in past time period.  We talked about how we learned that cows are labor and cost intensive and how we would raise chickens or goats.

--We also talked about the first episode of The Walking Dead.  At least nobody seems to be a zombie--but can we be sure?

--I read this article about the movie Contagion, a movie I've wanted to revisit for several weeks.  The library had 27 copies available, so I stopped by and picked up a copy on my way home.  The librarian said, "I wondered if this movie would be popular again.  Mediocre movie, but great cast."  That was my memory too, which is why I didn't want to pay to see it again.

--Have I mentioned lately how much I love the public library?  Of all the ideas that have impacted modern civilization for the better, the public library would make my top 10 list.

--But I digress.  Back to plague preparations.

--I think, too, about the last plague that felt so menacing--the AIDS crisis, before we knew much about that disease, back in the 80's.  But I haven't revisited those texts.  That virus seems so different than the one that menaces us now.

--How menaced should we feel?  Events are being canceled across the nation.  Italy is on lockdown.  And yet, when we try to think about contingency plans, as we did in a meeting yesterday, it still feels like too much is unknown.

--I haven't canceled any travel yet.  In fact, I got a great deal on an airline ticket.

--Perhaps I'll read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel on that trip.  That book scared me a bit when I read it while home alone one week-end.  Maybe I shouldn't revisit it.

--This article had a unique approach about preparing for the end when one has disability complications.  This morning I'm thinking about the literature of preparing for disaster as a subset of apocalyptic literature.  I'm also thinking of books like the Foxfire series--books that aren't exactly predicting disaster as trying to preserve culture that's disappearing, cultures that might have useful information in a time of societal breakdown.

--I think about my own stalled novel, the one where the repressive government uses a deadly flu outbreak to take away civil liberties and control the population.

--Perhaps I should write a happier tale--see if I do have supernatural powers to change the world by my writing (I'm joking, of course).

--Time to get ready for spin class.  Time to go about my normal life, while I still can.