Welcome To The Pandemonium

Welcome to The Pandemonium by rscholz@comcast.net

Had a nice conversation with my old Philosopher Rabbit friend yesterday evening.

Her name is Penelope. I call her Pen. I’ve known her since she was a bunny. When I first saw her she was snuggling together, adorably I might add, with her three other “nest-mates” none of whom had even opened their eyes yet.

Pen is seven years old now, which is old for a wild rabbit. Her coat looks a bit intermittent and raggedy; like the Velveteen Rabbit near the end of that story. I wonder if it will keep her warm enough to make it through our next winter.

Penelope & Her "Nest-Mates"

Pen and I often talk, you know, about this-and-that. She's pretty smart. But her range of knowledge is limited and quite eclectic. The red squirrels have been bringing her books from one of the neighborhood Little Free Library boxes. Here in Ann Arbor these boxes on poles are filled with a very strange assortment of free books. Lots of children's books, of course. But lots of unusual and erudite and intellectually stimulating books too. I looked in one of the Little Free Library boxes that I walk by on my way to the park the other day and was astounded to find that most of the books in this particular box were written by economists of the “Chicago School of Economics” like Milton Friedman's A Monetary History of the United States... Yoiks and Sheesh!

Yesterday, when I walked out to the garden to harvest some carrots for a salad I noticed Pen sitting pensively out by the garden gate.

“Hi Pen... what's the hops?” I asked. (Ha!) Pen had been sitting there very much like a stone statue and as I watched she seemed to come back from some far-out trip to the other end of the universe. She then turned to look at me with her liquid soulful eyes and asked, “Why do you wear a mask when you go out in the world… are you a robber?”

I laughed. “Well, I have stolen an idea or two in my day, but no, I'm not a robber.”

I told Pen that I was wearing a mask because a mask makes it less less likely that I will spread the dreaded Covid-19 virus, should I have the disease and not know it, and that the Covid-19 virus was laying low many of my fellow Apes That Walk On Two Legs, “What’s a virus?” asked Penelope “Well, you’re going to find this a little hard to believe but a virus is an eensy-weensy-teensy bit of stuff that is neither dead nor alive. The virus contains DNA or RNA in a protein coat. When a virus enters one of your cells it sheds its coat, bares its genes and takes over your cell’s replication machinery to make copies of itself which can then infect more of your cells. The bad news for the infected person is that the cells taken over by the virus don’t work right anymore and you get a little, or a lot, sick. So sick, in fact, that the infected person may find themselves walking right up to the brink of death and some of us even go over the brink, “ I explained.

08/12/20

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“The Fear of Death is something we rabbits experience daily. But the look I see on so many human faces does not look like the Fear of Death to me. The weird look I see on so many faces is the look of someone trying to scratch a mental itch they can’t reach,” said Pen. “Wow... you are very observant my Philosopher Rabbit friend, You might say that even though some of us get the virus, many of us are infected by a society wide brain-to-brain allergic response which is sort of like mental poison ivy. Oh sure, some of us are afraid that Covid-19 will bring death to ourselves or our loved ones. But the mental poison ivy is not fear of illness or death, We humans are very interdependent. None of us can really take care of ourselves, by ourselves. We are completely dependent on the actions of other humans to keep us healthy and warm and dry and fed. It's our social structures and the imaginary social contracts we each sign (without knowing what we're signing), when we join the human race that keep us alive and well.

This Covid-19 pandemic is starting to make us think that our social contracts are not worth the paper they aren’t even printed on. The pandemic has upended our “normalcy” and has created Penelope: The Philosopher Rabbit an itch we don’t know how to scratch. Many of us humans have assembled reasonably comfortable and fairly predictable lives.

We’ve built our lives out of many social interactions. These social interactions keep our “reality” on an even keel. Money, jobs, family, food, affection: we’ve carefully and painstakingly, often over many years, put together an acceptable combination of compromises and social contracts to meet our needs, “ I responded, somewhat pedantically.

I often come across as pedantic. It's a shortcoming, I know. But Pen overlooks that particular shortcoming of mine. Perhaps she thinks that the way I talk is normal for human beings. Her only human reference point is me... and I've never aspired to be a representative sample, if you know what I mean.

“That's a mouthful – fer shizzle,” said Pen, “Do rabbits get viruses?”

“Bigly, There's a really bad virus that rabbits can catch called Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease. It's a lot like Covid-19, very contagious, and kind of like another virus that humans can catch called Ebola, very gruesome, “ I replied.

“Damn, that sucks,” was Pen's considered opinion on that subject.

“But there is some hope that a vaccine can be developed for Covid-19 so that humans will have more resistance to contagion. Research facilities in countries all over the world are competing to come up with a vaccine. Not an easy task. Many are called, but few are chosen, you might say. Kind of like the story in that Disney rendition of the Arthurian Legend The Sword and The Stone that you like so much.” I added.

The Sword and The Stone

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Pen’s favorite subject, believe it or not was the Arthurian Legend of The Sword and The Stone. Yes, you guessed it, a red squirrel had found the

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rscholz@comcast.net

Disney version of this fable in a nearby Little Free Library, brought it to Pen and Pen and for some unknown reason developed a penchant for the Arthurian Legend.

Once Upon A Time... Two winters ago, to be exact, I was about to throw out an old Sony cassette player with a very scratched-up, raggedy case when I noticed that the cassette in the player was the cast recording of the movie version of Camelot starring Richard Harris. Rather than throw the player and cassette away, I put some batteries in it and, lo and behold, it still worked!

Camelot was about King Arthur and since Pen was a big Arthurian aficionado I thought she might appreciate some Camelot-ish musical entertainment.

It was mid-winter and the snow cover was deep. I made my way out to Pen's Den and found her cold and alone in the darkness. I showed her how to work the thing. She loved it! For many a cold night thereafter, when I went out to start the car or shovel the walk or take out the trash, I could hear King Arthur singing about Camelot from inside Pen's Den...

Camelot! Camelot!

I know it gives a person pause, But in Camelot, Camelot Those are the legal laws.

The snow may never slush upon the hillside.

By nine p.m. the moonlight must appear.

In short, there's simply not A more congenial spot For happily-ever-aftering than here In Camelot....♫ Which made me smile. Several New Years ago I resolved to find ways to make Pen's life a bit easier... I do believe this helped... it feels nice to help her.

I was thinking about Pen and Camelot and vaccines and the unpredictable nature of weather and disease when both Pen and I were buffeted by a burst of wind. A rogue thunderstorm was approaching from the West.

Time to batten down the hatches and skedaddle for cover.

In reference to Pen’s Arthurian Obsession I've developed a special goodbye I deliver each time we part…

“Farewell my friend… remember The Pen is Mightier Than The Sword…!”

She gave me a joyful wink and we both scurried for shelter.

Well, I scurried, she hopped.

### End ###

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rscholz@comcast.net