Morning statistics – Gutter cleaning – Flocking to the bars in New York – Gone With the Wind (sigh) again – Indian cures worse than the disease – Rabbinical diktats – Cutting down the idols in high places – Old horrors in the Congo – Evening statistics
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 AM — # of cases worldwide: 7,898,392; # of deaths worldwide: 432,901; # of cases U.S.: 2,142,515; # of deaths U.S.: 117,533.
With the spring being so cool and wet I did not get a chance to clean the gutters in April and then the matter slipped my mind, so I had to attend to it today. It was high time; one gutter runs under the shade of a large oak tree and it was covered with twigs and acorns. I suppose eventually I should engage some sort of service for this purpose – clambering over the rooftop is probably not the most prudent activity for someone in his mid-sixties – but matters are under control for the moment at any rate.
My cousins in New York have been sending me links to articles about people flocking to bars in New York City, although Phase 2 (the designated stage for the re-opening of bars and restaurants for outdoor seating) is not supposed to begin until June 22nd at the earliest. Hundreds were crowding East Village until it became “like Bourbon Street” without a face mask in sight. “For three months I followed every rule, did everything they said,” said one of the revelers, “but now I’m just like, I’m done.” But three months is not a very large amount of the lifespan of a pandemic. The Spanish flu epidemic took over two years to subside and the outbreaks of plague in the Middle Ages lasted still longer. It will be seen over the next week or so whether the combination of the recent protests and of the party-goers anticipating the relaxation of the various lockdown restrictions have initiated a second wave of the virus.
There is continued debate about the removal of Gone With the Wind from HBO streaming. I would not have said any more about the matter otherwise (it is not a subject that I care to dwell upon especially) but I should note in passing that, as far as the novel is concerned, even its advocates must concede that its use of dialect is not merely condescending but wildly overdone. Just imagine what effect it would have if this technique were applied to the upper-class characters in the novel:
“’Ah wuz goin’ ovah right affer suppah,’ she said. ‘Now dat Capt’n Butlah’s muvver has kum, Ah s’pose de fune’l will be t’morrow mahning.’
“’The funeral. That’s just it,’ said Mammy. ‘Miss Melly, we’re all in deep trouble and I’ve come to you for help. It’s nothing but weary loads, honey, nothing but weary loads.’
“’Is Miz Scarlett c’llapsed?’ questioned Melanie worriedly. ‘Ah’ve ha’dly seen her since Bonnie– She bin in her room an’ Capt’n Butlah bin out o’ ter house an’—‘
”Suddenly tears began to flow down Mammy’s black face. Melanie sat down beside her and patted her arm and, after a moment, Mammy lifted the hem of her black skirt and dried her eyes.
“’You’ve got to come help us, Miss Melly. I’ve done the best I can but it doesn’t do any good.’
“’Miz Scarlett—‘
“Mammy straightened.
“’Miss Melly, you know Miss Scarlett as well as I do. What that child has to stand, the good Lord gave her strength to stand. This has broken her heart but she can stand it. It’s Mister Rhett I’ve come about.’
“’Ah’ve so wahnted t’ see him but whenevah Ah bin thar, he either bin downtown or locked in his room wid—An’ Scarlett has looked lak a ghost and wou’dn’t speek– Tell me quickly, Mammy. You know Ah’ll he’p iffen Ah kin.’”
This dialogue between Melanie and Mammy occurs towards the end of Chapter 59, when Mammy makes her plea for Melanie to comfort Rhett after the death of his daughter. Observant readers will notice that I’ve altered scarcely a word of it. All I’ve done is to make a trifling change in their intonations. Mammy in this version speaks standard English while Melanie uses the “funetik aksent” that Margaret Mitchell sees fit to lay upon every single one of the black characters, often when it’s completely unnecessary (what’s the difference between “was” and “wuz,” for example?). It alters our perception of the two characters, doesn’t it?
It appears that other nations besides our own have issues with fundamentalist so-called “healers.” Aslam Baba in Ratlam, India, offered “COVID exorcisms” by kissing people’s hands; the “kiss-cure,” as he called it, supposedly had the power to drive away all ailments, including COVID-19. He was diagnosed with the virus on June 3rd and died on the following day – but not before he infected at least 20 other people with his treatment, including seven members of his own family. At least 29 other holy men have been offering similar so-called cures, forcing all of their clients into quarantine.
On a similar note, in Israel five senior Orthodox rabbis are objecting to temperature checks for people entering hospitals on Shabbat, when work is forbidden – heat measurement and the display of writing on the monitor coming under the definition of “work.” This is actually a violation of Jewish law: the concept of “pikuach nefesh” states specifically that the preservation of human life overrules virtually any other religious obligation. There are at least a few other rabbis challenging these hierophants’ judgment, so perhaps common-sense will prevail – or possibly the Israeli government will develop sufficient will-power to tell the rabbis not to meddle in matters that do not concern them. This last alternative is not to be counted upon, however.
The indignation expressed in Europe over the recent protests in our nation concerning race relations have had at least one unexpected (but thoroughly beneficial) consequence. The statues of Leopold II in Belgium are being taken down – finally! It is a wonder that they had stood there for such a long time. His exploitation of the inhabitants of the Congo is sometimes referred to as the “forgotten Holocaust.” The number of deaths attributed to his rule may be as high as ten million. There was widespread indignation in his day – Mark Twain, for instance, wrote a devastating pamphlet called “King Leopold’s Soliloquy “ in which he has Leopold raving madly about the benefits he had conferred on the Congolese by converting them (by force) to Christianity – but his wholescale campaign of pillage and murder was virtually forgotten in the course of a few years. Originally he acquired the Congo as a colony for himself as a private citizen; criticism of the forced labor he imposed on the inhabitants for the purpose of extracting rubber from the land (laborers were beaten, mutilated [severing of hands was a standard punishment], and frequently murdered when certain production quotas were not met) eventually forced him to transfer ownership of the colony to the Belgian government in 1908. Matters became a little better after that, but the unfortunate Congolese were virtually living in a conquered territory until 1960.
To be fair, King Leopold was far from being the sole exploiter. European nations generally during the 19th and early 20th centuries looked upon Africa as a kind of gigantic cash cow and arbitrarily split it up into huge colonies without the slightest regard towards the preferences of the people who actually lived there. Many of the tribal conflicts that escalate into civil war in the modern-day African countries are due to the boundaries that were laid down more or less at random around the territories that later became independent nations. Nigeria, for instance, is home to more than 300 different tribes that speak over 500 different languages and dialects among them. The three major tribes are the Hausa, the Igbo, and the Yoruba, and they feel little more connection to one another than the average American feels towards Guatemalans or Panamanians. England, France, Germany, Holland, and Italy all maintained colonies for the express purpose of draining wealth from the area and diverting it to their own lands, while maintaining a feeble pretense of conferring “civilization” upon the inhabitants who asked for nothing better than to be left alone.
Considerable argument rages about the pros and cons of the colonialization of the African territories, which I do not propose to delve into here. It wasn’t, after all, as if the various tribes were living together in idyllic harmony. There was frequent warfare among them and plenty of atrocities occurred during these conflicts. Furthermore, the Arabs were doing a good deal of exploitation on their own account. It is possible to contend, for instance, that a Kikuyu (in what is now modern-day Kenya) was better off when the territory was under British rule than he would have been in earlier eras when his village was subject to continual raids and even massacres by the neighboring Maasai and Somali.
But whatever one might think about colonial rule in general, there can be no question that King Leopold’s regime in the Congo was easily the worst in the history of the entire continent.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM — # of cases worldwide: 7,982,822; # of deaths worldwide: 435,166; # of cases U.S.: 2,162,054; # of deaths U.S.: 117,853.