By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Transitions
The Black Death is back, and about time too. Guess who caused an Oregon man last week to be diagnosed with bubonic plague?
Illegal immigrants
The cancel culture
Biden, Trump, Fauci or some other popular scapegoat currently
His cat
Cat owners can’t be surprised the Deschutes County Health Department determined D was to blame.
Back in the good old days, 1347 to 1341, the plague killed close to half. Birds and bees didn’t do it then; flea bites did.
Bleeding, rashes, diarrhea, vomiting and delirium set in, like today when we read about presidential candidates. Rosy-ringed victims were buried in mass graves or cremated — ashes, ashes.
Life was better in pre-social media days. The good died young before evil geezers like me could rob them of resources such as innocence, Social Security and the like.
Few fell for the notion that science might find a cure via bread mold-derived penicillin and such that would render the plague a rarity enjoyed largely by anti-vaxxers and souls owned by cats, like me.
I can hear Poe meowing now from the other room. He’s named after the author Edgar Allen, who wrote of Usher’s house falling when he sang at the Super Bowl, black cats, premature burials, perverse imps, the masque of the red death and more spirit-lifting subjects.
The 19th century’s Norman Vincent Peale, Will Rogers and/or Stephen King cheers me up with his malice. “Meow?” Let me in to steal your food, heart, then life.
Poe purred on my lap, after being fed, while I read recent news about mass shootings and the corpse washing up last week at Pier Cove. One update transitioned from the naked man’s body, found wearing only brown Converse All-Stars, to a feature on water-skiing squirrels. Heavy to light, this is called. Good cop/bad cop news.
Seems Chuck Best adopted an Eastern grey squirrel and did what any good Florida man would do: taught “Twiggy” to water ski mounted on Styrofoam towed a toy boat in a heated pool. You or I could have done this, had we had the foresight.
He and his wife Lou Ann, who had also trained “Moose,” their chimpanzee, to roller skate, wound up selling their roller rink and touring with Twiggy full-time in a motor home.
Chuck drowned after 20 years doing that, but Lou Ann kept the act alive, training replacement Twiggies after old ones died. It became a legacy business, like media. Five years ago, she passed on the act to their son Chuck Jr.
Animal rights groups have protested, claiming squirrels should be freed to rob birdfeeders and gnaw holes in my home’s eaves while Poe watches though windows, as nature and God intended.
I freed Poe to confront, not just contemplate, his prey, but he proved a poser, preferring to feign ferocity. Soon he meowed to come back in and again steal my food.
Animal activists attacked me — not recognizing, apparently, I am an animal too with rights — for not keeping this so-called domestic pet captive inside, free from outside harm or himself harming squirrels not water skiing at the time.
“What about my eaves?” I asked, but knew mortal possessions were vanities. Fate is fatal; life is just a matter of prolonging things. Soon enough I’d be wormwood too.
In more good news last week, I learned Winthrop University awarded two high school seniors the first cornhole scholarships. What a triumph for higher education. With more youths trained in practical skills like that, not arts and sciences, soon we’ll all fling beanbags through holes in boards 27 feet distant.
This got me thinking about black holes being like pupils in people’s eyes, with irises like stars orbiting around them. Black holes, their gravity inescapable, suck in everything around them as do our eyes, transformed it via optic nerve to our brains.
Optical illusions have become a popular diversion among arts and science majors displaced by beanbag flingers. We train our fingers to tap keyboards idly as more and more new News screens appear — School bus-size satellite to come crashing into earth’s atmosphere … the inventor of Pop Tarts dies … one more Putin opponent too … The Escape button! Where?
Poe meows outside, warning the cornhole culture seeks to silence cat letter-outers and dogma skeptics. “We want more Twiggy,” demand the masses. “More Moose and squirrel.”
Toaster-warmed, a pre-packaged “Fearless Leader” pops up to feed nostalgia. Avoid such plagues, I advise.