The Covid pandemic makes cholera seem almost quaint, doesn’t it? I wonder if Gabriel García Márquez would rethink Love in the Time of Cholera (El amor en los tiempos del cólera) if he were writing it in 2022. Nah, maybe not. There’s a wordplay in Spanish about the word cólera that has nothing to do with the acute illness caused by a bacterial intestinal infection.
And as horrible as cholera sounds (and it’s pretty bad), Melissa notes in this seven-card Covid series that it’s a rare-to-nonexistent postcard that contains the words “vomiting and diarrhea.” Yes, Melissa, I have to say this is the first one I’ve seen. We might need to get Mark Routh to comment on this. Mark has the world class, category-defining collection of Covid postcards and ephemera (approaching 5,000 items at last count).
Many thanks to Melissa for this series. (Images are from the CDC and the postcards were printed by NeckahNeck Forest Arts Collective.)
Did you read Love in the Time of Cholera? Or see the movie? Here’s the theatrical trailer.
Writing this made me think about all the hand washing I’ve done over the past two years of the pandemic. I commented in Episode 126 about how many people had died during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, and somehow I got that number right (50 million worldwide; 675,00 in the U.S.). As of February 1, 2022, there have been 5.7 million people who died of Covid worldwide, with 881,000 dead in the United States. I’m gonna keep washing my hands, wearing my masks, and getting boosters. Meanwhile, I’ll stay home and look at these new additions to my Covid postcard collection.
UPDATE: Just as I was ready to push publish on this post, I got a postcard from Kristen that said “Wash Your Hands.” How’s that for timing? And that made me think I should make a demo about proper hand washing technique. So I did that this morning as a public service.
Pero si algo habían aprendido juntos era que la sabiduría nos llega cuando ya no sirve para nada.
Gabriel García Márquez, El amor en los tiempos del cólera
Both corona and cólera mean something else in Spanish. I have never thought of that.
Love those new additions to your collection, are history in the form of postcards. My favorite is the social distancing one. And we are washing our hands until the end of times!
Yes, both those words…and why I used “corona”in the title instead of Covid (plus, it has the right number of syllables, to match the English title). I thought I did a pretty good job with that handwashing demo. Haha.
Ha! I knew you where playing with the title! You do the same with the shows and nerdy people like me love those word games. And good job with the video
Thank you…I entertain myself with word play. And as far as that video goes — I setup my tripod at my kitchen sink. And while I was recording I was asking myself what in the heck I was doing. But I was entertaining myself. And using peony-scented soap.