Tag Archives: COVID-19

Shots That Signal a Promising Future

By Robin Bates | Published: April 7, 2021

I’ve just had my second Covid shot, which has me thinking of Alexander Hamilton’s shot in Miranda’s musical. Pip’s cautious optimism about the future also comes to mind.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Covid vaccine, founding ideals, Great Expectations, Hamilton, Joe Biden, Lin-Manuel Miranda, optimism | Comments closed

Plague Lit on Life Returning to Normal

By Robin Bates | Published: March 28, 2021

Plague Lit teaches us how people behave DURING plagues. How about how they behave when life returns to normal? Camus may be best on this.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Albert Camus, Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year, Last Man, Mary Shelley, plague | Comments closed

The Pit, the Pendulum, and Covid Relief

By Robin Bates | Published: March 18, 2021

If Covid has offered a choice between the pit and the pendulum, then the vaccines and the Covid relief bill have been the liberating French army.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Pit and the Pendulum", Covid relief bill, Duck Soup, Edgar Allan Poe, Marx Brothers | Comments closed

Song of Hope: The Night Cloud Is Hueing

By Robin Bates | Published: March 15, 2021

With the passage of the Covid relief bill and increased vaccinations, Hardy’s “Song for Hope” seems appropriate.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Song of Hope", Covid relief bill, Donald Trump, hope, Joe Biden, Thomas Hardy | Comments closed

Stronger in the Broken Places

By Robin Bates | Published: March 14, 2021

Joe Biden picked the perfect Hemingway quote for his Covid address to the nation.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Ernest Hemingway, Farewell to Arms, grieving, Joe Biden | Comments closed

Our Time in the Covid Sewers

By Robin Bates | Published: March 10, 2021

Reading “Les Misérables” while awaiting a Covid shot led me to compare our pandemic experience and Jean Valjean’s trek through the sewers.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged mask mandates, Misérables, Victor Hugo | Comments closed

The Dangerous Final Months of Covid

By Robin Bates | Published: January 5, 2021

Winspear’s World War I mysteries write of dying just before the Armistice. Think of Covid as the war and the vaccine as the Armistice.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged American Agent, Covid vaccine, Jacqueline Winspear | Comments closed

Post of the Year: Plagues in Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: December 30, 2020

A survey of literature through the ages that has dealt with plagues.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Aeneid, Albert Camus, Daniel Defoe, Emily St. John Mandel, Journal of the Plague Year, Katherine Anne Porter, Louise Erdrich, Margaret Atwood, Oedipus, Oryk and Crake, Pale Horse Pale Rider, plague, Sophocles, Stand, Station Eleven, Stephen King, Tracks, Virgil | Comments closed

Dreaming of Travel during Covid

By Robin Bates | Published: December 21, 2020

A very smart Covid poem circulating on social media at the moment references 11 poems, all about longing to travel.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", "Lake Isle of Innisfree", "Sea Fever", "Green Eye of the Yellow God", "Mandalay", "Milford Haven", "Rolling English Road", "Skye Boat Song", "Upon First reading Chapman's Homer", A. E. Housman, Crown, G.K. Chesterton, J. Milton Hayes, John Keats, John Masefield, Kenneth Grahame, Loveliest of Trees, Michael Drayton, Midsummer Night's Dream, Outlanders, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Henry Boulton, W. B. Yeats, William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, wind in the willows | Comments closed