Filed under: Amazon, Faith healing, Feedback, Government, Kindle, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Wales | Tags: Amazon, coronavirus, Covid 19, Darnell Sidwell, faith healing, hope, Kindle, News, pandemic, police, politics, racism, reviews, St. Cybi's Well, survival, Wales, writing
I’m just going to post this entire review:
Filed under: Amazon, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Emergency, Flu, Government, NPR, Pandemic, Predictions, Preparedness, Religion, Science Fiction, Society, Writing stuff | Tags: America, Covid 19, distancing effect, dystopia, fire-flu, government, Josh Malerman, NPR, pandemic, racism, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, theocracy, Verfremdungseffekt, writing
Why on Earth would you want to read a novel about a pandemic during a pandemic? Or why would you want to dive into a world where America is a dystopia of racial hatred and theocratic overreach when America is, well, trying to sort out racial hatred and theocratic overreach? There’d have to be something wrong with you to join in such a dance, wouldn’t there?
This was touched on in an interview on NPR I listened to this morning on my daily walk. In it, author Josh Malerman said that reading about a pandemic during a pandemic was somehow comforting; it was a way of saying “we know how to deal with this”.
In writing St Cybi’s Well I used an old literary technique to create some psychic space between the reader and my criticism of our American society, by not placing the story in America, but by having characters in the story reflect on and discuss what a dystopia American had become. This way the reader joins me in a dance, following my lead, but themselves moving through the story I’ve set out. The dystopia is there, but together we have defined it, perhaps tamed it enough that we can see it for what it is.
Of course, our reality is not the reality of St Cybi’s Well. Though it is still very early in the Covid-19 pandemic, I don’t think that it will be quite as devastating as the Fire-flu is in my book. And though we are perhaps at a turning point in the political history of our country, we’re not yet in a constitutional theocracy.
Take the lesson — or the warning — for what it is. That’s why you join the dance.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Civil Rights, Connections, Government, Health, Politics, Privacy, Society | Tags: Adolf Hitler, Aparthied, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, health, history, Jim Crow, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, medicine, Missouri History, Nazi, Nazism, racism, Third Reich
Thought I’d share a small discovery I made this weekend.
I’m working on a book conservation project for an institutional client. It’s a patient ledger for a public hospital from the 1880s. It’s a large, heavy account book, and the binding structure had broken down, the original leather-covered covers have a bad case of red rot, and a number of the individual pages had been damaged. All in all, a fairly routine project; an important piece of mundane history, but not particularly interesting from a bookbinding standpoint.
So I took it apart, cleaned and repaired the individual pages, organized the folios back into sections, and set to resewing the book. Here’s the start of that process:
And here it is further along, as I’m sewing the individual sections onto ‘tapes’ as part of the new structure:
As I did this, something caught my eye I hadn’t noticed previously: here and there was the world “cold”.
Now, people don’t usually go to the hospital for a “cold”. Particularly in the 1880s, when hospitals were usually places most people avoided. So I looked a little more closely, and saw that the entries were under the column for where in the hospital patients had been put:
Here’s the top of that page:
Why on Earth would you put someone into a “cold” ward? That didn’t make sense.
Then I noticed something else, further across the page. Here’s a pic of it from a blank page, so as not to inadvertently violate someone’s privacy:
What I thought was “cold” was actually “col’d”, the abbreviation used for “Colored.”
As I’ve said previously, about another historical artifact:
So I understand the importance of preserving the artifacts of that history. And so understanding, felt that it was my responsibility to use the skills I have acquired to that end, no matter how distasteful the task. It was my small tribute to all who resisted, who persevered, who fought.
I’m not equating the two.
But it is important that we not forget either history.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 