I made Nell a mouth from the sleeve of my black dress. The cloth held the shape of my elbow when I cut it free. I laid it over the lower half of her face and stitched around the edges with red thread. The book said to leave the lips open. The dead would have things to say before morning.
With the novel Coronavirus in full flush, I have never been more self-educated in needing to know more about protective masks. Since the beginning of April, I have wondered at all the face covering options, while knowing, and accepting that the medical grade masks — the now non-ubiquitous N95 masks — are not available to the public. I’ve been searching everywhere for a lead on a KN95 mask or a surgical mask — the lesser protective cousin to the full N95 mask — or some sort of other, non-optimal mask that can protect Janna and me from the vulgarities of Covid-19. We are not having any luck.
I mourn the loss of the elegant dissenter in every aspect of our modern lives. On many blogs, it appears impossible for commenters to state a cogent and reverential opposing view on what was originally written. The angry comments are filled with rage, snark, name-calling and unbridled hatred.
Last week, three of the top ten sellers on Amazon.com were surgical masks. People were buying the masks in a feint effort to protect themselves from the onslaught of the Swine Flu pandemic. This week, we are brought into the realm of the ridiculously sublime in the fashionable, yet tasteless, animal face surgical mask:
What do we fear the most? Our deaths? American culture is enraptured with the idea of dying in our popular entertainment and religious cultural memes. Today is Friday the 13th and that means — to many people — that today is an unlucky day, a foreboding moment in time, a chance for the terror within us to strike out in the dark to wound those surrounding us.
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