the bob | Bertram's Blog

A Virus by Any Other Name

September 11, 2021 — Pat Bertram

In the following scene from A Spark of Heavenly Fire, my novel about a novel disease that was first published in 2009, investigative reporter Greg and his editor Olaf are talking about an article on the pandemic Greg is hoping to write.

—-

“How’s the research coming, Greg?” Olaf asked, a shade too heartily.

“I feel as if I’m drowning in paper.”

“So I see,” Olaf said, laying a hand on the stack of articles. “Mind if I look?”

“Help yourself. They belong to the newspaper.”

Olaf settled himself in his customary chair with a handful of the papers. A minute later, he raised his head.

“How do these guys get anything printed? If my reporters turned in work as incomprehensible as this, they’d be out of here so fast they’d think they were flying.” He glanced at the papers and shook his head. “Even the titles are incomprehensible. ‘Imitating Organic Morphology in Micro-fabrication.’ I don’t even know what that means.”

“Me neither,” Greg said, thinking if he had to wade through this sort of stuff to learn about the red death, the earth would fall into the sun long before he read half of it.

Olaf tossed the sheaf of papers back onto Greg’s desk. “Better you than me.”

“What do these guys do?” Greg asked. “Take a course in obfuscation?”

“Probably. Convoluted writing and obscure terms are a way of intimidating the uninitiated, keeping the profession closed to non-scientists, and adding to the scientific mystique. Just think, if diseases had names like Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, doctors wouldn’t make anywhere near the amount of money they do now.”

Greg laughed. “That’s an idea. They do it for hurricanes, why not everything else?” He mimed seizing the phone and dialing. “Mr. Olaf? I can’t come in today. I’ve got the Bob.” He hung up his imaginary receiver and looked inquiringly at his boss.

Olaf nodded. “Works for me.”

—–

And it works for me.

By the time this new virus was well-publicized, I was already sick of the fear mongering. For example, one of the first studies of the possible effects of this pandemic claimed that 80% of the world’s population would die. It was that first insane projection from which all the other insanity came.

The truth is, most people did not get infected, and of those infected, most did not get sick, and of those who got sick, most did not die.

Again, as with my post yesterday, I am not trying to denigrate anyone’s experience. For those who suffered deaths in the family, severe illness, isolation from family, or financial hardships, it was a terrible thing. But for most of us, the worst was the fear. It was reprehensible the way people who should have known better — the political hacks representing us, the media, the idiotic folks who put sick people into nursing homes where so many elderly lived — exaggerated the truth and caused immense (and in many cases, unnecessary) fear. There is a good chance we would not have been that much worse off if we had all just gone about our business, but too much jockeying for position was being done by people in power or people who wanted power, and truthfully, I think their tactics were so successful that they ended up buying into their own propaganda of fear.

And the manipulation is still going on. A vaccine of sorts is available for those want it, but the next move is to make the vaccine mandatory to “protect the vaccinated.” Huh? I thought the purpose of the vaccination itself was to protect the vaccinated. And if the vaccine isn’t a real vaccine, one that does protect the recipient, when are they going to get a real vaccine so that those who want to be fully protected can be? As with everything else that has gone on the past two years, the truth is hard to come by. What we are told might be the true truth, a semblance of the truth, or a wholly manufactured truth.

To keep from validating any of the shenanigans that is going on surrounding this virus, I have refused — and continue to refuse — to use any of the official names the parasite is given. Hence, “The Bob.” My own private rebellion.

I mean no insult to any Bob living or dead, of course. I named the disease many years ago back when I didn’t know any Bobs, and reusing the name for this virus seemed a good way to keep myself from succumbing to the fear and intimidation that the media and our so-called leaders apparently want us to feel.

Posted in culture, life, writing. Tags: A Spark of Heavenly Fire, deaths in the family, naming diseases, pandemic, severe illness, the bob, writing about a pandemic. 4 Comments »

Living In Fear

September 10, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Almost all new books mention, in some way, “The Bob.” Of course, the authors don’t know enough to call it “The Bob,” so they call the virus by other names that don’t really mean much. It was bad enough living through the upheaval; it’s a whole lot worse having to relive it in books. Sometimes, the reference is simply a placeholder, to give people an idea of when the story takes place, which is never a good idea because it dates the book, and readers in the next few years who prefer only current books won’t be interested. Other times The Bob is a major plot point. Either way, it doesn’t interest me. It seems perhaps sacrilegious to say this, considering the trauma so many people suffered during the past year and a half, but whether The Bob is mentioned merely to set the time or is an intricate part of the plot, it seems . . . trite. And even worse than trite — a cheap shot to get people personally involved in the story instead of using good writing to get engage readers.

I could be wrong, of course. Others might like to see their “Bob” experiences from a different point of view, to gain a bit of perspective.

The author of the book I am currently reading talks about how worn down people are from more than a year of worrying about their families and themselves; how weary they are of having to wear masks and keep their distance from others; how exhausted they are from isolation and loneliness and grief; and especially, how tired they are of living in fear.

I do understand that many people got deathly sick, that loved ones died, that some people suffered tremendously from isolation, but those things alone, I would think, would preclude people from reading about the horrors they lived through.

Notice I say, “the horrors they lived through.” Despite what I wrote in the first paragraph, that it was “bad enough living through the upheaval,” the truth is, for me, it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it made no difference to my life. Well, except for the mask, but since I was seldom around people and seldom went into a store, I rarely had to wear it.

I never worried about myself, never was afraid, never was lonely (except for a few times that had nothing to do with The Bob). Most of the people I cared about were already dead, and those still alive were taking care of themselves. I didn’t have any travel plans to call off, and as for local events, I’d mostly stopped going to those before they got cancelled. (I’d gained too much weight for one thing; the food was generally something I shouldn’t eat, for another.)

So I stayed home and read. I did see a few people, but always the same ones — the woman I worked for as well as an occasional friend or two. And that is exactly the life I would have lived even if The Bob had never made itself known.

I’m not denigrating anyone’s experience. I know it was a rough time for a lot of people, but it does seem strange to me that in this, as in so much else, what might be good for one person is terrible for another. Still, we each have our own nemeses.

I don’t know if it’s true, but I read that women with O positive blood got The Bob less frequently and not as bad as people with other blood types (it has to do with the protein coating on the cells). Unfortunately, it is definitely true that women with O positive blood are especially tasty to mosquitoes that carry various deadly viruses.

It just goes to show, if one thing doesn’t get us, something else will, though with the mosquitoes as with The Bob, I do the best I can. I won’t live in fear.

***

What if God decided S/He didn’t like how the world turned out, and turned it over to a development company from the planet Xerxes for re-creation? Would you survive? Could you survive?

A fun book for not-so-fun times.

Posted in books, life, writing. Tags: dealing with the pandemic, living in isolation, mosquitoes, O positive blood, the bob, the pandemic, West Nile Fever. Leave a Comment »

Lucky

April 26, 2021 — Pat Bertram

Unlike most people, fallout from The Bob has left me largely untouched, so much so, that when people tell me about things like the problems in India, I have to stop and think, and then I remember. Oh, yeah — there’s a pandemic going on.

India is dealing with heavy death tolls. Other countries have stringent curfews to help prevent heavy death tolls. But here in my almost forgotten corner of Colorado, there have been a few deaths, some even, that have affected friends, but mostly, we’ve been spared a lot of the agony the rest of the world has experienced. Oddly, though, the last two months of 2019 saw an upsurge of a horrific and devastating illness being spread here in this county. Back then, The Bob hadn’t yet been identified in the United States, so people were told they had a bad case of the flu, though in retrospect, at least a couple of doctors changed their diagnoses. All the symptoms these people had matched The Bob symptoms, even to the severity, the aftereffects, the collateral problems and complications.

By the time the official restrictions in the state were put into place, I’d already been curtailing my activities to keep from getting that abysmal flu. Even though no curfew was ever in place here, I had my own curfew. (To be honest, it wasn’t disease related — I generally save my wanderings, such as they are, for daylight hours.)

So basically, I’ve just lived my life as if there were no dread disease floating around. I do wear a mask when I’m in stores or at the library, and I probably would wear it elsewhere if I were ever around groups of people, but for the most part, I only have contact with a couple of people.

Because of this, because of the prevalence of the vaccine, because the library is open, and because I am boycotting the news, I hadn’t given much recent thought to The Bob. I guess since it hadn’t really affected me, I more or less figured that it was pretty much under control around here, but apparently it’s still rampant. This coming week there was supposed to be a town fair and celebration, but it has now been cancelled because of an upsurge in the number of Bob cases in the schools.

I hope you know I’m not making light of anyone’s problems that stemmed from The Bob. I’m aware that a lot of people have been affected in disastrous ways, and I am truly sorry for that. At some point, I might even be one of those people; the longer this goes on, the greater the chance of being affected in some way, and not just because a local festival and parade has been cancelled.

So far I’ve been lucky. Lucky that I haven’t gotten sick — with anything! (Amazing how staying away from people keeps one away from all sorts of contagious diseases.) Lucky that I can do so well without a lot of contact with people. And lucky, too, that a lot of what contact I have is via this blog — I can talk about what’s on my mind, and though it’s often a one-sided conversation, it serves its purpose of making me feel connected to the rest of the world.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator

Posted in blogging, culture, life. Tags: devastating flu in 2019, pandemic, pandemic curfew, restrictions, staying healthy in a pandemic, the bob, wearing a mask. 2 Comments »

The Redundancy of the Horror Genre

August 25, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m in the middle of reading a horror story, and it struck me that the whole horror genre has been made redundant by the insanity of this year. The Bob, dehumanizing masks, the reorganization of businesses and schools, double hurricanes, riots, wildfires, defunding the police. How insane would an author have to be to come up with such a mélange? But there was no author writing the story of the past few months.

A quote from Dean Koontz, who is talking about fairy tales: “Instead of stealing the queen’s newborn daughter, Rumpelstiltskin was foiled, and in his rage, tore himself apart. In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen’s daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society’s intolerance for bad-tempered, evil-minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane.”

Now we come to the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, and the difference is that people want to defund the police so that . . . what? Rumpelstiltskin won’t even be arrested? They’ll send a social worker to talk to him to see if he’ll release the poor girl? Maybe try to educate him away from his vileness? Let the poor girl continue to suffer while they pamper the co-called victim of intolerance?

Of all the insanities of this year, the vast criminality that is going along with the defund the police movement seems to show that we are in no shape to ease up on restrictions. (And yes, when there are billions of dollars of damage done plus many millions of dollars of merchandise looted plus lives lost plus untold injuries, the perpetrators have gone way beyond protesting to committing crimes.) Although there might need to be some sort of change (if nothing else, to take the cops with a bias off the streets) it seems that the defund the police movement favors the wrongdoers more than the victims.

If they don’t disband the police departments entirely, but instead divide the funds among various quality-of-life programs, how is that going to work? The various groups fight among themselves in a sort of bureaucratic triage to see who answers the call while the poor victim is left helpless? If someone is being mugged by a person high on drugs, do they send a cop for the victim or a counselor for the perpetrator?

It seems that defunding the police should come in a time of self-discipline and responsibility rather than a period of license and licentiousness.

But I could be wrong.

I live in a town that is trying to reestablish their police force, which could be a good thing since the local cops would ideally be more cognizant of the problems in town than the county sheriffs would be. Still, from what little contact I’ve had with the sheriff’s department, they seem to know the usual suspects quite well.

All I know is that I don’t commit crimes. I don’t disrespect the police even if they don’t respect me. (Which has happened.) Unfortunately, not everyone is like me or the people I know. If they were, then there wouldn’t be any issue of defunding the police because there wouldn’t be any police because there wouldn’t be any crime or drugs or abuse. There wouldn’t be any talk of man-made viruses escaping from laboratories because people like us don’t create such monsters. Nor would there be riots or burning or looting or killing or maiming.

And the horror genre could go back to being horrific in comparison.

***

Posted in life. Tags: Dean Koontz, defund the police, dehumanizing masks, double hurricanes, riots, Rumpelstiltskin, the bob, the reorganization of businesses and schools, wildfires. 2 Comments »

The World Outside my Fence

July 18, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I walked to a nearby store today to pick up a few items. What used to be a short walk (a half-mile round trip) turned out to be a far piece since my knee is still not in top shape, but I did walk. Yay!

I even saw a couple of friends who were also running errands, which is another yay, but they told me of a new law in Colorado — that everyone above the age of ten or those who were medically exempt had to wear masks in public, and I’d forgotten mine. Oops.

I have a surgical mask on a ribbon that I generally wear around my neck until it’s time to go into a store. Because of allergies, I can’t wear one for very long otherwise my sinuses protest and I start gasping for breath. Lately, though, I haven’t bothered, and apparently, there’s been a twenty-five percent increase in local cases of the Bob, from 4 to 5.

That’s one thing my friends and I marveled at — that the local economy was destroyed for a mere five cases of the Bob. That’s it. Five cases.

Well, if it makes the power-wielding folks happy, I’ll wear a mask when I’m around others, though there is no way I can have been infected by The Bob. And yeah, I know — people can be contagious without knowing it, but I’ve pretty much only seen one person the past couple of weeks (the garage-builder), and from what I can gather, he doesn’t see many people, either. The chances of one of us near-hermits coming in contact with the one person who recently became infected with The Bob seems minuscule. Still, being the quintessential “good girl,” I’ll do what I’m told. So, a mask it is.

The interesting thing to me is that if I hadn’t come across my friends this morning, I still wouldn’t know about the new law. There is a rather pathetic newspaper, but it comes out only once a week, so the only place I’d been able to keep current about local affairs was a town news group on Facebook. Which means, as long as my Facebook boycott lasts, I will have to continue relying on chance encounters to find out what’s going on. (Some people are trying to get a more focused newspaper going, and they asked me if I wanted to be a part of it, but I have a hard enough time writing just for me. And besides, the isolation due to The Bob has regressed me to my default mode and killed any desire to make the effort to be around people.)

To be honest, I don’t care — can’t care — what’s going on in the world outside my fence since I have no control over any of it. (Now that I think about it, I don’t even have any control of what’s going on inside my fence. The feral cats have staked out my bare earth spots as their latrines. Weeds take over when I’m not looking. Friendly plants grow or not according to their own whim.)

I sometimes wonder if we’d all be better off not knowing anything beyond our immediate environs. Does knowing make anyone happy? Does not knowing make anyone feel more isolated?

Maybe I’m just making excuses for my own predilections. Still, next time I want to know what’s happening beyond my property, I’ll go for a walk, and if I need to know what’s going on, I’m sure someone will tell me.

***

Posted in life. Tags: better off not knowing the news, far piece, feral cats, it's the law to wear a mask, near hermit, reverting to my default mode, the bob, wearing a mask with allergies, wearing masks in Colorado. 7 Comments »

Happy Hamburger Day

May 27, 2020 — Pat Bertram

National Hamburger Day isn’t until tomorrow, though some sites I Googled suggested that it was yesterday, so today appears to be a suitable time to celebrate.

I wouldn’t even have known about this holiday except that I was gifted with some ground beef. At first it seemed like an odd gift, but The Bob has changed things so that valuable gift items are not trinkets and electronics but toilet paper and tissues and bleach, all of which had been sent to me, all of which were welcome gifts. And to that list, now is added hamburger.

It was only a chance remark from the giver who said “Happy Hamburger Day” in response to my thanks that made me check to see if there was such a day. I thought the remark was simply a made-up excuse to send me a valuable present. (Admittedly, vegans and vegetarians might not agree about the value, but then, I am an omnivore.) And sure enough, there really is a hamburger day!

It’s interesting to me that only in this time of The Bob would such a present be feasible. It was delivered to my door from the local grocery store, and the only reason the store delivered is because they’re trying to keep us older folks at home as much as possible.

Even more interesting to me is that I’m forgetting there is a crisis out there. I am quite content immersing myself in the world of the Wheel of Time without the conflicting desires that so often pull at me — spending time with people or spending time alone. Going out and doing something or staying home with a book. Being sociable and getting together to play a game or indulging myself and not playing. Trying to find meaning in my new post-Jeff, post-grief, post-move life or accepting whatever meaning there is in simply being me.

I am aware of the crisis to the extent that on the rare occasions when I do go into a store, I wear a mask out of courtesy, but not to the point of contemplating its purpose. And horrors! I do hug people — on purpose — though I let them initiate the contact. Well, except once when it was my decision. I saw a good friend at the store the other day. We stopped six feet away. “We can’t touch,” she said. “I don’t care,” I said. She laughed and then we rushed toward each other. And oh, did that feel good! Odd to think that such a simple human act borders on the seditious, but to be honest, being rebellious in such a way felt good, too.

I must admit that beyond those few brief occasions of welcome touches, I love the distancing that keeps people from crowding me in stores. I don’t like being squished between people in line at the best of times, so I hope the stores will keep the six-foot markers long after this crisis has been forgotten by everyone, not just me.

I am getting far from the point of this article which is . . . hmm. I don’t remember. Hamburger day? Gifts? The benefits of The Bob? Maybe there isn’t a point except a reminder to enjoy the day. With or without a hamburger.

***

Posted in home, life. Tags: distancing, enjoy the day, hamburger day, hugging in the time of the pandemic, national hamburger day, social distancing, the bob, the wheel of time. 5 Comments »

Broken World

May 11, 2020 — Pat Bertram

The garage door and opener were supposed to be delivered today so the construction guys could come do some more work on my garage, but the lumberyard now says they can’t deliver the door until next week. Apparently, they don’t have a driver due to The Bob. It’s just as well – it’s cloudy and cold with a good chance of rain, though I doubt the rain aspect of today’s weather — there has been so little moisture the last several months and the ground is so desiccated that I think the rain gods have forgotten how to find us.

Still, the wind is picking up, so who knows . . . Of course, if the forecast is at all correct, by the time the door gets here, we’ll be back up in the 90s, and that’s not good weather for building either!

Oddly, I’m not that disappointed about the garage, but I am disappointed not to have the workers here. It would add a bit of excitement to my life and I wouldn’t feel quite so isolated. They might try to get the door here themselves later in the week, but if not, well, there is one thing to look forward to — a picnic at home. The director of the senior center will be visiting each of us for a few minutes this Saturday to check to see how we are doing and to drop off a picnic lunch. It will be good to see her, though maintaining social distancing requirements means no hug. Too bad — I’m feeling touch-starved. Even though all of us seniors won’t be in one place, we will be enjoying a meal together. Even better, it will be a meal I don’t have to fix!

A few friends have been gathering occasionally to play dominoes, and I’ve considered joining them, but I can’t wear a mask for that long, and anyway, although I would like seeing them, I don’t really enjoy playing. Next month, though, regardless of the state of The Bob and the whatever continued requirements there are for us seniors, the Art Guild will be meeting. It will be outside on someone’s patio so we don’t get too close to one another, but oh, such a treat!

Meantime, there is today. I’ve done my stint on the elliptical, am finished writing this blog post, can’t take a walk since I overdid it yesterday, don’t have any urgent yard work to do. I guess I’ll make a cup of tea and escape into The Wheel of Time where some people have the power to heal and some have the power to break the world.

I just realized — that’s what this whole Bob thing feels like: a broken world. Hopefully, by the time I finish reading the saga and that fictional world is put right, our real world will also be put right.

***

Posted in home, life. Tags: breaking the world, building a garage, garage door, isolation, no hugs, picnic at home, rain forecast, the bob. 6 Comments »

A Single Death

April 9, 2020 — Pat Bertram

Every day we are subjected to the current count of how many people have died from the disease du jour, and yet, what’s the point except to keep a tally? Does anyone really care? As of last night, 193 people have died in Colorado from The Bob, but people have died from other things, too. Don’t those deaths count? Even a single death diminishes us, so what difference does it make if one person died or a hundred or a thousand? It matters, of course, to the loved ones remaining behind, and perhaps even to the one who is gone, but why do the rest of us care about the number of people who have died of this disease? We certainly don’t care about the vast numbers of people who die from heart disease or cancer or traffic accidents. So why this? Why now?

Could it be that we are only concerned about ourselves and how close the disease is to us? Or do we simply care about the logistics? We are constantly being told about the lack of equipment (though a few experts think the very lack of respirators is keeping some people alive — there is evidence that the respirators in some cases are hastening the end of vulnerable patients). And we are constantly being warned about the necessity of “flattening the curve” to keep from overwhelming the system (even though some epidemiologists think we are merely prolonging the life of The Bob). So is that what we care about?

Unless we personally know someone who has the virus or have lost someone to the virus, or unless a celebrity has died, we don’t know enough to care about anyone who is suffering. (Though why anyone would care about a celebrity mystifies me, since the deaths of unknowns are tragic, too, but discussing that is too much of a digression even for this blog.)

So what difference does it make how many have died from this particular disease?

Yes, I know, it is tragic that people are dying, but people are dying from other things, and that is tragic, too. A friend recently lost her husband. Except for those of us who knew her (or her husband) no one in the world cares. But if we care about those who die from The Bob, shouldn’t we all care about him, too?

Another friend is going through chemo. That’s every bit as dangerous and life-threatening as the vulnerable folks who get The Bob, and a lot more dangerous than the less vulnerable, since most cases aren’t much worse than a bout of the flu. Chemo is certainly more dangerous than those who have the virus with no outward show of symptoms. So shouldn’t we all care about the woman going through chemo, too?

Why discriminate on the basis of disease? We can care about this disease but no other? So what do we really care about?

That this disease is spreading faster than other diseases at the moment? It’s still not worth the draconian measures being taken to stop the spread. And is it really spreading that rapidly? If so, why are not all the “essential” employees dying? Why aren’t the “essential” stores closing because all their employees are sick?

New studies show that the cities that are the hardest hit are the cities with Chinatowns and high Asian populations. If that’s true, instead of quarantining the rest of the country, why not simply quarantine those neighborhoods? Oh, but you can’t. It’s racist. So, to protect the sensibilities of one community, we have to impose harsh punishments on all of us. (That staying at home and sheltering in place and only shopping for necessities is not a hardship for me do not make such stringent measures any less harsh.)

I keep saying that the measures being taken to flatten that mythical curve (and it is a myth — a projection — and so far, most projections pertaining to this disease have been wrong) don’t affect me, but obviously, I am wrong. Being housebound is giving me way too much time to think! And I have an overactive “thinker” to begin with.

But still, someone has to think about these things. Someone has to care about those dying from diseases other than the disease of the day. Someone has to look beyond the numbers and see the tragedy in even a single death.

***

Posted in culture, life. Tags: are a lot of deaths worse than one, caring about the dead, enforcing a stay at home order, flattening the curve, numbers of people who have died, quarantine, shelter in place, the bob. 8 Comments »

Ordinariness

March 23, 2020 — Pat Bertram

It seems weird that at a time like this, when everyone’s life is interrupted, mine goes on as before without any major changes. Or any change, actually. For various reasons, I’d already stopped most of the activities I’d been involved in, and I hadn’t yet decided what new activities to try, so I’d been staying home even before it was recommended we stay at home.

Although there have been no cases of “The Bob” here, this county seems to follow along what Denver is doing, and Denver has issued a stay-at-home order for its residents that will be enforced. They are allowed to go the grocery store (and, I presume, work in those stores if they have a job), visit doctors, and go out to exercise and that’s sort of what I’ve been doing. Except I don’t have a doctor here. And I haven’t been braving the grocery stores. (I didn’t stock up on anything but a bit of tuna, so I’m just nibbling my way through leftovers and what little I do have.)

I have been trying to walk a bit every day, and I’ve been looking at videos on knee exercises because I tweaked my knee while sleeping one night, and it hasn’t yet gone back to normal.

And I have been going to sit with a sick friend occasionally when her husband needs to be away. (Yep. Living dangerously!)

The library is closed, and the latest I heard was that all services were suspended, maybe even the quick exchange of books they’d once promised, but I do have emergency books — a stash of unread paperbacks and a Nook with books I would only read in an emergency.

One thing I have been doing differently is experimenting with something I’d once planned to do but never quite got around to doing— using a pee rag. It’s something I learned when preparing for a backpacking trip, and I don’t see why it wouldn’t work inside, too, especially since there is only me here (and especially since I haven’t seen a package of Charmin in the stores for weeks now).

Other than that, the only change in my life is: