152. Coyote Story?

 If you know Isak Dinesen, the Danish author, it is probably through the book, or more likely the movie, Out Of Africa. The picture that comes to your mind will be of Meryl Streep saying “I had a faaam in Africa,” or of Robert Redford, as the dashing bush pilot, Denys Finch Hatton.  

 

I had a professor who was obsessed with Dinesen’s Seven Gothic Tales, romantic and darkly magical stories told as if spoken aloud with themes and people of previous times. It was written and published before Out of Africa, and gained American following in the 1930s. I took up his obsession, and read many of her stories and stories about her before I read or saw Out of Africa. 

 

It’s been decades, but Covid and the world’s responses have me thinking about those stories and Dinesen’s strange and utterly unusual life. The reason I say this is because she thought God was a jokester. The craziness and evil in the world did not elicit a kind and powerful God, and I guess the theology needed to explain such a one was too much for her. There was also good company in jesters to kings and American Indian coyote stories. And her own life.

 

Dinesen grew up wealthy. Her father committed suicide when she was young. She fell in love with someone from her social class, was rejected, and married his twin brother. That got her to Africa, which she loved. But the marriage got her syphilis, and a divorce. After the divorce she fell in love with a bush pilot and safari leader named Denys Finch Hatton (Redford), who died when his plane crashed. She returned to Denmark—and wrote.

 

***

Covid came on us, swept the globe but especially the United States, like a plague. Our medical teams and scientists developed a vaccine in record time—and during the Trump administration! Trump and his people minimized the disease and a sizeable part of the population rejected the vaccine. Many of the anti-vaxxers worshipped and praised their rejection to each other in churches. Churches have accounted for some “spreader” events.

 

Enough of us got vaccinated and/or got ill and recovered from it to slow the Covid’s progress. The virus bided its time while people fussed and argued over the efficacy of the vaccine, and over its distribution. The virus developed new variants that are worming through the population—especially attacking the unvaccinated. 

 

The numbers of new cases are skyrocketing—while the impacts of the most aggressive variant appear to be milder. What is next?

 

One could, I am sure, draft an outline of scientific and political Covid decisions that will explain—or at least fully chronicle it. Or one could think that some coyote was pulling the strings and laughing as we humans stumble through the next chapter of the Covid virus.

 

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