Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Cold Ahead
The number of new Covid-19 cases in Wisconsin yesterday was 3,200 and change.
The State of Wisconsin is opening a field hospital in a giant building at the Milwaukee fairgrounds that in normal years holds fast-talking knife salesmen and people selling essential oils and waterbeds. Now, we see on the news, the hucksters have been replaced by rows of curtained-off spaces, waiting for sick folk to be trucked in from up north. I am so weird that I worry what the patients will look at. Just a white curtain? Do the people in charge plan to bring in plants or wall hangings?
I also worry that people will be cold. But I’m sure someone is taking care of that, somewhat will have thought that the concrete floor and cavernous ceiling will make for a steady chill. I hope they will bring quilts.
This is where we’re at – bringing people a hundred miles from their homes to lay in beds in a thrown-together field hospital at the fairgrounds where, a year ago, their kids might have shown off their 4-H goats.
I don’t have any grand reflections on this. I’m not gifted in the way that some people are. I can’t see way beyond the reality of the field hospital at the fairgrounds to find meaning and truth. I just see the white beds and white curtains and wish there were plants and quilts.
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Photo by Nathan Bang on Unsplash
10 Comments on “Cold Ahead”
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Snow Door | wisconsinacademy.org
Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Why Wisconsin is a question I have been asking for a week. Any ideas?
Here’s why. A Democratic governor and a Republican legislature. Republicans go to court over the governor’s orders, like the stay at home order and the mask mandate. Just this week, the Tavern League challenged the governor’s order to reduce capacity of bars and won. This, while we are quadrupled the number of cases and opening a 500 bed field hospital at state fair. It is totally crazy and dysfunctional.
Wow. Thanks. I had no idea. I fail to see the sense of it. Oh right. There is no sense in it.
I wonder if you would be allowed to donate brightly colored quilts?
They did that on a smaller scale in many areas here in WA as we were an original “hotspot” at the beginning of all this. It was a preemptive idea I think, and the sites were hardly used.
Same here. Hospital was set up in the spring but not used. Now the # of hospitalizations is so high, it’s being opened and patients will be coming from the Fox Valley north of Milwaukee. Not good.
That sounds really miserable for people who are already sick. I just wanted to mention that I really like your hair!
Thank you!
Really enlightening. I love your writing style. Unbelievable this is happening in this country.
Unbelievable is exactly right.