COVID-19 update and Kipling
Jul. 11th, 2021 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anna_wingBack in lockdown again, no leaving the house except for work and groceries. Much of this is being ignored, because people have to eat, but least they're wearing masks.
My friends of Asian extraction living or working in European countries are grimly hunkering down in face of the locals' mad insistence upon lifting all mask and distancing restrictions, just so that they can get drunk en masse, wander about breeding new variants, and kill yet more of their fellow-citizens. My friends are all vaccinated, but none of them fancies catching it again, even if the likelihood of a serious case is much lower. We're none of us spring chickens any more, and some are over 60.
I am feeling a little tetchy about it all.
It is not widely known, but among Rudyard Kipling's short stories are some extraordinary works of science fiction, though from this end of the Trousers of Time they read as perfect steampunk. Like the rest of his work, they are rather more complex than people who dismiss him as a hidebound imperialist (usually without reading him) think. I consider him one of the great minor poets, myself, even if he was a bit off about the geography of Myanmar.
https://americanliterature.com/author/rudyard-kipling/short-story/as-easy-as-abc "As Easy As ABC"
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29135/29135-h/29135-h.htm "With The Night Mail"
My friends of Asian extraction living or working in European countries are grimly hunkering down in face of the locals' mad insistence upon lifting all mask and distancing restrictions, just so that they can get drunk en masse, wander about breeding new variants, and kill yet more of their fellow-citizens. My friends are all vaccinated, but none of them fancies catching it again, even if the likelihood of a serious case is much lower. We're none of us spring chickens any more, and some are over 60.
I am feeling a little tetchy about it all.
It is not widely known, but among Rudyard Kipling's short stories are some extraordinary works of science fiction, though from this end of the Trousers of Time they read as perfect steampunk. Like the rest of his work, they are rather more complex than people who dismiss him as a hidebound imperialist (usually without reading him) think. I consider him one of the great minor poets, myself, even if he was a bit off about the geography of Myanmar.
https://americanliterature.com/author/rudyard-kipling/short-story/as-easy-as-abc "As Easy As ABC"
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/29135/29135-h/29135-h.htm "With The Night Mail"
