I was obsessed with diseases as a child. I read extensively about polio because it was A Terrible Thing that happened to so many children AND a president…. and I was terrified by the ranks of iron lungs in old Life magazine images, fearing they would come back in vogue, as treatment for… something, and I’d be trapped in one for years. I memorized the symptoms for typhoid as described by Catherine Marshall in CHRISTY, because fictional interactions with disease was apparently also acceptable. I was mildly interested in Typhoid Mary, but fascinated by Jacob Riis, and Jane Hull who lifted children out of desperate circumstance. Children can become oddly fixated on disaster and destruction sometimes. My readings on child welfare and the shaky beginnings of a nation deciding that perhaps the children of the poor should also be granted a childhood instead of being bred for endless work clash painfully today against the plummeting working age in some states, and the climbing number of measles deaths in others. Somewhere, someone voted and decided that child welfare didn’t need to treat anyone well.
the smallest always pay the price
Will anyone admit they voted for this
And decided, “Sow chaos,’cause we can!”
Now whispering “Whaaaat?” or ‘How could this happen?’
Is pointlessly past tense, and done when anywhere,
Everywhere in the rot creeps. Ready or not
our dominoes fall. Change sweeps up everything,
true – but this breaking is
brutal and once again, children are lost.
