Stuff Happens

When we were in the process of moving, again, in mid-March, the specter of a pandemic was out there.  Worrying, concerning, confusing.  We were moving fast, working hard, trying to settle in before….well, we didn’t know exactly what was coming but we knew we wanted to be ready.

Since I was already a little lame (in preparation for my broken foot?) I was assigned the task of re-shelving books.  I could sit down, grab a handful of books from a box,  jam ‘em in the shelves and keep on going without having to walk a lot.

And so it happened that a book I’d never seen before popped into my hand.  The title, It Can’t Happen Here, stopped me in my tracks: 

Whoa, I thought.  A pandemic-handbook has just shown up.  It’s going to tell me all I need to know and, more importantly, perhaps assure me that “it” can’t happen here.

Of course, I was wrong.  In so many ways.  The book, written in 1935 by Sinclair Lewis, is not about a virus at all.  It’s about the fragility of our democracy and what can happen when we let our guard down.  Written as a cautionary tale, it shows us how frightening that might be.  How devastating it would be if “it” happened here.  

However you want to think about it, David Crosby…yes that David Crosby…sums it up by ranking It Can’t Happen Here as “number one on the list of famous last words.”