Viral History and Human Behavior

Posted on by Thor

People have always responded the same way to plagues and pandemics. When faced by the tragic forces of nature most people stand by and watch. With an earthquake or hurricane maybe 10% of the people do the right thing and help. Another proponent do the opposite they actively impede recovery. Most people however wait to be told what to do. They are the frog in the slowly boiling pot of water. Rather than panic or gear into recovery mode, they mellow out and pretend nothing is happening.

When the twin towers were hit, most people didn’t immediately run to the stairwells. They sat back down and waited to be told what to do. Many who waited died. Today we are still experiencing a 9/11 worth of death every week from COVID and most have mellowed out, pretending nothing is happening. Those who wear masks and social distance are treated with suspicion. They break the illusion promoted by top officials that the pandemic is over.

During the Black Death of the 1830s, the rich stole from the poor and vulnerable and scapegoated people of other socioeconomic classes, along with the sick and disabled. Families abandoned the dead. In general hatred of “others” took hold. Those with money believed themselves to be safe from infection. Leadership in general denied the reality of what was happening. In Europe. the Jews were blamed for purposefully infecting Christians. Doctors advised patients that “the best way to protect against disease, causing bad air, was to expose oneself to more bad air.” Rumors and misinformation flourished.

The 1889 Russian Flu was known for a post-acute stage that caused “nervous disorders” including depression that lasted years. In 1893, Edvard Munch, still suffering post-flu, painted The Scream.

Austrian artist Egon Schiele died October 31, 1918 from the Spanish Flu. His wife, Edith Schiele who was 6 months pregnant died two days earlier.

As bodies piles up in 1918 officials insisted there was no cause for alarm. Propaganda fueled by the WW I war effort had little regard for a statements truth or falsehood. Citizens were considered the mental equivalent of children. The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson never made a statement about the virus.Woodrow Wilson had a bad bout of the Spanish Flu and later suffered a stroke which parallelized his left side and caused brain fog. His inability to focus kept him from promoting his peace treaty at Versailles.

By ignoring the unfolding tragedy terror settled into the populace. As the director of public health in Chicago said, “It is our job to keep people from fear. Worry kills more than the disease.” A war drive parade was held in Chicago despite warnings and there was a huge surge of 8,000 deaths that followed. Mass graves had to be dug. San Francisco on the other hand promoted the use of masks and the weathered the influenza outbreak much better with 1,857 deaths.

Artists explore Mummies of the World.

Posted on by Thor

Mummies of the World is now at the Orlando Science Center (777 E Princeton St, Orlando, FL).

Weeks before I had met a little girl who had been on a field trip to the Mummies exhibit. I asked her if any of the mummies were wrapped in bandages with their arms raised like in the movies. She explained that only one mummy was wrapped. Having seen the real thing, she thought it silly to think that mummies should roam the earth. From the gift shop she had purchased little pills that would turn into dinosaurs when moistened. I warned her that she should make sure she was outside when she dropped the pills into water since dinosaurs can be huge.

A mummy is the dead body of an animal or a human that been
preserved after death so that it does not decompose. To be
considered a mummy and not just a skeleton, the body must keep
some of its soft tissue, such as its hair, skin or muscles. The exhibit had shrunken heads, Egyptian mummies, Peruvian mummies, medical specimens and many mummies that were preserved naturally.

I walked the exhibit quickly in search of my sketch opportunities. Science Center staff who were also artists had been invited to sketch mummies on this day. They were in strategic locations throughout the
exhibit and each of them was sketching a different specimen. Their creations will ultimately become an original work of art that will be displayed in
the exhibit once it’s completed. In the Burns Collection room, I was fascinated by David Matteson who was hunched over his book doing erasure poetry inspired by the screaming mummy. He said that Edmund Munch created Der Schrei der Natur (“The Scream of Nature“) after observing a mummy similar to this one. I don’t know if this is fact or fiction, but this mummy with its bony fingers raised up to its face does indeed look like it is screaming. He was working in a book about mortality rather than a sketchbook. He darkened lines of copy or individual words to find hidden poems within the books copy. His piece will address our morbid fascination with death and how we all fear and then must ultimately accept this inescapable truth.

Adam Wade Lavigne, the Science Center’s facility assistant, introduced himself. I’m always surprised and pleased when another artist knows about my sketching obsession. He was doing an amazing sketch of a mummies upper torso that was very accurate and expressive. I admired how large he was working.

A third artist, Jake White, the development director for the Science Center, was sketching the prone mummy behind David, but he lost interest and decided to sketch a Peruvian child that had been found in a basket naturally preserved by the dry heat. The child’s skull had been elongated by being pressed between two boards. These elongated skulls were considered beautiful at the time. Royalty would employ a third board which would create a pointed skull. The brain ultimately adapts expanding into the heightened skull with no ill effects to reasoning or intelligence. The mummy had been CT scanned and a computer created the skeleton and the skull as 3D computer prints. The bones had markings that hinted that the child had experienced malnutrition and stress.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to stare death in the face and learn about ancient cultures. Mummies will be at the Science Center with a limited time engagement through the fall.