i get lost, sometimes, in the stories of my ancestors. there are thousands of them, up there, who lived out their lives in the boston area or in some cases out on the hard plains. i got up to about 1908 with them, and now, i'm kind of curious how many got caught up in the pandemic. it's not always clear how they died. lots of the relatives died early - married and then died, or had their first baby and then died. it's not always a nice story.

somehow they got by by cranking out the children. this one family had eleven - two died - a couple more died young or something. this family was definitely lost in the late-eighteenth century and people didn't know much about them. sometimes i get the feeling that dates that they've collected - even the names of the people, might be something that someone made up, and they aren't real people. but they are - and they were living in places like cambridge, or chester, vermont, or maybe brookline. just living their lives. maybe cranking out the babies, maybe not.

if they had a lot of babies, that made it more possible that they got to where i am today. it's just statistically more likely. we are at a point where we have what, three hundred million in this country, and coronavirus will take maybe one million. by and large the human population is shrinking - women are having less than two - and gradually we may ease down to a point where the earth can actually handle us and heal itself. as for me and mine, i'm like my dad - i had four biological children, but don't hold out much hope for the long haul. i'll have descendants, but they won't populate the earth. we white folks are in a funk when it comes to cranking them out.

and no wonder. it's hard to know what's going on in this earth, not to mention in this country, and not feel badly about bringing another soul into it. here you go, you can inherit this mess. climate change, rich people ran off with all the goods, massive corruption, inability to work together - you can have the whole schtick.

and then other times i have hope. the virus wipes out some traffic, and a few factories. the flowers bloom again. the air is so fresh, you can see the mountains.

if i were a kid i'd say, the virus is coming, let's have kids like there's no tomorrow.