Mundane Apocalypse

[mundaneapocalypse]

Due to various issues, I cannot update the Tumblr anymore.

[mundaneapocalypse]

Nobody else has contracted smallpox, but the Shelter quarantine will not end until a month after the last scabs fall off. Mrs. Duffy has not contracted it or had a vaccination, but volunteered to nurse them. She resembles a plague doctor with tighter sleeves, a straighter and slimmer skirt, a brimless hat, a solid snood, and a usual kerchief-style face mask, gloves, and glass goggles. She says she lived through the smallpox epidemic and she probably will with a few patients.

The patients should recover with no complications, including blindness. They seem to be a little weaker than they would if they had not grown up with on-and-off malnutrition, which Mrs. Duffy says commonly happens among smallpox patients. It has not affected their growth visibly, but she says even short bouts (less than nine months; many animals and calorie-dense crops require about three months to grow) of malnutrition can affect their immune systems and overall strength for years, particularly if they are repeated.

The father of the patients used to be a subsistence farmer and subsistence fisherman approximately where Myrtle Beach is. They had salty soil and strict subsistence and recreational fishing limits to protect the professional fishermen. Compared to other subsistence households in the same area as them, they were poor. His children never went to a doctor, despite one breaking his collarbone, and they had no shoes, socks, coats, hats, scarves, or mittens, and often, no heat except for what the cooking fire gave. The children had one set of clothes for everyday and one for temple, and since she began being physically adult, the daughter has never had proper underwear, and when her mother died, hers was beyond repair. The shoes fit, but the daughter grew up without them and dislikes wearing them except with her good clothes. They cannot remember when they had coffee, tea, liquor, cooking oil, sugar, chocolate, vanilla, coconuts, oranges, lemons, limes, and other tasty things people in Roanoke buy, and rarely peanuts or sunflower seeds. Sometimes, they did not have corn, rice, beans, peas, dairy, or eggs, and their rabbits were not particularly robust. A hurricane damaged their house and the father patched it together as well as he could, but half their roof was a waterproof tarp. They were often in debt. After the continental collision, they gave up their homestead just before the bank would foreclose, which affected their credit rating slightly less than it would before. The family walked with anything they could carry or pull in a cart to the Shelter because they heard it hired any ablebodied man or boy aged 13 or older.

(Rice is much cheaper in South Carolina than in many parts of the country, and homesteads can grow it themselves if they can flood and drain the land without bothering the neighbors.)

Madison wanted to nurse the patients, but she did not know enough about Fae biology and medicine, and she had to keep her job at the hospital without potentially spreading smallpox through Kanawha County and potentially other counties. Mark kept his job, and incidentally, his boss now knows about the Shelter and no longer thinks we are the kind of weird he expected. I quit my job and I love being on the homestead. Now, we can leave the homestead, but not enter the Shelter.

[mundaneapocalypse]

Six people have smallpox, and mostly from one family. However, three neighbors and one soldier have contracted it.

The head of the family works on the Veil and his daughter cares for the family and often goes into Roanoke to look for honest work. Her siblings beg.

It probably spread through the three younger children playing together and the older daughter, who cares for the family, having direct contact with contaminated objects and carrying it with her. She thought it was tonsillitis or strep throat at first and did not change her dresses or scrub every inch of the house. Not many people do for tonsillitis or strep throat. Obviously, she washed her hands and boiled kerchiefs and cups to prevent the other siblings contracting it.

She mends clothes for the soldier, and because the clothes rest on her lap, it would have picked up droplets the soldier could have touched while dressing. She contracted smallpox, too.

The soldier shares a tent with one other soldier, but they interact with several more. The neighbors have a large family of fifteen people. Both groups eat communally and smallpox notoriously spreads through unwashed dishes (hence the government forcing pubs and public eating places to close in the 1990s).

So even though only one person had it initially, he could have contracted it from old germs somebody left behind months ago. The army and slums regularly contract diseases that way. When the first person contracts smallpox, it could be from a completely different place than the person frequents, then it spreads rapidly from the first person.

The sister might sound incompetent, but she behaved quite well for a teenager. She looked up the symptoms in the Roanoke Cuncraftbook and when the disease stopped resembling strep or tonsillitis, she asked another woman for help.

The Army has its own arrangements for the soldier, but everybody else is quarantined, and everybody in their households are separated from the sick and the healthy. Erik burned anything porous except the things they families would need through the quarantine. Those things will be burned later. The families have little in the first place.

[mundaneapocalypse]

Guess what!

One person contracted smallpox a while ago and showed the sores in his mouth today. Others have colds, flues, stomach bugs, or the initial stages of smallpox.

I think the descriptions below match Roanoke and Halidom descriptions of smallpox. They might be the kinds found in both places. However, there might be more in Roanoke because non-wights contract it and in Halidom, insects and animals did not appear to spread smallpox, though they can spread some of the other poxes. In Elfhame, many doctors thought Fae with animalistic traits could not contract it, but Erik says they had plenty of evidence to the contrary, but it took werewolves dying by the thousands in the 1990s for the doctors to agree. Some doctors said it was possible and others said it was something else, or they had quite a bit of wight genes.

Seriously, Erik’s earliest memories involve his family dying of smallpox. Though he understands the science, he doesn’t know how he survived and his siblings didn’t. It seems random.

With all forms of smallpox, initial symptoms resemble a cold or a stomach bug, but when the spots and rash form on the mucus membranes, which are easily visible in your mouth, it could be smallpox. Then the spots form sores and nearly any Roanoke woman can identify smallpox at that stage, but determining the type of smallpox can be difficult at first. The sores are quite different from cold sores, tonsillitis, and the like. Early diagnosis of the type can improve the chance of survival.

With common/moderate smallpox, if there is any doubt it is smallpox, another six days will prove it. The sores are papules, which turn into pustules and leak fluids all over. The pustules have dents in the middle. The sores begin in the mouth and within a few days, the entire body has pustules, because the infection has entered the blood stream and traveled all over the body. They can form on eyes and people go blind. The patient is most infectious during the pustule stage. However, the scabs are also infectious, and they form after the pustules dry up and deflate. When the scabs fall off and the person bathes, he is no longer infectious. Picking off scabs might increase the chances of infecting somebody else.

In Roanoke, if treated at home, smallpox averages a 30% mortality rate. With regular in-home professional medical attention at home, the mortality rate can be between 20% and 30%. In hospital, the mortality hovers around 15-25% depending on available treatments and hospital staff.

Oh, and the vaccination has a .5-2% chance of infecting the person with smallpox. Approximately 1% would be the mildest form. Vaccination to the ordinary type might protect people from hemorrhagic and septic types, allow a less serious infection, or it would be easier to treat.

The scabs might peel off in sheets. The scabs can join together and peel off in the shape of the person’s hand or nose or something, which generally happens in a severe infection. A patient requires a longer recovery time and has a slightly higher chance of death. This is severe smallpox.

In rare instances, a vaccinated person can contract a mild form with a quick-developing, superficial rash and low to no fever, and afterwards, the person is immune to smallpox (mild smallpox). Another rare form of smallpox can cause hemorrhage (hemorrhagic smallpox). The third rare form of smallpox has unraised pustules, the pre-sore stage lasts days longer, the smallpox causes a high fever, and blood poisoning can set in, and it takes much longer to recover from the pustules, and it is often fatal.

In Halidom, smallpox existed and was eradicated in 1979, except for a couple vials in a secret lab. So, much of the Halidom population has absolutely no immunity to smallpox.

In Roanoke, smallpox exists, and there was a major outbreak in the 1990s. I’m not sure if they are the same strains. I do know one strain particularly affects werewolves, and Erik was innoculated for it, along with several of his siblings, and some of his siblings and his father died from the vaccination and from contracting smallpox. Some Shelter inhabitants have smallpox scars.

In both worlds, no cure exists, though doctors can treat symptoms and antivirals might help some people. Smallpox is deadly. Mrs. Duffy says death rates decreased steadily through the 21st century in Roanoke, possibly from treating symptoms and supporting the patient with IV fluids and the surviving mothers passing on antibodies to their children. If the second, the deadliness would have decreased through history, but it is difficult to determine when many other factors such as failed crops affect health.

Smallpox needs about 7-19 days to incubate, but it can affect groups of people who touched anything that touches an infected person. In the 1990s, firemen burned down entire villages to control infection, cremation was mandatory and undertakers could forcibly use pottery kilns and charcoal burners, slave labor scrubbed streets perfectly clean and they would be hung as soon as they showed symptoms, the Army blockaded the highways and would hang any travelers, the police arrested and hung anybody traveling outside the designated time and place, the rich quarantined themselves to prevent infection, and people suspected of spreading smallpox can receive mob justice and hopefully no legal repercussions.

Erik’s mother tied him and his sisters in a separate room to keep them from touching each other in case they contracted smallpox from the vaccinations, which is an extreme example and he says it might have been child abuse. He was successfully vaccinated and had no ill effects. His wife, Ida, contracted it and survived.

Mr. Symmes lost twenty-two children and one wife to smallpox since the 16th century. He remembers Halidom Native Americans dying by the thousands from smallpox and is extremely worried the same thing would happen again to everybody in Halidom now. Some of us have immunity, and we don’t know how long it would take for our inherited immune systems to forget about smallpox. He contracted it, survived, and says it was the worst illnesses he had. Because he has a different body, nobody knows if he might contract it again.

You can contract smallpox from washing a cup a person with open sores or scabs, or who does not show the sores yet but is infected, drank from. You might get sick from touching the washwater. Pregnant women can transmit smallpox to their unborn children. Smallpox can live in scabs for up to twenty years under the best conditions, but generally less than two years. Obviously, touching an infected person directly will infect you. On the bright side, you can only have it once, then you are immune. Unless you have a new body, maybe. Children and pregnant women are extremely vulnerable, while adult men tend to survive.

Mark and I quarantined our homestead from the Shelter for one month since the last scabs on the last patient fall off.

The Shelter has had illnesses before, including scarlet fever and tuberculosis, but since the only Humans the inhabitants regularly interact with include Mark, Madison, and me, and we had vaccines, it was fine. Madison received adult vaccines. Mark got booster shots because sometimes in his orphanage, they received expired vaccines or half-effective ones. With Marmalade, we don’t want to kill her and she has no vaccines. She legitimately might die from them--she is part feline and part wight and it can complicate Elfhame vaccines anyway, and if she has a bad reaction to them, the hospitals might not be able to treat her. Halidom vaccines are way too dangerous for her. The Shelter does not have enough vaccines for everybody and she has a lower chance of catching a severe illness than the other kids. Being preemies, Lad, Lassie, and Half-Pint were very vulnerable to infection (Half-Pint still is; I will fight you if you try to hug and kiss on her; I have a pocket knife and a gun and I’m not afraid to use them). Theoretically, they were closer to Humans than Marmalade was, and possibly, diseases that affect wights are the same strains that affect Humans. They could have died anyway. Their chances of contracting historical diseases was pretty slim (except for measles, apparently), but they were weak enough they probably would die if infected, so they were vaccinated.

But not to smallpox, because the CDC and WHO had to save millions of Humans from dying of one of the worst illnesses in history, and now, babies aren’t vaccinated because the vials are in high-security labs where only somebody bent on a pandemic could access them, and if somebody could, smallpox might be low on the list of bothers. The CDC and Who probably didn’t know Elfhame existed, and it is extremely difficult to vaccinate Fae.

Or smallpox could spread if a Human interacts with an infected Fae, contracts it, and accidentally spreads it through spit before showing symptoms. If we did contract it, we would have to burn down the homestead to prevent spreading the infection. Remember the Velveteen Rabbit? Like that, except it might cause a forest fire and alarm the fire department. Somebody would probably die, and it would probably be the kids.

Also, “smallpox” isn’t a rational reason to stop going to church or work. I can get away with it, but Mark can’t. We don’t know what to tell our bosses yet, and we don’t want to be a root of a pandemic. For one thing, millions of people would die. For another thing, and, please remember I’m not an ambassador and I’m just using common sense and basic decency here, spreading germs isn’t a polite way to reintroduce massive cultural groups to each other. It will happen, but ideally, some strain of strep throat or something relatively easy to recover from.

Because the vaccine can cause smallpox and it could easily spread to Halidom, and the citizens have limited contact with Roanoke and most supplies come from Halidom, the Shelter does not allow smallpox vaccinations. It might have been a bad idea and vaccinations will begin as soon as possible. We are already screwed, but maybe we can lessen the spread.

If several soldiers show signs of smallpox over the next 2-3 days, it probably came from the Army--maybe in supplies, transfers, or being in Roanoke long enough to contract it and return, such as from an inn or pub. If the Shelter citizens show signs of smallpox over the next 2-3 days, it probably came from them--maybe from markets, family members, or pubs. It might have been from the prisoners. We don’t know much about their diseases, burning their bodies was easier than burying them, medical records were terrible, the prisoners killed the guards, and probably, any prisoner who had smallpox while a prisoner died, and the others would be infected because of awful living conditions and weakened bodies, and it would be noticeable. They escaped long enough ago if they had smallpox, we almost definitely would know by now. The Roanoke Army and the Shelter citizens rarely interact, and they might not infect each other. However, with the flooding, both of them live in less than hygienic conditions.

Smallpox and the infection risk are bad enough the persons might be hung. If they are dead and burned, they can’t infect anybody. Anything of theirs or anything that touched them would be burned. Anybody they came into contact with would be quarantined. In the meantime, the others will deep clean everything, and the persons are quarantined.

It can be difficult to diagnose smallpox without fluids from a sore. Growing a sample takes long enough the sores will form. If the sores and pustules are the most infectious stages, killing an infected person before it reaches that stage will prevent infection.

We can burn and clean anything non-living with no problems except whether or not slaves should respond to a disease like that. Quarantine is a problem because the people can’t fend for themselves.

So who wants to guess if the sick persons without the sores have colds, flues, stomach bugs, or smallpox and have whoever might have smallpox hung? Who wants to hang a man, woman, child, or baby because of fever, muscle pain, malaise, headache, prostration, nausea, and vomiting? Who wants to hang  pregnant woman when there is no way to tell if the baby has smallpox without puncturing the amniotic sac and possibly causing a miscarriage? Who wants to test everybody’s blood and hang everybody who carries a smallpox virus and might not have spread it to anybody else? Who wants to hang a person with a 70% survival chance who might not spread it to anybody else?

[mundaneapocalypse]

The Roanoke Army is still in the Shelter, and currently, in the settlement.

Mr. McFarlain and the other Veil engineers, magicians, etc. released millions of gallons of water into the Veil. They flooded a gigantic magic bag, split it, and all the water landed at once, and so everybody needed to be far away or else crushed. To their relief, it did not burst the Veil and flood parts of Halidom.

Now they and many of the Veil workers have been making hills, which tend to soak up water and fall down, which forms the terrain, including a river, creeks, and small ponds. Once the water cycle works better and until the plants root firmly, it might continue severely changing. So there may be mudslides, and if they are too vigorous, there will be a swamp and sinkholes. Hopefully, it will not be entirely swamp, although it looks like one in most areas. If they miscalculated the water amount, there will be a pond or a lake.

[mundaneapocalypse]

The Roanoke Army thoroughly searched the Shelter and found nothing except refugees and the Shelter organizational thing. They say some of the refugees are escaped prisoners, but all we see are starving people, which is still fairly common in Roanoke. Some of our refugees are a bit scragglier than normal starving people, but the Shelter is basically a last resort people happen upon, so it isn’t surprising.

Also, the kerfuffle we had with a clan in Roanoke implies the Shelter, and the Shelter’s opening into Halidom complicates the situation. They demonstrate a lack of respect for authority, which could have influenced the prisoner uprising.

To aid the Roanoke population, the Roanoke government has been using land in veils, and most land in most veils belong to the nobility or a clan, and the government does not typically use it. Legally, they can if they need to, but the Shelter was never part of Roanoke and it is not now. The government can’t use it.

If the Roanoke Army remains in the Shelter, the Roanoke Army will be considered an occupying force, and we are considering if we want to be occupied, conquered, or left to our own devices.

Mr. McFarlain and the scientists will water the Shelter this week. The people, except for necessary workers, will be on higher ground and we recommended the Roanoke Army leaves or seeks higher ground, or it will be washed away, and we don’t want to drown anybody.

[mundaneapocalypse]

The Roanoke Army arrived to quell the prisoner revolt, and we don’t particularly want them in the Shelter because the Shelter is not technically part of Roanoke and we don’t want trouble. The Roanoke government has been entering other small veils to harvest crops for famine relief, or to levey taxes, and the like.

The Roanoke prison system arrived in the Shelter, too, or it would be very suspicious. For now, it is a bit uncertain. We sent a telegram telling them there were no more riots and peace was restored. Apparently, they wanted to verify, and brought a battalion for in case of emergency.

To be fair, the Roanoke government is doing its job, and not letting prisoners riot and escape seems like a good idea. Travel times are rather long and police often can’t manage a large riot on its own. It would have been polite to ask permission first instead of telling us they were going to the prison camps. Asking might not have affected our points of view on the subject, but we are not associated with the Roanoke government and governments should not enter other countries without permission or a dang good reason for invasion. They do not have a good reason if the Shelter is perfectly calm and peaceful.

But Gilbert let them into the Shelter to look for the prisoners, who have disappeared and we have absolutely no idea where they are. The police don’t. Other than not knowing where the prisoners of another police force escaped to, the police are very competent. For the most part, the Shelter is peaceful, or at least as non-violent as a small town, minus the drugs and alcohol.

[mundaneapocalypse]

Mark makes good bookshelves because they don’t crack or warp if you turn the boards occasionally, they hold a reasonable amount of books, and they are deep, and whether it is the design or the wall anchors, a small child can’t pull them over or jiggle them. He made a bookshelf for a PhD candidate sturdier than usual and the customer loved it, told people, and now Mark has about ten custom bookshelf requests.

He is very happy, because he likes his job, but he loves making furniture, especially if he knows somebody will use it. Half-Pint has a tiny eye protection and dust mask because sometimes he watches the kids while working. It is safer than it sounds. They can’t reach the tools or small objects and he has a baby gate around the saw. Of course, Lassie sees the baby gate as a challenge we had to get a taller one, so now she bawls until she can sit on Mark’s baby carrier and make every woman in my family except for Marmalade and Half-Pint nervous.

[mundaneapocalypse]

There was a prisoner uprising overnight on July 2rd and July 3rd, and the prisoners apparently killed the guards and escaped the camps, which we definitely know because they left notes. Aside from that, I don’t have much particular information.

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The prisoners returned to work at 11:18 P.M., June 23, 2019, because, apparently, everybody dying a slow death is more pleasant than watching friends die and be punished and allowing fellow strikers die and be punished for sticking to tenets.

[mundaneapocalypse]

The prisoner strike continued until about 4:00 PM 6/21/19, and then guards began punishing the prisoners. They will kill one prisoner every hour, and every hour, add another prisoner to the cell, until the prisoners continue working.

[mundaneapocalypse]

Prisoner-Slave Strike

The Roanoke government decided it was fine to use prisoners as slave labor, and it is a pretty common thing. In general, it is along the lines of license plates, not gulags, but recently, conditions grew worse for the prisoners.

The Roanoke government decided it was fine for prisoners to work on the Shelter veil. Gilbert wanted to give people jobs to support their families and obviously, slavery doesn’t work like that. The prisoner-slave labor completed about a quarter of the Shelter veil so far.

On June 6, at 6:00 AM, the prisoners stroked (struck?), and apparently, it is over lack of food and water, and dangerous living conditions.

The Shelter government sided with the prisoners because their conditions are dangerous. The Veil workers work in the same hazardous environments, but off-duty, they are reasonably well fed, more-or-less safe from injury, and have mediocre sanitation, unlike the prisoners. The prisoners are much weaker than the workers, and they have accidentally infected the Veil workers with parasites and diseases, which is inconvenient and dangerous. The Shelter government offered to provide better sanitation and more water several times, but the requests were refused.

[mundaneapocalypse]

The Exterior Shelter Veil Festival

A festival means “pertaining to a feast,” and that is what a festival is in Roanoke. It often includes other things, such as singing and dancing, but it partially depends on the religion or if the festival is for a religion at all. “Feast day” might refer more to religious celebrations than festivals do.

I didn’t see the Exterior Shelter Veil Festival because I had to work, but I knew more-or-less what would happen.

There was dancing and singing, both of which required playing instruments. Households were required to sit together because they might not have opportunity for several months.

However, 148 veil workers died while working on the exterior veil and there was basically a memorial ceremony for them. Their households were not invited to the feast, but everybody attended the ceremony. Instead, they mourned. And most of them have had no support from the Shelter for months, and Gilbert barely wants them in the Shelter at all. Some of them work on the Veil now and some of them are slaves.

The prisoners were not included, but we are not responsible for them.

[mundaneapocalypse]

The veil workers finished the exterior Shelter veil yesterday, and tomorrow, there will be a festival.

The exterior veil is most important--Humans might see it, and if it is not secure, they can enter and exit at whim or accident. However, sturdiness wise, it functions like a storm door. The required shoring up for a secure veil is too visible to risk Humans seeing it.

For easier maintenance, some workers will live in the corners. Some will live on the Halidom side and others inside, either switching inside/outside station every few months, or working in shifts and returning to the Shelter at the end of shifts. There will be ferrymen in case something strays.

The interior is about halfway finished, but living near the unfinished bits is so dangerous that until the workers finish it, their families cannot live there. But for the weekend, the veil workers who worked on the exterior will be home, and then some will return to the corners for maintenance or will work on the interior.

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I posted more about Lad and Lassie when they were preemies because I didn’t have three kids, two jobs, and post-partum mental issues.

Half Pint does not need a kidney transplant anymore, but she still has an underdeveloped liver. She tries to nurse and can’t quite figure it out yet, and until she does, she has a feeding tube. She attempts nursing a few times a day. I don’t mind the feeding tube as much as Mark does--I have previous experience with a sick baby goat who needed one and figure sometimes people need tubes, and it worries Mark a little.

Because she can control her own temperature as well as a newborn, she came home today. She has weekly doctor’s appointments because of her liver. It is still much better for everybody than being hospitalized.

Yonca doesn’t know what to think of Half Pint. I showed Half Pint to her and Yonca looked at me like, “Are you seriously letting that thing around the animals? You do know it is wiggling, right? Why are you keeping it?” I told Yonca to put up with her.

Yonca doesn’t mind the other kids. They aren’t her favorite things in the world, but she leaves them alone. If they touched the other animals without me and maybe Mark around, she would probably bite them. Once she did try to bite Marmalade and Mark picked up Marmalade, which calmed Yonca down. So our kids don’t touch the animals without me. Lad and Lassie hardly ever enter the pasture because we adults can’t keep them out of trouble and do the chores.

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Madison and I planted the vegetables, and Lad and Lassie noodled around with extra seeds, trowels, and watering cans. Their plants might not sprout, but they will try. Marmalade did not want to help plant, but she kept an eye on Lad and Lassie.

Also, Madison and I plant very quickly because we have done it for several years and Mark made a wooden board with pegs for the various spacings we use. We smack them onto the dirt and lift them up, and the pegs leave the holes behind.

We had some artichokes and asparagus this year, and we should have plenty of berries. I can probably preserve enough berries we don’t need to buy them. Mark and I eat enough vegetables we can skip fruits (the informal definition) a few times a week, but Mark prefers fruit to some vegetables, and we want our kids to be in the habit of eating fruits and vegetables. Mark tends to be a pickier eater than me, but he has rarely found an objectionable fruit. I try not to skip fruit, because I am pregnant and/or breastfeeding and the kid still needs the nutrients, and if I do, I eat a vegetable instead. Quite a few vegetables are fruits, and quite a few fruits aren’t fruit, and theoretically, it evens out. Store bought fruit is wimpy like all store bought produce and I reckon naught to it. Canned home grown blueberries eaten by themselves are still better than store bought blueberries.

We eat mushrooms too. At least, I cook them and eat them, while Mark, Marmalade, and Madison pick them out, Lad spits them out and whines, and Lassie lost mushroom privileges because she would spit it out and yell “NOOOOOOOO!” and now she sulks near mushrooms or protests their existence. I always make multiple vegetables, and if she doesn’t want to eat something with fungal contamination, she doesn’t have to. I just spread the mushrooms out through the month and most days, she has plenty of good things to eat.

Also, we have not had pineapple in a long time because I’m not spending $3 on a berry clump. Mark loves pineapple and he gives pep talks to the pit orchard pineapples.

The pit orchard mostly survived, but Mark replanted some in the normal orchard and in the pit orchard, and planted new species in the pit orchard while Madison and I planted the garden. He prefers trees to other plants, and he is the chief keeper of the orchard. I don’t completely know what he planted, but it will be good. Some of the trees will give us firewood and some will give us food. He checks the woods regularly for dead or diseased trees and they will replace themselves naturally, but he might help them.

In the pit orchard, Mark needs to build the windows. We covered it with row covers and set up grow lights, and it does not work as well as a window would--tropical plants need more light and heat than a row cover and lights can, and grow lights plus and unsupported row cover might be a fire hazard. It has a couple compost piles in winter to heat it. Mark says thermal windows might replace them. We don’t worry about bacteria yet because we haven’t harvested anything, but when the trees and pineapples do produce, compost piles next to edible fruit isn’t particularly sanitary.

Mark wasn’t sure the bees had enough forage, and they seem okay, but he wants to keep them that way. This is the first year he could collect honey. If he has time, he will plant forage for the bees. Half-Pint arrived sooner than expected, and if she was at home, he could probably do it. But he or I spend as much time as we can with her, and he works all day, he and I spend evenings together not working whenever possible, and he wants to tend the orchard and bees himself. I theoretically could if I had to, but they are his domain. It relaxes him, except for our current situation.

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Mark grew up Orthodox in Halidom, and we are Lutherans, but he still follows quite a bit of Orthodox tradition, and sometimes the whole family follows it. Our kids know we have different theological backgrounds and this is the first year Marmalade noticed the Julian and Gregorian calendar differences and could explain it very simply: “Before Jesus was born, Julius Caesar was the head honcho of the Romans and he made a calendar and the early Christians used the calendar to mark their holidays. The Orthodox Church still uses it and the Western church doesn’t because they don’t get along. The Catholic Pope Gregory XIII made a new calendar five centuries ago and the High Church uses it, like Lutherans and Catholics. The calendars count time differently.” She also thinks that Orthodox services are interesting. I think they are, too.

Orthodox Easter (Pascha) was this Sunday, and they have a vigil all night Saturday. Mark said he would take Marmalade to the vigil, but Lad and Lassie can only go to the Pascha service. They are too little to stay awake all night unless they randomly decide to. Half-Pint can’t leave the hospital.

Mark couldn’t because he needed to sleep, but my Calvinist uncle said, “Oh, I’ll take them.” To the vigil and the service. Because he is nuts and could pass off the cranky, tired kids to Madison in the afternoon and take a nap, and otherwise, he would not do it. He and the kids survived. He did not say this to a member of the church, but to Mark, he said, “Yeah, let them stay up all night and get them sugared up afterwards. Makes perfect sense. But it was pretty interesting, and pretty in general. Death to the king anyway. I need a nap.” (Referring to King Charles I.)

Lad and Lassie recently began paying attention to the Lutheran service, and it is not extended interest--mostly looking around when the organ plays, and occasionally looking at the altar during communion, and watching the processionals. They liked looking around during the Pascha service, but probably did not understand what it was about. My uncle couldn’t really explain why anything happened, and, apparently, Marmalade was beginning to have an, “I’m related to an idiot” expression and a dad rescued him. She wanted to venerate the icons, and my uncle let her. He said he felt very awkward, and he couldn’t identify any of them, but Marmalade could identify the Virgin Mary and Jesus. He guessed she was right. The icons have labels in Russian or Greek, but my uncle knows two years of high school Spanish from about thirty years ago.

My uncle might be as crazy/stupid as Mark and I if you give him opportunity.