I believe there are as many types of saints as there are souls to be saved. - Flannery O'Connor

            I’ve decided I’m stopping after this — writing pandemic essays — but I can’t promise. I suspect I’ll need to redirect my thoughts to the election in November. That’s a different column, and probably one that will never be written. Contributing to divisiveness is not a calling I want to pursue. The first time I put on a face mask helped me understand a new kind of wall between us. Anonymity appeared as smiles disappeared. 

 John Prine is dead. I never met John, but I loved him. He wrote and sang Sam Stone, Hello in There, and Angel from Montgomery among many, many other songs. His voice wasn’t sweet, it was real. And lung cancer didn’t take his life, Covid did. When I learned he was in the ICU in Nashville with the virus, I’d check-in online to learn his status. I was awake and writing at 2 a.m. when a newsfeed lit my laptop screen to inform me that the “celebrated singer-songwriter” had passed. Prine died on April 7 when the moon was full, and pink, and super.

A pandemic isn’t a hurricane. We have water and electricity, internet and roads clear of fallen trees, but there is a sort of strange preparation for the unknown akin to a storm. It’s taken shape in bare store shelves, curtailment of entertainment, and news conferences by a governor and president buoyed by doctors, educators, lawyers, administrators, and in South Carolina, chaplains and signers.