2024: RIP Mayapples And Cicadas

Sure, we should all eat dessert first, for life is short and uncertain. Even in our time as humans, we get many chances to delay some gratification for later enjoyment. It’s called discipline, or maybe virtue. It’s not universal, but I can think of two life forms that make us look like lifelong party animals. Meet the mayapples and cicadas.  

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1866: The Tale Of Quarantine Island

I recently noticed an old newspaper item that seemed loaded with irony. It ran in 1917, four months before an outbreak of Spanish flu killed over 600,000 Americans and 50 million people worldwide. Not knowing the disaster that lay ahead, The St. Louis Star-Times chose to recall a memory from 1867:

St. Louis Times; October 11, 1917
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