From Kate to Nancy - pandemic endings

 The post below this one popped up yesterday by mistake - so if you check the blog early in the day - you might want to scroll down and see it.

This is the last envelope of the Nancy series. My brother happened to be at the mail boxes when the carrier was loading the mail for the residents and the carrier said, "You get the best mail - I love it." That's always nice to hear. It was fun to see that someone else had a Nancy stamp - and the style of lettering coordinates beautifully with the stamps.

I scrolled back and did not see anywhere that I have run this - apologies if it is a repeat. It was a sign I made for their door when they moved into their new retirement community. His name is Donald. Maybe I should have started a campaign for him to change his name to Sluggo - so that they could use the stamp as their *brand.* I wonder if they ever have costume parties at their new community.

***Sorry this is long - ignore it if you are busy.

I'm writing this in early August - at a time when there are some covid cases popping up. Naturally, I started wondering if I needed to be concerned. And somehow I ended up looking at one of my old favorite topics - the Black Plague - which isn't of interest to many people - but, here's the part that I do think is worth noting. The OG Plague wasn't just a big deal for a couple years - it went on and on and on:

London never really caught a break after the Black Death. The plague resurfaced roughly every 10 years from 1348 to 1665—40 outbreaks in just over 300 years. And with each new plague epidemic, 20 percent of the men, women and children living in the British capital were killed.

By the early 1500s, England imposed the first laws to separate and isolate the sick. Homes stricken by plague were marked with a bale of hay strung to a pole outside. If you had infected family members, you had to carry a white pole when you went out in public. Cats and dogs were believed to carry the disease, so there was a wholesale massacre of hundreds of thousands of animals.

The Great Plague of 1665 was the last and one of the worst of the centuries-long outbreaks, killing 100,000 Londoners in just seven months. All public entertainment was banned and victims were forcibly shut into their homes to prevent the spread of the disease. Red crosses were painted on their doors along with a plea for forgiveness: “Lord have mercy upon us.”

As cruel as it was to shut up the sick in their homes and bury the dead in mass graves, it may have been the only way to bring the last great plague outbreak to an end.

If you need more info - here's a link:

How 5 of history's worst pandemics finally ended