Pandemic Pentameter

The elderly residents of Casa Dorinda, currently under lockdown because of the coronavirus, are waxing poetic!

Longtime resident Linda Beuret says residents are watching movies and participating in exercise classes on Casa TV, while food is delivered to the doors of cottages and rooms.

“Keeping six feet from anyone you pass is absolutely mandatory,” says Linda, who I see regularly at CAMA and SB Symphony performances.

One resident has also started an e-mail chain of poetry about the current situation.

Linda’s husband Peter has also joined in the effort, with his poem reading:

“There once was a living man called Ignatz Semmelweis.
His home was Vienna. His mind was precise.
He was a good surgeon and he wondered why
When surgeons did surgery the patients would die.
Then Ignatz thought up a most wonderful trick,
If you just washed your hands people wouldn’t get sick.
They thought he was crazy. They called him a nut.
But Ignatz turned out to be anything but.
Now a hundred years later, or just a bit more,
a global pandemic is outside our door.
We’re keeping our distance. We’re scared half to death,
We’re washing our hands more than Lady MacBeth.
But thanks to old Ignatz, we’ll avoid the disease,
So let’s have a round of appease, if you please.
For keeping us healthy in our paradise:
Put your two hands together for old Semmelweis.”