The columbian exchange

This was fairly interesting:
This portrait shows, right to left:

• Louis the Petit Dauphin, died of measles in 1712 along with his wife and eldest son
• Louis XIV, who had smallpox in 1647 and survived to die in 1715
• Louis the Grand Dauphin, died of smallpox in 1711
• The future Louis XV, who only survived the measles epidemic that killed his parents and elder brother because
• the woman on the left of the picture, his governess Madame de Ventadour, locked the royal doctors out of the room

It also had this bit which puzzled me:

The question, "Were New World populations significantly reduced by Old World diseases introduced after 1492?" is currently considered settled by historians, and the answer is "Yes". If this startles you, it *is* a paradigm shift from what you probably grew up learning

Really? What on earth are/were they teaching their kids in the USA about this? I would have regarded it as totally anodyne and accepted wisdom. Though the extent of it did surprise me a bit:

Ninety percent of the population of civilized Mesoamerica and Andean America perished by 1568. Civilized highlanders constituted the vast majority of America's precontact population. Consequently, their sixteenth century epidemiology determined the magnitude of "the worst demographic disaster ... in the history of the world." (emphasis mine)

 Ninety percent? Makes poor old pasteurella pestis look like a piker

Edited to add a link to this hysterical parody site! Completely OT for this post, but .... Go read it
(courtesy of the wonderful Debra Dickerson)

Mum

My eyes are hot
with unshed tears
uncounted

Time to fly away
my beautiful canary,
I'll never forget
the music you gave me

Fly from the pain
let the suffering stay behind
I'll miss you forever

Periodicity

Well, having maundered on previously about how bleak the restaurant business looks here, I have to say that this last weekend kinda revised things - both the cafe's we visited for brunch over the weekend were busy, and Mimi's (last night) was so full we had to wait for a table.

mind you, after saying a 5 minute wait, we wound up waiting 25 minutes: then, after ordering, we waited a full hour, then walked out without ever seeing any of the food we'd ordered. So if they were busy, I guess it was an unanticipated rush. Oh .. of course, I've just realised Sunday was Fathers Day, so lots more people out doing ritual celebrations (or is it ritual sacrifice, haha)

So maybe that was just a temporary bobble.

It does make me wonder how things are going elsewhere in the world, though. I know from Sarah's comments that Chicago doesn't seem to be much touched, but both New York and DC seem to be hit very hard (per other blogs), and Glynn says west London is suffering a real rash of closing shops, both chains and boutiques. Grim times all over, I guess.

We took the weekend very quietly, otherwise: it was Cat's menses, and in the last couple of years these seem to have been hitting her harder and harder, to the point of writing off at least one day each time to total pain/disability.

Times like this, being a woman just doesn't seem like fun at all: so many of the women I've known seem to have crushing, appalling periods (probably none as bad as Rosemary's, but mostly pretty bad), and it just seems so ... cruel, I guess. Thirty or forty years of that and -then- you get to deal with menopause (and .. menopause? you mean it's gonna start again? ).

Never mind, at least women get to spend some of their time not awash with hormones, unlike men, who seem to always be on a hormone high (or low, depending on your viewpoint). And, yanno, external genitalia aren't the worlds greatest invention either (he said, crossing his legs nervously).

Enough of that for the day. I was going to write something about anger, but that'll keep for another time.