Meet Me In Boulder

It worked out well for me to have a ravenous appetite for the books of Stephen King while I was growing up in Colorado. Many of his books, the ones that manage to break away from his traditional setting of the Castle Rock/Derry area of Maine, take place in or around the Centennial State. Misery, for example, occurs in among the winding roads in the mountains near Sidewinder. The story of how author Paul Sheldon gives up ice skating thanks to his number one fan is a fairly recent addition to the list. Before that, there was The Shining, a tale about how hard it is to find good help these days. In the mountains during a Colorado blizzard.
Another story has a famous author applying to be the film critic for the local paper. This one is true. During the year that Mister King and his young family lived in Boulder, the master of the macabre sent a letter to the Daily Camera inquiring about the possibility of employment writing movie reviews. As a published author, he felt that his professional writing skills might come in handy in such a vocation. Happily for us all, he did not get the job, nor did he chop his family into little pieces. He went on to write four thousand more books and keep a generation or two on the edge of their collective seats.
And somewhere in there he wrote a little book called The Stand. And when I say "little" what I mean is that there are versions of the Bible with fewer pages. But their body count is about on par. If you haven't read this one, it's about a super strain of the flu that wipes out most of the world's population. Or at least the United States. There isn't a lot about international consequences once the lights go out. The inevitable group of survivors begin to wind their way from the coasts to the center of the continent. The bad guys end up in Las Vegas. The good guys head for Boulder. And because there are no zombies to deal with, there is a looming presence of evil that most likely pushed this whole pandemic into motion that needs to be dealt with.
And this story keeps playing out in my mind as each new case of Coronavirus is reported. Governments flap their hands and make ridiculous understatements or cry out in panic. We are told to wash our hands if we want to stay alive. Cruise ships full of sick people drift just offshore as we try to imagine solutions.
It sounds a lot like a Stephen King novel. Maybe we should put Steve in charge instead of Mike Pence. At least it would read better.