A revisited and updated version of a piece originally published on the Wheal Alice blog.
A Pandemic Puzzle Revisited
Before I (mostly)* retired from the security business, I'd probably have posted this either on ESET's blog, or else on a blog of my own that was devoted to scams, fake news and hoaxes. That’s because it's about a fairly recent poem/prose-poem by Kitty O’Meara that somehow became attributed to a different (and long-dead author) with a similar name. To add to the confusion, the poem was then claimed by someone else entirely. But let's start at the beginning.
Kitty (Catherine) O'Meara is (or was) a retired teacher and chaplain living in Wisconsin. She had a blog called The Daily Round, and on the 16th March 2020 she published an article there, called In The Time Of Pandemic, and consisting of the afore-mentioned prose-poem: the poem went viral (albeit in more than one form). It begins "And the people stayed home..." — the first line seems to have become the de facto title as the piece has spread across the Internet. I haven’t included it here for fear of breaching copyright. However, it is appended to this article, and Mr. Google no doubt knows of many other places where it is included.
It evidently struck a chord. Apart from the many (mostly admiring) comments at the bottom of the original article, further articles on her blog demonstrated how many people were inspired to perform it or collaborate in other ways. Unfortunately, that blog has now been acquired by an Indonesian person or group, and while I can’t read the content there, it doesn’t seem to include any of the original content. However, the poem not only survived on the Internet, but became a children’s book as well as being anthologized.
However, that isn't when or where I first met it. So I also missed the claim by Italian journalist Irene Vella that O'Meara's piece was a translation of her own poem. To which I can only say that I don't see much similarity between the two pieces. The Vella piece as shown here, in what appears to be her own translation, has some similarity of theme, but is certainly nowhere near similar in expression to suggest plagiarism.
Like many others, I first encountered O'Meara's poem on Facebook, but in a post where it was attributed to a 19th century writer called Kathleen O'Mara, complete with a backstory claiming that the original verse had been written in 1869, and reprinted in 1919 at the time of the Spanish Flu epidemic. It even included a photograph of two ladies wearing archaic clothes and facemasks. Well, I liked the poem, but wondered about a couple of things.
While I don't have the same grounding in literary analysis that Robert S. Becker apparently has, it did seem a little modern in concept, form and expression for 1869. Almost as if it had been written during the Covid crisis... Besides, over the years I've seen so many falsely attributed quotations that I tend not to take such things at face value.
For example, during the epidemic, I noticed a crop of plague-related 'quotations' from Samuel Pepys. Besides, I’ve had several decades of exposure to out-and-out hoaxes (like the malware hoaxes of yesteryear) and urban legends, and I’ve been writing about them for most of that time. After all, while I'm now pretty much retired from malware/security research, I spent well over 30 years of my working life in that area: old habits die hard, and my natural curiosity and scepticism haven't left me just yet.
Besides, if I was citing a reprinted poem, I would at least say where it was available: that sort of vagueness, militating against checking for authenticity, is characteristic of so many out-and-out hoaxes, that I really had to investigate further.
A little digging turned up a nineteenth century writer called Kathleen O'Meara who was certainly writing by 1869, though she's not known as a poet. Actually, I found several other more contemporary people with similar names, but I also found the Oprah Magazine article (and one or two others) that made it clear where the article really came from. Also, someone went to the trouble of modifying the Kathleen O'Meara Wikipedia page to make it clear that it wasn't her poem, though that note seems to have been removed subsequently.
While writing this article, I also came across the article by Robert S. Becker Travesty averted: An uplifting poem for the pandemic, as already cited. While we seem to have taken much the same route towards establishing the true provenance of the piece, his thoughts are certainly worth reading.
There is also a follow-up piece by Kitty O'Meara called In the Time of Pandemic, Part II which retains the essential optimism of the first piece, while hinting at the presumed reluctance of the oligarchs to let the earth or mankind heal — a prophecy more than borne out by the triumph of Trumpism in 2025.
I like O’Meara’s optimistic second piece, but I must confess that I think we’re in more danger of fulfilling Sara Teasdale's vision of a world where humanity has fought and plundered itself to extinction. Unlike Teasdale, though, I fear we will take most of the birds and trees with us, which I suppose puts me more in sympathy with the Ray Bradbury story that builds on it. Indeed, I liked the Teasdale poem so much, I put a tune to it… (Liked the poem, that is, not the likelihood of humanity’s meeting that fate.)
Much as I liked Kitty O'Meara's pieces, I suppose what really fascinates me is this: how (and why) did Kathleen O'Meara and Kitty O'Meara become so entangled in the hivemind? Yes, the names are close enough for potential confusion, I suppose, and there are plenty of cases where there probably is genuine confusion. (For instance, when that old saying about 'singing in the lifeboats' is credited to Voltaire, or perhaps in the misleading quotes highlighted in this article.)
Then, however, someone went to the trouble of inventing a provenance (complete with photographs) for the poem that was based on a false assumption.
Is artificially ageing the poem supposed to give it authority?
Does it derive from some genuine but misleading source that I failed to find?
Or is it just the old hoaxer thing of someone feeling superior because they've managed to convince others of something that is less than true?
I suppose the theory of 'spurious authority' would at least account for the number of people who have put up fake quotations from (e.g.) Samuel Pepys. Though Pepys actually did make quite a few observations that are very relevant to our present situation — thank you, Nora Lucke, for pointing them out to me!
"...this disease making us more cruel to one another than if we are doggs."
"But, Lord! how every body's looks, and discourse in the street is of death, and nothing else, and few people going up and down, that the towne is like a place distressed and forsaken."
"Lord! to consider the madness of the people of the town, who will (because they are forbid) come in crowds..."
Maybe we're not so far removed from those long-gone plagues and pandemics after all...
*I don’t get paid for writing about security any more, but I admit that I haven’t altogether broken the habit.