Count your Blessings

The Norfolk Virginian Pilot is is running a 14-part series on the region's yellow fever epidemic of 1885. Sometimes it's easy to lose track of how good we have it - these people would have loved to have Supreme Court nominees and terrorism as their biggest worries:

Commandant Samuel Barron continued to struggle under the fever. His infant nephew, who was breast-feeding when Imogene became sick, came down with whooping cough.

Mills C. Godwin, a compositor for the Richmond Dispatch , watched from the capital city as the fever consumed his family in Gosport. Godwin first got word that his brother had died. The next day, the paper reported the death of his brother-in-law.

A day later, Godwin learned that the fever had sent his sister to her grave. Then Godwin’s cousin fell to the fever, and her 6-year-old son. When he hoped the fever had finished with his family, another telegraph arrived: His father had died.

Before he could make it east to comfort his mother, a final transmission came: The fever had taken her, too.

Kinda puts that federal courthouse in perspective.