Monday, March 23, 2020

Parlous Times


           These are parlous times. What does that mean? One might gather from the apparent root of the word parlous that it derives from the French parler but according to etymology scholars that would be a mistake. Parler is said to derive from parabola or parabola when one refers to speech but parlous truly means perilous or dangerous and has its own separate line of ancestry.

          So these are dangerous times no matter how you slice it. Sanitation is of the utmost importance and more than a little worrisome for those who are vulnerable and those who love them. Thank goodness pets are not afflicted. I shudder to think what the consequence might be if they were.
Anyhoo, the recipe for good sanitation is as old as Moses. Really. I don’t cite the Bible very often but it is authoritative about the proper way to maintain healthy conditions both in and out of the kitchen. Moses, the first public health sanitarian, delivered more than moral guidance for human conduct. Hygiene in spirit was meant to accompany hygiene in practical quotidian duties. One notes that this could get a little severe when men, women and child prisoners were summarily executed to prevent the spread of disease, though virgins were spared in a pragmatic demonstration of moderation.

           The good old books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy lay out a pretty comprehensive list of allowable animal food on the basis of cleanliness as well as the procedures for preparation and storage in order to ensure healthy living. That’s basic sanitation but there were also prescriptions for waste management and water protection which makes a pretty good case for public health as a priority. Coming out of the desert there needed to be some guiding principles for what might otherwise have turned into an unruly and unclean mob. Timing is everything.

           In response to the arrival of the medieval plague in Italy, the state mandated quarantine, a forty day sequestration. Today we have a pretty good idea how to cope with a pandemic without the pandemonium, but people are people and so the inevitable strays will require convincing if not corralling. Luckily we have extremely wide and instant communication so that, if we are able to filter out the misleading and patently false junky bits, we’ll be okay at the other end of this episode.
Every Irish household knows that shoes on a table bring bad luck. Isn’t this a sensible extension of the Biblical health laws? That means when you bring home your grocery bag whose bottom has rested on the floor in the supermarket you ought to remember not to place it on any food preparation surface. That would be tantamount to walking on the counter! That’s simple common sense and just one example of preventive hygiene, praise Moses!

           Stay healthy. Stay aware. Stay in attendance of the ones you love.

                    With hugs,
                                        Celeste

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