The quar

Says Science Friday:

Officials in the Venetian-controlled port city of Ragusa (now Dubrovnik, Croatia) passed a law establishing trentino, or a 30-day period of isolation for ships arriving from plague-affected areas. No one from Ragusa was allowed to visit those ships under trentino, and if someone broke the law, they too would be isolated for the mandatory 30 days. The law caught on. Over the next 80 years, Marseilles, Pisa, and various other cities adopted similar measures.

Within a century, cities extended the isolation period from 30 to 40 days, and the term changed from trentino to quarantino—the root of the English word quarantine that we use today.

By my count today, Sunday, is day 22.

Halftime?

It took me this long to lock into some good habits and practices.  The first weeks were decadent and messy.  A key rule for me: must something positive before I’m allowed to pick up at my phone and chug horrific news and takes.

Some changes and observations from Hunker Down Times:

• really appreciating and being careful with my use of paper products.  Paper towels.  Used to be really free with the paper towels, I hope I’m learning paper towel discipline that will last.  In years to come, perhaps some psychology will be done on why people seemed to be so focused on toilet paper.  Freudian?

• interesting how many ski resorts had outbreaks, which were then spread back home by the skiiers.  Iscgl, Austria (and other Austrian ski resorts) may have been responsible for 40% of cases in Norway?  Aspen and Sun Valley were hotspots as well.

• Part of the Zoom revolution.  Why is Zoom so good when Facetime and Skype I bristle at?  I don’t know.  Easy to use I guess, not forcing me to link it with my Facebook or whatnot.  Zoom, in my opinion, is really good for work but bad for socializing.  We’ve been achieving great results – efficient with time, focused – with four or so person Zoom work meetings.  But a Zoom hang feels oppressive.  There’s no breaking off into and reforming from small groups, the organic flow that drives a larger social gathering.

• Before this all happened, I’d had some conversations re: a possible movie about Bob Hope.  Why did they love Bob Hope enough to name the airport after him?  By the time I was alive Bob Hope was beyong a relic. A lot of aspects of his personal character were unpleasant.  He was cheap, mean, selfish, self-absorbed, an off-the-charts womanizer and #MeToo bad guy.  His later USO tours were really just an elaborate way to avoid his wife and score poon and work in front of an easy audience when no one was paying.  His comedy doesn’t stand up.  But during ‘rona times, I’m understanding (a bit) why Bob Hope was so important at the time.

If anyone could consistently make me laugh right now I’d be into it.

source

If anyone could consistently make me laugh right now I’d be into it.

• Loving the DJ sets of D-Nice.  (We watch by screenmirroring Instagram story onto Apple TV?).  Dancing and plagues go together.  What about the tarantella, which you were supposed to dance to cure yourself of a tarantula bite?

In the Italian province of Taranto, Apulia, the bite of a locally common type of wolf spider, named “tarantula” after the region, was popularly believed to be highly venomous and to lead to a hysterical condition known as tarantism. This became known as the Tarantella. R. Lowe Thompson proposed that the dance is a survival from a “Dianic or Dionysiac cult”, driven underground. John Compton later proposed that the Roman Senate had suppressed these ancient Bacchanalian rites. In 186 BC the tarantella went underground, reappearing under the guise of emergency therapy for bite victims.

What was going on with the dancing plague of 1518?

source

When I read about it it sounds like maybe we’re misunderstanding anti-dance party propaganda?

Bruegel was a good dance painter:

• I liked the Queen’s speech:

I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge.

And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any.

That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country.

The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future.

I like when leaders comprehend that tone, cheer, humor, is part of the job.  All the greats knew that.  If your guy has a nasty, sarcastic, unpleasant tone, you’ve got the wrong guy.

• In other news, I found this to be a cool friendship:

Hope all Helytimes readers are keeping it chill.