Troubled times, these. But not so troubled as what humankind has never endured similar.
Though it may do little to relieve our immediate burdens, merely knowing that our forbears survived far worse travails than those testing our mettle today can at least encourage the Sherpas among us in our respective individual schleps.
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| February 18, 2022--a gash of sunset over "The W" |
Being of good faith, as Scripture styles it, is often difficult. What with wars and rumors of wars. With pestilences. And lest we forget winter...Inland Empire winter which seemingly goes on and on and...on. That is enough to jade the most saintly among us into despair.
Yet our experienced shivering here in Idaho is how we get to "good cheer". What do I mean? Well life's experiences in Idaho just above 46° North Latitude indicate that, despite how irascible winter may be in a particular year, it "don't last forever". Weather wise, we're getting into the short rows. Spring is just around the corner. Nature's own resurrection will soon be in evidence throughout Idaho.
By way of proof, yesterday (Sunday, February 20th), Darla spotted the first intrepid robin of the season here on "The W". It flitted about in the willow next to our farmhouse, doubtless seeking the enjoyment of the long-wave solar radiation coming off the house for its warmth. That's not unusual for this time of year. Robins often arrive here before snow melts, and usually in front of a brutal cold snap which has begun. How they make it is a mystery.
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| Juniper Titmouse |
Far less common would be the visit by Juniper titmouse at this time of year. Or rather, that is what I took them to be. They were gray and tufted birds, in any case. Last week a skittish flock of about 30 of them visited our pine which stands near the southeast corner of the house above two old landscape junipers. So right habitat; but somewhat wrong time of year.
While they are found in Idaho, Juniper titmouse at this latitude are north of where they typically are found. Unfortunately, it was impossible to put a camera on the jittery bunch. So lacking an image in evidence, I must here offer a purloined image in lieu.
Bottom line, spring beckons even now. Nature stirs its natural migrations. As it does our sojourn too. This year we put caution to the wind, sort of like the early birds mentioned here on our homestead. We plan to take up our Easter sojourn in Scotland. Notwithstanding viral variants, and rumors of viral variants.
Our footsteps follow "palmers" before us--which is to say, Christian pilgrims. Indeed, our reason for going on pilgrimage is likely similar to those palmers from centuries past. In Canterbury Tales (written c. 1387-1400 A.D., but never completed), Geoffrey Chaucer described the desire to go on pilgrimage like this: "When in April the sweet showers fall, that pierce March's drought to the root"..."then folk long to go on pilgrimage."
Chaucer noted that pilgrims usually were bound "to distant shrines well known in distant lands." So too are we, 650 years later. In Chaucer's time, pilgrims in England especially went to Canterbury, “The holy blessed martyr there to seek who helped them when they lay so ill and weak.” In other words they made an homage doubtless under contracted promises in fervent prayers made to, and evidently answered by, that saint.
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| Chaucer, Langley Collection, Westminster |
What Chaucer referred to in Canterbury Tales (ill and weak) was the "fourth pestilence" of bubonic plague in Britain. Exact dates are difficult to determine, but it is generally believed that the fourth pestilence in England began in 1374. By 1378, the pestilence reached York, and was particularly fatal to children. By 1382, plague had reached Ireland taking an especially heavy toll. So, these were contemporary events leading up to Chaucer's Tales.
Today, we only have an inkling of those troubled times, ourselves having just endured the Covid pandemic. At best, our understanding is diluted. It is not possible for us to grasp the severity of the medieval plague, a pandemic that later would be called the Black Death.
Even with modern medicine, the Covid pandemic is said to have claimed 5.89 million lives worldwide in just over three years. In the United States 934,000 lives have been lost, attributed to the disease. These are horrible figures, no getting around it. But those casualties pale in comparison to the Black Death's. In five years (1347 to 1352 A.D.), an estimated 25 to 30 million Europeans died in that bubonic pandemic. By many accounts this is a low estimate. The death toll was so extraordinary that Petrarch, the Renaissance poet from Florence, felt compelled to address future generations. He was sure they would not believe them. ‘O happy posterity, who will not experience such abysmal woe and will look upon our testimony as a fable.’
Bubonic victims often were buried at night in deep trenches, pitched into mass graves. As a contemporary Florentine historian wrote: "In the morning when a large number of bodies were found in the pit, they took some earth and shoveled it down on top of them; and later others were placed on top of them and then another layer of earth, just as one makes lasagna with layers of pasta and cheese." A main course of death.
On average, it is assumed that not less than 35% to 40% of Europe's population died in this so-called "first" Black Death pandemic (c. 1347 A.D.). Many localities saw death tolls reach as high as 60% to 80% of their population. One town, Kilkenny in Ireland, was wiped out...100%.
And Black Death returned again and again throughout the 1300s and 1400s and even well beyond. The "Great Plague of London" lasted from 1665 to 1666...it was the last widespread outbreak of the plague in Britain, during what the BBC has called the "400-year Second Pandemic". 400 years. On the continent of Europe, the last major plague occurred in Marseilles in 1720.
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| Michel Serre, “Scène de la peste de 1720 à la Tourette.” |
The last large scale global plague pandemic occurred in China in 1894. The bubonic pestilence--a bacterium Yersinia pestis--is said to have originated in China. It is endemic there. And before communist Chinese chauvinists get bent out of shape by my implying this should be called the "China Plague," it should be noted that paleo-anthropologists speculate bubonic plague was present in Europe as far back as 3000 BC...in the Neolithic Age, well before any written records.
The Plague of Justinian (541-549 A.D.) is generally considered the first major outbreak of plague. Better said, it was the first recorded pandemic. But plague has apparently been with humankind for thousands of years. Perhaps forever. Nor has bubonic plague been eradicated today. Each year between 1,000 and 3,000 lives are lost to plague worldwide, including some in the Western United States.
With that as an historic comparable, Covid virus today is well behind the record of those lasagna layers of death in medieval time. That does not mean that precautions against Covid should be ignored. To the contrary. These two pandemics are similar in many social respects.
Modern malcontent over measures to control the spread of this contagion (which so far has only encompassed about three years) cannot be seen as credible; not when compared to decades upon decades over centuries of bubonic pandemics. Preventative social behavior is important. Had the medieval population only washed their clothes and bedding, and
kept their habitations clean of waste and debris to control rodents which bore the disease, they could have spared
many tens of million of lives.
In a reductio ad absurdum therefore, current refusals to mask or vaccinate today are akin to an equally malcontent medieval person saying: "I refuse to wash my clothes as a preventative measure against the plague, because I have a right to carry fleas, and the right to cover my body [or temple] with whatever filthy clothes I deem fit."
The problem with such a mentality is that fleas do jump. They also bite. And as for rights, it's not always just about you.
[The martyr mentioned in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, incidentally, was St. Augustine who died May 26, 604, and is considered the Apostle of the English.]
