QUARANTINE 1
We owe the word “quarantine” to the Venetians who in 1377 instituted a policy of keeping ships from plague-stricken countries waiting off its port for 40 days. While hard athwart those among us with COVID19, the quarantine sense is felt by all of us as an echo as we pass through this time of more or less world-wide social isolations, distancings and lock downs. Here we touch on and grapple with some of its immediate practical realties, associations from the past, and speculations on the shape of things to come as we discuss the Dead Sea Scrolls, John Donne, the parable of the “appointment at Samara” (as well as the John O’Hara novel by that name), Buckminster Fuller, Aristotle’s POLITICS (Book Two), the “Wild Child of Avignon,” Jung, Robert Duncan”s “Childhood’s Retreat,” a passage from THE BOOK OF DANIEL, John Prine, Hal Willner, Sonny Rollins, Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed. We’re going to do a series of sessions within the quarantine universe, broadly speaking—so settle in. Also, this podcast includes numerous, aspirational refrains to Sparrow’s fabulous 101-year-old father sequestered in Brooklyn.