Badger Balm and a Latin Lesson

Badger Balm and a Latin Lesson
from Shirley F.

I know that psoriasis can come and go, but mine has been gone since a holiday in the US where I discovered Badger Balm. Am hoping for a long interregnum! -Shirley F.

*****

Ed’s Response: I’m grinning so broadly I’m having a hard time typing, Shirley! It’s been a long time since a two-sentence email has opened such thoroughly delightful pursuits!

First, Badger Balm. Yahoo led me to Peaceful Company on the net, and I’ve just got to share the text from their home page with FlakeHQ readers:

Badger makes really good stuff. The main ingredient in all of their balms for instance, is Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil. They use it because they feel it is the most therapeutic of all skin care oils. When you imagine some ancient Mediterranean goddess lounging by her baths and anointing herself with precious oils, extra virgin olive oil was "the balm." Speaking of precious oils, all of their essential oils are naturally processed and most of them are either organically grown or otherwise ecologically produced. They come to them from the four corners of the Earth.

They smell great and they have the ability to uplift body, mind and spirit. It's strange, but you can be feeling down, breathe in the fragrance of the balms and find yourself transported to a totally different place.

I read this, then had to just stop and sit there looking at it for a moment. I was experiencing something akin to déjà vu. I had this incredible urge to root through my attic for any old Carly Simon 8-track cartridge. (Lord knows what I would have done with it had I found one — can’t recall the last time I possessed a working 8-track player.) I gotta case of the munchies. I wanted to burn some incense. My feet screamed for the freedom of old-leather sandals. Why couldn’t I chew on my own hair anymore? What’s happened to my copy of Rod McKuen’s Listen to the Warm? ...

This run on retro emotions was starting to feel like anxiety, like a trip to sweat city, until my eyes refocused on the Peaceful Company home page and I found my anchor: zee ol’ peace sign in the upper right corner of the page. There it was, looking just like the icon my friend Crusty Moonbender painted on his VW bus before he drove off towards San Francisco. (I write “towards” because he didn’t make it that far. The van died in Elko, Nevada, and Crusty returned home on a Greyhound Bus. But he was smiling when he got home. We all smiled in those days.)

I don’t know who the people are behind Peaceful Company, but I know a little bit about their cultural history (real or appropriated) — and it was sure good for a rush this morning!

Ah-hmmmm. Olive oil. Oh yes, that’s what got this started. Badger Balm is an olive oil product. Search FlakeHQ from the homepage for olive oil and you’ll turn up at least ten references from the archives. It appears what the folks from Peaceful Company have done is turn olive oil into an unguent that’s more than pleasant to use. In its raw form, olive oil might be good for the skin, but it might leave you smelling like the smokiest alcoves of a traditional Italian restaurant. Badger Balm, on the other hand, smells great and has the ability to “uplift body, mind and spirit.” Far out.

The Latin. Then there’s interregnum. I had to look this up, but I am oh-h-h so-o-o glad I did. Three definitions from my dictionary:

The interval of time between the end of a sovereign's reign and the accession of a successor.
A period of temporary suspension of the usual functions of government or control.
A gap in continuity.

Definition number one is the most fun for our context. “The end of a sovereign’s reign” means the quiescence of your P after you discovered Badger Balm during your US holiday. The “interval of time” is the glorious remission I hope you are still enjoying. The “accession of a successor” is the next health “issue” — perhaps the return of your P — you will face which, like a sovereign, will want to rule your life. More or less literally, you are free for the moment “between kings.” That pretty much says it all, doesn’t it?

Shirley, I hope you will feel free to write us any time! -Ed

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