Going cuckoo

After brief Internet connection, I’m disconnected. Again.
A “problem with the tower.”
The tower ain’t got no power!
Coming from California – close to hyper-urban, hi-tech Silicon Valley – to KZN’s rural low-tech Midlands demands patience.

News blues…

Uneasy about being cut off from US news during one of the most significant domestic moments of the New Millennium, I grimace… grumble … grouse…
Friends and family text me their local news:

• I’ve been watching videos of cops and undercover cops inciting violence. One video showed an undercover cop breaking windows. Another showed people intentionally pushing other people into the cops from behind then running away. What’s fascinating is that they used to get away with all this stuff but now it’s all captured on video so all can see the tactics.
• Resistance [to heavy-handed cops] is already happening. In Minneapolis a bus driver refuse to drive arrested protesters to jail. In a couple of places cops even joined protesters. This has never happened before - so it’s a good sign.
• [Congressman] Seth Moulton, a Democrat and a [war] vet just called on the military to “lay down arms” if ordered to confront protesters.
• As per the UN International Human Rights Standards of Law Enforcement pocket handbook, soldiers have a duty to refuse unlawful orders: “All measures for the restoration of order are to respect human rights.”

Leaders of the City of Alameda, an island city of approximately 74,000 souls and my home for 20 years, alerted residents that:

A curfew is in place…tonight and tomorrow night, June 1 and 2, from 8pm to 5am. If extended, we will continue to update the community.
Last night, May 31 into June 1, the East Bay was hit hard by widespread incidents of looting, burglaries, and violence. Here in Alameda, we experienced a dozen incidents from 9pm to 5am, and arrested 7 individuals. What we experienced was less severe than in neighboring cities, but damage was done to our community.
These unfortunate events will also further complicate statewide and regional efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19.
We have substantially increased the number of officers we have on duty and have contingency plans in place to address changing circumstances.
Curfew regulations…include that it is unlawful for any person to travel or be upon a public street, sidewalk, or public place within the City during dates and hours designated, unless you are exempt. Exemptions include essential workers and individuals traveling to and from work, seeking emergency care, fleeing dangerous circumstances, or experiencing homelessness.
The Alameda County Sheriff issued a curfew order for the entire County [1.67 million people] beginning tonight at 8pm and extending through June 5 at 5am.

Hmmm, nothing about banned cigarettes, rationed alcohol, or wearing/not wearing short-sleeved white undershirts.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Day 2 of Lockdown Level 3. Except for masks covering many but all faces in public, and the occasional store clerk holding an infra-red thermometer to customers’ foreheads, life here appears back to normal. Heavy traffic, crowded taxis, crowded shopping malls, crowded stores, crowded pavements.

***

The live-in domestic worker who took ill yesterday suffered, not a stroke, but a form of lockjaw!
She reports that a fellow patient in the communal ward where she spent the night suffered similar symptoms … and he succumbed. Dead.
I’m trying to get further details on the malady.
No one knows nothin’.
Without Internet, I can’t even consult the Internet’s diagnose-from-a- distance “health experts.”

***

Further symptoms of Lockdown Syndrome.
Sunday’s post admitted my growing obsession with the graphs displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.
Today, I admit my daily Weed Walk resembles the anxious lope of a Bored Zoo Exhibit. The swaying elephant… poop-tossing baboon… cage-circling wolf… breast-feather-plucking cuckoo….
Come 3 o’clock, I don walking shoes and pluck weeds while I prowl: over mown and unmown lawns, up the stairs and turn right or down the stairs and turn left (last minute changes of direction add variety), around and around, up and down, down and up, over and under, under and over – over and over and over.
Vehicles passing on the dirt road poof clouds of dust that settles onto my hair and shoulders.
Hadidah ibis roosting on the electric pylon observe and chuckle raucously.
The dogs that once alleviated their boredom by following me no longer bother.
On the plus side, Weed Walking has eliminated garden weeds.
At 3:30, I dust off the dust … and visit my mother for a cup of tea and a dose of Judge Judy.

Click to enlarge.

End of day, I review the graph displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.
Love the pattern!

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