News blues…
In South Africa, Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said that in the past 24 hours, “the cumulative number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in South Africa is 92,681. The mortality rate is 2 percent.”These numbers are alarming – particularly as South Africans, like Americans, appear to have decided the risk of contracting the virus is more welcome than suffering further lockdown tedium.
The people of Tulsa, Oklahoma, however, displayed unexpected wisdom and didn’t budge from home.
After weeks of controversy about Trump’s first campaign rally to take place in months “and held against the advice of Trump’s own coronavirus task force, which had urged White House officials to nix the event amid fears it might spread coronavirus,” Americans elected to watch it on TV.
Perhaps it was the message that:
“potential rallygoers would participate in the event at their own risk [or that the] registration page for the rally included “a legal disclaimer that said attendees could not sue Trump or his campaign if they found themselves infected with COVID-19” [or that] the Trump campaign confirmed that at least six Trump rally staffers [had] tested positive for the coronavirus [and were]...immediately quarantined.”Whatever kept you home (an expected audience of 925,000!) We the People salute you!
I paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr.: Smart, smart at last, thank the gods, you’re getting smart at last!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Focusing on something other than lockdown continues to challenge. With domestic conundrums waking me each day with tense neck and shoulders muscles and tension headaches, I’m running out of new obsessions. (“Symptoms of Lockdown Fever.”)The change to cold weather has subdued my garden and garden pond obsessions (goldfish are hiding; pond weed paths now covered with cypress needles; canna plants eradicated, cat’s claw eradication ongoing).
Alas, like nature, human brains abhor a vacuum, so this human brain is revisiting ideas for remodeling Otter Pop, my pontoon houseboat.
Currently, alone and unvisited, Otter Pop docks in a small marina on the San Joaquin River in California’s Sacramento Delta.
Until January, when I departed the US, I’d maintained the boat, the outboard motor, a deck garden with pots of basil, tomatoes, and parsley, and several hummingbirds that dropped by to sip at the feeder hanging off the bow.
On this winter solstice, I long for Otter Pop, summer temperatures (upper 30s, even low 40s C / 90s into 100s F), birds and otters and fish, fellow mariners, glorious sunrises and sunsets, even the islands of invasive water hyacinth that float through the marina's channel.
Instead, I’m cold, locked down, and isolated
All is not dismal, however: I’ve begun a virtual remodel of Otter Pop.
I’m researching materials with which to upgrade the deck – exterior and interior, how to clean two pontoons, or who I could hire to de-foul and maintain the pontoons, if necessary.
Besides overall maintainance, I plan to enlarge the “head” – the shower/toilet space – replace the too-small kitchen sink, and insulate interior walls with spray-on foam insulation.
Not sure when I’ll board Otter Pop again, but when I do, I’ll have plans aplenty.
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| Click to enlarge. (c) Susan Galleymore Jabula Arts |
Last week I mentioned my interest in returning to work in clay, or clay-like material. The experiment conducted with cement/peat didn’t work: the mixed material is too soft and requires too much set up time.
The yen to work clay, however, hasn’t diminished.
As I figure out my next move on how to satisfy this yen, I revisit past sculptures, a handful of which exhibited in the San Francisco Bay Area (Link to my Heedlessness series. )
This series grew out of meditating upon a line of Rumi poetry: "Heedlessness is a pillar that sustains our world, my friend.”
Apt, no?
Read Week 1 |
Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 |
Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9
| Week 10
| Week 11
| Week 12
| Week 13
Watch Videos of Garden Creatures 
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