New US cases surpass 68,000/day while the WHO reports 228,102 new cases.
The number of COVID-19 cases in South Africa has risen to 250,687 – more than a quarter of a million. Infections continue to surge around the country, including villages around here.
News blues…
Follow the money? Major US corporations and companies linked to Trump associates got business loans. Payroll Protection Program funds went, instead, to Trump pals and not to the protection of tax-paying, working people. Yet another case of Trump being Trump?Republicans agree to work together to force Trump from office in November. (8:36 mins)
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The Lincoln Project, The MAGA Church. (1.08 mins)Sarah Cooper does:
- Trump on the 4th of July (4:14 mins)
- How to mask (0.58 mins)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
After three days of warnings about the impending once-a-decade weather system, it came … and it went! (Our immediate area got off lightly in comparison to the hail storms that hit close by.)For the first time in a week, I ventured out for a quick walk around the neighborhood. By the time I arrived back home, daylight had turned to twilight and thunder drummed in the distance.
Soon, a smattering of hail the size of marbles fell, followed by sheets of rain.
I signed with relief: at least the rain would extinguish smoldering embers from fires that had raged last night.
I had been working on my laptop, my back to the picture window, when I’d heard rustling and cracking.
Alarmed, I wondered if my abuser had returned?
Instead, when I looked out the window, I saw walls of flame shooting high into the air.
Smoke-laden wind gusted, and flames danced as I dialed frantically to alert someone, anyone, that our house could ignite.
Where were the darned fire trucks and fire fighters?
The flames receed.
Frantic, I knew that if the tinder-dry trees surrounding the house ignited, the house could ignite.
I needed to “liberate” my mother.
For, somehow, she and her two domestic workers have evolved a convoluted night-time sequence that locks my mother and her seven pampered mongrels inside overnight and liberates them early next morning.
Anyone paying attention to the details would realize that the complicated mass of keys and locks and procedures involved means that my mother cannot quickly evacuate the building in an emergency. She forgets she has a set of keys and she awaits the workers to unlock the doors.
I’ve worried about and tried to alert her to the dangers.
I successfully addressed her habit of lighting a candle at night by purchasing and placing a small fire extinguisher next to her bed.
But a small extinguisher cannot handle a conflagration. “Besides,” she’d laughed, “I can’t remember how to use it.”
Naturally, she pooh-poohs my concerns.
As the fire raged outside, I roused one domestic worker and we unlocked my mother’s doors and burglar guards.
Tellingly, my mother, surrounded by dogs and happily watching TV, had been blissfully unaware of the fire. This, even as she watched the security monitor display billowing smoke. She’d judged it fog.
After the flames receded, we locked up my mother and her dogs, again … and went to bed.
Takeaways?
1) I’ve lived away for so long, I’d forgotten that “veld fires” are a feature of South African winters, indeed, burning is part of Africa’s natural ecology. (As a child growing up in a rural area, I’d loved joining informal firefighting crews armed with wet sacks to beat back flames.)
2) I’ve become accustomed to life in California where fire trucks and fire fighters are the solution to fires.
3) “veld” and brush fires are a far cry from the infamous climate-change-related wildfires that, over the past decade, have burned hundreds of thousands of acres of rural California.
4) And, this household needs a plan everyone can buy into that ensures my mother is safe at night – and easily liberated.
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