No immunity in the community

What does it mean when members of a country’s elected governing body does nothing while the leader of a major country refuses to lead during a pandemic, shuns advice, and chooses to play golf and Tweet (“The Lone Warrior”) rather than attend to deadly perils that citizens face?
One of my friends would answer: “It means a decadent ruling class…”
Another friend would say that “It means the governing body is maneuvering behind the scenes to solidify their positions….”
Another friend would say, “It means they’re all fascists….”
(I love my friends for their points of view: never a dull moment.)
I would answer: It means We, the People of the world, are in deep, deep trouble….

News blues…

Testifying at the Senate coronavirus hearing yesterday, Dr Anthony Fauci said, “We are now seeing 40,000 cases [of Covid infections] per day. I won’t be surprised if we see 100,000 per day if this does not turn around. I am very concerned.”

Trump, meanwhile, has been largely silent on the continued spike in cases, instead focusing on vandalized statues and his own ego. As more than 40,000 new cases and more than 800 new deaths were reported in the U.S., the president was busy tweeting “photos of 15 people the U.S. Park Police said it is attempting to identify ‘who are responsible for vandalizing property’ in a park in front of the White House.” 

Moreover, to celebrate July 4th this year, Trump plans to insert himself amongst George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will travel to Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, on Friday for an early Fourth of July fireworks celebration and flyover, the first of its kind in more than a decade. The event will gather "thousands" together during a global pandemic with no social distancing, and comes amid a national conversation on monuments with racist histories.

Need I add masks and social distancing will be optional?

Another point of view regarding the wearing of masks.

Most examples of people failing to follow social distancing measures [in the UK] are not evidence of individual selfishness, said John Drury, a professor at the University of Sussex and one of the country’s leading behavioral psychologists, but rather of the hardships that many face and the failure of public officials to offer clear guidance or provide for their needs.
“Despite media campaigns to vilify some people as selfish and thoughtless ‘covidiots,’ the evidence on reasons for non‐adherence shows that much of it was practical rather than psychological,” Drury and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper in the British Journal of Social Psychology. “Many people had to cram into Tube trains to go to work because they needed money to survive and government support schemes were insufficient. People were told they could go out to exercise, but those in urban areas had limited public space. And some employers failed to provide the support for social distancing and hygiene. Those with less income and wealth also live in more crowded homes.”
Now, with Boris Johnson encouraging people to eat, drink, and be merry — and the decision to relax restrictions further on a Saturday seems designed to facilitate just that — it’s no wonder that the public seems to be adopting a looser stance toward the coronavirus.
But it remains the government’s responsibility to make sure that the lifting of lockdown restrictions doesn’t result in a second wave of infections. Many health officials have looked on with dismay as the U.K. and the U.S. press ahead with reopening plans despite the lack of robust testing and tracing systems that would allow them to identify and isolate new outbreaks quickly, before they spread throughout the community.

Talking about statues…

The statue of British colonialist 

Cecil John Rhodes was removed 

from the University of Cape Town 

as a result of a month long protest 

by students citing the statue 

"great symbolic power" which glorified 

someone "who exploited black labour [sic] 

and stole land from indigenous people".

© Mail and Guardian 

(Charlie Shoemaker/Getty Images)

Click to enlarge.

The current wave of protests sweeping the world is nothing new to South Africans.

Students orchestrated the removal of the Cecil John Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town campus back in 2015. Now, activist groups in the city are threatening to dismantle more relics of the past if the government does not act to remove them.
Lester Kiewit reports that the Black People's National Crisis Committee will intensify protests if those demands are not listened to. "These symbols inflict psychological violence on the minds of people whose ancestors were murdered by people who are being glorified by statues," said a member of the group.

Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word, interview: Bill Moyers: Instead Of A 'Soul,' Donald Trump Has An 'Open Sore'
This interview is from 2017, shortly after the Charlottesville violence that resulted in one death (and about which Trump said, “great people on both sides”). Moyers’ words are still timely in 2020 as he explains that the inherent message of Confederate statues in the South “was not to honor the soldiers of the Civil War. It was to remind blacks and whites that the force of the state would still be used to subjugate them to a different form on slavery. All of those [statues] could come down without affecting history at all…. We could put them in museums where teachers could explain why they were put up in the early part of the 1900s. (Segment at about 6:30 min and continues at 10:00 min).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Another warm and sunny winter day that I began with an early walk around the neighborhood.
I passed the house with the black Great Dane that, as usual, barked and stalked me. His barking, as usual, alerted the two dogs guarding the corner house who then barked and stalked me, too.
As usual, I pass and talk to the dogs: “Hello, dogs, what good barkers you are, dogs…” As usual, they bark (“stay away from our house, stay away, we say…”)
Today, however, I met a young girl who lives in that house. She told me the dogs’ names: Zack and Chloe.
Now our relationship – dogs and mine – changes forever.
Tomorrow, I’ll pass and say, “Hello Zack. Hello Chloe. What a good barker you are, Zack. What a good barker you are, Chloe….”
I’m dying to see how they respond.

***

I collected two large bags of dry leaves from a neighbor’s avocado tree (“avocado pear tree”)… plus three planters made from recycled tires/tyres.
Back home, I raked dry leaves of the exotic camel’s foot tree, and collected a bucketful of soil from mole hills dotted around the garden as well as another bucketful of wood ash from a recent veld fire outside.
I’ll combine leaves, mole hill sand, wood ash, and other ingredients with compost and mix in a recycled concrete mixer to produce wonderfully rich soil for the veggie garden.

Tens of thousands of people around the world struggle with a deadly infection while millions more struggle to remain infection-free.
Gardening is a metaphor for regeneration.

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