Super Tuesday

© Zapiro 

Zapiro, South African's  cartoon treasure, captures my thoughs exactly: Donald Trump defeated at the polls. Here’s hopin’
I awoke to no electrical power – again!
No power = no internet. 

No internet = no blog post for the day.
Sigh.

News blues…

How South Africa is viewing Trump vs. Biden  

***

The Lincoln Project:
American the Beautiful  (0:55 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

After waking to find no electricity, my immediate thought was: Eskom’s at fault - again. I blamed the country’s national electricity supplier (power derived from coal), complaining that Eskom no even longer bothers to inform its customers via its EskomSe Push app that power is off, nor about the expected duration of the outage, nor the regions affected. Moreover, Eskom, subjected to corrosive corruption during the Zuma presidency, is billions of rands in debt  …which means, naturally, that tax payers will tapped to fill the gap.
An immediate effect of no electricity is no internet connection - therefore no updated blog posting.
The auto security gate is also affected when electricity is off. This morning, it took several tries for the security gate to close.
Already stressed (what if The Donald is re-elected? Surely it couldn’t happen? Surely the world’s people would rise up en masse and complain?), when I spotted two local residents talking on the street, I said, “One set of neighbors has electricity but our house does not. Do your houses have power?”
One man explained, “Someone stole electrical cable last night,” he gestured to an open box on a pole. “The houses on this section of the street, including ours are affected.”
Stolen cables? Who steals cables from live electrical connections?
South Africans do.
Alas.

***

Today, I take the day off. With daylight savings time started in California, South Africa is now 10 hours ahead of California, I cannot watch the nail-biting election news as US media ekes out hours and hours of election predictions and slow results.
Moreover, I’ve not taken a day off for 222 days – not since the beginning of the pandemic locked down South Africans in March.
I plan to visit the now-abandoned land upon which I grew up and to which I bonded and continue to love.
On the outer west region of The Valley of a Thousand Hills  nurtured me and gave me profound respect for the natural world. Alas, due to encroaching industry, my mother sold the land after living there more than 60 years.
Usually, I visit the area at least once during a stay in South Africa. I’ve not visited this year. 

Today is the day.