Several years ago, a friend and I left home at 3.33am on a rainy morning to ferry to Alcatraz Island, in San Francisco Bay, to celebrate an Indigenous Peoples’ Unthanksgiving.
I foresee a future when Americans look back at 2020’s Thanksgiving and holiday season as a time for sober reevaluation.
What were we thinking when we acted rashly and ignored an out-of-control pandemic?
This photo essay reminds us that beauty is all around, if we have eyes to see….
News blues…
As Thanksgiving week draws to an end, more experts are warning the Covid-19 pandemic will likely get much worse in the coming weeks before a possible vaccine begins to offer some relief.
[Across the US] More than 205,000 new cases were reported Friday - which likely consists of both Thursday and Friday reports in some cases, as at least 20 states did not report Covid-19 numbers on Thanksgiving. As of Saturday evening, more than 138,000 new cases and 1,100 deaths had been reported, according to Johns Hopkins University.
The US has now reported more than 100,000 infections every day for 26 consecutive days. The daily average in the week to Friday was more than 166,000 - almost 2.5 times higher than the summer's peak counts in July.
The number of Covid-19 patients in US hospitals reached record levels on Saturday evening, with 91,635 Americans hospitalized with Covid19, according to the COVID Tracking Project.
***
Overnight numbers of new Covid infections in South Africa, were, again, above 3,000.
Motherwell resident Ntombizanele Majamana, 56, urged [health minister] Mkhize to convince the cabinet to impose strict regulations in Port Elizabeth. “I have lost many relatives to Covid-19,” she said.
“I wish we could return to the strict lockdown because [then] people adhered to the rules. At the moment people are acting as if Covid-19 is gone, they are attending churches, funerals and traditional ceremonies in numbers.
Healthy planet, anyone?
Reuters photographer Gleb Garanich says: “…the animal world need not only be found in the wild. I was on my way to cover a protest near the Ukrainian parliament and had deliberately left 90 minutes ahead of time as I like to take pictures early in the morning in the city centre”…This photo essay reminds us that beauty is all around, if we have eyes to see….
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Spotted my fourth snake yesterday, the first green one. It was fast but I registered a fresh shade of green, not more than 14 inches long, and what I’d categorize as a youthful body. Could have been any of a range of “green snakes” …***
Marketing in South Africa is highly dependent on “passion”. Marketing professionals are “passion about,” feel “passionately,” and employ variants of this word to flog anything, from cannabis oil to shoes, to manufacturing, to pharmaceuticals… Recently, an email from a pharmacy declared, “we are passionate about delighting our clients…”
One wonders what drugs they’re pedaling.
