Friggatriskaidekaphobia: A morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th.
Frigga - the name of the Norse goddess for whom “Friday” is named and triskaidekaphobia, meaning fear of the number thirteen.
Among South Africa’s progressive community, Donald Trump is known as the Sentient Naartjie – a naartjie (“nar-chi”) being a bright orange colored tangerine-like citrus. These days I suffer Trumpthenaartjiephobia – the fear of how far Republicans will go to permit the orange-haired madman to exact revenge on We the People of the United States.
It’s way past time for the white straight jacket and the escort under guard from the White House.
News blues…
As the
“adrenaline-infused mallard” in the White House continues to ignore it, the United State's surging coronavirus outbreak is on pace to hit nearly
1 million new cases a week by the end of the year —
a scenario that could overwhelm health systems across much of the country…
Governed by Greg Abbott, a Republican mask-denier,
Texas this week became the first state to surpass 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases.
Mississippi’s Governor Tate Reeves (Republican) said that under his leadership, his state
will not cooperate with a national lockdown order, should President-elect Joe Biden implement one next year. This, in response to one of Biden’s newly appointed COVID-19 task force members floating the idea of a four-to-six-week lockdown to attempt to get the coronavirus under control.
You know, kinda, sorta like We the People of South Africa have been doing for the last 232 days. (Lockdown helps … although South Africa’s overnight tally of confirmed new cases was more than 2,000.)
***
Healthy futures, anyone?
From the author of “Annihilation,” Jeff VanderMeer, “the truth is some version of the apocalypse is inevitable" …
The question is whether we can mitigate it to the point where it’s livable.
… the coronavirus in the sense is part and parcel of the climate crisis. It is not divorced from it. It is linked to things like habitat loss and habitat degradation and the fact that we have to not just have green tech. We have to have biodiversity on our planet in order to survive. And so it’s almost weirdly this invisible thing has made visible the cracks in our systems and the faults in our systems that we need to desperately fix in order to deal with the next thing and to deal with the climate crisis in general.
Listen to a conversation with Jeff VanderMeer and Kara Swisher
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
Our gardener has two young children, a ten-year-old girl, and a seven-year-old boy. I’ve never met these children, but I regularly enquire about them. The pandemic prevented childrens' full weeks of schooling and, currently, each of the gardener's children attend school two days per week; one on Monday and Tuesday, the other on Wedneday and Thursday; neither attends on Fridays.
During the early days of lockdown, the children stayed home for several weeks straight. I purchased assorted books, crayons, pens, coloring books to assist their parents with keeping the kids busy. (Imagine being confined to a small house with two lively children and a pandemic raging outside!) Today, keeping in mind that the children are now seven months older, I replenished the assortment, adding a set of glitter glue pens for the upcoming holiday season.
Intriguingly, in this village in Midlands, KwaZulu Natal, the only coloring books I could find were Euro-centric. At least 97 percent of the books' illustrations depict Euro-centric characters – white pirates, Snow White, Nordic princesses, etc. - rather than Afro-centric. I scooped up the only coloring book that depicted a young African girl in tribal costume carrying a pot on her head, and a giraffe. (I look forward to finding a wider, Afro-centric selection in the local city. Much of what is sold in South Africa these days, however, comes from China.)
***
The garden pond is alive with little critters. I wasn’t wearing my glasses when I spotted the latest batch of critters hatched in the pond. They looked like a species of tadpole (“polliwog”), but smaller. Intrigued, I peered closely.
Surprise! The critters are mosquitos! The large pond, epicenter of my gardening joy, is a hot bed for my insect nemesis.
Since adult mosquitos love snacking on my blood, I may be the only person in South Africa who owns – and uses – a functional mosquito net (opposed to the “out of Africa” prop used for interior design). My net is voluminous and black – the only color available at Cost Plus in Oakland California when I purchased it more than a decade ago. I set it up during last week's very hot spell, and have slept well under it.
“Anopheliphobia,” a branch of entomophobia, fear of insects, is fear of mosquitos - derived from Greek “anopheli,” mosquito. This phobia is linked with pruritophobia, fear of itches, since mosquito bites are itchy.
Combine anopheliphobia and pruritophobia with Trumpthenaartjiephobia and
I may be ready for a white straight jacket.
