Expect the unexpected

News blues

“At this rate, dead people are slowly poisoning those who are alive.”

The coronavirus pandemic has claimed over 5.7 million lives worldwide. Funeral homes, mass burial grounds, and crematoriums remain overwhelmed and pushed beyond capacity. Last April, gravediggers in São Paulo had to exhume old graves in a cemetery and relocate corpses’ remains in a desperate attempt to bury thousands of daily COVID.
Researchers argue that cemeteries are one of the most neglected and insidious sources of metal contamination in the soil. As the COVID pandemic drags on, metal pollution in cemeteries and surrounding areas could reach staggeringly high levels—further aggravating the risk of groundwater contamination.

Read “COVID-19 is overcrowding cemeteries and causing heavy metal pollution” >> 

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Even as my mug of once-per-day coffee tangled in my mosquito net and crashed to the floor at 5:00am this morning, I’m happy to have and enjoy coffee. Turns out, I’m on the right track as there’s a link between drinking coffee and a lowered risk of COVID-19. A new study points to other dietary intake data and the odds of getting the virus, too >> 

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The Lincoln Project:
Vote while it counts  (0:55 mins)
Randy Rainbow on Marjorie Taylor Greene  (4:30 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Wondering how animals and plants are adapting – or not - to our ever-warming, increasingly polluted world? A new database reveals how much humans are messing with evolution >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My mother’s long-term (35 years) domestic worker, Martha, met me in the kitchen at 5am. She happily reported she’d dreamed of my mother. (My mother died July 12 last year – amid KZN’s calamitous protest/riots.) Martha happily described my mom as joyous, surrounded by her many dogs – Benji, Freckles, Daisy , too many to name here - Mike, her partner, and Keith, her handyman. Martha even described the clothing each was wearing in the dream.
It’s not easy to lose a parent, particularly amid a pandemic that's sealed off the Care Center from visitors, a violent protest, and me in California. 
Martha’s dream touched my heart. I'll ask her to relate it when the family gathers for my mom's memorial. She'd been planning this event for years and gathered dozens of fancy boxes containing dogs' ashes - each solid wood box adorned with the dog's name etched on a brass-plate. 

My instruction? 

Place all the ashes, including hers, Mike's and Keith's - in a large container then bury them together on the property where she'd spent 6 decades running a country "guest farm". 

Problem? 

That property has been sold. I'm not about to trespass on someone else's property with a large box of cremains. We'll do the memorial in a nearby (rural) valley where my maternal grandfather's ashes are scattered. She'll like that, not as  much as being spread on her beloved former property but.... 

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From 90F degree weather yesterday, to 72F weather and rain predicted today. We shall see. Around here, weather predictions are as reliable as Eskom’s load-shedding schedule. A wait and see attitude is de rigueur.

KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:39am
Sunset: 6:46pm
San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 7:00am
Sunset: 5:47pm