Home alone

News blues

Plummeting Covid-19 case counts across the United States are leading to lifted mask mandates and more conversations about steps toward normalcy — but more people are dying of the coronavirus now than during most points of the pandemic.
Read more >> 

The pandemic is following a very predictable and depressing pattern. As with diseases such as malaria and HIV, rich countries are “moving on” from COVID while poor ones continue to get ravaged.
Read more >> 

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War!:
Not focused on Covid-19 … but meet Fiona Hill, my hero since I watched her uncompromising and forthright testimony during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial. (Video clip from that time >>)
Fast forward to March 3, and Fiona Hill and Stephen Colbert chat about her dinner with Vladimir Putin, Russians protesting Putin’s current war, and the invasion and demolition of Ukraine and Ukrainians >>  (9:28 mins) 

Nuclear weapons:
For more than 30 years, one very good friend has engaged the reality of nuclear weapons and nuclear power: that they’re no good for people or planet. This friendship makes me sensitive to the topic – and very fearful of Putin’s putsch into Ukraine. These days, ridding our planet of nukes – weaponry and power generation – should be in the forefront of all humans’ minds.
The consequences of nuclear war would be devastating. Much more should – and can – be done to reduce the risk that humanity will ever face such a war. 

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The Lincoln Project: Biden's Response to Tyranny  (1:35 mins)
Vote Vets:
Party of Putin  (1:10 mins)
Lt. Col. (Ret.) Alexander Vindman Articulates What Must Happen Now That Russia Invaded Ukraine  (1:29 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Scientists have doubted whether the process of evolution can create “prudent predators” able to avoid extinguishing their own prey – and therefore themselves.
But “wild life” predators must avoid overexploiting their prey if they are to survive. They cannot evolve to become so aggressive that they eat all their prey and then go extinct themselves?
Why – and how – have they “done” this?
Read “Animals have evolved to avoid overexploiting their resources – can humans do the same?” >> 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Last night was my first night, ever, alone – well, with three dogs – in my late mother’s house. (After a year of barely any time off, our domestic worker took the weekend off to attend a traditional Zulu wedding. This includes a cow meeting its demise and its peeled and dripping skin drying out over a fence while the edible parts are consumed with gusto).
Locking up the house last night was an adventure. I discovered where are the “weaknesses” … noticed which locks are tenuous, which exterior lights need attention….
Unlocking this morning was an adventure, too. Under the watchful eyes of hungry dogs, I managed this laborious task then doled out breakfast.
For the next 3 days, I’ve arranged my weekend to ensure the appearance of constant human presence in the house. This, to discourage unexpected incursions. (That thuglet who threatened my life still haunts the neighborhood, albeit mostly sleeping in local bushes as he sleeps off drunken episodes. I keep an eye out for him and opt to prevent incursions from the gen pop, too.) 

This weekend will be replete with painting walls, gardening, hedge clipping….
A year ago, I perseverated over purchasing a mechanical hedge clipper to trim the many hedges around my apartment. While this fecund vegetation affords privacy - one of the reasons I chose that apartment - one afternoon manually clipping presents reality: I can’t do this regularly. Reluctant but practical, I put aside ambitions of designing and cutting shapes - waves? Animals? People? - and contemplated the glory of mechanical clippers.
Alas, the selection of such tools around here is narrow: most clippers are too big and powerful for me - or too small and not powerful enough.
A friend swore by her small, battery-operated clipper, but I wasn’t enamored of the manufacturer and avoided that brand.
Hedge clippers were the last thing on my mind after I departed the country last year and attended to the demands of Covid-19.
A year later, those privacy-presenting hedges tower over my apartment garden. They desperately need clipping. I haven’t the appetite manually to clip them. Moreover, the many hedges in my late-mother’s garden need clipping too.
Rekindling interest in the perfect mechanical hedge clippers, I comparison-shopped in three local stores, saw little that enticed, returned home to the reality of overgrown hedges, and grappled with my dilemma.
I returned to one store, listened again to Vision, the salesperson, and focused on one brand. All the men with whom I consulted about mechanical clippers steered me away from purchasing a battery-operated set: “battery-run tools are limited”. Nevertheless, I purchased a battery-operated Stihl brand tool that perfectly suits me.
How did I settle on it?
The petrol (“gas”) fuel clipper offers a rope pull. After months struggling to start my small gadabout-boat motor with a rope pull, I swore never again tug anything with rope pull.
For my late mother’s large garden, the electrically powered versioin requires a very long extension cord (cost about R1000,00/US$65). And it would lie in/near water while I clipped. No way I’m risking electrocution if water intruded into the electrical system.
The set I purchased has a battery designed to run for up to two hours. Since I work 30-to-45-minute sessions, it should work. It’s lightweight enough for that duration session, too.
Back home, I charged the battery, inserted it, and clipped.
The device is 95% perfect for my size and strength. The 5% that’s imperfect? It struggles to cut long, sword-shaped, densely packed leaves. I’m a soupçon disappointed, but perfection is rare in a single garden tool. (After all, it’s the hunt for perfection that sends gardeners back to garden stores and allows tool manufacturers to generate profits.)
I’m chuffed with my almost-perfect mechanical hedge clippers.
What fun!

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Eight days to the beginning of California's daylight saving time regime.
It’s drizzling in the San Francisco Bay Area
Sunrise: 6:34am
Sunset: 6:06pm

It’s drizzling in KZN, South Africa:
Sunrise: 5:53am
Sunset: 6:27pm

Exemplars of absurdism

“I recently thumbed through “The Plague,” to see if Albert Camus had intuited anything about the rhythms of human suffering in conditions of fear, disease and constraint. Naturally, he had. It was on April 16 that Dr. Rieux first felt the squish of a dead rat beneath his feet on his landing; it was in mid-August that the plague “had swallowed up everything and everyone,” with the prevailing emotion being “the sense of exile and of deprivation, with all the crosscurrents of revolt and fear set up by these.” Those returning from quarantine started setting fire to their homes, convinced the plague had settled into their walls."

We’ve hit a pandemic wall: New records show that Americans are suffering from record levels of mental distress. 

Healthy futures anyone?

I recently “had my say” on South Africa’s Nuclear Regulation Act. Take a look and, if South African, have your say. 
South Africa taking on another nuke power station is, well, an exemplar of absurdism. Why purchase – with the country’s demonstrably corrupt tender system and little technical knowhow – a power system that provides mountains of toxic waste?
No nuclear waste has ever been successfully (sustainably) managed anywhere in the world.
Why nuke power in an era when the world must go in a sustainable direction?

African prosperity will not come by it being shackled to the outdated dirty energy infrastructure of the past. Rather than trudging behind in the 50-year-old footsteps of European countries, Africa needs to leapfrog to the clean, cheap and renewable technologies of the future. This is how Africa will catch up with its global neighbours. Africa is blessed with more sun, wind and geothermal energy than anywhere else on the planet, but that fact does not help the GWPF or the coal industry.
Not only are wind and solar increasingly becoming the cheapest forms of new electricity across the globe, but they are also inherently more agile and versatile than grid-reliant fossil fuels. Pastoralists in remote parts of Africa in need of electricity will not be served waiting for hulking great power grids to be built, cutting a swathe across Africa’s precious natural landscape. They would be better off with solar mini-grids and wind turbines supplying energy exactly where it is needed most.  

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Mauritius environment minister Kavy Ramano and fishing minister Sudheer Maudhoo concur, “We are in an environmental crisis situation… This is the first time that we are faced with a catastrophe of this kind and we are insufficiently equipped to handle this problem.” 

The problem? A breach in the vessel MV Wakashio, carrying 200 tonnes of diesel and 3,800 tonnes of bunker fuel.

The ministers said all attempts to stabilise the ship had failed because of rough seas and efforts to pump out the oil had also failed. Ecologists fear the ship could break up, which would cause an even greater leak and inflict potentially catastrophic damage on the island’s coastline. The country depends on its seas for food and for tourism, boasting some of the finest coral reefs in the world.

It’s not rocket science: We the Critters of this planet all depend on our oceans. (Way back in May 2010, Greg Moses wrote “Oil Wars come home to roost."  It’s more relevant than ever. )
What can you do? Start small with an easy-to-accomplish step:
Call on world leaders to protect Antarctica and deliver the largest act of ocean protection in history. Only one Antarctica 

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A line from the movie, “Cry, the Beloved Country, about apartheid South Africa: “In South Africa, the law and justice are distant relatives – and they haven’t been on speaking terms for decades.” 

Update that for this moment and substitute the law and justice with Trump and responsible leadership. Trump is a dangerous clown but he is merely the current instrument with which American right-wing politicians hammer home their philosophy expressed by Grover Norquist: “I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
And right-wing Republicans accuse “The Left” of anarchism? 

It's a complex history with a simple plot line: subjegate The People by impoverishing them, taking away possibilites of health care, decent and affordable education, minimum wage....
How the pandemic defeated America. 

This is not a blanket condemnation of all Republicans. The Lincoln Project, for example, is made up of Republicans of a different feather (at least during this season of Trump disasters).
Republican Vets Against Trump  (1:00 mins)
Meidas Touch:
Leave Me A Loan: Trump's PPP Scandal Exposed (1:16 mins)
Trump Hoaxed America  (1:00 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Overnight temperatures dropped to 2C/ 36F – that means below zero in our valley wetlands. And that means, ice in my watering can this morning. In anticipation of freezing temperatures, last night I wrapped vulnerable plants.
I watch the days getting longer by mere seconds, longing for the return of spring and summer. This time last month, the sun rose at 6:53am and set at 5:12am; today, it rose at 6:37am and will set at 5:29. Getting there, slowly but surely.

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The latest threat to healthy seedlings and flourishing vegetable gardens?
Monkeys.
I discovered the hard way – solid evidence – that monkeys, curious rather than malicious, pluck seedlings out the ground and toss ‘em. 

I’d be less chagrined if monkeys ate seedlings – it’s winter and they’re hungry.
But, wanton destruction?
Exemplars of absurdism.