Push back…with humor and humanity

The Lincoln Project’s latest ad is Mourning in America.

Trump is attacking the Lincoln Project  – thereby raising public awareness (and approval) of the ad.
The Lincoln Project creators are thrilled with the president’s reaction. A fight on the front pages of news outlets, from Fox & Friends to websites, will benefit the project, not the president.

Live and let die
I appreciate the American sense of humor and irreverence, hallmarks of American culture.
Trump and his entourage hoped to assure the public that they had things under control when they created a photo-op at a N95 mask manufacturing plant in Phoenix, Arizona.
It did not go well.
Somebody or somebodies with an irreverent sense of humor coupled with courage, unmasked (ahem!) the contradiction of those in power abusing their power.
That somebody (soon to lose her/his job?) blasted on-topic music into the warehouse, including ‘Live and Let Die’.

Of this moment,[comedian] Jimmy Kimmel tweeted: “I can think of no better metaphor for this presidency than Donald Trump not wearing a face mask to a face mask factory while the song ‘Live and Let Die’ blares in the background.”

***

Cognitive dissonance
Locked down in my security-enhanced South African home-away-from-houseboat-home (docked in California’s Sacramento Delta), I ponder cognitive dissonance: the “state of having inconsistent thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes, especially as relating to behavioral decisions and attitude change.

With the current global tally of confirmed infections at more than 3.6 million, at least one third of which are in my adopted country, and more than a quarter of a million coronavirus-related deaths, it’s weird to feel … as if I’m doing nothing.
My mother and her helper make masks, most recently for children, that I deliver. I make small online donations. I purchase the household’s groceries and related chores “outside the wire.” We four lockdownees adhere, best we can, to level 4 lockdown rules.
Yet the planet’s catastrophe “outside” feels distant, far away.
There’s enormous suffering “out there.” The incompetent leadership “out there” is too often a feature, not a bug.
We, the People, face enormous odds. I’m doing my best… but couldn’t I do more? If so, what more?
I’m caring for my microcosm.
Why does that feel like not enough?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Day 41 feels like a day to take stock.
Today’s walk around the garden – waving the anti-spider-web stick – revealed:

• more weeds to pluck (check!) 
• a sink-hole to top up (check!) 
• a pond-weed path to tamp (check!) 
• flowers and bugs to photograph (check!), 
• dogs to walk and entertain (check!) 
• and an earth-bound freshwater crab with whom to chat (check!).

Now to tackle the tough stuff:
Attempting to sell real estate after South Africa’s financial status was downgraded to BB+ - 'non-investment grade speculative' or 'junk status' – seems like a fool’s errand. (BB+ signals to potential investors an increased risk that South Africa's government might not have enough money to pay back what it borrows.)
Attempting to sell real estate during a pandemic seems like a fool’s errand.
Attempting to explain these pertinent considerations to a stubborn 87-year-old resistant to change seems futile – more so as necessary change involves terminating her relationship with seven beloved dogs.

Bogged down by seeming futility in my physical yet emotionally isolating environment, I talk on the phone with American friends. Most recent topic of conversation includes the effect of emails from the US Consulate in South Africa.
Over the past week I’ve received three such emails. Each begins:

Event:  The South African Ministry of Health confirmed "xx" numbers of cases of COVID-19 within its borders. (Today "xx" = 7,572 - up 352 since yesterday.)

The email continues with information on how residents can return to the US. Most recently:

• Fly Qatar Air to Doha, Qatar … and find/purchase a ticket in Doha to complete the trip home.
• Fly SAA to Washington Dulles International and find/purchase a ticket to California. (I thought SAA was bankrupt.)

Independent of the Consulate, I found a direct flight with Turkish Airlines from Durban/Shaka to San Francisco with a stopover in Istanbul. (Turkey's rate of infection: 129,491 confirmed with 3,520 deaths.)
Flying an almost direct flight would be nice.
Masked.
Sanitized.
Socially distanced.

But… what about my mother? her dogs? her staff? her too-large house? her too-many lawns? her piles of useless household goods? her real property? her well-being….

Today, taking stock - internal therefore uncomfortably passive - feels like a good direction.


Read Week 1  | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4  |  Week 5   | Week 6

See photos Spying on Garden Creatures    |    Watch Videos of Garden Creatures

Crisis: Danger? Or opportunity?

The Chinese word for "crisis" is composed of two Chinese characters signifying "danger" and "opportunity" respectively.
The crisis facing our multicultural planet is, indeed, both danger and opportunity.
One danger is the lack of effective US leadership.
One opportunity is that We, the People actually demand leadership that is honest, direct, unequivocal, humane, generous, and firm.
Let’s assume you and I agree (as does much of the planet) that Donald J Trump fulfils none of the above leadership traits.
Who, then, could lead us out of the current crisis?
Joe Biden? Not likely.
Joe Biden is a follower, not a leader.
Joe Biden has his schtick down pat: the folksy manner sold as a man of the people; the “I’ve been in politics all my life so trust me”; the grin designed to communicate “I’m just a friendly, honest guy”, etc., etc.

We, the People are in the political, socio-cultural, and psychological fix we’re in because of, not in spite of, long-term politicians like Joe Biden (and Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, “Moscow” Mitch McConnell, and, yes, Bill and Hilary Clinton, too).

I’ve shared in this blog the anti-Trump ads produced by The Lincoln Project and Republicans for the Rule of Law because it’s a first-time phenomenon. Four decades living in the US and I’ve never seen Republicans do anything like it.
But, remember, they’re still Republicans. Republicans concerned about the damage wrought by The Donald and his crew support Joe Biden because Joe’s manageable. Joe’s politics are Republican-Lite. Joe and Republicans can live with one another because they share the same values, politics, and, often, the same donor base.
Ol’ folksy Joe may bring Republicans and Democrats together “across the aisle” but that also brings business-as-usual politics.

I’m not just a crazy locked down lady running around her garden photographing bees and sharing crazy notions.
People “out there” share these crazy notions. Meet, for example, Nathan J. Robinson, and read his full article, “Democrats, You Really Do Not Want To Nominate Joe Biden”, excerpted here:

The reason many of us are so turned off by Joe Biden is that, over the course of a many-decade career in Washington, he has let us down on the key issues when it matters most. Joe Biden has shown himself to be fundamentally weak, unreliable, and dishonest. He gets taken advantage of by Republicans, and he seems more interested in making friends than advancing Democratic ideals. Biden, ultimately, is truly “just another politician”: a guy who will give you a warm smile and then sell you out behind closed doors, a person who will make terrible decisions and grubby deals and then cover them up with lies. He adopts a “middle class” image but sucks up to the rich and powerful, and has contempt for ordinary voters and their concerns. He’s a man with little integrity or moral character, whose choices in office have caused a lot of people a lot of harm.

So, what do “We the People” do?

How about dump Biden and...nominate Andrew Cuomo?

Right now, Cuomo is the proven, and now experienced, Coronavirus ‘fix it’ guy. He also happens to be the kind of control freak needed for this crisis (danger and opportunity).
Cuomo presents facts and figures in a way that a majority of people understand (including in whole thoughts and sentences - unlike the current White House incumbent).
Moreover, Cuomo delivers tough facts and figures in a lovely family-friendly style reminiscent of FDR’s Fireside Chats during the Great Depression.
Finally, Andrew Cuomo would likely either have Elizabeth Warren as his VP or ensure that her brain-power and know-how were put to work for the country.

Imagine! Competence. Efficiency. Brains. And delivery.
We, not just The People, but the whole damned planet at this time of great crisis, need a pair of qualified and humane leaders who could work well with other qualified and humane leaders.
Joe Biden? No!
Cuomo and Warren could do it… and would do it well.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Amid a global pandemic, my mother has decided, finally, to give up the excess baggage burdening her 87-year-old life. She’s agreed to forego seven dogs and their ongoing visits to vets and to forego the ongoing hunt for giblets. She's agreed to forego the too-large garden and too-numerous lawns with too-needy lawn care. She's agreed to end the long employment of two live-in domestic workers who happen, coincidentally, to have decided that Lockdown doesn’t apply to them so they can exit and enter the property at will, saying nothing to nobody.

After years of vehement denunciation of retirement facilities, my mother has decided that a move to a care-giving retirement facility might, after all, better suit her needs.
I’m thrilled with this decision.

Except…
Guess who will have to carry out all the tasks to fulfil the mission?
Guess who will have to search for new homes for utterly spoiled dogs during a time people are abandoning dogs they can no longer afford?
Guess who will have to find the retirement facility that meets her mother’s stringent conditions?
Guess who will have to sell excess personal property and prep the large seven-bedroom house for sale?
Guess who will have to work out legal and financial ramifications of laying off domestic workers with a 35-year work history?
Guess who will have to find and work with a local real estate agent to attempt to sell a house during a pandemic and Level 4 Lockdown?
Guess who will have to fend off the rest of the family who, suddenly, will become “concerned” with the new plan?

You got it.
Dutiful Daughter.

Ah, yes. Crisis: Danger? Or opportunity?

Read Week 1  | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4  |  Week 5   | Week 6

See photos Spying on Garden Creatures    |    Watch Videos of Garden Creatures

Forty days and forty nights?

We're on the cusp of 40 days into the pandemic.
Periods of 40 days are significant in Earth’s creation stories.

• The book of Genesis states, “I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living thing I have made."
• After his baptism, Jesus was tempted by the devil for 40 days and nights in the Judaean Desert. Based on this, traditional Lent lasts for 40 days.
• Similar to Jesus, Buddha started his ministry fasting for 40 days and nights in the wilderness and was also tempted by evil spirits.
• Forty days was the period from the resurrection to the ascension of Jesus.
• According to some, Moses' life is divided into three 40-year segments: growing to adulthood, fleeing from Egypt; returning to Egypt to lead out his people.
• The 40th Day after death is a traditional memorial service in Islam with family gatherings, ceremonies and rituals in memory of the departed.

Forty days is also about how much staying at home people hoping to avoid Covid-19 can take before demanding “freedom” – even the freedom to suffocate in one’s own coronavirus-congested lungs.
About 40 days into the pandemic:

• Rifle-carrying Trumpies inside Michigan’s state legislature demanded freedom. 
• Conspiracy theorists protested stay-at-home orders claiming that COVID-19 is a hoax and a “dry run for communism.”
• Conservative and/or remote California counties defied stay-at-home orders.
• Californians crowded beaches.
• South African township dwellers rebelled.

Infections are growing in South Africa. Confirmed number of infections today: 6,783.
In Cape Town’s crowded townships such as Khayelitsha, Nyanga and Langa infections increased by up to 173 percent last week, and in some cases shot up by well over 20 percent a day.
The Western Cape now has about 45 percent of South Africa’s confirmed Covid-19 cases and deaths.
Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal townships are defying orders, too, saying lockdown is impossible.

I talked on the phone with our gardener, locked down in Mpophemeni Township with his wife and two young children.
“It’s terrible! Terrible!” he said. “Police driving up and down the road all the time. Go out the house to buy food and they stop you. Shouting, shouting, always shouting.”
The good news is he knows of no cases of infection in his part of the township. While his relationship to gardening is not passionate – gardening is just a job where he can arrive late, leave early, and eat well in-between – he sounded almost wistful for weeds.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

First Monday of the month and I drove into town to fill another prescription, drop off homemade cotton masks at a children’s center, and buy giblets for dogs.
Crowds of people lined the streets, particularly in a section of town lined with several banks. The crowd shown here, snapped as I drove past, is a fragment of the line along the street waiting for ATM service.
After I saw these crowds, I elected to drop off masks and buy giblets later in the week.

I spent the rest of the day eradicating pond weed then recycling it as another layer for my weed-smothering path under swamp cypress.


Read Week 1  | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4  |  Week 5   | Week 6

See photos Spying on Garden Creatures    |    Watch Videos of Garden Creatures

White House: Home of the Whopper

By January 2020, Donald J Trump had made 16,241 verifiably false or misleading claims. With the pandemic offering him the opportunity to outdo his own record of whoppers, he’s excelling (for once).
A sampler of his recent whoppers:

• Maximum Of 60,000 Deaths

During a White House briefing March 29 in the Rose Garden, Trump referenced modeling that found there could be between 1.6 million and 2.2 million fatalities in the U.S. if no containment measures were taken.
“If we could hold that down … so we have between 100 and 200,000, we all together have done a very good job.”
Trump moved the target again last week, predicting a maximum of 60,000 Americans would fall victim to the disease … “We did the right thing, because if we didn’t do it you would have had a million people, a million and a half people, maybe 2 million people dead… Now, we’re going toward 50, I’m hearing, or 60,000 people.”

(May 3, US death toll is more than 65,000.)

• ‘We’ve Tested More Than Every Country Combined.’

A shortage of COVID-19 tests [is]… ultimately costing the health care system precious time. … Trump declared that “anybody that needs a test gets a test.” Dr. Anthony Fauci… contradicted the president…describing “the lack of available tests as an ongoing failure.”
Trump also promised “…individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.” … [and that] “Google was “very quickly” developing a website for checking symptoms and locating testing sites. Instead, Google issued “a statement that said the website was in “early development”….
“We had a chance to contain this outbreak, but we didn’t,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, told ABC News.
“And as a result of that testing failure, over 60,000 Americans are dead and our economy has been shut down. It didn’t have to be this way.”

• There’s Plenty Of PPE For Health Care Workers

“We have masks. We have everything,” said the prez. … Pressed …about widespread accounts from health care workers of personal protective equipment shortages, Trump declared them to be “fake news.”
With dire shortages of vital supplies – protective N95 masks, gloves, gowns and face shields - health care workers have resorted to wearing trash bags or Yankees rain ponchos as gowns. In many places, doctors, nurses and other workers reuse masks that are supposed to be thrown away after a single use. In others, personnel are forced to use substandard equipment, like surgical masks that provide little protection compared to N95 masks. Health care workers are even staging GoFundMe campaigns to buy the supplies their employers aren’t providing. Some medical personnel have even been fired for speaking out against unsafe working conditions.

• A Coronavirus Vaccine Is ‘Very Close’

Feb 25: “We’re very close to a vaccine.”
Feb 26: “We’re rapidly developing a vaccine,”
Feb 27: “The vaccine is coming along well.”
Vaccines typically take years to develop and test and there’s always a chance that one is never developed. Dr Fauci dispelled “the president’s nonsense. A vaccine, he said … would take at least 18 months”….[and] offered a somewhat more optimistic assessment of the progress of developing a coronavirus vaccine: Immunizations could be available as soon as January. Eleven months actually would be a fast deployment for a vaccine preventing a virus that was only discovered last winter… In fact, we’ve never successfully created a vaccine for other coronaviruses.

But, never fear, Jared Kushner is on the job. He summed it up and declared victory. “The federal government rose to the challenge. This is a great success story.”

News blues

According to the Guardian, “Trump is handling coronavirus so badly, he almost makes [Boris] Johnson look good.”

We don’t need to wait for a full statistical analysis to know that Johnson has not been the worst world leader in this crisis, because we can declare a winner in that contest right now.
Each day Britons wake up to ever more jaw-dropping news from across the Atlantic. Last week, it was Donald Trump advising Americans to inject bleach. On Friday, it was his claim to have seen evidence that coronavirus was developed in a Wuhan laboratory, a claim denied by his own director of national intelligence. The shocking images of protesters wielding assault weapons storming into the state assembly in Michigan on Thursday night are hardly a surprise, given that Trump himself was tweeting “Liberate Michigan!” a matter of days ago, cheering on those who are demanding their states defy the advice of Trump’s own White House and prematurely end the lockdown that has so far proved to be the only way to stop the virus.
However bad Boris Johnson and his government of conspicuously few talents is … they can at least show a modicum of human empathy for those who’ve lost loved ones, a feat that continues to elude Trump. They have at least – eventually – united behind a coherent “stay home” message, rather than undermining that advice at every turn. They are not hawking quack cures and endorsing deranged conspiracy theories. They do not seem willing to countenance mass death in the insane belief that it will help them win an election.
It’s a low bar, but these are low times. 

Going mobile?

My scheduled departure date is May 19. So far, at least half my trip – London to San Francisco - has been cancelled. Even if the first half - Johannesburg to London - isn’t cancelled, current Lockdown Level 4 rules prevent me crossing provincial borders prevents me travelling to Johannesburg.
I missed the US Consulate’s deadline issued for its “last/final” repatriation flight to the US. I received another email yesterday:

We have been notified of Embassy of Qatar-coordinated repatriation flights to Doha in the coming weeks. It is not confirmed as a certainty; however, we are collecting information on prospective travelers to provide to the Qatar Embassy in the event the flights are approved.

Flight information:

• These flights will depart from Johannesburg only and will land in Doha. You must make your own onward arrangements from Doha; you will not be able to stay in Doha – only transit is allowed at this time.
• You will be responsible for finding your own transportation to either the Johannesburg airport or to a required staging area (if applicable); we are not aware of any domestic flights at this time.
• It is our understanding that travel between provinces will be permitted next week and thus no travel letter is needed.
• Currently, we do not have any further information on baggage allowances, flight cost, or specific flight times/final dates. We also do not know if business class seats will be available.

Hmmmm. Good news is "It is our understanding that travel between provinces will be permitted next week and thus no travel letter is needed."
My choice? Stay here with garden, lawns, critters, and mental health discomforts… or sit in Doha airport until I can book a flight from Doha to California?
Is this Hobson’s Choice, Morton’s Fork, or Buridan’s Ass?
Hobson’s Choice: A free choice in which only one option is offered; i.e., “take it or leave it”.
Morton’s Fork: A a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives… or two lines of reasoning that lead to the same unpleasant conclusion. It is analogous to the expression, “between the devil and the deep blue sea,” and “between a rock and a hard place”.
Buridan’s Ass is an illustration of a paradox in philosophy in the conception of free will. It refers to a hypothetical situation wherein an ass is placed precisely midway between a stack of hay and a pail of water. Since the paradox assumes the ass will always go to whichever is closer, it will die of both hunger and thirst since it cannot make any rational decision to choose one over the other. The paradox is named after the 14th century French philosopher Jean Buridan, whose philosophy of moral determinism it satirizes. (Thanks Kennon-Green.)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

David, artist and friend based in New Mexico, posts Stare, the world’s longest-living blog.  This weekly/“weakly” notes:

The coronavirus is killing people faster than the living can cremate or bury them. …the solution [is] obvious: reusable, composting caskets. That would get rid of the backlog of bodies and provide fertilizer to help with the upcoming food shortages.

If humans weren’t so finicky about death and dying, David’s idea could work. It aligns with Lockdown Level 4’s stipulation not to travel to attend funerals.

Perhaps it needs more fleshing (ahem!) out.
How about simply slipping bodies – with or without coffins - into compost piles? Or stuffing bodies without coffins into garden sink holes? If charity begins at home, my garden sink hole has room to stuff bodies. Moreover, if my suspicious are correct, bodies would quickly be recycled by my sink hole’s debris-consuming dragon…

(Hmmm, talking about mental health…)

Read Week 1  | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4  |  Week 5   | Week 6

See photos Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch Videos of Garden Creatures