Herd immunity, impunity, or fraternity?

Catching up after three days without an Internet connection.
So much going on it’s hard to stay current.

News blues…

A friend under curfew (also a lawyer) texted news from the San Francisco Bay Area:

• Yesterday was the attack on peaceful protesters, media, and clergy by secret service, police, and the National Guard in Lafayette Square [outside White House] to clear it for a Trump photo op. They attacked protesters under the direct command of Attorney General [William] Barr, who could clearly be seen ordering the attack. I watched this in real time.
• There were a number of crimes committed by all involved, the main crimes being criminal civil rights violations and conspiracy to violate civil rights.
• I spent the morning calling my federal representatives about this stuff, and my state and county reps about the wholesale use of gas, flash bang grenades, and rubber bullets against non-violent protesters, many of whom are young college and high school students. This is happening all over the state [California]… A main freeway [near me] was blocked [by protesters, too].
• A MSNBC TV reporter asked Republican Senators about these attacks. All senators either refused to answer or claimed not to have seen it.*
• Former CIA analyst Gail Heit said, “This looks like what happens when democracies die. It happens like this in countries before a collapse. It really un-nerves me.”
• There are big demonstrations all over defying the curfews. Like many cities and counties around the country, San Francisco and East Bay counties [population of 3.5 to 4 million], are now under curfew indefinitely. 
• [Signaling]…resistance from the big state governors and other quarters, a member of the Defense Science Board, James Miller, a former under-Secretary of Defense, resigned today. [He wrote] a scorching letter to the Secretary of Defense saying both he [current SecDef] and Trump had violated their oaths of office and the law.

Defense Science Board member, James Miller’s resignation is the beginning, I believe, of a domino effect that will bring Trump down.
*For now, leaders such as Marco Rubio still prop up the stale edifice. Rubio (R-Fla.), the acting chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said about the attacks on peaceful protesters outside the White House:

“That wasn’t even a protest ― that was a provocation … created deliberately for national television… Show me the pictures of that crowd and tell me those are real protesters and not professional agitators.” 

Meanwhile, Republican Voters Against Trump, a Republican group opposed to President Donald Trump urges voters to end his “American carnage” by voting him out of office in November. The group is using Fox & Friends, one of Trump’s favorite TV shows, to spread the message.

The spot uses the president’s own words against him and is centered around a line from his inauguration has taken on new meaning amid a deadly pandemic and nationwide civil unrest: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

Former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mike Mullen, wrote in The Atlantic:

It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel — including members of the National Guard — forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president's visit outside St. John's Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump's leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent.
Whatever Trump's goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing

Televangelist Pat Robertson, on his “700 Club” TV show, scolded President Donald Trump over his threat to send the U.S. military into American cities to control civil unrest.

“You just don’t do that, Mr. President. It isn’t cool.”
In comments posted online by Right Wing Watch, Robertson also called out Trump for getting the tone all wrong in dealing with the people protesting against racial injustice in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, last week.
“You know, there’s a purpose to everything under heaven, you read in the Bible, and there’s a time,” Robertson said. “And I think now is the time to say, ’I understand your pain, I want to comfort you, I think it’s time we love each other.” 

Ah, yes, this is what I love about America and Americans. When the fur flies (aka “sh** hits the fan”) Americans guided by principle come out of the woodwork and show their courage.
I find fraternity at these times with James Miller, and Mike Mullen, and Republican Voters Against Trump, even very conservative Pat Robertson.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Third feature of Lockdown Syndrome: coupled with isolation, disconnection from the Internet for more than 24 hours causes irritation, anxiety, even depression.
Sitting by the garden pond helps, watching dragon- and damselflies helps. Seeing a vibrant Woodland Kingfisher certainly helps. But, there’s nothing like reconnection to the Internet!

***

Mea culpa. Fulsome complaining about the kitchen alarm and staff’s misuse of gas comes back to haunt.
It is true that staff does not moderate gas burners.
It is true that fire alarms are necessary tools to signal emergency.
And, it is true that alarms malfunction.
Indeed, malfunction was the root cause of our kitchen’s overactive alarm.
Another humbling lesson in why not to jump to conclusion, why not to assume, and why not to assign blame.
My excuse? I’m all-too-human.

On the topic of all-too-human, this was the perfect morning to listen to Arlo Guthrie’s, “City of New Orleans.”

Good morning, America
How are you?
Say, don’t you know me?
I’m your native son…

I listen, smile with joy … and cry with anguish as American burns. (Why brutalize people who justly claim their humanity?)
Crying is not allowed in my family of origin. Never has been, never will be.
So, like a well-trained seal (Bored Zoo Animal?) Dutiful Daughter sits on her bed, alone in her bedroom in KZN, far from friends and family in burning, adopted-country America, and cries.

Take care, Americans and America.
Do not give up your fight for your humanity, your human rights – and our democracy.

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Going cuckoo

After brief Internet connection, I’m disconnected. Again.
A “problem with the tower.”
The tower ain’t got no power!
Coming from California – close to hyper-urban, hi-tech Silicon Valley – to KZN’s rural low-tech Midlands demands patience.

News blues…

Uneasy about being cut off from US news during one of the most significant domestic moments of the New Millennium, I grimace… grumble … grouse…
Friends and family text me their local news:

• I’ve been watching videos of cops and undercover cops inciting violence. One video showed an undercover cop breaking windows. Another showed people intentionally pushing other people into the cops from behind then running away. What’s fascinating is that they used to get away with all this stuff but now it’s all captured on video so all can see the tactics.
• Resistance [to heavy-handed cops] is already happening. In Minneapolis a bus driver refuse to drive arrested protesters to jail. In a couple of places cops even joined protesters. This has never happened before - so it’s a good sign.
• [Congressman] Seth Moulton, a Democrat and a [war] vet just called on the military to “lay down arms” if ordered to confront protesters.
• As per the UN International Human Rights Standards of Law Enforcement pocket handbook, soldiers have a duty to refuse unlawful orders: “All measures for the restoration of order are to respect human rights.”

Leaders of the City of Alameda, an island city of approximately 74,000 souls and my home for 20 years, alerted residents that:

A curfew is in place…tonight and tomorrow night, June 1 and 2, from 8pm to 5am. If extended, we will continue to update the community.
Last night, May 31 into June 1, the East Bay was hit hard by widespread incidents of looting, burglaries, and violence. Here in Alameda, we experienced a dozen incidents from 9pm to 5am, and arrested 7 individuals. What we experienced was less severe than in neighboring cities, but damage was done to our community.
These unfortunate events will also further complicate statewide and regional efforts to slow the spread of Covid-19.
We have substantially increased the number of officers we have on duty and have contingency plans in place to address changing circumstances.
Curfew regulations…include that it is unlawful for any person to travel or be upon a public street, sidewalk, or public place within the City during dates and hours designated, unless you are exempt. Exemptions include essential workers and individuals traveling to and from work, seeking emergency care, fleeing dangerous circumstances, or experiencing homelessness.
The Alameda County Sheriff issued a curfew order for the entire County [1.67 million people] beginning tonight at 8pm and extending through June 5 at 5am.

Hmmm, nothing about banned cigarettes, rationed alcohol, or wearing/not wearing short-sleeved white undershirts.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Day 2 of Lockdown Level 3. Except for masks covering many but all faces in public, and the occasional store clerk holding an infra-red thermometer to customers’ foreheads, life here appears back to normal. Heavy traffic, crowded taxis, crowded shopping malls, crowded stores, crowded pavements.

***

The live-in domestic worker who took ill yesterday suffered, not a stroke, but a form of lockjaw!
She reports that a fellow patient in the communal ward where she spent the night suffered similar symptoms … and he succumbed. Dead.
I’m trying to get further details on the malady.
No one knows nothin’.
Without Internet, I can’t even consult the Internet’s diagnose-from-a- distance “health experts.”

***

Further symptoms of Lockdown Syndrome.
Sunday’s post admitted my growing obsession with the graphs displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.
Today, I admit my daily Weed Walk resembles the anxious lope of a Bored Zoo Exhibit. The swaying elephant… poop-tossing baboon… cage-circling wolf… breast-feather-plucking cuckoo….
Come 3 o’clock, I don walking shoes and pluck weeds while I prowl: over mown and unmown lawns, up the stairs and turn right or down the stairs and turn left (last minute changes of direction add variety), around and around, up and down, down and up, over and under, under and over – over and over and over.
Vehicles passing on the dirt road poof clouds of dust that settles onto my hair and shoulders.
Hadidah ibis roosting on the electric pylon observe and chuckle raucously.
The dogs that once alleviated their boredom by following me no longer bother.
On the plus side, Weed Walking has eliminated garden weeds.
At 3:30, I dust off the dust … and visit my mother for a cup of tea and a dose of Judge Judy.

Click to enlarge.

End of day, I review the graph displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.
Love the pattern!

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“Change in political and economic power”

Protestors demonstrate in 

Columbia, S.C. in response 

to the recent killing of 

George Floyd at the hands 

of law enforcement. 

Sean Rayford, © The New York Times

Click to enlarge

Fourteen thousand miles/ twenty-three thousand kilometers from the US yet I feel, and sympathize (non-violently) with the anger in the streets of my adopted country.
I’ve lived, worked, and engaged with events in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years, including the 1992 Rodney King riots, the 2010 Oscar Grant riots, the 2003 anti-war protests, and the 2011 Occupy encampments.
What protesters say now was true then: We, the People, protest injustice and mobilize for change yet our protests go nowhere - beyond police banging up protesters, shooting with rubber bullets, and arresting hundreds.
We get labeled, too.
Once upon a time, “Communist” was the worst Boogieman name to label Americans. These days, “socialist”, even “Democrat”, thanks to Trump - are in the running, but both lag behind the current worst naming label: “Antifa.”
Antifa lends itself to amorphous projections that imply all the bugaboo lables: communist, un-American, traitor, terrorist, domestic terrorist, socialist, Democrat, radical, Left, far-Left, and ultra-Left. It implies youth: dissatisfied, disengaged, disenfranchised, disempowered. And, dare I say it, it implies poor “people of color”…
In fact, Antifa is an abbreviation for something truly American: anti-fascist.
Pronounced an-tee-fah, and defined as “a political protest movement comprising autonomous groups affiliated by their militant opposition to fascism and other forms of extreme right-wing ideology.”
If Antifa is made up predominantly of young people (no proof of that) then these young people are among the most politically engaged Americans. They’re willing to risk their health and well-being to demand progressive change in our country.
South Africans know how to protest – effectively, too. Yet, for me right now, KZN seems so, so far from the current round of protests in the US that:

…shook more than three dozen [American] cities on Saturday as crowds expressed outrage over the death of George Floyd…. Demonstrators shut down freeways, set fires and battled police batons and tear gas…the pain and frustration of the moment spilling out into the streets.
In Columbia, the city where Mr. [Joe] Biden delivered his victory speech after the South Carolina primary just over three months ago, demonstrators on Saturday said they were demanding more than what it seemed like an election in November would deliver. Not only justice for the death of George Floyd, but change in political and economic power that would prevent the death of another black person in police custody, another brutal video going viral.

Ah, “change in political and economic power”….
“Change” is a tough enough ask of politicians.
Add “in political and economic power”… and you’re wandering into the realm of “ain’t gonna happen” – at least not without sustained protest.

News blues…

“Willing to kill democracy”?

…we can focus this simply on Trump or we can also focus on all of those folks that have enabled Trump: the Republican leadership, the corporation that may make statements in support of this work but, on the other hand, do all sorts of things to prop up, support, donate to Donald Trump. You don’t get Trump and Trumpism without a whole host of institutions and individuals that support and enable him.”

***

The Lincoln Project reports that Republican Senator Mitch McConnel responds to their ad, “Rich Mitch”  with a page from Trump’s playbook: tweeting insults.
McConnell roundly denounces the team who created the ad with name calling: inane, ridiculous, etc. But the Gentleman from Kentucky does not refute their central claim, that Mitch enriched himself at the cost of Kentucky.
To be fair, Mitch’s second wife Elaine Chao, inherited money after her mother died in 2007. That marriage would have increased Mitch’s net worth on paper. He balanced those books by elevating his wife to Transportation Secretary.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Further symptoms of Lockdown Syndrome. Yesterday, I described a growing obsession with the various patterns displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.
Today, I recognize my daily Weed Walking  around the garden resembles the anxious lope of a Bored Zoo Animal.
Limited access to Internet news and limited exposure to public behavior under Lockdown suggests South Africans view Lockdown Level 3 as an opportunity to socialize again.
Accordingly, I elected to delay until next week the gardener’s return to work, and then he’ll work only one day. Returning to/from work via public taxi one day a week poses a risk of Covid-19 infection; returning three days a week is a greater risk, one I’m unwilling to take.

***

Yesterday, one domestic worker suffered a medical episode that’s a repeat of an event eight years ago diagnosed as a stroke.
Her face swelled up and her upper lip was rigid. Swelling is not a feature of stroke, nor is moving around easily.
An ambulance transported her to a provincial public hospital.
This raises a dilemma.
South Africa’s notoriously under-funded and over-crowded public hospitals cater to, well, ill people, including people carrying, knowingly or unknowingly, coronavirus.
Today, I sought advice from a “sister” – an advanced nursing professional – on how safely to incorporate the worker back into the household.
The domestic worker returned – unexpectedly by public taxi – to quarantine.
We’ll all take necessary precautions.

***

Another round of canna removal.
The succulent garden I imagine slowly takes shape.

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Micromanaging, or barely managing?

Lockdown Level 3 begins at midnight. Confused messaging from the country’s leadership adds up to overall confusion among the people.
Forty-eight hours without Internet means 48 hours without easy access to news.
Forty-eight hours without Internet is like a month on a desert island with a can of beans but no can opener.

News blues…

Brief peeks at the news via my cell phone indicate confusion reigns about what is and is not permitted during Lockdown Level 3.
Cigarettes? Still banned. Except … cigarettes can be “transported for export” while also “prohibited to be sold, and prohibited to be bought” [sic] and “police have a right to seek the receipt of where you have bought cigarettes….”
If I were a smoker, my brain would fry ….
Work? “An essential or permitted work permit from the employer is required” - or not. No “letter from employer” exists in Level 3 regulations, and a permit is required only for movement across provinces, districts and metro boundaries, or declared hotspots.
Dress code? The confusion regarding “short-sleeved t-shirts as under-garments” reminds me of Woody Allen’s 1970s movie, “Bananas.” The storyline includes an authoritarian leader insisting citizens wear clean underwear. To prove they’re changing underwear regularly and according to law, citizens must wear underwear on the outside.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

This morning, soon after sunrise, the upstairs kitchen alarm squawked three different times.
Back in February, I installed two small battery-powered fire alarms inside my mother’s large house.
I placed one alarm above her bed. This because, despite my entreaties to the contrary, my mother burns an open candle next to her bed at night – she says its to memorialize her dead partner. Try arguing with that!
I placed the second alarm on the wall above the kitchen stove.
In the past week, soon after sunrise, the kitchen alarm has squawked five times.
Each time, still in pajamas, I slip on shoes, depart my warm room, run through the garden, up the back stairs, along the balcony, and enter the hallway that leads to the kitchen.
Each time, I’ve found no one inside the kitchen while steam rises furiously from a pot filled with dog food bubbling on the stovetop.
Does humans depart the kitchen because a watched pot never boils?

I’ve demonstrated to the staff how to moderate gas flow.
I explained the theory and mechanics of moderating gas flow.
I attempted to raise awareness of the economics of natural gas, even, in desperation, expounded on the politics of fossil fuels and described the impending disasters of climate change.
Other than increasing resentment toward me – and the alarm – there’s no sign of behavior modification.
Soon as I depart the kitchen, the gas is full throttle again.
My mother’s attitude?
Yes, natural gas is expensive, “But,” she claims, “I can’t hear the alarm.”
(Translation: if she can’t hear it, it doesn’t squawk.)
My mother’s solution after today’s three episodes? “We should turn off the alarm.” (Translation: “We” means yours truly.)
Flabbergasted, I departed the kitchen and scuffled along the balcony, down the back stairs, through the garden, and into my warm room.
Still dressed in pajamas, I returned to bed.
I developed a throbbing headache and a fever.
An effective headache capsule convinced me I hadn’t contracted Covid-19. Just to be sure, I (gratefully) self-isolated and spent the day quietly pondering 1) life in general: why opt for live-in staff? And, 2) my life in particular: what the hell am I doing in South Africa?
I could die here.

Lockdown Level 3 decrees no domestic or international flights. I cannot follow my instinct to flee back to California, back to where violent protest against violent police killing innocent Americans makes more sense than disarming an alarm because it works.
Am I a traitor if question why someone who:

• spends her day watching TV spend none of her day watching TV news.
• reads nothing, hasn’t been outside the gate for eight weeks, and pays no attention to official Covid-19 recommendations, believes she’s au courant?
• never insists on staff wearing masks “out there”
• never insists on staff sanitizing their hands after re-entering the property yet when I insist, tells me they wash their hands with “soap”?

I don’t want to suffocate on mucus – a typical Covid-19 death - due to uninterest and lack of information.

***

Symptom of Lockdown Fever: Obsessively tracking cell phone’s battery level.
I use an elderly iPhone, model 6. Before departing California, I visited an Apple store to replace the phone battery.
Apple no longer supports iPhone model 6.
I left California with the iPhone battery I have, not the iPhone battery I want.
I purchased a back-up battery charger to counter Eskom’s program of load shedding.
Background: Eskom is South Africa’s state-owned-enterprise that supplies the nation with electricity.
Load shedding is Eskom’s solution to dwindling electrical capacity: it “saves” energy by switching off the electrical grid for wide swathes of the country for anywhere from 6 to 10 hours, sometimes longer, per day.
One upside to the pandemic is Eskom refraining from load shedding for now (although electricity still fails for long minutes).
Lack of availability of energy – coal-generated electricity or electrically charged phone batteries – focuses one’s attention.
I’ve become fascinated with the bar graph displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.

(Disclaimer: directions for an iPhone 6. Directions for android or other phone may differ.)

1) Go to “Settings”
2) Scroll to and select “Battery > ”
3) Scroll to “Last 24 Hours”
4) Examine the graph.

Green bars indicate regular battery use. Yellow bars indicate Low Power Mode. Red bars indicate battery charge is dangerously low.
Note: No bars indicate iPhone switched off

If, like me, you’re “arty” and would like to create your own charge pattern, vary your use of Full and Low Power mode. Experiment with creating nice green/yellow/red display patterns.
Such is life under Lockdown Levels 5 and 4. Little indication that Level 3 will change much.
Am I losing my marbles?
I remind myself: lockdown will end.
When it does, I suspect we’ll see a flurry of post-lockdown support groups for people who, like me, showed signs of going bonkers around Day 60.
“Hello, I’m Susan. I’m addicted to checking the bar graphs displayed by my iPhone’s Last Charge Level.”

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