Realities, unchained

Welcome to Week 12...and a look at the numbers:
Worldwide: ,7,514,500 infections; 421,460 deaths
US: 2,043,500  infections; 114,000 deaths
SA: 58,568 infections; 1285 deaths

In the 1989 movie, “A Dry White Season,” the South African lawyer played by Marlon Brando says that, in [apartheid] South Africa, law and justice are from the same family but “they’ve not been on speaking terms for years.”
Not to trivialize South Africa’s past, but I’m reminded of this line as I grapple with Lockdown. Real reality and human/my reality are from the same family, but not on speaking terms for, well, at least 66 days!
Lockdown Day 66 – 28 May – was the day Lockdown reality began to penetrate my Lockdown denial. Until then, I’d stayed busy, developed minor obsessions, whatever it took. Unconsciously, I’d deluded myself that a few weeks of laying low and, poof, coronavirus would lose its lethality. I’d hop on a plane and return to my houseboat, life on the water, summer.
Maintaining psychological balance was a challenge but not impossible.
I would, you know, overcome…

Twelve days later, coronavirus reality is overcoming me.
Denial is hard to maintain.
I am, you are, we’re all amid a perfect storm of historical events – and few of us are equipped effectively to respond.

We humans are ill-equipped to address/confront real reality; we lag way behind the moment. We resort to habit, the familiar. We lose the plot when faced with a slowly unfolding catastrophe.
Ditto elected leaders. Most appear incapable of addressing the moment. Many are still in denial - their equivalent of Day 66 hasn’t arrived, or they ignored it when it did.
Ramaphosa seldom appears in public.
Others - Trump, Bolsonaro – have thrown in the towel and pretend the pandemic is over, finished and klaar, “embers and ashes.”
We, the People discover systems we took for granted, that we thought securely in place, no longer work – perhaps never did.
Historically, now is a delicate moment, the kind of moment history teaches can go either way: more fascistic or more progressive.
Which will it be?
It is up to you, to me, to our friends and family.

News blues…

Notable successes during the pandemic:
New Zealand. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the country coronavirus-free. New Zealand also saw very few COVID-related deaths.

The cornerstone of a pandemic response for every country must be to find, test, isolate, and care for every case, and to trace and quarantine every contact… That is every country's best defense against COVID-19 and it is how New Zealand succeeded in overcoming COVID-19. Stopping the virus also means the country can begin its economic recovery sooner.”
Ardern said the economy would now operate at just 3.8% below normal. "We now have a head start on economic recovery because at level one we become one of the most open, if not the most open, economies in the world."  

Iceland: Vigilant tracing and strict quarantine resulted in Iceland beating the virus.

Iceland never imposed a lockdown. Only a few types of businesses—night clubs and hair salons, for example—were ever ordered closed. Hardly anyone in Reykjavík wears a mask. And yet, by mid-May … the tracing team had almost no one left to track. During the previous week, in all of Iceland, only two new coronavirus cases had been confirmed. The country hadn’t just managed to flatten the curve; it had, it seemed, virtually eliminated it. 

True, both countries are isolated islands with relatively small populations. But more importantly their leaders responded fast and with honesty about the way forward.
Is it significant that both countries are led by women with children?
Prime minister of Iceland: Katrín Jakobsdóttir;
PM of New Zealand: Jacinda Ardern.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Overnight temperature dropped toward freezing early this morning. This overnight trend continues through the next several days.
The early freeze of late May (Day 66?) damaged succulents leaves and flower buds. With time on my hands, last night I covered beds of succulents with sheets of plastic.
After struggling to pull on my stiff-with-cold gum boots early this morning, I removed the plastic. Succulents appear frost-burn-free. (None thanked me for my service – perhaps, like my gum boots, too cold.)
Yes, I know it is ridiculous to protect outdoor indigenous plants from frost. But I’ve the time and the inclination so why not? Tonight, I’ll cover them again. (Perhaps they’ll figure out how to express their thanks?)

***

Remember toilet paper mania (TPM), way back at the beginning of the pandemic? Stores ran out of toilet paper with the result a modern-day tulip mania (looking at you, Australia).
Naturally, entrepreneurs capitalized on TPM: Japanese company PooPaint presents toilet paper for people with time on their hands. (I’ll pass – at least for now. I recommend PooPaint conduct a no-holds-barred marketing campaign in Australia.)
Manias come and go, and capitalism will never end.

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Embers, ashes, and flames

More than 2 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections in the United States and as many as 1,000 deaths per day – and the implicit message emanating from the White House? “Move along, nothing to see here.”
I was not unhappy to no longer see and hear The Donald spouting gobbledygook at press briefings. But to halt coronavirus task force briefings? To end the coronavirus task force?
It’s madness.

News blues…

Ramaphosa has largely disappeared from view. South Africans are left to their own devices as:

…squabbling erupts over the constitutionality of the National Coronavirus Command Council (NCCC)…[that] it appears to usurp the powers of structures set up under the Disaster Management Act in determining government’s response to national disasters…[and that it operates] without parliamentary oversight.
…Ramaphosa said that the NCCC was not established in terms of the Disaster Management Act but instead forms part of Cabinet in an advisory capacity.
“The National Coronavirus Command Council – originally known as the NCC – was established as a committee of Cabinet by the Cabinet in its meeting of 15 March 2020.” He further expanded on the role of the NCCC in decision-making and how it helps formulate lockdown regulations.
“The NCCC coordinates government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The NCCC makes recommendations to Cabinet on measures required in terms of the national state of disaster. Cabinet makes the final decisions.”
In a separate response Ramaphosa added that all cabinet members currently sit on the NCCC – although this was not originally the case when the lockdown first started.

A dose of confusion, anyone?

In the US, top officials like infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci have also largely disappeared from national television.

…Fauci [and other experts made] just four cable TV appearances in May after being a near fixture on Sunday shows across March and April — and are frequently restricted from testifying before Congress. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is preparing to resume his campaign rallies after a three-month hiatus, an attempted signal to voters that normalcy is returning ahead of November’s election, and that he’s all but put the pandemic behind him.
“We’ve made every decision correctly,” Trump claimed in remarks in the Rose Garden Friday morning. “We may have some embers or some ashes or we may have some flames coming, but we’ll put them out. We’ll stomp them out.”

We’ll see….
Confusion keeps apace with rising cases of infection and leaders, north and south, appear incapable of leading.

***

I wish it were not inevitable but…

“Covid waste” – dozens of gloves, masks and bottles of hand sanitiser [noted] beneath the waves of the Mediterranean, mixed in with the usual litter of disposable cups and aluminium cans.

The quantities of masks and gloves found were far from enormous…[but]… the discovery hinted at a new kind of pollution, one set to become ubiquitous after millions around the world turned to single-use plastics to combat the coronavirus. “It’s the promise of pollution to come if nothing is done…” 

As much as 13 million tonnes of plastic goes into oceans each year…. The Mediterranean sees 570,000 tonnes of plastic flow into it annually – an amount … equal to dumping 33,800 plastic bottles every minute into the sea.

These figures risk growing substantially as countries around the world confront the coronavirus pandemic. Masks often contain plastics such as polypropylene …“With a lifespan of 450 years, these masks are an ecological timebomb given their lasting environmental consequences for our planet.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

The plumber called in to replace a bathroom fixture mentioned he had a plumbing job in Durban.
“Durban! How lovely,” I breathed. “Sounds so … exotic! Like a visit to the moon!”
“Lockdown has that effect on people,” he said, “but for those of us working, it’s a hassle. Police roadblocks shut down the N3 [national highway] and it takes forever to pass through. The cops climb into my bakkie [work truck] and paw through my toolboxes.”
“Why do they do that?” I asked.
“Looking for [bootleg] alcohol and cigarettes.”

The cigarette ban makes no sense. Illegal trade in cigarettes flourishes within South Africa and without. The Limpopo /Zimbabwe border is riddled with illegal cigarette trade.  (2:12 mins)
I’m not a smoker but under the circumstances – hungry, financially strapped South Africans and Zimbabweans – of course do what they need to do to survive.
The biggest loser? South African Revenue Services – SARS – loses a vast generator of tax with the ban and makes not a penny of illegal cigarette sales.
With Lockdown/stay-at-home fraying around the edges all over the world, continuing the ban on cigarettes makes no sense.

***

I’m researching recipes for a workable cement-type material to sculpt. Even as I conduct research, my hands long for the feel of clay. I’ve worked with concrete in the past – not for sculpture but for repairing and patching. In comparison to clay, it lacks that … je ne sais quoi….

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Wild ride

The pandemic has reinforced humans’ need to neutralize the horror of the unknown by predicting the future.
Predictability makes the world go round. We save money for a “rainy day,” plan events, have babies – because we believe in tomorrow.
The unpredictable frightens.
But popular yammering on and on about coronavirus, what it will do, how it will do it – or not – is detrimental to mental health.
Not needing to know, not managing anxiety by making predictions, presents an opportunity to develop a mentally healthy relationship with not knowing. The challenge is training oneself to “hold”, mentally and emotionally, the unpredictable without denying its power.
Think of it as a form of meditation: clearing the “monkey mind” and simply… being, holding the moment’s challenges rather than having to “do something.”
Having said that, let’s hear what the “experts” predict.

News blues…

Experts warn that it is only a matter of time before the rest of South Africa reaches the surge in Covid-19 coronavirus cases currently being experienced in the Western Cape.
Epidemiologists, as well as experts in infectious diseases and vaccinology, spoke to City Press this week . All agreed that a change in social behaviour was the only way to halt the increasing speed at which the virus was spreading.
Just this week, South Africa recorded the highest increase in new cases, with a jump of 3,267 new infections identified from the previous day. Friday also saw a large increase of 2,642 new cases from the previous day.
Numbers of confirmed cases went up another 2,112 overnight, with today’s total close to 53,000.

***

We don’t really know when the novel coronavirus first began infecting people. But … it is fair to say that Sars-Cov-2 has been with us now for a full six months.

What we know
At least 100 scientific teams around the world are racing to develop a vaccine.
That’s about it for the good news.
The virus has shown no sign of going away: We will be in this pandemic era for the long haul, likely a year or more. The masks, the social distancing, the fretful hand-washing, the aching withdrawal from friends and family — those steps are still the best hope of staying well, and will be for some time to come.
“This virus just may become another endemic virus in our communities, and this virus may never go away,” Dr. Mike Ryan, the executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, warned last month. Some scientists think that the longer we live with the virus, the milder its effects will become, but that remains to be seen.
Predictions that millions of doses of a vaccine may be available by the end of this year may be too rosy. No vaccine has ever been created that fast.
The disease would be less frightening if there were a treatment that could cure it or, at least, prevent severe illness. But there is not.
Remdesivir, the eagerly awaited antiviral drug? “Modest” benefit is the highest mark experts give it.
Which brings us back to masks and social distancing, which have come to feel quite antisocial. If only we could go back to life the way it used to be.
We cannot. Not yet. There are just enough wild cards with this disease — perfectly healthy adults and children who inexplicably become very, very sick — that no one can afford to be cavalier about catching it. About 35 percent of infected people have no symptoms at all, so if they are out and about, they could unknowingly infect other people.
Enormous questions loom. Can workplaces be made safe? What about trains, subways, airplanes, school buses? How many people can work from home? When would it be safe to reopen schools? How do you get a 6-year-old with the attention span of a squirrel to socially distance?
The bottom line: Wear a mask, keep your distance. When the time comes in the fall, get a flu shot, to protect yourself from one respiratory disease you can avoid and to help keep emergency rooms and urgent care from being overwhelmed. Hope for a treatment, a cure, a vaccine. Be patient. We have to pace ourselves. If there’s such a thing as a disease marathon, this is it. 

***

Tasteless and tone-deaf: What is it with white guys wearing black face?
For readers not familiar with the term, blackface describes a form of theatrical make-up used predominantly by non-black performers to represent a caricature of a black person.
I was tempted to write, above, “old, white guys” assuming such antics happened way back when, in the dim days of the colleges they attended as teenagers.
Alas, the young and apparently hip do it, too. Canada’s Liberal Justin Tradeau, for example, admits “he can't recall how many times he wore blackface makeup.”

Click to enlarge

Perhaps Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. wore blackface as a college student. If so, he has not learned a thing since then.
Indeed, just the opposite.
Running one of the largest Evangelical Christian colleges in the world, junior Falwell recently went steps beyond tasteless.

Falwell, an enthusiastic supporter of President Donald Trump who opposes wearing masks, posted an image [in May] of a facial covering he said he would wear. It featured a picture of a person in blackface and another in a KKK hood.
Along with apologizing on Monday, Falwell deleted the May tweet. However, it was preserved in screenshots.
Nearly three dozen Black pastors, ministry leaders and former athletes ― including several former NFL players ― who graduated from Liberty sent Falwell a petition that was co-signed by thousands more on Change.org.
It read in part:
The KKK robe and hood and blackface face mask tweet may seem funny to you, but this tweet is the action of a political commentator or activist and is not fitting nor acceptable for the leader of one of the largest Evangelical Christian schools in the world. A review of your social media and statements during your presidency would lead many to believe that you care much more about politics than Jesus Christ, Evangelism, and the discipleship of students.

Hear, hear!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Another repat flight announced, another repat flight not taken.

Health Alert: Announcing June 14 Repatriation Flight on South African Airways – U.S. Embassy Pretoria, South Africa (June 8, 2020)
Location: South Africa
Event:  The South African Ministry of Health has confirmed 48,285 cases of COVID-19 within its borders.

[Editorial: adding increasing numbers of cases feels like a warning: “now is your moment to do-like-a rat and abandon ship”]

Announcing June 14 South African Airways Flight
We have been notified of a special commercial repatriation flight to the United States operated by South African Airways on Sunday, June 14.
Flight information:

• The flight will depart from Johannesburg and then Cape Town on Sunday, June 14 before proceeding to Washington Dulles International Airport.
• Passengers will be responsible for onward travel to their final destination in the United States.
• This flight is open to U.S. citizens, Lawful Permanent Residents, and visa holders who have received DHA approval to depart South Africa.
• Passengers will be responsible for finding transportation to the required assembly point, which will be communicated prior to the flight departure.
• For any questions regarding cost, baggage allowance, or other flight details, please contact SAA directly.

To confirm your participation in the June 14 South African Airways special repatriation flight, you MUST express your interest by completing this form by 11:59pm on Wednesday, June 10. Note that completing the form does not guarantee you a seat. Please complete the form even if you have filled out a previous form with the U.S. Mission to South Africa – this will confirm your interest in this specific flight only and does not track interest in future flights. SAA will sell tickets directly to passengers who have completed the above form.
… If you would like to depart South Africa, we highly recommend you avail yourself of any available opportunity, even if it is not your desired flight route.  We cannot guarantee frequency of special repatriation, nor can we guarantee that previously scheduled commercial flights will depart as planned.  We do not have further information about when regular international commercial flights will resume.

Despite the ominouos sound of that last line: "We do not have further information about when regular international commercial flights will resume" (will I get out of this country alive?), I’ve pretty much given up the notion of a repat flight to California, my family and friends, and my houseboat.
I can’t justify departing during a pandemic and leaving my 87-year-old bed-ridden mother, seven dogs – three elderly and incontinent – two live-in domestic workers, one-to-two-day /week gardener.
Crazy, I know. I should simply vamoose…
Yet….

Instead, I will take my own advice and train myself to “hold”, mentally and emotionally, the unpredictable nature of this moment without denying its power.
Gardening, Weed Walking, walking the neighborhood, writing a blog entry every day, isn’t enough.
In real life – California - I’m a ceramic sculptor. Here, I’ve neither clay nor studio.
I can either look around for a ceramic studio to join (not holding my breath on finding one) or test cement-powder-based recipes (plenty of cement-powder here) and create a sculpting medium.
Goals are good.

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Teetering…

Pandemic numbers hit another milestone: globally, more than 7 million confirmed infections and nearing half a million deaths.
The US teeters on the brink of 2 million confirmed infections and more than 110 thousand deaths.
South Africa’s numbers continue an ominous rise: now more than 50 thousand infections (increasing by more than 2,500 eahc day for the last several days) and 1,080 deaths.
Brazil ranks second in the world – behind the US - with infections and first with recording new deaths, more than any other nation. Its health ministry found the best route to keeping numbers down: hide them or fudge them.

***

Mind boggling. In 2015, then-FBI Director James Comey told the House Judiciary Committee,

"People have data about who went to a movie last weekend ... [but] I cannot tell you how many people were shot by police in the United States last month, last year, or anything about the demographics. … We can't have an informed discussion, because we don't have data… And that's a very bad place to be."

Indeed.
The data we do have points to a grotesque truth: “American police shoot, kill and imprison more people than other developed countries.”
Clearly, something must change.
My first take on the increasingly popular notion in the US of defunding police departments was, “oh, yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen.”
I’m still skeptical. Not because it’s impossible but because of pushback by folks like, well, Joe Biden. Downplaying America’s law and order mentality and defanging police would be akin to ridding American of guns: many powerful reasons to do so but American gun ideology and culture is too entrenched in gun worship.
History is a great place to begin understanding how We the People got to this terrible place with aggressive police and ‘law and order’ culture.

Isaac Bryan, the director of UCLA's Black Policy Center, points to history: Law enforcement in the South began as slave patrol, a team of vigilantes hired to recapture escaped slaves. Then, when slavery was abolished, police enforced Jim Crow laws - even [for] the most minor infractions.
And today, police disproportionately use force against black people, and black people are more likely to be arrested and sentenced.
Bryan said, "That history is engrained in our law enforcement". (Read about origins of police in US. )
Defunding the police means reallocating those funds to support people and services in marginalized communities. It "means that we are reducing the ability for law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities," said Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement…. "It's about reinvesting those dollars into black communities, communities that have been deeply divested from."
Those dollars can be put back into social services for mental health, domestic violence and homelessness, among others. Police are often the first responders to all three… Those dollars can be used to fund schools, hospitals, housing and food in those communities, too - "all of the things we know increase safety."
…
It's radical for an American city to operate without law enforcement, but the plan is already in motion in Minneapolis..[after] nine members of the Minneapolis city council announced they intend to disband the city's police force entirely.
"We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe," Council President Lisa Bender told CNN.
…the council still needs to discuss what to replace police with, but that the city would funnel money from police into "community-based strategies." She noted, too, that most 911 calls are for mental health services, health and EMT and fire services.
…"A week ago, defunding the police in any capacity would sound like 'pie in the sky,'… Now we're talking about it. Defunding police in its entirety still might sound like 'pie in the sky,' but next week might be different."

Viva la different!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Second day of walking around the neighborhood – alone. Today I forgot my mask at home. Ditto my identity document. Carrying both was mandatory during Level 4. Now? I’m not sure. That added anxiety to the pleasure of being out, winter sun warming my face as I noticed recent changes in the ‘hood.
Walking alone can be risky. Muggings are common. (A year ago, a friend’s husband – 80 years old - was mugged, robbed, and physically abused by two young men.)
Lockdown fever, however, demands I choose: risk? Or insanity?
Risk wins.

***

The gardener returned to work. Until I’ve a better sense of where things are heading vis-a-vis Covid-19 in this area, he’ll work one, perhaps two, days a week.
He mowed the outlying section of lawn and bush-cut overgrown grass along the stream. We bagged the clippings – 9 large sacks full – for our neighbor. His brother, a farmer, feeds grass clippings to his calves.
I’ve almost eradicated invasive canna plants from the inside garden.
The cleared area is like a canvas waiting for an artist to apply paint. Or, as a ceramic sculptor I'd say, like a bag of raw clay ready for wedging. (A ceramicist wedging raw clay looks a bit like a baker kneading bread dough. Kneading bread dough introduces air pockets for a lighter loaf. Wedging clay removes air pockets and creates a pliable, uniform consistency in clay.)

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |  

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures