Rising tides

Twenty million-plus confirmed Covid-19 infections around the world. And it took fewer than six months to arrive at this point.
Rising tides: surging seas, surging coronavirus, surging fear.

News blues…

Europeans view with astonishment and alarm the United States' failure to contain the spread of coronavirus.

Perhaps nowhere outside the US is America's bungled virus response viewed with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of Europe's epidemic.
But after a strict nationwide 10-week lockdown, vigilant tracing of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distancing, Italy has become a model of virus containment.
"Don't they care about their health?" a mask-clad Patrizia Antonini asked about people in the United States as she walked with friends along the banks of Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. "They need to take our precautions ... they need a real lockdown."
Much of the incredulity in Europe stems from the fact that America had the benefit of time, European experience and medical know-how to treat the virus that the continent itself didn't have when the first Covid patients started filling intensive care units.

Moreover, a major new survey  of EU citizens found that

… almost 60 percent said their view of the US had worsened since the start of the pandemic. By contrast, just 6 percent of respondents said their view of the US had improved.
European perceptions of the United States slumped in European countries that were previously regarded as being Washington's closest allies, thanks to Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. 
The crisis [has] inflicted dramatic and lasting damage on the reputations of Europe’s two biggest economic partners: the United States and China. Each superpower has seen its reputation collapse in some of the countries that were its closest allies and partners.

***

Predictably, a report finds widespread infection among U.S. children. 

As schools face the daunting challenge of reopening while the coronavirus continues to spread, at least 97,000 children around the United States tested positive in the last two weeks of July, according to a new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. It says that at least 338,000 children had tested positive through July 30, meaning more than a quarter tested positive in just those two weeks.

***

How can it be that anybody still supports Donald Trump?

According to CNN Trump’s “position is no longer deteriorating. A look at the polls shows that even as coronavirus cases and deaths rise, Trump remains within striking distancing of Biden.” What’s more, Trump recently “signed four executive actions that included deferring payroll taxes that provide funding for both Social Security and Medicare.”
This, as a pandemic rages and more than 5 million Americans are confirmed infected with Covid-19.
As “the American people desperately need relief,” noted Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.). “…the president decided to defund Social Security and Medicare.”

***

In South Africa, the vuluzelas fell silent.

Healthy futures, anyone?

Focus on Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas). Kiribati, population 119,449, consists of 33 atolls and coral islands (22 inhabited) divided among three groups: Gilbert, Phoenix, and Line Islands.
Economic activity once centered on mining rock phosphate, but deposits are exhausted. 

Click to enlarge. 

The small and beautiful island… in the Kiribati group was mined for rock phosphate from about 1906. 
Top photo: the island shortly before mining began.
Bottom photo:  taken soon after, shows vegetation and soil removed to extract the phosphate rock. 
(c) Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.

While a $500 million fund created with mining revenues continues to provide significant budget support, Kiribati now relies on foreign assistance, emigrants' remittances, fishing, coconut exports, and tourism. Kiribati is most famous for its world class fly fishing, great scuba diving, and astounding seabird wildlife. 
Kiribati’s newly re-elected president, Taneti Maamau, plans to raise the islands to counter sea-level rise. He will seek support from China and other allies to elevate the islands from the sea, partly through dredging. 
… “The strategy is still in development but clearly identifies raising our islands as a way forward in our fight against climate change. This is also clearly demonstrated in our national climate change policy.”
… To solve chronic flooding in the overcrowded capital, Tarawa, [proposes] to replace causeways – landfill between islands that supports the main road but which can cause beach erosion – with an elevated bridge road running the entire length of the atoll on the sheltered lagoon side. It is the sort of massive infrastructure project China might fund, and has the expertise to engineer. 

Hmmmm. Besides raising the temperature of ongoing geo-political disputes between China and the US regarding offshore resources, one wonders about the practicalities of Kiribati’s plan.
Can “dredging” produce enough material to raise these atolls (“ring-shaped reefs, islands, or chain of islands formed of coral”)?
And at what harm to long-suffering and imperiled coral?

Will China supplement and transport building material to Kiribati – a journey of between 10,600 to 11,000 km? Isn’t that prohibitively expensive under current economic conditions? 

One painful and politically incorrect solution might be to relocate Kiribati’s islanders to more secure areas. (For thinking people, sea level rise is a fact of life; humans must and will adjust . I’m sympathetic: my condo on San Francisco Bay is threatened by sea level rise.) 

On the other hand, Pacific islands and islanders have been used and abused for decades. Perhaps it’s payback time?

Backstory: More than 60 years ago, the United States tested radioactive weapons on Bikini and Enewetak atolls (of the Marshall Islands).
Today, these atolls remain far more radioactive than Chernobyl and Fukushima.

Sarcasm follows: Instead of the enormous expense of China hauling material to Kiribati, the US could recycle and donate material from Runit Island’s Runit Dome? 

The dome, aka “The Tomb,” the Cactus Dome, was built to contain toxic nuclear waste after the US conducted nuclear tests in 1958.
With the Marshall Islands only 2,373 kms from Kiribati, wouldn’t it be cheaper to recycle and transport the dome’s 46 cm (18 in) thick, 115 m (377 ft) diameter concrete dome and the material it encapsulates - an estimated 73,000 m3 (95,000 cu yd) of radioactive debris, including plutonium-239?
(It’s a matter of time before sea level rise drowns then breeches Runit Dome and releases deadly toxic material into the Pacific Ocean.)
Economically distressed Kiribati could use free materials to elevate the islands and cover it with another concrete dome or two. 

Voilà! Both countries benefit by promoting the reduce, reuse, recycle philosophy.
Additionally, the US could mount a concerted propaganda campaign to highlight its gifts to Kiribati, thereby enhancing its tarnished global reputation and cleansing its appalling history at Bikini and Enewetak.
Kiribati would become a model of modern ingenuity in the face of climate change. (The atolls couldn’t look worse than they did after the removal of soil and vegetation to extract rock phosphate back in 1906.)
The tourist industries of both countries would thrive!
A win/win!

Finally, people would “get so sick and tired of winning!” 

*** 

The Lincoln Project: Regret  (0:55 mins)
Really American: Biblical Idiot  (0:37 mins)
Meidas Touch: Vote Proud: Enough is Enough  (1:20 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve gone from mowing lawns, weeding, maintaining the garden pond, composting, hosting various obsessions , spying on garden creatures , videoing garden creatures , essentially, doing anything to ward off the doldrums.
Yet, behold, the doldrums.
I’m becalmed. Stagnating. Listless.
For now, I’ll choose to blame Lockdown. Winter. A visit geared to check on my elderly mother’s well-being extending… and extending…with no end in sight.
But…
What if I’m falling apart?
What if the whole world is falling apart?
What if this is the end of the world as we know it? (Sabine Hossenfelder – coronavirus version - 3:35 mins)

Women on Women’s Day

Our world is on the cusp on 20 million confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection.
The US is responsible for more than 25 percent of those cases (5.5 million confirmed). That’s more infections in the US than New Zealand has people (population: 4,886 million). Moreover, New Zealand has virtually eliminated Covid-19 with zero active cases. 
Iceland, too, has zero active cases. Iceland’s population is 364,000 so the US has “lost” the equivalent of half of Iceland’s population to Covid-19.
Reminder: New Zealand and Iceland have women as heads of government. Just sayin’….

According to new research, a record number of people are giving up their US citizenship.

Hmmm, perhaps these Americans have moved to New Zealand or Iceland.

News blues…

National Women's Day is celebrated annually in South Africa on 9 August. If that day falls on a Sunday – as it does this year – Monday is the public holiday. (Naturally, not all women will have a holiday – certainly not a paid holiday.)
According to Wikipedia, Women's Day

...commemorates the 1956 march of approximately 20,000 South African women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the country's pass laws that required South Africans defined as "black" under The Population Registration Act to carry an internal passport, the “pass.” The pass allowed the maintenance of population segregation, controlled urbanisation, and managed migrant labour during apartheid.
The first National Women's Day was celebrated on 9 August 1995. In 2006, a reenactment of the march was staged for its 50th anniversary, with many of the 1956 march veterans.

International Women’s Day is celebrated around the world on 8 March. Not to knock it, but I recall IWD as a burden when I was a young mother in the US. It meant I – and other working mothers – had to find and pay for babysitters to care for our children so we could work to earn money to support our children. 

Ironic that a day meant to recognize women was not geared in practice to recognize mothers. That is, heavy on intention, light on practicalities.

***

President Ramaphosa delivered the keynote address for national Women’s Day  under the global campaign themed “Generation Equality: Realizing women’s rights for an equal future.” (Ramaphosa’s segment begins at 53:27 mins. My opinion of his address? Heavy on intention, light on practicalities.)

***

Daily Maverick webinar, “The Inside Track: A Critical Conversation with Advocate Shamila Batohi.” 

Daily Maverick Associate Editor Ferial Haffajee in conversation with National Prosecuting Authority Advocate Shamila Batohi, the National Director of Public Prosecutions, on gender-based violence and the war on women. Batohi also talks about her experience as a woman leader within the National Prosecuting Authority.

An eye-opening fact- and statistic-based conversation about South Africa’s criminal justice system and how it affects violence against the country’s women and children.
Takeaways:

• Gender-based violence (GBV) is, essentially, a war on this country’s women.
• 82,726 cases of gender-based violence from 2017 through 2018
• Rape has increased by 1.4 percent. (Only 1 in 9 rapes is actually reported.)
• What is going on in our country when the levels of violence against women and children is so high?
• 70 to 80 percent conviction rate – but based on number of cases that come to court, not the number of reported cases (only 10 percent are reported). It is the detection rate that is under-reported.
• Everybody in the justice system needs training in the holistic system’s view rather than one or two segments of the whole.
• Huge challenges, including how to deal with forensic evidence What values are we teaching out children and young people when they can violate respect for other human beings?
• National registers in the works for violations against women and children – but perhaps not enough being done at the level of preventation.
• Prevention and better detection required.
• Value system is off in this country; custom, patriarchy, and entitlement plays big roles in attitudes towards women, too.
• Alcohol plays a huge role; Ban on alcohol due to pandemic reduced gender-based and domestic violence.
• Admits there are “serious problems” within SAPS (corruption, lack of training, responses, and attitudes to women complainants, etc., “system fails many women.” (Personal view: Backstory on GBV in this house.)
• NPA looking to understand lens through which we view these issues and developing a policy about how to deal with them.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Monkeys become bolder by the day. They’ve moved from the garden’s perimeter fence into the garden and close to the house. The “watch” dogs are too comfy in their toasty beds to rouse themselves.
My experiment to discourage monkeys with rubber snakes failed. 
Now I’m researching how to discourage them via smell and taste. I’m weighing the … ethics … of this recipe:

To keep vervet monkeys away, mix 1/3 cup flower, 2 tablespoons red chili powder and two tablespoons powdered mustard and sprinkle around the garden. If you want to spray it, add 4 cups of water and some vinegar. Even just sprinkling vegetables with pepper will deter monkeys from eating them.

The ethics involved? Monkeys do what monkeys do… moreover, they do it well: feed themselves and their young. Punishing them with chili and mustard powder feels… unethical. Isn’t it illogical to feed wild birds (mostly doves) but not feed wild monkeys? (I’m not for feeding monkeys – that’s also discouraged by wildlife experts – just pointing out well-meaning but faulty logic.)
Another recipe:

Sprinkle Jeyes Fluid inside, on the outside or around refuse bins and bags. Refuse skips covered with shade cloth and treated with Jeyes Fluid will deter vervets. 5. Use nylon bird or hail netting over and around vegetable, strawberry and other produce gardens to keep them out.

I’ll skip the Jeyes Fluid - a strong disinfectant. (Back in the day, my grandfather dipped his cows with diluted Jeyes Fluid to kill ticks.)
Netting might work. But it takes only one persistent monkey breeching the netting to destroy weeks of gardening effort.

Continental divides

The recent battering of the World Health Organization’s reputation  does not nullify its important research – echoed by many other reputable organizations and individuals. Its warnings about urbanization is particularly apt:

Urbanization is process of global scale changing the social and environmental landscape on every continent. Urbanization is a result of population migration from rural areas in addition to natural urban demographic growth. In 2007, the world’s population living in towns and cities surpassed 50% for the first time in history and this proportion is growing. Rapid, unplanned and unsustainable patterns of urban development are making developing cities focal points for many emerging environment and health hazards. As urban populations grow, the quality of global and local ecosystems, and the urban environment, will play an increasingly important role in public health with respect to issues ranging from solid waste disposal, provision of safe water and sanitation, and injury prevention, to the interface between urban poverty, environment and health. 

We, the people, have been warned. 

Will we rouse ourselves enough to force a change in direction, from unfettered consumption to sustainability?

New blues…

This Ridley Olive turtle
screen saver graces my laptop.
Click to enlarge.

The good: More than 10,000 baby Olive Ridley turtles were released into the sea off the Indonesian island of Bali - part of conservationists’ attempts to boost the population of a vulnerable species and promote environmental protection.
The turtles, just a few inches long, scurried over the black sand and pebbles as the tide splashed over them. 

The bad: Under a new “self-reliant India” plan, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, will boost the economy post-Covid-19 and reduce costly imports, [by opening] 40 new coalfields for commercial mining in some of India’s most ecologically sensitive forests. 

Among them are four huge blocks of 420,000 acres of forest in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, which sit above an estimated 5bn tonnes of coal…. [This pits] a rich and biodiverse Indian forest, indigenous people, ancient trees, elephants and sloths against the might of bulldozers, trucks and hydraulic jacks, fighting with a single purpose: the extraction of coal. 

The ugly: While more than 160,000 Americans are dead, unemployment has soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression...

federal payments to laid-off workers have expired with millions more facing possible eviction, and coronavirus cases continue to spike nationwide, Congress and the White House are mired in their ancient, all-consuming gridlock.
Two weeks of closed-door talks … failed to lead to a breakthrough on a new coronavirus relief package. [Democrats and Republicans] remained hundreds of billions of dollars apart on overall spending for the new package, and even more important, were separated by a huge ideological chasm over what role the government should play at this point in the calamity. 

***

The Lincoln Project’s Steve Schmidt on Trumps hot mic moment and strong words on Trumps Golf Club press briefing  (12:15 mins)
Meidas Touch: Vote out Racism  (1:47 mins)
Trump Rant: Axios Interview, “I want a Do Over with more charts and graphs and no Jonathan Swan!  (7:48 mins)
Don Winslow Films: Consequences For Trump  (2:19 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Granadilla, aka passion fruit, is a fruit native to southern Brazil through Paraguay and northern Argentina. It flourishes in lower altitude KwaZulu Natal; so far, I’ve had no luck growing it in the Midlands. Two weeks ago, I purchased a dozen purple fruit and waited for them to wrinkle and harden – evidence they’d ripened enough to eat. Then I made granadilla curd, a buttery, egg-yolk-rich, sweet/sour treat. 
It turned out well. I plan to bake granadilla bars – think lemon bars with seeds – although it’s a tossup if there’ll be enough curd left after the many spoonsful I snack on in the meantime.
Granadilla curd requires only the yolk of eggs. I beat the leftover egg whites and baked an impromptu veggie frittata: zucchini (“baby marrow”), onion, sweet pepper, garlic, parsley, olive oil, Swiss and Romano cheese.
Many ingredients I use in California are difficult to find in KZN: fish sauce - available sporadically. Mexican ingredients and spices (I’d kill for tortillas, a softshell taco, salsa verde, refried beans, a frozen margarita…).
On the other hand, Indian cuisine spans both countries – with the South African variety far cheaper. For example, a samosa in California costs from 5 to 7 US dollars - equivalent to 80 to 150 rand! Slightly less plump KZN samosas costs 18 to 20 rand each – that’s 1 to 1.20 dollars).
No melktert or koeksisters in California. No lacey cookies in KZN.

*** 

As a child I had a one-on-one relationship with Jacko, a pet vervet monkey. These days, my relationship with vervet monkeys is hands off and communal. The local troop comprises about three dozen monkeys I address collectively as “monkeys ... monksters … monkilizers….”
I continue to appreciate their antics when they negotiate the garden perimeter, raid the bird feeder, and balance precariously on overhead wires.
My relationship with this primate community, however, is becoming more nuanced and complex as they uproot – destroy – seedlings, most recently snap peas and pole beans.
Local gardeners familiar with monkey business advise not transplanting my veggies into the dedicated veggie garden I’ve created. Rather, they suggest transplanting seedlings among decorative garden plants.
I’m not adverse, but it means rethinking an approach I assumed already settled.
Accordingly, I scanned the winter-dry garden for segments of garden capable of disguising veggies from monkeys.
A dry palm stump offered potential for climbing peas and beans. I donned my sunhat and gardening gloves and began removing the dry vegetation around the base of the stump.
Within a minute, dozens of small black ants swarmed over and bit into my hands and arms.
This encounter with South African ants was less vicious than a past encounter with Texas fire ants.
Outside the Crawford, Texas property of then-president George Bush, as we protested his administration’s war policies in Afghanistan and Iraq, I’d unwittingly pitched my tent on a colony of fire ants.
Those ants can bite – and their bites burn for days!
That day lives on in infamy!

Dear Diary

Dear Diary: This Is My Life in Quarantine / under Lockdown
Sensing that they’re living through a historic moment, many people are journaling [and blogging] to create a keepsake of life during the pandemic. The time we’re living through will one day become history. This is always true, of course, but the coronavirus pandemic has, perhaps more than any other event in living memory, made people hyperaware that their present will be remembered in the future. And this new, strange sensation has compelled many to capture the moment for posterity. 

Thank you for being on board here. If the mood strikes, comment below and I'll share your thoughts and experiences….

New blues…

“Sh**hole country,” anyone?
Irony of ironies: America shut its southern border to South Americans while Canadians shut their southern border to Americans.
I’ll dare to say it: “What goes around, comes around.” Or, rats clinging aboard ship….

Since March, the U.S.-Canada border has been closed to all but essential traffic in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus. But Americans being Americans, they are flouting the new regulations in the pursuit of their usual summer fun.
“Canadian border patrol has effectively prevented caravans of Americans” from crossing the border. Most are arriving by sailboats and luxury yachts.
Those crossing the border have often told officials that they are heading to Alaska to circumvent the new regulations. …
One reason Americans are being spotted is that Canadian boaters are using technology to monitor them. With the requirement that all passenger boats have to be equipped with tracking devices to help prevent weather-related accidents, anyone with an internet connection can monitor border-crossings and identify vessels by type and country of origin. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

During a recent visit to Karkloof Conservancy,  I spotted wattled cranes flying over the hide (aka “blind”), but they settled in a field out of reach of my camera lens.
Karkloof Conservancy hides were built by local farmers, foresters and landowners to provide visitor safe access to the region’s biodiversity. Posters decorating the hides’ interior whet the appetite of novice crane-seekers. 

View posters: 

Poster wattled crane
Click to read.

Poster blue crane
Click to read.

Poster grey crowned crane
Click to read.

I will return to the Conservancy in anticipation of a close encounter with a crane, any crane. 

After all, recent visitors shot gorgeous video of wattled cranes at the Conservancy (0:33 mins). If they saw wattled cranes, so can I. Hope spring eternal.
Wattled cranes bring to mind the thousands of sandhill cranes that migrate to California’s Sacramento Delta each winter.  I hear them from my houseboat and a 10-minute walk reveals vast flocks grazing and nesting.
Not a hardcore “birder,” my motto is, shoot first, ask questions later. I’m frequently unsure of what birds I’ve captured on camera. Can you identify those at the bottom of the page, Spying on garden creatures?