Happy place: Trains, ‘planes, and automobiles

News blues…

More than 100 million humans confirmed infected with Covid-19. More than one quarter of those infected reside in the United States – and that’s more than half of the number of the next highest number of infected, and that’s India.
How did we get here? “Evil decisions” were made, says Steve Schmidt of The Lincoln Project. (7:44 mins)

***

Survey on South Africans’ attitudes towards Covid-19 vaccines   (3:00 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

With countries closing borders to flights from South Africa due to "the new Covid variant", and lockdown continuing, I'm thinking about when, more importantly, how I can return to California and take care of my life there, my family and friends, my houseboat, etc. That set me on a look back to a golden age of music: Enjoy!
Trains: Arlo Guthrie – City of New Orleans, and, for South Africans… Hugh Masekela Stimela  (9:50 mins)
‘planes: Arlo Guthrie – Coming into Los Angeles  (3:06 mins) 

and automobiles:  Bruce Springsteen - Pink Cadillac (3:36 mins)

 Yes, it’s from “way back” – a golden age....

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My mother was more communicative although I still cannot make out what she’s trying to say.
For the last 60 years she’s made decisions about her business and, far as I’m concerned, her severe physical decline doesn’t mean she should be excluded from offering input on current decisions. I invited her to comment on various decisions I face on her behalf: 

Impending tax refund: for the past 5 weeks, SARS has regularly emailed me that they would deposit her refund into her bank account “in ten days.” It’s close to 40 days - and 6 email notices - and not a penny has been deposited. My mother chuckled at the irony of SARS sending her first ever tax refund as she’s dying. 

Selling her house: I mentioned I may have a buyer and explained the conditions under which he’d be interested. She knows the proposed buyer and she nodded her approval. 

Doggie drugs: I asked her about the contents of a package of dog medications she’d given to her domestic worker. She appeared to recollect giving the medications, but I couldn’t understand her response. I said I’d ask the vet and that appeared to satisfy her. 

What I learned from this interaction was not to ask questions. The implicit assumption is that she can answer. She can’t. If I must ask questions, I must phase it so she can nod agreement or shake her head in disagreement.
I stroked her head and told her she’d had a good life and it was okay to let go and move on to the next steps – that I was sure her friends and all her dogs were waiting to welcome her to that place. 

Watching a loved one die is a profoundly complex experience.

All too much…

It’s not even midday and I am, as South Africans would say, “gatvol”! That means I’ve taken about as much as I can take and I need a break. I’ll post this then tune out for a while…

News blues…

California Has Its Own Coronavirus Variant, Researchers Reveal Scientists suspect the homegrown strain is likely linked to the case surge in Los Angeles County.  

Healthy planet, anyone?

A blight upon the planet?
A Trump Presidential Library? Don’t Count On It. 

Yet, a ‘Presidential Library’ for Donald Trump offers grim and funny possibilities 

Under the ‘Grift’ shop, it could list ‘presidential pardons’ for sale and sell MAGA playing cards with tweets by the outgoing President. And at the café, visitors could buy ‘Corona Beer’  
I addressed Trump's presidential library way back in March 2020 with a series of design ideas, deriving from popular neighborhoods Little Libraries. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My mother was more communicative today although I still could not make out what she was trying to say.
For the last 40 years she’s made decisions about her business and, far as I’m concerned, her severe physical decline doesn’t mean she should be excluded from decisions now. I invited her to comment on various decisions I face on her behalf: Impending tax refund: for the past 5 weeks, SARS has regularly emailed me that they would deposit her refund into her bank account “in ten days.” It’s close to 40 days - and 6 email notices - and not a penny has been deposited. My mother chuckled at the irony of SARS sending her first ever tax refund as she’s dying.
I mentioned I may have a buyer for her house and explained the conditions under which he’d be interested. She knows the proposed buyer and she nodded her approval.
I’d persuaded the Care Center matron to allow my brother to visit tomorrow. (Alas, I’ve not been able to reach him by phone to invite him.)
I asked about the contents of a package of dog medications she’d given to her domestic worker. She appeared to recollect giving the medications, but I couldn’t understand her response. I said I’d ask the vet and that appeared to satisfy her.
I stroked her head and told her she’d had a good life and it was okay to let go and move on to the next steps – that I was sure her friends and all her dogs were waiting to welcome her to that place. 

Watching a loved one die is a profoundly complex experience.

Coping

News blues…

Category 2 tropical cyclone Eloise pummeled Madagascar and Mozambique and heads into Limpopo, Mpumalanga and northern KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) .
This part of Midlands (KZN) is getting off lightly with steady rainfall, no thunder and lightning, no hail, and no wind.

***

KZN has moved into second place with its Covid-19 numbers of infected (293,050) only behind Gauteng (373,100), the most urban province in the country.
South Africans should expect a third Covid-19 wave in 3 to 4 months – and the crisis hits world headlines  (2:03 mins)
Biden responds to this news by preparing to impose a travel ban for non-U.S. citizens traveling from South Africa. (2:23 mins)
Theoretically, I could still depart SA although the UK is stopping flights from SA into that country.
Dubai is a stopover possibility. That country is a favorite destination for desperate South Africans.

***

Exactly one year after its first confirmed case of Covid-19, the US passes 25 million confirmed cases. 

***

Boogieman of the conspiracy crowd, Dr Fauci, now President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, spills on working for Trump:

Fauci frequently contradicted Trump’s baseless claims about COVID-19. In his interview with The New York Times, he recalled Trump’s repeated claims that the virus would simply “go away.”
“It isn’t like I took any pleasure in contradicting the president of the United States,” Fauci said. “I have a great deal of respect for the office. But I made a decision that I just had to. Otherwise I would be compromising my own integrity, and be giving a false message to the world. If I didn’t speak up, it would be almost tacit approval that what he was saying was OK.”
“That’s when I started to get into some trouble,” he continued. “The people around him, his inner circle, were quite upset that I would dare publicly contradict the president.”
Asked if Trump ever confronted him for contradicting him about the pandemic, Fauci said the then-president would express “disappointment.” 
“There were a couple of times where I would make a statement that was a pessimistic viewpoint about what direction we were going,” Fauci said, “and the president would call me up and say, ‘Hey, why aren’t you more positive? You’ve got to take a positive attitude. Why are you so negativistic? Be more positive.’”
“He would get on the phone and express disappointment in me that I was not being more positive,” Fauci added. He said Trump didn’t explain why he was upset that Fauci didn’t have a more upbeat attitude about the deadly pandemic.
…In his interview with the Times, Fauci said he’s received numerous death threats in the last year stemming from “right-wing craziness.”
“It was the harassment of my wife, and particularly my children, that upset me more than anything else… They knew where my kids work, where they live. The threats would come directly to my children’s phones, directly to my children’s homes. How the hell did whoever these assholes were get that information?”
In one alarming incident, Fauci said he opened a letter he had received and a “puff of powder” exploded onto his face and chest.
“That was very, very disturbing to me and my wife because it was in my office,” he said. “So I just looked at it all over me and said, ‘What do I do?’ The security detail was there, and they’re very experienced in that. They said, ‘Don’t move, stay in the room.’ And they got the hazmat people. So they came, they sprayed me down and all that.”
The powder was tested and the results showed it was “a benign nothing,” Fauci told the Times.
“But it was frightening,” he said. “My wife and my children were more disturbed than I was. I looked at it somewhat fatalistically. It had to be one of three things: A hoax. Or anthrax, which meant I’d have to go on Cipro for a month. Or if it was ricin, I was dead, so bye-bye.”

Dr Birx unloads on Trump, too…. 

***

Pineapple on pizza? MSNBC news anchor (“presenter”) Ari Velschi was born in Nairobi, Kenya, and raised in Toronto, Ontario, son of Murad Velshi, the first Canadian of Indian origin elected to the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, and Mila, who grew up in South Africa.
Perhaps it’s the southern /northern hemisphere connections or being an immigrant (like me, he lives in the US), or simply that he’s smart and eloquent, but, here, he expresses ideas with which I’m on board … . (And, I’m a “no” on pineapple on pizza.)

***

Steve Schmidt, co-founder The Lincoln Project, Republican Party Is An Organized Conspiracy  (12:30 mins)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Lots to cope with these days: Fast moving Covid, extended and unanticipated stay in SA, a typhoon, trying - so far, unsuccessfully - to maintain and sell my mother’s large property, find congenial homes for 3 mature dogs, find work for a longtime employee, a gardener ill with Covid, and a mother dying. 
Time to catch my breath and ponder….

Uncharted territory

The death of shame (2:54 mins)

News blues…

• Covid trends in South Africa  (4:57 mins)
• Hundreds of National Guard members and 38 Capitol police officers test positive for COVID after protecting Capitol from threats   

***

Right wing conspiracy theory and propaganda continues: 

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) attracted attention last week when he said in a floor speech that former President Donald Trump “bears responsibility” for the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. But since then, he has seemed to walk back his criticism.
On Thursday, he told reporters that he didn’t actually believe Trump had “provoked” the mob of his supporters.
In an interview airing Sunday on Gray Television’s “Full Court Press With Greta Van Susteren,” McCarthy insisted he wasn’t changing his tune. “No, I have not changed in that,” he said.
He stood by his assertion that Trump does bear some responsibility for what happened. But, he added, so does every other person around the country. “I also think everybody across this country has some responsibility,” he said.
McCarthy then started pointing to Democrats who opposed Trump, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), people who are rude on social media and law enforcement authorities who didn’t prepare for the attack as some of the people who were somehow responsible.

With this kind of claptrap emanating from Congress, what, you many wonder, is the long-term prognosis for the American Experiment in Democracy?
Not good.

On the other hand, we see new ways of thinking among American youth. We the People need to listen to youthful voices speaking for a more equitable future for all. 

***

An inevitable outcome of America’s gun-crazy culture? A Republican member of tries to carry a gun onto the House floor:  (4:58 mins)

***

Steve Schmidt, co-founder The Lincoln Project, Congressman “Rand Paul has “soiled his oath”  (5:30 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

Clothes washing linked to ‘pervasive’ plastic pollution in the Arctic 

© Red crabs on Christmas Island climb
a bridge designed for their protection. 
Photograph: Chris Bray Photography/Swell Lodge

How creating wildlife crossings can help reindeer, bears – and even crabs 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

My new posting schedule is awkward but necessary as I segue into my new life and new home with my new wireless connection – and visiting my mother each day.
She’s dying.
It is … well, expected, but outlandish…
How can my mother die?
Preposterous. But true.

My mother’s dominance over my “family of origin” ensured the trickle down of her predominant ideology: “everything-is-fine”; don’t make waves – unless you’re angry, then make tsunamis; resistance to an action or idea means “you’re just jealous”; females, lesser beings than males, are inherently untrustworthy; positive reinforcement is unnecessary, indeed, “spoils” a child….
This meant touching, hugging, and expressing affection has not been part of my relationship with my mother although she and my brother always meet and depart with a kiss.
Given this history, I was apprehensive about visiting her in the Care Center each day.
Thinking she’d like Kipling’s classic, The Jungle Book I downloaded it onto my cell phone to read to her.
She’d nodded agreement about this plan, and I began. Five minutes later, she mumbled question about why I was reading about a wolf family: did I think she was a child?
I put the story aside.
I scanned through her CDs and found Nat King Cole. It wouldn’t play. I found Bing Crosby. That wouldn’t play either. Dean Martin’s 40 favorite hits played, and she indicated she enjoyed hearing it.
Huh. Maybe she and I could find common ground in simple enjoyments.
I showed her pictures of her grand- and great-grandchildren, told her my brother was “fine,” reported on the dogs and their wellbeing… Teatime rolled around and I urged sips of liquid through a syringe; antipathy to drinking water leads to her dehydration, but she can’t sit upright to drink from a cup. Her musculature is kaput.
My first try led her to choke and I had to shout to the staff for help.
On departing, I stroked my mother’s head, patted her hands and thigh, told her I’d be back tomorrow.
Arriving home, I messaged my brother and his kids: gran is in bad shape, please, please send photos and anecdotes I can share with her.
Today, I’ll lie next to her on her bed and share what they sent.
I’m in uncharted territory.
It’s heartbreaking.

***

The gardener called me late yesterday to report he’d not be at work on Monday as he’s “very sick. I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said.
He works for a neighboring friend on a Wednesday and she reported he wasn’t well that day.
He’s a family man with a wife and two young children and an all-round good guy. Send him your best vibes, prayers, and wishes….

Payback

News blues…

Don’t worry, be happy?

Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize said on Friday night that there was “promising evidence” that the Covid-19 second wave was on the decline. 
Mkhize said on Friday that 11,761 new cases were confirmed in the past 24 hours — but this was at a positivity rate of 19%, significantly lower than the positivity rate from the height of the second wave of infections over the past month.

For skeptical South Africans sick of the corruption and lies at the heart of the troubles in this country, I suggest a more apt phrase: “Show me the money!”

***

In the US, the incoming administration usually begins to enact its “agenda” within the first 100 days, aka “the honeymoon period.” After that, the gloves come off and opposition begins in earnest. 

Joe Biden’s “honeymoon” period lasted less than 12 hours. So much for “unity”.
Corruption and lies show up in the US system, too. Republican efforts to coldcock the honeymoon period include:

• Thanks to Trumpian lack of goodwill, indeed, malice, Biden’s coronavirus team “don’t’ know what they don’t’ know”  about Trump’s Covid plan.
• Just two weeks after the Capitol riot inspired by their own voter fraud lies Republicans are mad Joe Biden isn’t uniting the nation around the GOP agenda. “The new president’s policies are dividing the nation.” 
• Then there’s Republican “kiss my ass” response to the Federal mask mandate 
• And the “goofy”: delay in power sharing 
• Donald Trump and his wrecking crew created the 1776 Commission  to promote “patriotic education” and counter the New York Times’ controversial “1619 Project”. The former was, according to historians, “a hack job” reflecting a “clumsy partisan intent” Now, it is itself history – gone, disappeared, vamoosed. Thanks, Joe Biden.
• Trump’s legacy includes a Republican Party prepared to punish formerly respected Republicans for stepping out of line.

***

A rose by any other name?
Is the phrase “domestic violent extremism” the new term evolving to avoid the politics of “domestic terrorism” yet capitalize on cultural disdain for “domestic violence”? 

***

The Lincoln Project: You had it all, Josh  (0:55 mins)

Healthy planet, anyone?

A million young people urge governments to prioritize climate crisis. …
Coalition quietly adds fossil fuel industry leaders to emissions reduction panel 
Shark tourism and conservation off the coast of South Africa – a photo essay 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Yesterday, permitted into the Care Center for the first time since my mother’s fall and subsequent surgery, I was shocked at what I found.
Instead of my proud 87-year-old mother, an ancient, drooling gnome-like figure squirmed in a Lazi-boy armchair. Her head lolled on her chest as I tried to squirt tea into her mouth using a syringe. Nor could I understand the few mumbled words she uttered.
When I met her one open eye, however, I saw my mother inside that physical wreck. She appeared trapped in a useless body, unable to escape.
I’m not easily shocked, but….
I went to the matron for answers. It was, after all, the matron – not my mother’s doctor – who alerted me to something “off” about my mother’s condition. We talked. I sought names of doctors I could ask for second opinions, and then I set to work.
It’s not easy to find busy doctors who will agree to same-day appointments. One well-respected doctor had no open appointments until March 24. I emailed her “… MY MOTHER WILL BE DEAD BY MARCH 24….” Perhaps that phrase stimulated her admin to return my call? We agreed that doctor would work with the doctor I solicited for a second opinion to review my mother’s prescription drugs of the last several months. It’s my (non-medical) opinion that her regular doctor’s back-and-forth decisions on prescription precipitated her decline.
I met the new doctor before he examined my mother and spoke to him afterwards. He concurred that she’s in a deep depression. He plans to liaise with other doctors and come up with a regime that will suit my mother’s condition.
Meanwhile, I have permission to enter the Covid-conscious, locked down Care Center every day to visit my mother.
Thinking about how best to use that time: read to her (something easy and fun? Jungle book?). Sing to her? Tell her stories of earlier, happier days? I’ll carry photos there too.
If my mother doesn’t revive her interest in living, she will quickly die.
A lifetime in the School of Hard Knocks has toughened me up, but the next weeks will test everything I think I know about who I think I am.