Week 3 - Day 16, Saturday April 11

Easter notice outside a church: Jesus rode an ass into Jerusalem. You keep yours at home …

Why stay home? This morning’s numbers from Johns Hopkins might convince:*
Worldwide: 1,698,416 confirmed cases; 102,764 deaths
US has the highest number of infections: 501,419; 18,586 deaths
SA: 2,003 confirmed cases; 24 deaths
(*Compare this afternoon's numbers, below.)

History and the lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic:

Tell the damn truth: “The government lied. They lied about everything”: A historian on what went wrong in 1918.
The US president is incapable of telling the truth. He’s failing, and Americans are paying.

What’s going on out there?

The good news

• Kerala response: How an Indian state successfully fought and contained the deadly coronavirus 
• Thai newborns getting face masks

The not good news…

• South Africa: SANDF and police’s violent Easter gift to Masiphumelele
• Pakistan: Pakistan doctors beaten by police as they despair of 'untreatable' pandemic

Let’s hear it for women

• Kansas Governor Sues GOP Leaders For Subverting Order Limiting Church Meetings
• She came to the rescue during the Great Depression. Her work is still aiding jobless Americans
• On March 27, Trump attributed his own broken promises about ventilator production to General Motors, now headed by a woman unworthy of even a last name: “Always a mess with Mary B…
• And then there's "That woman in Michigan…” 
• “Fifty Democratic congresswomen have signed a scathing open letter that calls out President Donald Trump over his “continuing derogation of women” in his rhetoric and policies.” 

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Shocking observation from a reluctant mower of lawns: grass keeps growing!
I push through the fourth or fifth segment of this garden’s fast-growing, thick, Kikuyu lawn and realize the first segment is still growing… In other words, there’s no end to this!

President Ramaphosa’s lockdown extension, now thorough the end of April, means I must redouble my efforts to maintain sanity.
Carrying an old-style camera around the garden helps. And patience. After waiting for what felt like an hour for this crab to perform for a video clip, I gave up and shot stills.
Note to wildlife photographers: I salute your patience and dedication.

Research shows this damselfly is Africallagma sapphirinum, the sapphire bluet, a species in the family Coenagrionidae. Endemic to South Africa, its natural habitat is ponds and lakes with floating aquatic plants. Guess where I saw it? Yes, posed on a floating aquatic plant.

click to enlarge.

I'm impatient for the day this garden reveals some long-mourned endangered species. So far, while extraordinary anyway, most of the critters I've stumbled upon have been of the "Common" variety.

(Visit Photo Album for more photos ...)
***
Six hours after I presented the numbers above, they have increased:
Worldwide: 1,701,718 confirmed cases; 102,867 deaths
US has the highest number of infections: 501,615
SA: 2,003 confirmed cases; 24 deaths (i.e., no updates)


Read Pandemic Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

Week 3 – Day 15, Friday April 10

Like fellow South Africans, I expected this daily grind of lockdown would end next week. Alas, last night President Ramaphosa extended it to end of April.
From the macrocosm point of view - health and welfare – of course Ramaphosa is right. The threat and the potential effects of a rampaging viral infection in this country are horrendous. The potential of infection in townships and, worse, in informal settlements beggars belief.  Take a look at just one informal settlement and multiply that by hundreds and you get the picture.

Here in the microcosm? Small scale crazy making. I’ve got it good. This household consists of my fragile mother, two live-in domestic workers, and seven dogs. Marauding monkeys drop by now and again. Hungry kingfishers occasionally snack on easy-to-see-easy-to-skewer goldfish.
Nevertheless, crazy-making territory lurks between what was - walking and swimming several days a week – to what is: in-place stretching, running up and down 10 steps, skipping rope, and mowing the never-ending lawn. Crazy-making lurks in the little things, too: the one-eyed, peeing everywhere, deaf mutt (aptly named Scruffy) who barks every seven to nine seconds throughout the day; the need not to snap at housemates; truncated phone conversations with intelligent friends and family in faraway, chaotic United States.
On the plus side, spending time in the garden is a gift. (More on that below.)

***

'Post Tortoise'

Courtesy Daily Kos

Back in 2005, a doctor stuck up a conversation with a 75-year-old Texas farmer. Eventually the topic turned to Trump and his role as GOP Nominee for President.
The farmer said, “Well, as I see it, Donald Trump is like a 'Post Tortoise'.”
Unfamiliar with the term, the doctor asked what was a 'post tortoise'.
The farmer said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that's a post tortoise."
Seeing the puzzled look on the doctor's face, the farmer explained. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, he's elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumb ass put him up there to begin with."

Such is the chaos in the United States these days that American citizens decline US Embassy repatriation offers. One young woman in Lebanon explained that it's “safer” in Beirut.
I delayed repatriation for similar reasons. (See Week 2, Day 11, Monday April 6, “Fly the coop?”)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Today, I spread yesterday’s grass clipping around sections of garden. It’s the beginning of autumn/fall here – one feels the coming-of-winter “nip in the air” – so time to start prepping plants and mulching anyway.
I removed mounds of the diaphanous pond weed again today. I last thinned this weed on Week 1, Day 3, March 29.

Another 20 days of lockdown.

I’m due to depart May 19. Will I? That is one question.
Another question: what shape will I be in when I do depart?
And will I have another 14 days of quarantine/self-isolation in California?


Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

Pandemic Day 14 – Thursday April 9

Numbers as per MSNBC News, 4:03 pm April 8

click to enlarge.

On the same day in South Africa, 18 confirmed deaths and 1,845 confirmed cases*:
782, Gauteng, 3 deaths
495, Western Cape, 3 deaths
354, KwaZulu-Natal, 9 deaths
88, Free State, 3 deaths
15, North West
21, Mpumalanga
21, Limpopo
45, Eastern Cape
13, Northern Cape
11, Unallocated
* numbers from News24.com

Of 197 countries and regions, 184 have (are admitting to) confirmed cases of Covid-19 infections.

***

Usually a fan of late-night comedian-delivered news, I’ve not watched my staple comedians - Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, or Jimmy Kimmel - for weeks.
Watching these guys in casual clothes sitting in their home studies – with poor sound quality, poor delivery, scripts not as scripted as usual, and missing laugh tracks makes me ... sad.
But then there’s only so much comedy to be made while tens of thousands of people suffer and Trump hogs the spotlight to deliver “truthiness.”

The con man cometh…
and overstays his welcome

Not only is he “great” and “perfect,” America’s snake oil salesman president is now “America’s cheerleader.”
Remember back in 2015 when Trump, running for Republican presidential candidate, would flog Trump Organization products – steaks, bottled water, vodka, and Trump magazine? 

Nowadays, he’s effectively taken over the Republican Party, dismissed anyone who showed effectiveness, expertise, competency, and dedication to government service and replaced them with… himself and his coterie.


It's amazing how much lying, incompetence, and passing the buck Americans will put up with.
Michelle Cottle sounds amazed, too. On the New York Times editorial board, she writes, “Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies: Why does the nation need to be subjected to the president’s daily carnival of misinformation, preening and political venom?”

A sprinkling of the latest gems from his coterie of supporters:

• “…they were on their last legs anyway…. ”
• “True Christians do not mind dying of coronavirus…” 
• Only .33 percent (i.e., less than 1 percent) of promised 3.5 billion N95 masks distributed to states… 

Meanwhile…

Here is KZN Midlands, lockdown is getting lax. Five days ago, during my first trip outside, streets and stores were almost empty. Yesterday, out for medication and iPhone charger cable, there were many vehicles on the road and in mini mall parking lots. Today’s foray for lawn mower petrol looked as if lockdown was over.

… back at the ranch

For someone who spent twenty years in California gardening in pots on a small condo patio and now lives and gardens on a houseboat, mowing a large lawn is an eye-opener.
Each day this week, I’ve tackled another section of the large lawn here in KZN. I’m only half finished. The mower cuts out every seven to nine minutes or more frequently when it encounters thick grass. Pulling the rope to reignite the engine is developing the muscles in my right arm and my back. This will help when (if!) I return to my houseboat. I’ll be able to start up the 15 hp outboard motor on my gadabout dingy in no time at all!

Read Lockdown Week 1   |   Week 2

Resist! Italians show the way

Italians sing ... from their balconies during coronavirus lockdown... and it "goes viral"

Donald John Trump Presidential Library

Take 1. The Donald John Trump Presidential Library.
A number of people commented that it had too many books for a man who proudly states he never reads. So...

Take 2. We'll probably get this right when Twitter opens an account called Donald John Trump Presidential Database of Tweets.

Wow! Way to go, Colbert...and Romney

Just when you think the end is nigh... a miracle of honesty and courage (on the part of both Colbert and Romney): GOP-Controlled Senate Finds Trump Not Guilty, But Mitt Romney Honors His Oath And Votes To Convict (skip to minute 6:00 or so).

Downtown Oakland, California

A small effort to keep pace with urban change
After moving from the inner San Francisco Bay, my home for most of my years in California, I felt like a tourist recently when visiting Oakland. I got lost in Chinatown!
Over the next few weeks I'll post a series of photos taken over several years that capture some of these changes. First up: the evolution of a mural painted in Oakland from March to May, 2017.

Stomper - click to view this mural's evolution