Week 3 - Day 19, Tuesday April 14

Question of the Day: Whither Democracy?

 No truly “fair and balanced” person can watch the president of the United States and not worry. Check out this April 14 press briefing  and this one, “Presidential authority is total” ...
Methinks the prez doth protest too much. He’s losing whatever marbles he had, he’s on the ropes (talking of ropes, Florida deems wrestling “essential business.”)
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The Trump/Moscow Mitch duo hath cometh – and hath bamboozled.
It’s a formidable opponent for generous-spirited people everywhere.

Jailbirds flying the coop?

• Paul Manafort, set for release from Rikers prison in November 2024, seeks early release citing risk from coronavirus. 
• Ditto, Bernie Madoff, 81-year-old financial fraud schemester par excellence.
• Ditto, Michael Avenatti, convicted extortionist, busily working himself out of jail for 90 days. The Trump nemesis faces two more criminal trials.
• If I was a betting woman, I’d bet Harvey Weinstein is leveraging the coronavirus pandemic, too. And Bill Cosby. Cushy mansion/house arrest, instead?
• No ruling has been issued on a similar motion from twenty-eight-year-old Reality Winner, former intelligence analyst. Given the politics, I’d bet Winner, “leaker”/ whistleblower of a top-secret report on Russian election interference, is refused. She’s sentenced to prison for more than five years…and I’d bet she serves ‘em all.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ve alluded to KZN’s astonishingly fertile soil, that I can pluck a stem and push it into the earth and, pronto, it sprouts.
Last year’s veggie garden presented both the up- and downside of fertility.
Upside: already rich soil, amended with rich compost, and potatoes, onions, and squash volunteer with gusto. Initially, starter plants - tomatoes, spinach (chard in California), strawberries, thyme, oregano, basil, and Thai basil - appear willing to flourish.
Downside:

The enthusiasm of beans, peas, and lettuce is quickly dampened by uMswenya. Cutworms.
California’s dry summers, wet winters, and clayey soil present few opportunities to understand cutworms. Sow bugs, yes: similar color and shape and, like cutworms, they roll/curl.
KZN’s wet, hot, humid summers present perfect umswenya conditions. Add beans, peas, dill, lettuce, rhubarb… and the gross, juicy pests thrive just below soil surface. They demolish emerging sprouts and stems leaving only tiny scattered flecks of green.
I engineered seedling collars out of discarded toilet roll tubes cut in half. Unfortunately, collaring constrains plants and they grow spindly.
My revenge? Popping unswenya.
This year, only volunteer squash survived cutworms. Instead, they fell victim to marauding monkeys.
Takeaways? 1) How do farmers cope? 2) Do creatures like umswenya and monkeys account for Africa’s incredibly rich, fecund soils not developing as the world’s breadbasket?

***

I’m the only South African I know who sleeps (or admits to sleeping) under a mosquito net.
Divebombing and sucking mosquitos are annoying but manageable. I dab smelly, homemade cannabis oil on the bites. (Lockdown means not worrying about wafting cannabis aroma.)
Alas, the manufacturer and dispenser who supplied me last year has moved on. I’m not sure how to replenish my supply but I’m using what remains, mostly on spider bites.
Despite consistently checking for spiders inside gum boots, shoes, waders, and outside gear, spiders express their displeasure at my presence. This year, they’ve dined on my right calf, left foot, sternum, and left wrist. The latest assault left a large red splotch with two tiny, raised bite marks on my right front hip.
If I don’t scratch, the angry red bumps disappear after eight to ten days of generous dabbing.
The odd thing? Unlike mosquitos, I’ve never actually caught a spider in the act, nor even found one on my person.
Why blame spiders? Couldn’t aliens from another planet be conducting experiments?
Well, I encounter spiders and evidence of spiders: on plants, on walls, and webs slung between plants and anywhere I walk.
When I encounter aliens, it’ll be time for me to burst out of lockdown, damn the consequences.

A positive note: finally snagged a shot of a dragonfly near the pond. (Still no sign of goldfish.)





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Week 3 - Day 18, Monday April 13

USA! USA! USA is number one!

This nationalist slogan takes on new meaning as the United States really is number one.
We're sitting on top of the world: 558,590 confirmed cases of novel coronavirus, and numbers still growing.

David Bowie* has a song for that… “This is not America” – except it is. This is America in the Age of Trump.

(Left) The cover of Rolling Stone Magazine's May issue.  “The President and the Plague” outlines the last 5 months.

Coping in a time of crisis

• Is there anybody out there? 
• People dress up to take out trash to enliven their self-isolation
• Volunteering to help those self-isolating 
• Stay sane and Let’s Dance 

Okay, Boomer*

Born on the trailing end of Boomer Gen, I grew up in rural KZN and missed much of the US 60s culture and all of its nuance. Nevertheless, last night, to change my headspace from depressing Age of Trump news, I slipped down the YouTube rabbit hole and listened to ye good ole days classic rock:

• Pink Floyd: Another Brick in the Wall 
• Jefferson Starship: White Rabbit 
• Jefferson Airplane: White Rabbit 
• Jimi Hendrix: Hey Joe 
• Joe Cocker: Help from my Friends (Woodstock)  and Whiter Shade of Pale 
• Rolling Stones: Sympathy for the Devil 
• David Bowie: Heroes 
• Janis Joplin: Ball and Chain (Monterey) 
• Bob Dylan: Knocking on Heavens Door and his big existential questions, Blowing in the wind 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Goldfish spotting: with no flick of goldfish fin or tail in six days I conclude fish are under lockdown, too. For, even the most dedicated kingfisher couldn’t pluck nine goldfish from a weed-and-lily-filled pond in six days. Could it?

Of moles and mowing

A different section of lawn but moles with similar
mathematical inclinations?

For now, I’m declaring lawn mowing “finished and klaar.”
I’ve had it with maneuvering a mower designed for genteel lawns over hardy Kikuyu Grass and between ever-increasing numbers of mole hills.

It’s tough to learn anything about moles from moles.
Humans opine that moles spend their time in four-hour shifts, divided between sleeping and searching for food (earthworms, grubs, and other small earth dwellers).
Online conspiracy theorists say nothing about whether moles use clocks, watches, or cellphones to tell the time, but they confidently assert that moles love to eat Juicy Fruit gum (and that it's best to buy Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit in bulk packages from Costco).
They also argue about whether 1) gum should be chewed or unchewed when placed in the mole tunnels, and/or 2) to use a knife and cutting board to cut up fresh (unchewed) gum into tiny squares, smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. Theoretically, moles eat the gum that “gums up” their insides, causing them to die of constipation or some other horrible digestive problem.
That sounds like American moles...and American consipiracy theorists.

Conspiracy theorist's view of moles.
(Looking for Juicy Fruit?) 

All’s I know about KZN moles in this garden is that they’re mathematically fastidious  (note the almost straight lines; perhaps they use an app on their cellphones?).
Based on the formal/biological names of most of the KZN creatures I’ve researched to-date, I’d guess this mole species is something like Common Brown Garden Mole.
At any rate, no creature, Common or not, deserves to die of gummed up insides, constipation, or digestive problems.
Moreover, I've discovered I prefer moles to lawns.



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Week 3 – Day 17, Sunday April 12

Australia’s prime minister urged stay-at-home back in March and again, yesterday, for Easter. 

Aussies appear to have overcome the national urge to buy up and hoard the country’s toilet paper supply. Perhaps they’ve sublimated fear into something constructively home-centric: baking toilet paper cakes.
What comes next? The Great Australian Toilet Paper Bakeoff?

Easter Sun-day-of-Rest-and-Reflection

Back on March 27, first day of lockdown in South Africa, blogging a post a day for three weeks looked feasible. My daily routine already included reading world news, writing, gardening, exercising, visiting my mother, walking the dogs, and spying on garden creatures. Adding a post-a-day would keep insanity away. Wouldn’t it?
Turns out, daily blogging quickly becomes debilitating.
World news depresses. Trumpeting Trump’s lack of leadership, self-centeredness, and greed depresses. (I barely can watch him on YouTube; why is he allowed to campaign at “press conference” microphones?)
Gardening: me mowing the lawns is the garden equivalent of me cutting my child’s hair: clumpy and uneven. I seek out and murder invasive cat’s claw sprouts. I fill sinkholes.  I collect and redistribute rich topsoil ejected from mole tunnels.
Exercise: I stretch, skip rope, run up and down stairs. It’s better than nothing but nothing like swimming and walking.
I watch mother sew cotton masks for the household and neighbors.
Spying reveals creatures sleep in on Easter Sunday. I haven’t spotted a goldfish in six days.

Yes, my position under lockdown is one of privilege, certainly more privileged than the majority of South Africans. Case in point: as I drafted this post, the gardener phoned. A family man with two young kids living in Mpophemeni Township, he had been scheduled to return to work this week. After we extended his stay away, I asked the status of the township. No infections that he knows of but life, he said, is “bad.” Crowded, anxious, bored, and, I’m sure, dangerous as people with incomes fall prey to people without incomes. (Last year, I asked if he grew veggies in his yard. He laughed, “Too many goats.” Goats and cattle trump people in Mpophemeni, and have priority right of way.)

***

Fewer vehicles on roads mean air is cleaner around the world. Moreover, a study reveals “pre-existing conditions that increase the risk of death for COVID-19 are the same diseases that are affected by long-term exposure to air pollution.”

Imagine if governments and people around the world mobilized for climate change with just one percent of the effort expended on fighting Covid-19 infection. Louis Armstrong sang it: “What a Wonderful World.”

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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"