You can't make this stuff up - Part 2

(c) Mike Luckovich

Today was initially scheduled to mark the end lockdown.  We're going another two weeks, until end of April. Then what?

Global confirmed cases of Covid-19 infection beyond two million, 640,000 plus in US alone.
The US economy is in shambles, the global economy is following suit.
But fear not. The poster children for nepotism are on the case as Trump appoints Javanka to Council to Reopen America.

After several hours of giddy optimism about demonstrably good South African leadership on the pandemic (read yesterday’s post), I made the mistake of continuing to track news from around the world.
Congo’s news sobered me up.
Another Ebola outbreak in the eastern city of Beni as cases of Covid-19 erupt around the country. With more than 2,000 deaths from Ebola in the past 18 months, hand washing and social distancing is entrenched among Congolese. As they do their rounds, community health workers educate about coronavirus by word of mouth but fears mount.

Five-plus million Congolese and millions more people around the world depend on support from World Health Organization.  The same WHO that Prez Trump/US is threatening to defund to the tune of US$237 million in assessed fees, plus US$656 million in voluntary contributions. Voluntary contributions are “earmarked for programs including polio eradication, health and nutrition services, vaccine-preventable diseases, tuberculosis, HIV — and preventing and controlling outbreaks.”

WHO works around the world, including South Africa. (What WHO does.)
Makes more sense to me to trim US military budget - Fiscal Year 2019, approximately $693 billion (US$693,058,000,000 or ZAR12,952,333,401,010,91) – and concentrate on life and health instead of oppression and death. But then, I’m anti-war not pro-business and that makes all the difference.

Moreover, the great irony is Trump defunding the WHO is largly designed to deflect scrutiny of his own administration's slow response to the outbreak. That's Trump the Businessman for ya!

Other women, actual leaders with, y'know, actual qualifications and stuff, are doing a disproportionately great job at handling the pandemic. So why aren't there more of them?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Earlier this week, I mentioned an autumn chill in the air. That’s borne out by two photos of … snow dusting the Drakensburg.

Drakensberg from Rosetta (click to enlarge)

Drakensberg from Kamberg (click to enlarge)

California is warming up. Yesterday’s temperature along San Joaquin River, in Sacramento Delta, where I dock my houseboat, was 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.6 C).
Cliff swallows likely are arriving from South America to rest and nest (one couple nests above my boat’s pontoons). Hummingbirds are wondering where I am and why I’m not filling their damned feeders.
I miss it.

Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

You can’t make this stuff up

On top of all his miscommunication, false starts, repeated mistakes, false information, and butt-saving messaging, Donald J. Trump decided to delay, even further, mailing Americans coronavirus-related stimulus checks.
Why?
So checks can be printed with his name.
Twitter users ripped that action.
Then, as if punishing Americans wasn't enough, he went on to punish the whole damned planet: Trump Defunds World Health Organization In the Middle of a Global Pandemic
He attacked the WHO for its delayed response and unwillingness to confront China … without acknowledging that he’s guilty of the exact same things.

Week 2, Day 8 Friday April 3 post  suggested someone step up to Trump at a podium, switch off his mic, and escort him offstage. No one in his orbit is brave enough to do that. The US Constitution, however, provides a direct and effective measure: The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV).

Amendment XXV summarized: If the President becomes unable/unfit to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President becomes the President. This can happen for a short while, if the President is sick or disabled …or permanently.

Sticking point?
Congress determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
Right now, the House of Representatives is majority Democrat while the Senate is majority Republican. Republicans support Trump, no matter what. This means more hopeless partisan division and inaction… while humans die by the thousands.
Postscript: Concerned Americans frown with consternation at VP Pence becoming P.
I’ve frowned, too. Mr. Pence showed little ability as governor of Indiana to make decisions based on peoples’ health needs and currently shows particularly sycophantic obeisance to Trump.
I’m certain he’d dump the obeisance and jump at a chance at the presidency. He’d do better than Trump in that role – at least through the end of this disastrous administration. (That I’d ever suggest Pence step into the presidential role shows the level of Trump-induced calamity.)
As long as no one in government implements the amendment, Americans will continue to die while Trump hogs the mic.
Roman Emperor Nero, meanwhile, grins with delight: finally, history will ignore his fiddling while Rome burned. Donald J Trump has become history’s biggest bungler.

Lockdown works in South Africa

Hooray for South African leaders taking control of the pandemic.
Monday April 13’s “public engagement with experts” Prof Abdul Karim, SA Health Ministry’s Zweli Mkhize, and others laid out strategies to confront South Africa’s coronavirus challenges.
The first five to seven minutes of MP Mkhize’s introduction covered the latest numbers - tests, confirmed infections, deaths - and how numbers are generated. Except for 15-minutes of bad audio for two call-in experts, the conference (more than two hours long) was informative and a pleasure to watch. Great going South Africans!
Prof Karim’s take-aways regarding personal protection, in order of importance:
1) Wash hands
2) Social distancing
3) If you wear a mask – non-medical, cotton masks are fine for laypeople - remove it very carefully. Touching inside the mask could distribute virus and contaminate. Disinfect in hot water.

Webinars to the rescue!

Courtesy Zapiro. click to enlarge.

Days dragging by?
Daily Maverick’s Webinars make lockdown more bearable.
Link and listen to yesterday’s Climate Crisis in the time of Covid-19 webinar, with Mary Robinson and Kumi Naidoo, hosted by Rebecca Davis.

Link and listen to today's Covid-19: The Status of the Pandemic in Lockdown Week 3.
Maverick Citizen Editor Mark Heywood with health experts Professor Wolfgang Preiser and Dr Indira Govender.
Takeaways:

• high confidence that SA’s confirmed numbers of infections are accurate BUT it’s about who gets tested and when testing occurs.
• To avoid overwhelming the health systems, SA is going to have to create parallel health services specifically for Covid-19 – or risk infecting non Covid-19 cases with the virus. (It hasn’t hit the rural areas – yet!)

Trajectory of the virus in South Africa:
Prof Preiser: there will have to be measured relaxation of lockdown rules; we’re behind the curve with the worst yet to come; some habits will have to change for good.
Dr Govender: this is long term challenge with no return to “normal”… we can’t go back to overcrowding … and we need contingency plans to quickly contain Covid-19 hot spots as they crop up.

Sign up for tomorrow's webinars, Thursday 16 April at 12 pm. FutureNow: Face the Covid Reset. Daily Maverick Associate Editor Ferial Haffajee in conversation with John Sanei discusses life after the Covid-19 pandemic.  Register here  (If you register then miss the live webinar, you’ll be emailed a link to watch later.)

***

Word from the urban streets

A domestic worker required emergency dental care at a Pietermaritzburg clinic, 22kms away. She departed early, traveled in a public taxi, and passed through roadblocks by indicating her swollen jaw.
Coincidentally, her sister passed through a different roadblock early in the day and on foot. She was detained and spent hours sheltering from the rain in a police vehicle. She was released, unharmed, at 4pm, the beginning of afternoon commute.

Meanwhile back at the ranch…

Risking police roadblocks in this small rural neighborhood, I stepped outside the gate today: my first walk in 18 days. I delivered to elderly neighbors masks my mother had sewed. How to make a mask
It was déjà vu all over again. The same dogs barked in the same gardens – passing the chore of barking to the set of dogs in the next garden as I passed. The same glorious plants bloomed. Few neighbors in sight.
Last year, a friend and I walked regularly in the neighborhood. Then a pair of young thugs hijacked, assaulted, and robbed my friend's elderly husband as he walked. He recovered but we lost our nerve.


Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

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.)





Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

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.



Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

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.”

Read Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3

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