Obsessions, cont’d

Obsessions have their place during a pandemic. I've addressed a smattering of mine in earlier posts. Some obsessions have lessened (battery charge level graphs), some are lessening (making compost), and one is in the first stages of development.
I admit a growing obession with my personal safety.
This, because someone else’s growing obsession is to “shoot” me, “kill” me, and perpetrate great bodily harm.
More on this below, but first – a developing, harmless, obsession:

• June 25: sunrise 6:52am; sunset 5:08pm
• June 30: sunrise: 6:53am; sunset: 5:10pm
• July 1: sunrise: 6:53am; sunset: 5:11pm
• July 5: sunrise: 6:53am; sunset: 5:12 pm
• July 6: sunrise: 6:53am; sunset: 5:12 pm

Every few days we add a minute more of daylight yet sunrise time remains constant.
Why?
Broad explanation: Instead of a perfectly-circular orbit, Earth's orbit around the Sun is slightly elliptical… The combination of Earth's elliptical orbit and the tilt of its axis results in the Sun taking different paths across the sky at slightly different speeds each day. This gives us different sunrise and sunset times each day.
In the southern hemisphere,

“We may have reached our shortest day, but unfortunately it will be a few more weeks before our mornings get any brighter. In fact, sunrise will shift slightly later (by a couple of minutes) and it won’t be until well into July that the trend will shift. (See a deeper explanation with illustration.) 

News blues…

Nothing much new happening in the news. Infection rates go up. Income and employment rates go down.
Trump and other leaders appear as confused as ever – to the chagrin of health workers and scientists agog but seemingly powerless.

The Lincoln Project continues to churn out ads: Historic 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Context: My mother owned/ran a country hotel for 60 years. She was forced to sell when industry moved in. She purchased a large house 50 miles away (much higher elevation) and brought along two long-term domestic workers.
One domestic worker has a 40-year-old ne’er-do-well son who, in the past, was convicted of and served prison time for rape.
Two years ago, while I was in California, that domestic worker persuaded my mother to allow the son to move onto the property.
My mother agreed.
He’d been here six months – lounging around, drinking, not working - when I arrived from California.
One morning, he was so drunk by 11am that he had to sidle along the walls of the house to stay upright.
Next day, I told him to leave.
It took a lawyer’s letter and several days to evict him (while the domestic worker repeatedly asked my mother to reconsider).

Fast forward: Last week, as I mixed compost outside, a drunk passed along the road, shouting obscenities directed at me by name.
I figured it was the son, still smarting over his ouster. Still jobless. Still supported by his mother (he’s fathered children he does not support).

Yesterday morning, the drunk showed up outside the upper gate. For more than an hour he stood there and harangued: “you Susan, you’re in danger: I’m going to shoot you; I’m going to [perform lewd sex acts upon] you” … on and on. I recorded much of it on my cell phone.
Even my usually passive mother paid attention, albeit wishy-washy.
I called our security services provider and the police.
Both arrived (a miracle the police actually arrived).
Neither did anything beyond suggest he stop yelling.
Police said they couldn’t do anything about the incident because of “Covid”.
Security services took my name.
Both drove away, leaving the perp still shouting.

On advice of a friend, I called a different security services provider that also runs a citizens’ task force in the neighborhood. We discussed how to get a restraining order. It’s tough: Lockdown affects courts’ open hours.

Last night, dark, 5:45pm, the drunk showed up again, this time at the lower gate that’s opposite my bedroom.
Yet more, and more explicit, threatens against my life and limb. All recorded.

A woman came from the local shebeen and chased him back there (his antics call attention to, therefore endanger, her business).
(A shebeen is an illegal “bush” pub that sells cheap, potent alcoholic bevs.)
The new security service put two watchmen in the neighborhood. Apparently, my incident is one of several, most of which involve invasion of property and crop and animal theft.
The next few days will be… interesting….

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 | Week  15

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

Day of rest

Fifteen Sundays and counting....
Late summer, to autumn/fall, into winter and Lockdown continues….
According to President Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa “won't be moving back to Levels 4 or 5 of the lockdown despite the rapid increase of COVID-19 infections. [Instead, he’s] calling on South Africans to protect themselves through social distancing, washing of hands and wearing masks.”

News blues…

• Watch President Ramaphosa assess Mpumalanga’s response to Covid-19 (11:00 mins)
• South Africa on Saturday reported more than 10,000 new coronavirus infections, the highest daily jump on record for the country [so far]. … [Gauteng] health ministry showed 10,853 new confirmed COVID-19 cases, taking the cumulative tally since March when the virus first arrived in the country to 187,977.  (Gauteng will soon surpass 50,000 COVID-19 infections; death toll at 282. "By the end of the weekend, we would have passed 50,000 going towards 60,000.")
• In the Land of the Free and “exceptional” US, Trump,
  ...delivered another deeply divisive speech to mark Independence Day… comparing the US's fight against Nazis and terrorists to his efforts to defeat "the radical left" in the US and accusing social justice protesters of trying to destroy America. 

Same old Trump.
And same old cronyism comorbid with the other virus raging through the White House – denial, lying, deflection  – as Trump’s trade adviser and Whackjob Peter Navarro rants Whackadoodle-itude.

***

• The Lincoln Project’s new: Gettysburg 
• Jimmy Kimmel’s “… Donald Trump Added to Mount Rushmore”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Ah, Sunday. A day of rest.
I’ll take it!
And I'll mix more compost!

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 |  Week  15

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

Handed trash? Make compost!

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo 

demonstrates how to wear a mask.

© CBSNew York 

Click to enlarge

These days of surging pandemic, even America and Americans see the value of face masks in reducing the risk of contracting Covid-19.

News blues...

Formerly resistant mask-deniers now urge their use. (Texas; Republicans;  Ohio;  California; even Trump-sycophant Pence.)
Donald Trump?
Not so much. “Trump Trip to Mt. Rushmore, Masks & Social Distancing Not Required”
This, while the US leads the world in number of infections: closing in on 3 million.
Trump, the “stable genius,” focuses on what’s really important: lying, obfuscation, and ignorant division:

… [Trump made] an impassioned appeal to his base while in the shadow of Mount Rushmore [and] instead of striking a unifying tone, railing against what he called a "merciless campaign" by his political foes to erase history by removing monuments some say are symbols of racial oppression.
"As we meet here tonight there is a growing danger that threatens every blessing our ancestors fought so hard for," Trump warned.
"Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children." 

Many Native Americans would agree with Trump about “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values and indoctrinate our children.”
Unfortunately, Trump is ignorant of history – and irony – and fails to recognize how apt is his summary of Native American history since the first boatload of Pilgrims set foot in North America.

For many Native Americans, the 79-year-old Mount Rushmore, with four white faces carved into the granite, is a symbol of similar oppression, especially offensive because it's located in South Dakota's Black Hills, which they regard with reverence. 

Trump is a 19th century throwback longing for the good old days when the rabble knew its place and could be/was abused at whim and will.
He’s Cecil John Rhodes without the horse - or the self-made wealth. (FYI: Rhodes apparently was frightened of horses and loathed horse riding. Sickly as a youth and never robust, he was depicted on horseback because it made him look tall and manly.)
Who will have the last laugh?
Good question.
We, the People – and I mean the people around the world – must come together to stand up to Trumpism and the laissez-faire attitude of politicians (looking at you Republicans and Democrats). If we don’t, we are – and democracy is - sunk . Already struggling, We, the People could easily be back in the position of rabble abused at whim and will…
Consider the latest direction of US federal regulators who,

... quietly shredded the most significant banking reform enacted after the 2008 financial crisis last month. When they were done, they patted banks on the back for continuing to shovel cash to their shareholders.
Not a single Democratic regulatory appointee voted for the measure to strip what was left of the Volcker Rule of its meaning. Congress approved the Volcker Rule in 2010 as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform package, which was meant to curb excessive risk-taking at the nation’s largest banks by barring them from making speculative bets in securities markets for their own benefit. The rule also forbade banks from holding a financial interest in hedge funds or private equity funds that were involved in such markets.
That principle has been under assault in the decade since. In a concession to Wall Street, the original law allowed big banks to invest up to 3% of their capital in hedge funds and other speculative vehicles and turned the issue over to regulators to hash out the details. The result was nearly 300 pages of loopholes and exemptions.
Last week, regulators at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) simply shredded what was left of the statute. Under the new interpretation, bank investments in venture capital funds are wholly exempted from the rule, as are investments in funds that focus on long-term debt investments. 

A significant problem, of course, is that Trumpies, "his base", anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, “the poorly-educated”, the “Basket of Deplorables”, you, me, Antifa, people whose views we dislike, etc., must be included and have a say in our collective future.
The world has had more than 2,020 years to figure out how to come together and live generatively. We’ve failed.
Can we do it now, under pressure?
To speak metaphorically: handed trash and bulls***, can we make compost?

***

Anti-Trump ads come so thick and fast these days it is hard to keep track. Moreover, how many times can We the People be shown the dismal failure of the Trump presidency without tuning out?
Overkill is real. One can see too much of a point of view.
Having said that, here are a couple of new ads/editorials:

• Alfred Hitchcock presents Trump 
• If you’ve missed Sarah Cooper’s Trump How to, voice-overs, here’s a compilation 
• The Lincoln Project : “Betrayed” 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Concrete mixer = a blessing for titrating compost ingredients.
Who knew the satisfaction of watching – and sniffing the healthy aroma of – compost as it tumbles in a concrete mixer?
Excellent compost is, of course, made around the world without fossil-fuel-energy-consuming mixers.
I, however, have limited physical strength and I find the recycled (free) mixer liberating.
Three bags full of compost await spreading to nourish seeds.
Naturally, Murphy’s Law is in play (summarized: what can go wrong, will go wrong). I spent half an hour troubleshooting why the elderly electric mixer wasn’t powering up, and another hour repairing the elderly three-prong plug – twice! – before mixing commenced.
All appears well; another day of composting awaits.

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 |  Week 15  

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

Flagging...

On the cusp of Day 100 (ironically also Independence Day in the US) I confess: I’m flagging.
I want to take a break from posting each day and I’m afraid that if I do, the discipline of posting each day will lead to an overall breakdown in Lockdown discipline.
Then what?
Sanity mostly intact, I’ve completed Lockdown Days 1 to 99 by gardening, scooping leaves from the pond, doing household chores (grocery shopping, etc.) cooking (vegetarian), reading and writing, walking the neighborhood and talking to neighborhood dogs, and isolated but communicating with faraway friends and family….
The next 100 days will bring us into mid-October.
What will happen between now and then?
Enquiring minds wanna know…

You can help. Email me info on how you’re coping and ideas you’d like to share: raisingsandradio at gmail.com.

News blues…

Dismal news on the Covid-19 front…

• …a new form of the coronavirus has spread from Europe to the US. The new mutation makes the virus more likely to infect people but does not seem to make them any sicker than earlier variations of the virus…. researchers call the new mutation G614, and they show that it has almost completely replaced the first version to spread in Europe and the US, one called D614.
• There have been at least 182,260 cases of coronavirus in Texas, according to a New York Times database.  As of Friday morning, at least 2,562 people had died. (My son and his family live near Houston. He works in a hospital and was unknowingly exposed to a Covid-positive patient this week.)
• The United States reported 55,220 new coronavirus cases Thursday, ... the largest daily increase for any state in the United States on Thursday. 

The end of this weekend will see more than 11 million infections worldwide. The US will continue to lead with at least 3 million infections anticipated by Sunday afternoon.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Located on the border of a suburban village and “farming area,” the road outside this house changes from (pot-holed) tar to dirt. It’s dry this time of year and each vehicle that passes raises clouds of dust.
Much of that dust appears to settle on my car.

In the US, I would either wash my car at a self-serve, coin operated facility or push coins into the slot of a fully automatic car wash.
In SA, everything at a petrol/gas station is conducted by attendants: drivers wait while attendants pump petrol/gas, check oil and water, and clean windows.

After months of dust accumulating on my car, I elected, for the first time, to use a local car wash.
What I could see of the car wash facility as I waited in line appeared fully automatic.
An attendant with an official-looking receipt book showed me a menu of options - wash only; wash and dry; wash, dry, wax; interiors detailed, etc.
I selected wash and dry.
At the attendant’s signal, I moved my car into the facility.
Surprise! The entire process is manual: two workers (including the menu-wielding attendant) hand wash, hand dry, and, I assume, hand wax, all vehicles!
Manual washing makes sense in a country where employees vastly outnumber employment.
Cost for wash and dry? ZAR 85 - US$ 5.00 (That’s cheaper than a coin operated self-serve car wash in California – with drying-by-driving option.)

***

Another day to ponder the pandemic while making compost with a concrete mixer (and brewig compost tea/fertilizer).

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 | 

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

Those pesky numbers

Week 14's pesky numbers compared to Week 13's

• July 2 - worldwide: 10,729,340 confirmed infections; 517,055 deaths
  June 25 - worldwide: 9,409,000 confirmed infections; 482,190 deaths
• July 2 – US: 2,688,250 infections; 128,104 deaths
  June 25 - US: 2,381,540 infections; 121,980 deaths
• July 2 - SA: 159,333 infections; 2,749 deaths
  June 25 - SA: 111,800 confirmed infections; 2,205 deaths

And, despite all the staying at home going on around the world, atmospheric CO2 continues its upward trajectory

• 27 June 2020: 416.05 parts per million
• This time last year: 413.50 ppm
• 10 years ago: 391.44 ppm
• Pre-industrial base: 280ppm
• Safe level: 350ppm

Reading from Mauna Loa, Hawaii . (Source: NOAA-ESRL)
Scientists have warned for more than a decade that concentrations of more than 450ppm risk triggering extreme weather events of temperature rises as high as 2C, beyond which the effects of global heating are likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.

News blues…

A brief scan of new numbers:

• Gauteng’s Health MEC expects “Covid-19 cases to reach 120 000 by the end of July. "Our predictions tell us that we will be … getting closer to 250 000 to 300 000 by August, [and in] September which is expected to be the peak, we will be having more than that," Dr Bandile Masuku told News24 on Wednesday. 
• The SA government’s official coronavirus figures could be missing more than half the deaths caused by the pandemic, a new report from the Medical Research Council (MRC) reveals. 
• As a number of US states reversed course on their reopening plans amid spiking case counts, Trump told Fox Business in an interview that he still believed the virus would simply go away on its own. “I think we’re gonna be very good with the coronavirus,” he said. “I think that at some point that’s going to sort of just disappear, I hope.” 
• With 4 percent of the world’s population, the US accounts for a quarter of worldwide coronavirus deaths. On Wednesday, the US reported 49,932 new coronavirus cases, the fifth single-day case record in eight days…. North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas also hit daily records, with Texas reaching more than 8,000 new infections. 
• The US experienced 15,400 'excess deaths' from March to April 4 compared with last year, suggesting coronavirus death toll is higher than known, according to an analysis conducted for The Washington Post. During the same time period, the official death count from COVID-19 was 8,128. The discrepancy exists in data from around the world, and suggests the true number of coronavirus-related deaths is being significantly undercounted. New Orleans Health Director Jennifer Avegno believes the actual death toll may be 15 percent higher than what is officially reported.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Ah, the satisfaction that comes with recycling an elderly concrete mixer into a compost mixer….
For months, I’ve composted kitchen scraps and collected leaves, ash from veld fires, pond weed, sawdust, peat, vermiculite, even excavated soil from mole hills….
Today, those ingredients – including earthworms - went into the concrete mixer… and came out as sweet smelling, fecund, garden soil. (Earthworms came out dizzy but alive – and ready, I think, for the upcoming garden phase.)
Figuring out how to start the mixer was a challenge. Incentivized by a potential 220-volt jolt if I got it wrong, I consulted the Internet – which wasn’t much help. I spent some time searching for the on/off switch, then, finally, realized there was only a three-prong plug to push into a live socket.
Voila!
It was hard work, but the sweet smell of compost made it all worthwhile!

***

(c) Charles J Sharp, Sharp Photography
Click to enlarge.

Yesterday, I spotted a Giant Kingfisher perched on the overhead electric power cable peering into the garden pond.
It was in the same spot today.
The Giant Kingfisher is Africa’s largest kingfisher species – up to 18 inches tall – and it dives from its perch to catch crabs, fish, and frogs.
In this set of four photos by Charles J Sharp, a female Giant Kingfisher returns to perch with a tilapia from Lake Naivasha, Kenya. She smashes the fish against a post to break its spine.

Ah, can’t help thinking of my goldfish!
Haven’t seen goldfish fin nor tail for weeks. I assumed they’d dived deep for warmth.
Would the Giant Kingfisher offer any insight into goldfish whereabouts?

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |  Week 12  |  Week 13  | Week 14 | 

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

No immunity in the community

What does it mean when members of a country’s elected governing body does nothing while the leader of a major country refuses to lead during a pandemic, shuns advice, and chooses to play golf and Tweet (“The Lone Warrior”) rather than attend to deadly perils that citizens face?
One of my friends would answer: “It means a decadent ruling class…”
Another friend would say that “It means the governing body is maneuvering behind the scenes to solidify their positions….”
Another friend would say, “It means they’re all fascists….”
(I love my friends for their points of view: never a dull moment.)
I would answer: It means We, the People of the world, are in deep, deep trouble….

News blues…

Testifying at the Senate coronavirus hearing yesterday, Dr Anthony Fauci said, “We are now seeing 40,000 cases [of Covid infections] per day. I won’t be surprised if we see 100,000 per day if this does not turn around. I am very concerned.”

Trump, meanwhile, has been largely silent on the continued spike in cases, instead focusing on vandalized statues and his own ego. As more than 40,000 new cases and more than 800 new deaths were reported in the U.S., the president was busy tweeting “photos of 15 people the U.S. Park Police said it is attempting to identify ‘who are responsible for vandalizing property’ in a park in front of the White House.” 

Moreover, to celebrate July 4th this year, Trump plans to insert himself amongst George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore.

President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will travel to Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, on Friday for an early Fourth of July fireworks celebration and flyover, the first of its kind in more than a decade. The event will gather "thousands" together during a global pandemic with no social distancing, and comes amid a national conversation on monuments with racist histories.

Need I add masks and social distancing will be optional?

Another point of view regarding the wearing of masks.

Most examples of people failing to follow social distancing measures [in the UK] are not evidence of individual selfishness, said John Drury, a professor at the University of Sussex and one of the country’s leading behavioral psychologists, but rather of the hardships that many face and the failure of public officials to offer clear guidance or provide for their needs.
“Despite media campaigns to vilify some people as selfish and thoughtless ‘covidiots,’ the evidence on reasons for non‐adherence shows that much of it was practical rather than psychological,” Drury and his colleagues wrote in a recent paper in the British Journal of Social Psychology. “Many people had to cram into Tube trains to go to work because they needed money to survive and government support schemes were insufficient. People were told they could go out to exercise, but those in urban areas had limited public space. And some employers failed to provide the support for social distancing and hygiene. Those with less income and wealth also live in more crowded homes.”
Now, with Boris Johnson encouraging people to eat, drink, and be merry — and the decision to relax restrictions further on a Saturday seems designed to facilitate just that — it’s no wonder that the public seems to be adopting a looser stance toward the coronavirus.
But it remains the government’s responsibility to make sure that the lifting of lockdown restrictions doesn’t result in a second wave of infections. Many health officials have looked on with dismay as the U.K. and the U.S. press ahead with reopening plans despite the lack of robust testing and tracing systems that would allow them to identify and isolate new outbreaks quickly, before they spread throughout the community.

Talking about statues…

The statue of British colonialist 

Cecil John Rhodes was removed 

from the University of Cape Town 

as a result of a month long protest 

by students citing the statue 

"great symbolic power" which glorified 

someone "who exploited black labour [sic] 

and stole land from indigenous people".

© Mail and Guardian 

(Charlie Shoemaker/Getty Images)

Click to enlarge.

The current wave of protests sweeping the world is nothing new to South Africans.

Students orchestrated the removal of the Cecil John Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town campus back in 2015. Now, activist groups in the city are threatening to dismantle more relics of the past if the government does not act to remove them.
Lester Kiewit reports that the Black People's National Crisis Committee will intensify protests if those demands are not listened to. "These symbols inflict psychological violence on the minds of people whose ancestors were murdered by people who are being glorified by statues," said a member of the group.

Lawrence O’Donnell, host of MSNBC’s The Last Word, interview: Bill Moyers: Instead Of A 'Soul,' Donald Trump Has An 'Open Sore'
This interview is from 2017, shortly after the Charlottesville violence that resulted in one death (and about which Trump said, “great people on both sides”). Moyers’ words are still timely in 2020 as he explains that the inherent message of Confederate statues in the South “was not to honor the soldiers of the Civil War. It was to remind blacks and whites that the force of the state would still be used to subjugate them to a different form on slavery. All of those [statues] could come down without affecting history at all…. We could put them in museums where teachers could explain why they were put up in the early part of the 1900s. (Segment at about 6:30 min and continues at 10:00 min).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Another warm and sunny winter day that I began with an early walk around the neighborhood.
I passed the house with the black Great Dane that, as usual, barked and stalked me. His barking, as usual, alerted the two dogs guarding the corner house who then barked and stalked me, too.
As usual, I pass and talk to the dogs: “Hello, dogs, what good barkers you are, dogs…” As usual, they bark (“stay away from our house, stay away, we say…”)
Today, however, I met a young girl who lives in that house. She told me the dogs’ names: Zack and Chloe.
Now our relationship – dogs and mine – changes forever.
Tomorrow, I’ll pass and say, “Hello Zack. Hello Chloe. What a good barker you are, Zack. What a good barker you are, Chloe….”
I’m dying to see how they respond.

***

I collected two large bags of dry leaves from a neighbor’s avocado tree (“avocado pear tree”)… plus three planters made from recycled tires/tyres.
Back home, I raked dry leaves of the exotic camel’s foot tree, and collected a bucketful of soil from mole hills dotted around the garden as well as another bucketful of wood ash from a recent veld fire outside.
I’ll combine leaves, mole hill sand, wood ash, and other ingredients with compost and mix in a recycled concrete mixer to produce wonderfully rich soil for the veggie garden.

Tens of thousands of people around the world struggle with a deadly infection while millions more struggle to remain infection-free.
Gardening is a metaphor for regeneration.

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 | 

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures

Timing is everything?

Click to enlarge and read.

A friend (American) texted me this joke.

As I read it, I thought, “Oh, no, a conspiracy theory…”
Then I got to image of the valve stem – and laughed.
Phew, thank the gods! It’s a joke!
I Whatsapp’ed it to friends (South African).
So far, all have thought it serious!
I might have to text a disclaimer!

Dark humor. Another (American) friend enduring stay-at-home in New Mexico and commiserating with our Lockdown, texted, “Things are the same here: comfortable and voluntary house arrest. It’s like prison but without the sex.”

***

Typical 15-seat mini-bus taxi.
Click to enlarge.

There are more than 200,000 minibus taxis South Africa, with full capacity at 15 seats (although more passengers are frequently carried). More than 15-million commuters use mini-bus taxis each day.
The growing industry is worth about R50 billion a year, with 69 percent of South African households using them. (More facts about this industry.)
Even as numbers of confirmed cases surge between 5,000 and 6,000 per day in South Africa...

“Santaco - National Taxi Council in KwaZulu says government's R1-billion relief fund is not enough.
The association says it has now resolved to load taxis to full capacity and it will hike fares [as of] Monday.
Santaco’s resolution goes against government’s COVID-19 restrictions and guidelines that stipulate that minibus taxis must load at 70-percent capacity during level three of the lockdown.
Government says there is simply no money to offer anything more.

With commuters jammed into taxis again, how long before numbers of confirmed cases surge above 6,000 per day?

***

Testing, testing…

Hundreds of COVID-19 test kits have been found dumped next to the N2 highway near… East London [Eastern Cape].
The used kits were discovered by a jogger late on Tuesday last week.
The tests were on their way from surrounding hospitals to a laboratory in Port Elizabeth.
It's not clear how or why they were disposed of.
The National Health Laboratory Service has now collected the remaining tests.
The jogger told eNCA that he normally sees the tests when he watches the news. "When I saw them I knew immediately that these were the sticks they use to test people for COVID-19. I didn't touch them.
"I shoved them away with my running shoes. I could open them up using my foot, and I saw that these were COVID-19 tests."

As of today, South Africa has conducted 1,596,995 tests. How many have been read in a timely fashion?

Western Cape healthcare workers have reported waiting up to 10 days for COVID-19 test results — and sources in Gauteng say they’re not alone. Delays in results leave many fearing that patients with the new coronavirus virus, who should otherwise be self-quarantining, could unwittingly be exposing others to the virus.
“The delay is not only being experienced in the Western Cape… and indeed other provinces — ramp up testing, [the National Health Laboratory Services] are finding it challenging to keep up and process these tests, resulting in a nationwide backlog in the results.”
According to the provincial health department… it is currently testing about 1600 people daily for the virus.

Turns out, testing is the easy part.
Throwing tests away is one way to handle the lack of capacity to read them in a timely manner.
Hmmm, how long will it take America’s failing political leadership to figure out this tactic in response to their testing controversies?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Months of stay-at-home/Lockdown prey on the mind and emotions – not to mention the body.
I’m experiencing mood swings similar to those reported by my American friends.
One moment, we feel vindicated that our projections were correct: the pandemic is out of control and no one of substance is in charge, at least in the US.
The next moment, we’re plunged into depths of despair: our projections were correct, the pandemic is out of control, and no one of substance is in charge.
South Africa at least tried to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 and the surging pandemic. Ramaphosa shut things down quickly, and tried – despite monumental challenges – to respond effectively.
The United States did – continues to do – few of those responses.
Trump poo-poo’d Covid-19 as “the flu” that would disappear “like a miracle.”

Remember the emergence of HIV/AIDS  in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1980s?
One day a colleague would fail to come to work, next day, he was reported sick, and soon after, dead.
That epidemic was associated with a specific group of people and  those outside that group were relegated the role of helper or observer.
Observing allows distancing.
Covid-19 is an equal-opporrunity pandemic that disallows observation.
We humans are amid a horrific time. Few of us know how to grapple with – and hold – the horror.
Yet , grapple we must ….

Gardening is my solace.
I hear seeds calling….

Read   Week 1 |   Week 2   |  Week 3  |  Week 4 |  Week 5  | Week 6  |  Week 7  |  Week 8  |  Week 9  |  Week 10   |   Week 11  |   Week 12  |  Week 13 | Week 14 | 

See photos  Spying on Garden Creatures 

Watch  Videos of Garden Creatures