May 18, 2020
Day 58
In seventeen days it will be the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Remember it while you can. Fifty years from now all records of the June Fourth Incident will have been purged, deleted, or otherwise erased from every institution, library, government archive or online cloud data storage centre. Your children’s children will be speaking to their parents about the great opportunities afforded to them if they are accepted for admission in universities across China. Permission to emigrate to Mars will be among these privileges as well as selection for retirement living on the moon. If you would like to know what it felt like to be alive as the glory that was Rome fell, keep your eyes open. Look around you. It is happening everywhere, all the time now. You can stop it in its tracks with a little determination and some sacrifice.
But that toaster is on sale now. Your call.
Whitianga was back to its old self today, save for new social distancing methods built into checkout areas and one way traffic in and out of larger stores. Everything was open again pretty much like two months ago. I checked with my new optometrist’s receptionist about whether the doctor would be wearing a mask for my examination tomorrow and we discussed common sense and courtesy and responsibility while I filled out a patient information sheet. Came up with a mnemonic to remember her name (Romeoed what Juliette) and then headed over to New World to help Valerie with the grocery shopping. From there I went to PlaceMakers and loaded up the roof rack with a sheet of form ply, some 2×3’s and 1×2’s. Got some bricks for a path to the new forest porch steps, two boxes of screws and some more silicone roof and gutter sealant. The fun never stops….
Oh, wait… It did stop for six weeks or so, didn’t it? But we did a good job of corralling those infected with the virus and the result is still reflected in today’s numbers.
Zero New cases. Zero Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is still 95.5%.
But wait, there’s more… Can you see it?
7 Zeroes on the board for the first time since we began watching these figures. Lucky number seven. Good to see, great to think about and let’s hope that soon we get to the big Zero we’ve all been waiting for.
The Sphinx in Moonlight
Live well and love. Time is gaining on you.
ironwoodwind 
Wait. Tags: fantastic sex?? Is that how you get views? Does V know about this? 🙂
Anyway…Thinking about how best to live well in our new situation. As for not buying from China, it’s unfortunately difficult here. Not sure about there. We try as best we can but as we’ve already mentioned when discussing the book about not buying anything from China for a year, it’s pretty much impossible for most of us, at least if we have “stuff” of almost any sort. In our two moves, I’ve gotten rid of lots of “stuff” but as I put away kitchen items, I realize I have a lot of appliance stuff. As with clothes and other things, I’m going to give it a year and then see what I haven’t been using and pass it on in some way, shape, or form.
Cheers and congrats on the sex! 🙂
janet
Dear Janet,
You have no idea how much I appreciate your perspicacious comment. The inclusion of the words in question is/was an experiment. I am getting virtually zero views and/or new followers other than a few random and rather obscure ones from India and points elsewhere in the neighbourhood. Why this should be the case is a puzzle that set me to wondering. I get the zero part. Diary of a Pandemic is not the most riveting reading and has no specific target other than the vague and unknown occupants of this planet somewhere in the digital future. That and my son, should he ever wonder WTF I thought every now and then and how on earth I caught Covid-19. There are also occasional messages to the living, sure to be ignored, but at least I tried. I used a few earlier tags as experiments, such as the three most powerful words in marketing, to try to see whether there was any correlation to ‘followers’ and/or ‘likes’.
As for the other… I asked at PlaceMakers how much of their ‘stuff’ was from China and my friend there thought about it for a second…. then thought some more and finally said, “About all of it, I’m afraid…” Which is why the title, Rome wasn’t burnt in a day, is appropriate. We got here over the last fifty years and we’re not going to change it without (thank you Gwyneth) conscious uncoupling. Whether humanity has the will, knowledge, drive or guts to do so is up in the air. The quote “He who has a ‘why’ to live for, can bear almost any ‘how'”, by Nietzsche comes to mind, but I fear the dumbing down and hypnotising of the proles nowadays is fairly comprehensive and nearly complete.
As my last picture makes clear, Valerie and I are going to transition during the beginning of the end. The Sphinx is meant to remind my readers fascinated with sex, that empires come and go and in the end, Time and Love is all that will endure. I’ve got the latter and a bit left of the former. Most never find what I have. So I write because I want to and don’t really think these words will do anything other than float around for a while on Oblivion’s Sea. Speaking of which, may I use this reply as a my post tonight?
Thank you for being one of the observant few out there reading. Lovely to think that you might a sign of things to come.
Love,
Doug
Feel free to use the reply as your post. 🙂 I don’t usually look at tags but for some reason, probably because it was right above the comment box, I saw that one and got a good laugh out of it. Not, I hasten to add, because I don’t think it of you (TMI) but because it was so off the wall for the post. I’ve been quite happy that you surfaced again because I enjoy your thoughts and writing. It’s a shame more people haven’t found you…and V too for that matter. She has such stories to tell. Has she ever considered a book?
Thanks Janet,
As I said, I’m not in any way discomfited by my lack of discerning readers. It all comes to dust in the end. As for Valerie, she’s written four published books plus a sixteen book series about the history of New Zealand, plus her autobiography that she’s shopping around. I’m happy to be in her presence. Going to keep experimenting with the tags because I like to collect SEO wannabe blogs.
Cheers,
Doug
Or dust in the wind.