June 3, 2020
Day 74
Though the weather forecast said rain, we had a respite from the showers that have been soaking the land for the past week. Sunshine streamed in the bedroom window this morning on an angle that tells me it is nearly the beginning of winter. Only one quail and a host of chaffinches showed up for breakfast. Light wind from the west, cool but not cold. After a breakfast of fried bread I rose to do battle with the temporary kitchen’s leaky west wall. We’ve been mopping up water from the floor in the two closets that sit on either side of the china cabinet and I even drilled two large holes in the floor to see if the water would drain. No luck there as the water bypassed them both through the strength of capillary action between the floor and the base board of the left hand closet. Time to see what could be done on the outside.
Yesterday I built a walkway spanning the entire length of the wall so that I could work on the upper edge detail of the roof without having to constantly reposition a ladder wherever I needed to work. I cut ten pillars to length, drove them into the clay with a mattock, attached two long header rails and then capped it with a plywood deck and an outer edge piece to keep the ladder feet from sliding off. The gap between the verandah on the north side and the end of the walkway was bridged by a two-by-ten and the epiphytes on the house side of a huge tree were trimmed so that I could make my way easily along the walkway.
This morning I cut a small section out of the verandah rail so that I can get to the walkway without having to negotiate that obstacle. When that was done I began the painstaking and tedious work of figuring out how, where and why the wall was leaking and then fixing it. Morning turned to afternoon and I skipped lunch because the sky had clouded over and rain was threatening. The job finished with a new tarp being attached to the upper header of the temporary kitchen wall and the roof tarps weighted and draped over the entire span. As the sun slipped behind Totokoroa and the light began to fade I put the final touches on my repairs, inspected the work, picked up all my tools and stopped for the day. I hope it works.
Inside the sitting room the heater was going and the warmth made the space feel even cosier than normal. I sat in my big chair and checked todays numbers…
Zero New cases (for the twelfth straight day). Zero recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active and probable cases (plus 22 deaths) is still 99.93%. One active case remains and the entire nation is quietly waiting for that person to recover. The media must have their headlines ready and the editors are standing by. So we wait…
…And while we wait, many of America’s major cities are seeing the worst riots since Rodney King was beaten down by a gang of policemen in May of 1992. This time the trigger was the needless and tragic death of George Floyd at the hands (and knee) of another policeman and aided and abetted by the inaction of three other officers on the scene. Protesters rightly took to the streets to say this should not have happened and that something must be done to prevent it in the future. Then, inevitably, some protests became riots. The two are mutually exclusive. You can protest or you can riot. The former is understandable, the latter is a crime. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Thugs and thugettes want free big screen TV’s and cheesecakes and the protests are a great excuse. Al Sharpton showed up to say that burning black owned businesses was ‘reckless’. What about white owned businesses? Hispanic owned businesses? Korean owned? Those okay to burn, Al?
The people who are rioting and looting have revenue enhancement goals, entertainment goals, and some have political goals. It is my opinion that very few of them give a rats ass about George Floyd. They have agendas, they know the police are outnumbered and have their hands tied by the ‘optics’ of arresting anyone for anything. Some rioters even convince themselves their actions are justified. If asked, they’ll say, “We are protesting…”
This lunacy is further compounded by the organisation Black Lives Matter and a great deal of their supporters who care not a whit for the hundreds of black men, women and children killed by black offenders in Chicago last year, this year, and, seemingly, every year. Where is the outrage. Where are the protests? No riots for them? No looting?
But when a white cop kills a black man in the course, however flawed, of an arrest, it’s game on. Cue the victimhood speeches, cry for reparations, interview Colin Kaepernick, page Al and Jesse, break out the masks (and not for Covid-19) and meet up at your local Target store for free stuff. Dare to ask where is the outrage when a black man kills another black man and you will be dismissed as a racist, the throwaway line for every situation when someone doesn’t agree with the aggrieved nowadays. Yes, it is wrong for a man to be denied due process by being killed during his arrest. Yes, I support the right to peaceful protest and agree that even one such death is one too many. But if citizens aren’t motivated enough to get out and do the hard, constructive work required to change the system, I have no respect for them when they foment violence and tolerate or try to explain away the deliberate theft or destruction of property in the name of advancing their agendas. It is despicable and beneath contempt.
Why do the very people affected by this ignore the question? To continue to ignore it is a choice.
ironwoodwind 
You said just about everything I’ve thought over the past 48 hours. Take care, stay safe. And stay sane. I’m trying to cover all those bases.
Hi Sandra,
Thanks. The morons seem to be taking over the world. They’re going to wonder what happened when it all disappears out from under their noses. Going to be a lot harder to get it back, too, once it’s gone.
Do stay safe. We need to hold on for as long as we can.
Cheers,
Doug
The best short version of a response I can come up with is you can protest thing a without condoing thing b. The BLM campaign is specifically targetted at police brutality against black lives. It doesn’t mean other things aren’t a problem, but it’s OK to choose to campaign one thing.
(Analogy: You can express concern about China taking over the world by stealth without mentioning that the USA has done a whole lot more world-domination – including by force – over the last 50 years. It doesn’t necessarily mean you like what America did.)
If God dropped a massive can of lilac paint over all our skin tomorrow and did away with racism in a stroke, it would still be hugely worse to be a formerly-Black (or other minority) person than a formerly-White person because of the huge inherited deficits in wealth, school districts, etc etc. This problem goes hand in hand with racism and each feeds into the other. Governments should be working to fix both, so that nobody feels like it is safer to join a protest that might turn violent, than to go out to buy skittles or cigarettes.
Dear Jen,
I believe that BLM protests thing (a) because they are unwilling to focus the baleful eye of their righteous anger on thing (b), themselves. This leads to a bad look and even worse behaviour on their part. And what about Sharpton, et al, saying it’s ‘reckless’ to burn black owned businesses. Don’t you think he’s condoning the burning of all ‘other’ businesses? The very words chosen by that group for that group often only widens the gulf instead of closing it. Perhaps the organisers didn’t think of that when they started and now that they’re stuck with it, they won’t admit they could have said it better and they’re going to keep on hammering that square peg into the round hole no matter what. All I’m asking is to what end if all they’re doing is making things seem worse than they are and contributing to the destruction of the very fabric of society they profess to care for.
At what point ought a people stop blaming others for their challenges and start taking responsibility for raising themselves out of whatever place their parents placed them through the accident of birth? Many school districts are poor now because of the deterioration of those districts due to the very thing we’re seeing now; rampant disregard for the property of others. Governments are not the answer. Change has to come from within. I hear a lot of people calling each other racist but I believe that it has becoming a crutch for those unwilling to walk. (Not all, but many, especially those looting Target every time the opportunity
arises.)
I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t think burning down your house and then complaining you have nowhere to live is helping anything.
Stay safe and forgive me if I sound too strident. I’ve watched this same story on rewind for 50 years.
Sincerely,
Doug
Dear Doug,
Wash, rinse repeat. The only thing that seems to change is nothing. Holding on for dear life. Love to you and Valerie.
Love and more love,
Rochelle
Dear Rochelle,
So nice to see you’re swimming again. Sure must’ve been something.
Do hold on. Message received and delivered.
Love back,
Doug
Dear Doug,
It was a zen moment. Swam my mile with ease and practically went into a trance. It was glorious!!! Thank you for passing the received message on.
And back to you two, too.
Rochelle
I saw this much earlier in the day, but there was no way I could respond via my phone. I had to have a real keyboard.
First, let me say you’re a true Renaissance man. I love reading about all the things you can do (and Valerie is quite something in that area as well.)
As for as the rest, I posted about the same thing on Facebook a few days ago–where’s the outrage for the 20-50 or so black people killed by other blacks each weekend in Chicago and in other large cities? Let’s talk systemic killing and not just systemic racism. When I brought this up, I was told among other things that I was a good person but part of the problem because I couldn’t understand.
Let’s talk about abortion which, whether you think it right or wrong, kills many, many unborn black children each year, many in an institution (Planned Parenthood) started by a racist to control the black population.
” The fact is that Margaret Sanger strongly believed the Aryan race to be superior and that it must be purified, a view that finds its roots from Charles Darwin’s defense of evolution in The Origin of Species. Darwin argued that a process of “natural selection” favored the white race over all other “lesser races.” Sanger advocated for eugenics by calling for abortion and birth control among the “unfit” to produce a master race, a race consisting solely of wealthy, educated whites. Sanger said she believed blacks were “human weeds” that needed to be exterminated. She also referred to immigrants, African Americans, and poor people as “reckless breeders” and “spawning…human beings who never should have been born.”
Sanger once wrote “that the aboriginal Australian, the lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development, has so little sexual control that police authority alone prevents him from obtaining sexual satisfaction on the streets.” In an effort to sell her birth control and abortion proposals to the black community, Sanger said: “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” In 1926, Sanger was also the featured speaker at a women’s auxiliary meeting of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey.” (https://blog.frcaction.org/2020/02/margaret-sanger-and-racist-roots-planned-parenthood/)
Let’s talk about the difference between peaceful, lawful protests and stealing and destroying what belongs to others AKA burning and looting. That isn’t protesting and it only makes the divide worse.
OK, I’m getting off my (and your) hobby horse. But it infuriates me and takes away from issues that really need to be addressed. And just seeing a picture of Al Sharpton makes me annoyed. 🙂
janet
Dear Janet,
I want you and anyone else reading this to know that I consider people of all races ( I hate that word ) to be equal. i call them humans. It’s one of the reasons I think saying Black Lives Matter is a poor choice for the name of the movement. It automatically separates them from the rest of us in the family of man. And so I’m part of the problem because I don’t understand. But they’re not? Sorry, but no, it doesn’t work that way, no matter how much they aver otherwise. Saying something over and over again doesn’t make it so. It just limits the chance for meaningful interaction between humans. It’s easier to say that I don’t understand than it is to acknowledge that ‘the problem’ is larger than their slogan and that they are just as much a part of ‘it’ than all of the ‘others’ they hold up as straw men in their world view.
As for Margaret Sanger, she sounds ghastly. i don’t care who reproduces with whom or how much as long as the parents can support the offspring and raise them to think and act responsibly.
Thanks for the dialog. hope you are well and safe.
Cheers,
Doug