As Long as the Red Earth Rolls

 

Jun 8,  2020

Day 79

Today I rested.

Early morning clouds hid the moon again and so the chance to duplicate May’s full moon photograph is gone. “Another time, Highlander”, growls the Kurgon somewhere in the back of my mind.

No quail this morning. Temperature is down into ‘see your breath territory’. Back to sleep for a while. Wake to beauty. Breakfast in bed. Sun streams through the bedroom window.

Valerie and I walked in the midday sun through our compound, seeing areas that need work and noting where a brush stroke here or there would add to the canvas. She inspected the neat double stacked row of foundation posts in the tiny hollow just off the drive and I showed her how I’ll be able to pull them one by one down through a gap in the trees to the worksite. A Tui sang crazily above us and we walked to the top of the drive and up the road for a while. The sun was bright and the sky a turquoise backdrop to the green ridges that frame our land. Back at the entrance to our drive I showed her where I want to build a cantilevered gate that will slide out of the forest on silent bearings when we want to keep the world at bay. We walked hand in hand down the drive cataloging the damage to the ponga done by the drought. We lost at least ten of the tall fern trees along each side, not to mention what has happened throughout the forest. I will harvest the trunks and use them somewhere along the line, honouring their life as best I can.

After lunch I cleaned dead ponga branches from the grove and removed spider webs from the interior walls of the entrance porch. The ease with which they can be seen is probably the only drawback of having black walls. I used a small paint brush and found it worked pretty well, but as I brushed I imagined of a battery powered rotary tool with a bottle brush on the business end…  And added it to the list.

Around mid afternoon Valerie checked the numbers and told me, “Zero new cases and you’ll be glad to know that the one person who’s been holding out has recovered…”  I let that news sink in as I reached for my computer to see for myself. Sure enough, today’s numbers tell the tale…

Zero New cases. One Recovered case. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases and probable cases plus deaths is 100%. Zero active cases.

WHISKEY. OSCAR. WHISKEY.

Bloody marvellous and while not a laurel to rest on, it is a milestone a long time coming and one to be proud of and thankful for. I think I’ll have a beer and raise a toast to us.

 

 

So… Where do we go from here? The country is going to Alert Level 1 for the second time in history. What that means for us is that all businesses will be open with only minor restrictions. Gatherings can be held without regard to size. Social distancing will still be encouraged and the wearing of masks may be mandated on public transport and in certain other situations. Anyone coming into the country will be quarantined for a minimum of fourteen days while authorities examine options  and begin to sort out how to re-open the country to travellers from disease free nations. There will be many more details to iron out, some anticipated and others wholly unanticipated. It’s the nature of the beast.

 

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wisely made it very clear in her announcement today that there will be more cases, but that what we have learned thus far will help us to find, diagnose, track and eliminate any new cases that show up.

 

 

We are in a good place and things are only going to get better.

 

 

All of which has me thinking that my subtitle, Diary of a Pandemic, is no longer appropriate, nor accurate. Especially since it looks as though, for the semi-foreseeable future, any dying I do won’t be because of Covid-19. That being said, I’m still glad I decided to write about it all. At the outset of lockdown the odds were good that it was going to be a serious Charlie Foxtrot and there was no way of telling how it would all work out. http://acronymsandslang.com/definition/7720898/CHARLIE+FOXTROT-meaning.html

 

I’ve learned a great deal in the past three months, not the least of which is that…

 

 

Nevertheless, I have no illusions that it’s over. The fears that started me writing what was, in many ways, my death bed testimonial still exist. They are founded on long years of experience and the events of the first half of 2020 have only strengthened them.

 

 

The Pandemic is still on in the rest of the world. Covid-19 is probably out there for good now, unless smarter folks than I can find a way to put it back in the bottle it was let out of. New Zealand will have to bend like a reed as the storm continues to rage elsewhere.

No man is an island, as Mr. Donne so eloquently said, and that statement applies to islands as well. So we will watch and wait, hope and dream, love and laugh. And I will remember to be grateful for the miracles that I am privileged to see every moment I’m alive, and to thank those of you who have stood by me as I added a few more planks to my raft. It is all I can do. I hope it is enough.

 

 

I hope each and every one of you find your way to the happiness you deserve. Breathe deep and know that no matter what happens to you or yours, this is not the end…

 

 

If the time comes when anyone wants to know more and I’m not around to ask, let it be said that…

 

 

And that he wished for all to…

 

 

 

 

Internet Maintenance Day

June 4,  2020

Day 75

Went into town this morning to get supplies to fix a problem with the power to a section of the kitchen. A huge old tree on the turn by the estate picnic area had fallen, its splintered trunk, broken a metre above the ground, revealed rot through and through. We were lucky that it fell downhill and away from the road or we would have been blocked and I would most likely have been part of a working bee to remove it. This would have been possible because we are, as a community, gradually realising that only one person has Covid-19 in New Zealand and the likelihood of catching it is pretty small. It was raining off and on all the way to town. New slips along the road are showing up as the land reaches saturation. The weight of water pulls great swathes of clay and forest floor, trees and all, down sodden slopes to new resting places. They usually aren’t as bad as the one below that happened yesterday in Norway, but you never know.

 

 

The whole of New Zealand, indeed, the entire world, is headed toward sea level and the universe toward its eventual heat death. I probably won’t be around for it.

We arrived in Whitianga in the middle of a sudden downpour and I stopped at a hardware store that had a three-foot wide river running in through the main entrance and down the centre aisle for fifty feet. It turned to the right and disappeared from view under the tool section and I knew it would find its way out the back door the same way it had come in the front. The staff were taking pictures and putting up cones everywhere as I paid for my gear and left. It was still coming down cats and dogs on the way home and we could see where the Whangamaroro River had flooded a few days earlier. The highway runs down the centre of an alluvial flood plain next to the estuary that opens up into Mercury Bay and whenever it rains hard for any length of time the road is overtopped by the river. There is a crossroad at this point that leads up into the foothills of the eastern Coromandel Range. I don’t know how the road got its name, but I think I do and I smile every time I see the sign post for Wade Road.

I spent the afternoon replacing wiring and outlets and putting things back together again and testing to see whether it all worked. Once again I finished as the light was fading outside. My repairs of the roof on the previous day were half successful, which means I still have a leak from the roof into the house. Half is better than none, but we’re still seeing water coming in through the wall. The thing to do is bite the bullet and replace the temporary roof with a permanent one, but summer is gone and the rains are here (and inside) so I’m caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Checked the numbers and found we are still in stasis…

No change. Good news.

 

Elsewhere in the world some interesting things are happening. Sweden has said that given a chance they would have altered their policy of staying open for business during the first wave of Covid-19. The very fact that there is a free and open discussion about the issue and that a member of their government has admitted that they could have done things better stands in stark contrast to China, where no such admissions will ever be made while the CCP is in control.

Today in China it is Internet Maintenance Day.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/china-has-found-64-tiananman-related-terms-to-block-on-its-internet-today/372137/

It is also known as A Day to Remember, but not if you are being recorded…

 

Can you imagine what it must be like to live in a country where one-thousand-four-hundred-million people are afraid to say anything on camera?

 

History is being erased day by day in the…

 

 

Don’t forget.

 

Goodnight and Good Luck

May 24,  2020

Day 64

A couple of things right off the bat. The quail haven’t left, the meteorologists were right about the rain and Hong Kong is in trouble.

In other news today a salon worker in Missouri infected 91 customers over seven days last week, Sweden stands by their plan and Putin’s approval ratings have dropped from 100% to 97%. In Moscow a third doctor who worked for an ambulance service has fallen to his death after expressing dismay about two doctors who earlier died in similar incidents. A government spokesperson is reported to have cited ‘unwarranted agitation for parachutes for health workers on the frontline of the fight against Covid-19’ as the cause of his ‘inadvertent and totally unrelated high speed convergence with the earth’. In Norway, BOC Aviation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the state owned Bank Of China, has purchased a majority share of Norwegian Air after the cash strapped startup completed a debt for equity swap in order to survive the downturn in revenue caused by the Covid-19 contagion. Media representatives for BOC Aviation were unavailable for comment at the time of the transaction as they were busy threatening Australia with ‘new much needed regulations’ on the import of beef and ‘technical inspection issues’ affecting the shipping of coal and iron ore. Elsewhere, North Korea still has zero reported cases and credits this to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s ‘Superior Leadership and Beneficial Practices’. The Hermit Kingdom has offered to help the world combat Covid-19 by teaching these principles to all countries except Turkmenistan, citing a long standing dispute with that former Soviet republic about which nation had zero Covid-19 cases first. Resolution of this dispute is proving to be difficult as President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has banned the word coronavirus. And in New Zealand toady, Ministry of Health figures were posted on their website and this is what they say…

Zero New cases. 1 Recovered case. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.8%. Five Zeroes on the board. 27 Active cases remaining.

 

 

 

And in our final story tonight…

 

Goodnight and good luck.

 

 

 

Strange, Strange, Strange

May 22,  2020

Day 62

To the extent that it is possible within the limits of their resources, every country in the world has tried to find a way to deal with all of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have decided to say that it does not exist, some have decided to let it run its course and others have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to stem, if only for a little while, the wave of contagion. We are in the midst of the first months of what may prove to be a years long battle to defeat a thing that is not even technically alive, but which is multiplying in its billions of trillions and spreading slowly, inexorably to every living human in the world.

I fear that the end result of all our tilting at this implacable windmill of Mother Nature will be the sad fact that we are powerless in the face of its relentless march and that one will either catch it and live, or catch it and die. Those that live will either have no long term problems or they will struggle with the effects of the virus for the rest of their lives. But they will be alive. They will reproduce and those most resistant to the virus will pass on this resistance to their children. Time and tide will relegate the Covid-19 bug to the history books and the world will wait nervously or obliviously for whatever’s coming down the pike next from the wet markets of China. The virus is going to run its course and humans are banging their heads as it does.

We see this happening now as governments try to protect citizens who don’t want to be protected. We see it in the attempts by some nations to pay lip service to their stated goal of protecting the older members of society while devoting equal, if not more attention to protecting their economies. Fear and apathy are revealed in the morbid nickname of Boomer Remover coined by some who cannot begin to imagine that they might one day be the same age as those they are so dismissive of now. The disease is driving a worldwide wedge into the fault lines of party politics and the result is that those in power will begin to sacrifice the vulnerable in order to protect themselves. Billionaires build bunkers equipped with swimming pools, stock them with the best viands money can buy. They staff them with masseuses, cooks, nurses and personal assistants for every need, then hunker down to ride out the storm, aloof in isolated luxury. Celebrities utterly convinced of their importance fill their Instagram feeds with inane yammering about lockdown being like prison or how we’re all in this together. They describe the hardships they’re enduring and post pictures of their activities as if anyone cared and they pat each other on the back and dream of the day they can hobnob on the walkways again and be famous once more. We see it as governments realise they cannot remain shut down forever. With covidiots partnered with those who simply need to go back to work. With protesters marching on capitols carrying signs that say what amounts to, “If you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk!”.

Through it all the virus continues to be spread by human activity, good or bad, well intentioned or clueless, like water finding its way into every space it can. It’s not overly virulent, as plagues go, and people are getting tired of it ruling their lives. So they carry it to their friends and neighbours and coworkers and fellow citizens and say, “Here, I’ve got it so you might as well have it too. Enjoy! You’re not too old are you? Diabetic? Overweight? Sorry about that, but you’ll be stronger for it.” In the end it will be like a good TV series that everyone eventually sees. Some watch it as it happens, week by week while others binge watch entire seasons a few years down the line. Sooner or later, though, everyone has seen it and then it’s gone, but not gone. It just blends with the scenery. A part of life in the bad old 2020’s. We’re in for a long, strange haul.

And that’s why I’m glad I live in New Zealand. It’s one of the last sane places on the planet and is a country that, whether through geographical isolation or enlightened leadership or just plain dumb luck, has managed thus far to slam the door on the world and then take great strides toward eradicating Covid-19 within its borders. This miracle mixture of luck and applied discipline has bought me some time before its my turn to dance with the devil. Time for the vaccine makers to do their thing, or, failing that, for the drug makers to whistle up some expensive brew so that I can ride this planet a few more times around the sun. I could not be in a better place and from where I sit and write, the view alone is worth the trouble.

 

 

Here are the numbers for the island nation that is my home…

1 New case, 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.7%. 2 Zeroes on the board. 28 active cases left.

 

 

 

 

202020

May 20,  2020

Day 60

Up early on a beautiful, clear and cold morning to return to the doctor. He said to put the lime in the coconut and call him in the morning. Other stops included the main op-shop for the first time in two months. Found some treasures there, including a light fixture for above the washer and dryer for $5. Amazing value to be found if you know what you’re looking for. Found a GoPro knockoff for $5 in a smaller op-shop around the corner, waterproof case and all. Going to hook it up to a motion sensor and see what sort of critter is digging up the leaves along the edge of the walkway to the workshop shipping container.  While Valerie shopped for groceries I used some of the disinfectant spray I’ve been using around town and some paper towels to wash the inside of the windshield of the car. The sun is so low in the northern sky now that no matter what time of the day we’re driving there is constant glare at certain spots on the 309 Road. It was better going home, but I missed some spots so there’s still work to do. Ammonia based window cleaner will be next.

I designed the base for our faux tile floor for the shower last night and began to cut the pieces of timber I’ll need to complete that job. The afternoon passed in a blaze of glory and evening found us firing up the burner to heat water for our showers before a dinner of steamed chicken, mushrooms and potatoes. Watched the movie A Brief Encounter on YouTube and reflected on how fortunate we were to have found each other and to have been in a position to do what the protagonists in that story could not.

 

 

Tucked Valerie into bed and then checked the day’s numbers. They are encouraging, tantalising, even mesmerising and they are shown below.

 

 

Zero New cases. 5 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.2%. Four Zeroes on the board. 35 Active cases.

 

There is a chance.

There is hope.

There is going to be a respite while a vaccine is developed.

 

The story of our finding this place to build our home is one of  miracle after quiet miracle, each of which reaffirmed our belief that the Universe supports those who make a leap of faith.

 

 

We could not agree more.

 

 

Stay safe and let your thoughts manifest the change you want to see.

 

Goodnight.

 

Maybe

May 19,  2020

Day 59

The skies are clearer than I’ve ever seen them in new Zealand and that’s saying a lot. After my appointment in Whitianga with my new optometrist I chased a beautiful sunset up the 309 Road and rolled down our drive with some groceries and a new car battery. I wonder where the battery was made?

There’s some sort of weird bookkeeping arithmetic going on in the count today, but for me the real number is the ongoing climb of the ratio of recovered cases to the number of confirmed and probable cases.

There are Zero new cases today, however, “the total number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 today increased by four. These cases are people who returned to New Zealand from the Greg Mortimer cruise ship in April and who had all tested positive for COVID-19 in Uruguay. They were classified as being under investigation while we were awaiting information from Uruguay to avoid them being double counted by the World Health Organisation. We have now confirmed these cases were not reported by Uruguay. All four have recovered.” (This from an explanation by the Ministry of Health published today to explain the asterisks. Bookkeeping.)

9 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to the number of confirmed and probable cases is 95.9%.

The powers that be are talking about 28 days being the amount of time we need to go without seeing a rise in number of infections as being the benchmark for success in our fight against the Covid-19 virus. Level 1 may take place sometime around then. Right now there is still a good deal of social distancing being practiced in businesses. Less so with people. Some are aware and conscious when I stop to let them pass. My optometrist wore a mask, as did I. Cashiers are wearing gloves and hand sanitiser is the new normal, but thing are coming back. Life is returning to the town and the nation. I hope it returns to you.

 

 

There was a time when the world was a quieter, more peaceful place. The dentists were primitive and lifespans were shorter, but there were no cars and far fewer people. No penicillin, but no processed food either. The seas teemed with life, the skies were clear and the moon and stars ruled the night. Trade offs abound and answers are few, but the same span of years that has made me more susceptible to Covid-19 also has given me wisdom to make sense of its place in the tapestry of life. There is serenity in this knowledge.

I know where I’ve been.

I know where I am.

I know where I’m going.

 

Maybe I’ll see you there.

 

Goodnight.

 

 

 

 

Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day

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.

 

 

Dancing in the Moonlight

May 13,  2020

Day 53

Rain on and off again today. Winter is officially here and the drought is broken for sure and at last. What is also official is that for the first time in five years the quail have not left to winter down in the blackberry cane thicket near the community vegetable garden. It seems about thirty in three groups of fat and happy and thoroughly friendly birds have decided that the pickings are easy and the company nice here at Lot #18. Where once we could back off the feeding for a few months and rest and relax, we now have a new paradigm of our own making. It’s a happy challenge and the quail are worth it. Seeing them standing patiently on the steps outside our bedroom window, looking in at us, calling ‘Good morning! What’s up? We’re here!’ is so beautiful it melts our hearts. We walk outside and they come down the steps and skitter and dash into the grove and out again and set to with a will when we scatter their seed on the pavers. Life is good, life is good, life is good!

I am finally healed. My lungs are clear as they ever get and that’s a good feeling. Valerie’s back is slowly mending and her stomach, which has suffered terribly from the cocktail of medicines she had to take, is slowly recovering. Yogurt is now on the menu and things are looking up. We spent most of the morning in bed listening to wind buffeting the trees and rain drumming on the metal roof. Inside we are snug and warm and though I never got to replace the roof this summer, it will probably last until next year.

After a late lunch of sausage sandwiches and soup I went out to the workshop and made headway on projects. I finished fabricating a new and better mount for my homemade laser sight and flashlight attachment for my crossbow. Tested it until it was spot on, then made seven new bolts using epoxy, nails and knitting needles. I built a magnetic calendar from some small tile squares, magnets and glue. Found the parts for the lamp repair and got them ready for tomorrow. Organised the shelves and the spare parts and hardware bins. Lots of tiny steps, each taken at the right moment, contributing to the greater whole, all while the river of time rolls majestically past.

Wrapped up at dusk and found that one of our neighbours dropped off a mother’s day package for Valerie that her daughter had couriered to the estate gate. They also left some groceries for us from a trip they’d made into town. There is a buzz in the estate, in town and even countrywide, that you can feel deep down. We are moving to Level 2, stage one, tomorrow. The country is going to open up internally, climb back onto the saddle and ride. Whether we can figure out a way for external visitors to join us in our rodeo is another story, but for now, we’re going to see whether we can stay on top of the numbers and emerge into the sunshine of a new day.

Checking the figures before dinner I see that we have gone another day without a new case and there are still five Zeroes on the board.

Zero New cases. 4 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 93.6%.

For 53 days we’ve felt like this…

 

 

Now we feel like this…

 

 

 

Lots to do yet. Many questions to answer, but for now, for a day or two while we shift down another level, we’re going to have to be excused for smiling just a little.

Thank you all. Stay safe and good luck.

 

 

 

 

The Things Not Meant for Me

May 11,  2020

Day 51

3 New cases. 15 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 92.5%.

 

And this, since it represents progress toward wherever it is we’re going to be in a few weeks.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300009818/coronavirus-new-zealand-will-start-to-move-to-level-2-on-thursday

New Zealand is moving in three step phases to Alert Level 2. Most businesses will be able to reopen with new guidelines for social distancing in force and certain provisos re maximum capacity of establishments in place. I’ve got some timber to buy and there are some time sensitive documents that I have to get into the bureaucratic pipeline so I hope the government will be open for personal business. Those are the only things I’ll be out doing over the next few weeks other than, as you have no doubt figured out, watching the numbers.

We appear to have dodged the bullet, but as that fellow from Sweden warned, we still have to maintain our quarantine of incoming visitors and figure out how to cure/treat/prevent/mitigate Covid-19 for the long run. So there’s still people out there pulling the trigger and bullets will be flying and all it takes is a few bad breaks and happy people sharing a beer (Bars are the last in line for reopening for just this reason) to reverse the gains we’ve made thus far. But it’s another step in the right direction and that is good.

 

 

 

 

I started writing this diary because things were, across the board, on the cusp of going seriously awry. I had done what I could to prepare in a material sense and as lockdown loomed I realised I was like a passenger on a hijacked plane, cell phone in hand and little time between the slowly unravelling present and the implacable unknown future. Only I had more time than those poor souls who can only text a few lines to their loved ones before their plane disintegrates around them. It was a gift I did not want to squander. I had time to gather my thoughts and put pen to paper with that long arm from the grave to say…

That I apologise to all I have hurt in my long life. It was not my intention. I was young and ignorant, untried and unsure. I made decisions that experience has taught me could have turned out better had I gone another way. Much later, when I was older, Clavell’s description of prisoners of war in Changi fit me well. Of them, he wrote, ‘These men too were criminals. Their crime was vast. They had lost a war. And they had lived.’ In the eyes of the woman I loved my crime, too, was vast.  Like all the people who had ever hurt her, I was a man. My mistake was thinking that she would know that I was different. In the end her constant fear became a self fulfilling prophecy. I am sad at how things came to pass, but I was not those other men and to be tarred for so long with the same brush became unbearable.

There is the brother I never knew because I never asked about his life. It is a shame and a sadness that is hard to bear. My brother deserved more and I am sorry I never gave it to him. There was a sister once who wanted to be right more than anything else and got exactly what she wished for. Nothing to apologise for there, but had I known then what I know now, I’d have altered my course a few degrees to help her find a better way.

To my co-authors whose long and heartfelt labors of love saw only the slush pile of various agents offices, I apologise. The stories were good and true and though they float now on Oblivion’s Sea with countless others, there was worth in the writing.  I know this to be true and I offer this knowledge in exchange for the time we spent filling them with life. That they were stillborn, silenced before their time, is unfortunate. I apologise not a second for striving, but wish that you had been spared the long ordeal of being tied to my falling star.

To the keeper of the light across the channel, I would have loved to love you better. I am a slow learner and thank you for the patient way you showed me.

 

Every villain is a hero in their own mind. I never meant to hurt anyone. I’m sorry if I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The End (I Hate to say I Told you So…)

May 10,  2020

Day 50

2 New cases. 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is still 91%. This number is going to climb slowly from here on out, but climb it shall.

 

(A picture of the moon out of my window)

 

 

In other news today I found the video report below…

 

…and hope it is not inappropriate to quote Winston Churchill.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

 

In the meantime Covid-19 burnout continues worldwide. People are tired of there being such an inconvenient thing as a global pandemic and hearing about it endlessly. Because I am sensitive to everyone’s feelings I am going to stop going on about the contagion. We as humans have seen much worse and survived to invent his one. The worldwide economy is reverberating discordantly, the skies are empty of chem-trails and the seas are getting cleaner by the day. Anyone who was reading has nodded off or found better ways to amuse themselves under whatever version of ‘lockdown’ they’re under, so it’s time to move on. If I don’t make it, I’ll send up a flare. If I do make it, you know where to find me, studying Kiwi and Mandarin and watching closely as one era ends and another begins.

Not having Covid-19 to kick around any longer I have decided to branch out into clairvoyance and share some predictions which will come true very shortly. It is my hope that they may help you to plan your soon to be changing future.

1. In response to the collective impotence and lack of vision evinced by the rest of the world and as a follow on of its already stated policy towards Taiwan, China is going to take over the renegade island militarily. It will crush all major resistance within three months of the start of hostilities (which will not be called hostilities) and will commence re-educating the survivors with extreme prejudice. There will be ham-handed attempts by America to intervene through a series of useless U.N. resolutions, vague bluster and empty threats, while China, under the policy of We Own Everything except Covid-19, will shut down all maritime traffic through the South China Sea save for its own commercial and military vessels.
2. A full court diplomatic and economic press will tie the hands of every country on the planet, giving China time to present the takeover as a fait accompli. As the nation of Taiwan will no longer exist (just ask China) the United States will reason, quite logically and conveniently, that it no longer has to adhere to any treaty obligations it had with the former non-nation. They will hoist a Mission Accomplished banner and leave the area before the paint on the new signs at Taipei’s airport has a chance to dry. What once was called Taiwan-sheng or Taiwan province will cease to exist on paper even as it is subsumed by the invaders who will name themselves something innocuous but patriotic. Something snappy like The Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere Forces of Reunification. What? It’s been used before? No matter. Move along please. Nothing to see here.
3. China’s Renminbi, or Yuan, will become a global currency and will challenge the U.S. Dollar for supremacy. https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-debt-to-china-how-much-does-it-own-3306355
4.  China will land men and women on the moon, set up a permanently manned base     there and claim ownership of the Earth’s satellite. https://www.space.com/13331-china-space-race-moon-ownership-bigelow-ispcs.html
5. https://www.china-briefing.com/news/china-proposes-establishing-moon-based-special-economic-zone/
6. China will take over Australia and New Zealand through aggressive commercial practices and strategic purchases of key industries and land blocks.
7. Before item number six happens I will have shuffled off this mortal coil.
8. Before I do that I predict that I will say I told you so.