POEM: THE COVID-19 EDITION

Nero 2.0   

Burn. Burn away your empire—

Burn all of it.       

Burn down your sad towers,

with their jagged spires

that pierce the sky with illusions.

Watch them crumble and become lost

in the dust of their collapse.

Burn it all away!

But not with the flames of past thrones

that saw baths laid in the place of ruins.

Burn it with hotter fires

that are fueled by all the bent,

broke-backed and wearying days

that come with their ever-advancing 
tomorrows.

Then go among the ruins.

Look for the glitter of false joys.

Smash those carnival mirrors!

Break those gilded devices

with their painted stars

and clever surfaces 
that reveal nothing

of the true face of lives spent

furiously polishing time’s brighter reflections.

Make them gone.

Then scatter the heedless, the needless,

the vain and wayward.

Spill them like seeds upon stony fields

you will choose for your sacrifice.

Leave what remains for the carrion-eaters

and the small deciders of the world.

…

Then come away with me.

Come to where the air rims the world

with winds so pure and high,

and where there soon will be

other thrones and crowns

and banners for our sky.

I THOUGHT I'D END THE MONTH ON AN UPBEAT NOTE….I’m not sure I like this poem. Just finished it? [Progress in the writing process seems stalled. Ed.]

Yep, good ‘ol Covid-19 has spread-eagled the planet and everything has ground to mostly a standstill. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised, after all viruses total 0.2 Gt of carbon*, and humans weigh in at a paltry 0.06 Gt! For those who need to know, the most biomass tonnage on Earth goes to plants, which are still on top even though we’ve been paving paradise and putting up a parking lot for some time now. Plants are followed by a bit of a surprise—Bacteria! Then come Fungi and microscopic Protists. Who would have thunk it? (Animals, including Humans are waaay down on the list.) And even though viruses comprise a much smaller amount of biomass when compared to the top contenders, there is still much more of it than there is human biomass around. Who knew?! (Not me.) So, watch out! Viruses can throw their weight around and we better start behaving!

I watched the new Michael Moore film (he’s the producer) on YouTube last night. It’s called Planet of the Humans and I highly recommend it. For anyone questioning the dominant tropes of modern environmentalism, climate change, global warming, etc., and who have grown tired of warn-out platitudes which always start off with something like ”If we  just [fill in the blank], then Bob’s your uncle!” If you’ve ever had concerns about how effective various environmental groups**—some quite well known—have been as far as making actual changes in the world; or if you have ever wondered why is it there is a great deal of talking and drawing up of “accords” and “manifestos” and so on, yet relatively little action on the horizon, and in fact things have been getting worse, environmentally-speaking; if such doubts have crept into your mind from time to time, then this is the film for you.

Released a week prior to the anniversary of the first Earth Day, it is a sobering examination of the real-world feasibility (and scaleability) of renewable sources of energy. Producer and composer Jeff Gibbs narrates this scathing, yet also compassionate and evocative journey through the difficult terrain of environmentalism and renewable energy.

Jeff Gibbs

He opens his film with a challenging question: “How long do you think we humans have?” In interviews with passersby on a pleasant, sunny sidewalk, the answers range from a chipper “two years” all the way up to “infinity” (a popular answer). There’s humour and honest deliberation from many of the respondents, but my favourite was one curmudgeon's reply: “Being kind, I’d say about ten years, unless we get to another planet—and then fuck it up like we’ve done this one.” And the overarching question the film asks is: How long do you think we humans have--going the way we’re going?   

Gibbs uses interviews, news reports, amateur and archival footage in his attempt to answer this difficult and seemingly unanswerable question. Throughout the film he examines various schemes for renewable energy—wind and solar in particular, as well as schemes deemed “green energy” like biomass generation, bio-diesel fuels, natural gas power plants, electric cars, etc. 

Michael Moore

One of the questions Gibbs kept asking activists and green-tech promoters was how much fossil-fuel was being used in the construction, maintenance and operation of each so-called “clean” energy process. Unsurprisingly, the use of fossil fuels—coal, oil, natural gas—was embedded in each and every one, sometimes much more than you would expect. And the EROEI (Energy Returned On Energy Invested) ratio that measures how efficient each process is in providing clean energy from the particular resource or system is not nearly as favourable as promoters of green tech would have you believe. Furthermore, each process comes with its own negative environmental impacts, some that are surprising, as Gibbs discovers. (His review of biomass power generation is quite revealing.) I won’t detail his findings—you can and should see them for yourself;  the film is free on YouTube, so what's your excuse?

Decommissioned Windfarm

The take home is that, as far as climate change is concerned, renewables will have only a modest impact and none of the processes to date—from old-tech waterpower (just how many rivers in the world are there left to dam?) to new-tech “micro-algae” oil and the like—can realistically scale-up to supply the vast energy requirements of our modern civilization. And if environmental movements and initiatives have, for the most part, been sequestered and put out for display like pretty, stone Buddhas in corporate Zen gardens, where do we turn? Who do we trust? Where do we go from here?

Refreshingly, Gibbs and Moore do not provide us with the standard list of environmental ‘to-dos’. The question we need to answer, they say, is much larger (and also more personal) than what to do about climate change or global warming or the horrible pollution of our environment and the mechanized slaughter of the living world. Yes, we’ve all seen the ‘hockey-stick’ graphs of Co2 emissions, population rise, industrial growth, rainforest clear-cutting, coral reef depletion, etc., etc., etc. We just don’t care. Too many of us drank the Kool-Aid laced with poison labelled: Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet. And while the drink is a long time killing us; kill us it will.

"Arr, Billy! Don't you be drinkin' thar swill!"

The question we need to ask is a simple one: Will we be masters of the world or masters of ourselves? It’s a question that’s always been with us, in all civilizations and all times. It’s one that’s even been answered, from time to time. Today, however—well really for the last, mad century or two after we'd discovered the “black gold” of coal and the “Texas tea” of oil—we’ve simply forgotten the question entirely. The time-out we’ve received because of Covid-19 could go a long way to help refresh our memories, though I doubt it will. But the world will thank us for this brief respite as our industries stand for the moment silent and shuttered.

Downed trees around Mt. St. Helens after erruption.

The movie's final scene of rainforest deforestation reminded me of photographs of the land around Mt. St. Helen in Washington state after the volcano erupted there in 1980. There was devastation for miles around! Trees were flattened everywhere from the force of the volcano's blast. But the images of the man-made devastation Gibbs records of a tropical forest cut down to make way for a coconut plantation were shocking. The lone stand of remaining woods held a group of orangutans, clinging precariously to the limbs of trees as they neared to toppling over. And later, the displayed bodies of the dead and dying apes was a scene as strikingly viseral as any taken of the liberated concentraion camps of  WWII. Both depict living beings being slaughtered. In this case it's because we've been told that biofuels are good to use in our cars.

The film ends with a quotation by famed environmentalist Rachel Carson. It was taken from an address she gave to the graduating class at Scripps University in California in 1962. Silent Spring, her ground-breaking study on the effects of DDT in the environment, the book that arguably started the modern environmental movement, had just been published. And though she had been diagnosed with with breast cancer (she would die in 1964 from complications resulting from the disease), and physically weak, she nevertheless undertook the arduous cross-country flight to present her thoughts on nature, "Man" and the sciences to the Scripp's graduating students that year. Her closing words include the quote Gibbs and Moore paraphrase for their film.

           

“I wish I could stand before you and say that my own generation had brought strength and meaning to man’s relation to nature, that we had looked upon the majesty and beauty and terror of the earth we inhabit and learned wisdom and humility. Alas, this cannot be said, for it is we who have brought into being a fateful and destructive power. But the stream of time moves forward and mankind moves with it. Your generation must come to terms with the environment. Your generation must face realities instead of taking refuge in ignorance and evasion of truth. Yours is a grave and a sobering responsibility, but it is also a shining opportunity. You go out into a world where mankind is challenged, as it has never been challenged before, to prove its maturity and its mastery—not of nature, but of itself. Therein lies our hope and our destiny. In today already walks tomorrow.” [from Scripps College Bulletin, July 1962—Rachel Carson’s speech to the graduating class.]

 Words as true then as they are now. But what about tomorrow?

Cheers, Jake.

*Gt=giga-tons of carbon (for those with a science-deficit, like me, “giga” is the metric system’s short-form for billion. The decimals I’ll leave to you.) Biomass “is the amount of living matter (as in a unit area or volume of habitat")—Merriam-Webster dictionary.

**Another question the environmental movement is incredibly uncomfortable being asked is who funds their organizations, initiatives and studies. The surprising (or perhaps not so surprising) fact is that a number of large, well-known environmental groups have big business donors, including Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Ag—which you’d think would be a serious conflict of interest. The long and the short of it is this: Listen Fats, where big business and environmental movements intersect, eventually profit wins out. Suffice it to say that greenwash is everywhere.

Premiering on April 21, already Moore's and Gibbs' film has garnered much pushback from environmental groups. It will be interesting to see how the producers weather the storm of criticism....[One helpful commentary on Moore's film is by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti of The Hill's Rising news webcast on YouTube.]  

I feel that the environmental movement has failed, to a large extent, in its stated goal of arresting climate change and protecting the biosphere. There are a number of reasons why this is the case. One reason is because there is too much focus on "new-and-improved" techno-fixes and elaborate schemes for switching out fossil fuels for some either unproven (fusion power, anyone?) or unscaleable (wind, solar) energy sources or power distribution system. 
It's not our technology we need to re-examine--it's ourselves. We need to ask ourselves questions such as: what is it to live a good life? How much is enough? And how are we to share this world with our fellow humans and with the myriad other beings and lifeforms that surround and support us? We'll either find answers to these and other questions or we'll go the way of the Dodo, and deservedly so.  

 

"All righty! I want a clean execution, today. Any questions?

[UPDATE: As of late May, Youtube has taken down Moore and Gibb's film citing copyright infringment. Granted, the film has flaws, but its over-arching message remains.]

BOOK REPORT: THE MANAGEMENT OF SAVAGERY BY MAX BLUMENTHAL

The subtitle of Max Blumenthal’s new book is: How America’s National Security State Fueled The rise Of Al Qaeda, ISIS, And Donald Trump which suggests this book is not a pleasant one to read. It explores the web of connections that American security services, particularly the CIA and the FBI, have had with extremist Islamic groups over the past several decades. Max details how covert operations began in the 1980s with the US government secretly funding jihadist groups in Afghanistan who then waged a guerrilla war against the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul. It details the blow-back resulting from this flawed CIA program with the rise, decades later, of Al Qaeda and ISIS whose roots lay in the blood and soil of that impoverished, war-torn country. 

Max describes the networks formed between American spy agencies and  Islamist radicals, some even operating in the United States. He notes how CIA money and covert support to Al Qaeda affiliates in Iraq, following America’s disastrous invasion, led directly to the formation of the even more extremist group, ISIS. He later explores the CIA’s connection with ISIS and other radical Islamist groups fighting in Syria's civil war, as well as highlighting the role the "White Helmets" played, and continues to play there. Blumenthal suggests the NGO may be acting as an anti-Assad shill in concord with the terrorist groups:

"Marketed to the public as a mere band of "rescuers" rushing toward the bombs to pluck helpless babies from the rubble, the White Helmets had revealed themselves as an international influence operation that lobbied on behalf of the Western governments and military-intelligence officials that conceived it to drive the regime change agenda. Indeed, the group was not born in the rubble of a Syrian conflict zone, but in public relations offices and the boardrooms of private defense contractors." (209)

Max Blumenthal

American spy agencies played a central role in all these theaters of conflict by funding splinter terrorist cells, pitting rival groups one against the other, sometimes funding and equipping both sides—all in support of the larger project of American hegemony in the Middle East. 

So, no, this is not a pleasant book to read, but it is an important one.

His first chapter, “The Afghan Trap”, is a primer on how not to win a war, revealing how America’s all-encompassing “War on Terror”, begun in the aftermath of 9/11, had its roots in the earlier involvements by the CIA and other government agencies with Middle Eastern (particularly Saudi) radical Salafist adherents. These extreme Islamists (nicknamed “the Arab Afghans”) were given training and hundreds of millions of dollars in supplies and weapons by the CIA to promote an insurgency in Afghanistan. This policy began in the Carter administration, in 1979, as a geopolitical ploy to draw the Russians "into their own Vietnam”, and to weaken the Russian polity. The operation succeeded in its larger project: In 1989 Russia withdrew its troops from Afghanistan and two years later the Berlin Wall fell.
However, blow-back came afterwards when all those highly trained and armed “freedom fighters” returned home. What was to be done with them? Unsurprisingly, as Blumenthal outlines, this “disposal problem” (28) became the problem for a number of countries as their nationals were repatriated. The “ghosts" (36) of "Operation Cyclone” (the name of the CIA’s undercover operation in Afghanistan) came to haunt Egypt, Algeria, the Philippines and Bosnia in the following decades as radical Islamist cells developed in these and other countries. Along with terrorist bombings and violence, governments themselves reacted with their own, extreme policies.* Summarizing this point, Blumenthal says: “…[T]error begets extremism [from governments] and collapses the fragile space where multi-confessional societies survive.” (38) 

Of course, the attacks on 9/11 were the most dramatic examples of blow-back resulting from these ill-conceived, cloak and dagger operations.**

"I try to see no evil, but I don't know what Hear or Say are doing."

Recently, Syria has become the latest victim of egregious CIA meddling when the agency secretly began funding  and supporting radical jihadist groups in the country in its bid to remove President Assad. These groups were judged at the time to be "more “moderate" and therefore more compliant (but who later proved to be neither.) Consequently, Syria’s civil war has been prolonged and deepened because of US interference, and blow-back came in the form of millions of Syrians forced to flee their homeland, with all the problems that entails. No doubt, there will be further repercussions resulting from the CIA’s ham-fisted operations in the future.

And that’s just the first chapter of Max Blumenthal’s meticulously detailed examination of the connections between America’s security services and radical Islamic groups. He highlights the cynical disregard for law and order and moral conduct on the part of the CIA, FBI, the US government and other actors in their pursuit of geopolitical aims. It’s a modern democracy’s dark corner and Blumenthal’s exposé shines a needed light into it.

Cheers, Jake.

*The 2001 ”Patriot Act” in the United States is one example—it was enacted to allow the President to quickly declare war, without going through the legislative process, in case of a threat to national security. It was supposed to be a one-off, but it has been renewed annually ever since, and has allowed Presidents of both political stripes to send troops around the world as they see fit—without congressional approval. Canada has a similar, if watered-down, version. Once power has been granted to a government, it's hard for it to be rescinded.

**It should be remembered that 15 of the 19 hijackers on that fateful day were Saudi citizens. Saudi Arabia remains a hotbed for Wahhabism, an extreme, traditionalist form of Islam that radicalized many of the hijackers. Max provides an interesting geopolitical context for the growth of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia, by which the United States ‘turned a blind eye’ to the dangers arising from this extreme form of Islam—in exchange for a secure supply of Saudi oil!

And it should also be remembered that the mastermind of 9/11, Osama bin Laden, was a Saudi, a former “freedom fighter” and an adherent of Wahhabism who was incensed over the presence of foreign troops in his country. Blow-back can come in many forms and from many sources.

    

Max Blumenthal is an American investigative-journalist and senior editor for on-line news site The Grayzone.  His is a youthful, articulate and passionate voice of dissent and scrutiny that regularly challenges the Washington consensus, calling out bad actors in government and elsewhere which, some months ago, made him the target of deep-state harassment. (See my 31 October 2019 blog post “Rants: American Reporter Arrested on Trumped-Up Charge” for details.)   

His award-winning journalism gives fresh insights into American foreign and domestic politics and attempts to uncover the truth behind the curtain of current political events.   

       

Max Blumenthal, The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, Isis and Donald Trump. Verso. New Left Books, Brooklyn, NY. 2019

"Yep. That's either the North Star or a speck of fly poop on the window."

BOOK REPORT: CIVILIZED TO DEATH: THE PRICE OF PROGRESS, BY CHRISTOPHER RYAN

Author Christopher Ryan provides a wide-ranging, entertaining and thought-provoking critique of one of our favourite topics of discussion: namely, ourselves—Homo sapiens sapiens—and about who and what we are, and how we got to this moment in time. No small task that!

One of the points he makes early on is the wrongheadedness and misplaced faith we have in the idea of “progress,” what he calls the “Narrative of Perpetual Progress (NPP for short). For most of us, progress seems like a good thing. As humanity grows, more benefits are wrought by our science and technology, and our expanding economy bring us ever-greater wealth, security and personal comfort, with each new generation more prosperous and fulfilled that the one that came before. The more the merrier! Isn’t that the way it should be?

Who doesn’t think progress is a good thing?

Well, Ryan for one. Oh, he’s not saying that humanity shouldn’t live and learn and grow—that type of progress is common to all life—we breathe, we eat, we love, we’re born, we die. He’s critical of the type of progress that assumes things will automatically get ‘better and better’, and that the future will always be bright. That type of progress assumes man’s big brain and the technologies we’ve developed (from flint chips to microchips) are the best yet devised, and that we can continue to grow and expand indefinitely because we are at the apex of creation and evolution’s final answer to the silence of the void from which we came. But we need a wake up call. Face it, Ryan tells us: we’re nothing more than chimps with a bit of tech. Optimism, he states, is over-rated. It’s based on false or distorted assumptions about the type of beings we are—our evolutionary niche—and our place amongst all the other branches of evolution’s tree.

     “Rosy declarations of eternal progress are as intellectually baseless as they are emotionally comforting, and they undermine our capacity to correct course before it’s too late. When you wake up smelling smoke, ‘Don’t worry, go back to sleep’ may be precisely what you most want to hear, but that doesn’t make it good advice. Psychologist Tali Sharot calls this blind faith in progress ‘optimism bias.’ She’s found that we tend to dismiss disturbing evidence as aberrations while accentuating anything that paints a brighter picture of the future.” (37)

Christopher Ryan

He goes on to say

“Paeans to progress will always be a part of the civilizational package, because any system predicated upon incessant growth will insist on defining all movement as movement forward, like the falling man who insists he’s flying. Until he isn’t.” (37)

Using archaeological, anthropological and historical evidence, as well as psychological and sociological studies, Ryan attempts to give us a clearer picture of who we are and how we should be living, and where we’ve gone off the rails. Our busy modern world, with its elaborate network of technologically advanced systems of commerce, governance, transportation and communication, etc., has become a monkey-trap. Once grasped, we seem unable to let go of the technological prize, even if all the signs suggest we’re heading for a colossal crash and fall (Oopsie! Sounds a bit like the one we’re experiencing. Covid-19: It's the gift that just keeps on giving!)

But changing our course seems impossible now, and our fate may be sealed. In his conclusions Ryan asks whether we can, at this stage, come to understand how much of our biology and genetic heritage is shaped by our hominid and early human beginnings, and therefore, as such beings, how we ought to live on the planet. He’s not optimistic:

     “How likely is it that we will choose this path? Not very. But it’s well within our capacities…. (252)  

The “path” Ryan suggests we need desperately to find is the one that had previously sustained us for hundreds of thousands of years and shaped our bodies, our senses and our minds as we lived together in social groupings of advanced hominins, descendants of earlier hominids who were also social beings. He says we need to rediscover our hunter-gather selves, because in the end that’s who we are and where we come from.

Okay. I know what you’re thinking: "But Jake, there isn’t room anymore for all of us to hit the road and wander about, gathering nuts and berries  and snaring rabbits in clever, homemade traps. Cummon! How many Innuit are living off the land full-time, anymore? Sure, there are some tribes or clans or whatever living in jungles or deserts or in grassland regions. But almost everybody on the planet has a smartphone and pays way too much for their data plans." (Not me!)

  

No. There is no more room—not with the whole world geared-up in perpetual-growth mode, and our population in overdrive. (Infinite growth on a finite planet, sounds pretty dumb when you say it out loud; so, keep it to yourself!) But Ryan makes a proposal after reviewing our place in the world and who we are, and what we're made of. 
Who we are as a species is homo sapiens and our lineage along the evolutionary tree is conveniently drawn with ourselves at the top (which, in my opinion, makes the sapiens moniker a bit problematic. Are we truly all that “wise"?)  Ryan reviews what we are: we're hominins who exist in social groups, who have certain neurological and physical characteristics developed as a result of our interactions with the environment, and with each other, over the course of hundreds of millennia. He then proposes we embrace the world view and ethos of our hunter-gather past. He suggests characteristics of hunter-gather societies such as empathy, egalitarianism, sharing, tolerance and so on be re-incorporated into our societies so that we can live full and active lives, lives that are more in harmony with our environment. 
He likens the steps by which we need to examine ourselves to the Five Stages of Grieving, as articulated by Dr. Kubler-Ross, with Acceptance being the sought after end-state. Acceptance instead of hope or belief in the myths surrounding "Naratives of Perpetual Progress" is what we need, says Ryan--acceptance of ourselves with all our limitations (and our strengths), and acceptance of our place in the scheme of things.


Interestingly, he references the thought-experiment Fermi's Paradox: In a universe teeming with stars, how is it, physicist Enrico Fermi wondered in 1950,  that we have not received any communications from other, similarly advanced civilizations? There must be millions of them out there. One conclusion drawn from the theory is that civilizations reaching Earth's level of technology either destroyed their ecosystems (like we're doing) or else blew themselves up. The theory suggests there is a threshold that technological civilizations must cross and get beyond before they are free to roam the galaxy and contact other planets. They do this by finding solutions to the inherent dangers embodied in their technologies. And most don't reach the finish line. Hence fewer star-buddies to call on us.  Klaatu Barada Nikto.

Another conclusion to be drawn from this dearth of alien communications, Ryan tells us,  is that there are, in fact, multitudes of worlds in space whose populations chose NOT to develop technologies that would lead them down the garden path of ecological overreach or the use of weapons of mass destruction. And these may be very pleasant, if more humble worlds when compared to our own, but they should in all likelihood be very alive and living ones. 

    

Artist's conception of one monument ring at Göbekli Tepe site.

Ryan suggests as humans became more sedentary, following the adoption of agriculture, that we lost the vital characteristics and traits of communal, small-group living. He cites the example of Göbekli Tepe*, in Turkey which is arguably the oldest religious site in the world (some 9,000 to 10,000 years old!), which may represent as the archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, its discoverer, speculates, “the last flowering of a semi-nomadic world that farming was just about to destroy.”(The Guardian, online. 23 April 2008). As such, it is instructive to note that future generations of sedentary farmers in the area used the site as a “midden”, which is archaeology-speak for a garbage dump. These monument rings, perhaps erected either to celebrate or mourn the end of the hunter-gatherer way of life and the rise of agricultural lifestyles,** were something that the descendants of those monument-builders did not think worthy of celebrating or even remembering. Instead, they buried them under millennia of refuse. It’s a disturbing interpretation Ryan makes. And his conclusions are equally troubling for they tell us now, so late in the game, that the tale about the emperor’s new clothes is really about us.  We are a naked animal, but we imagine ourselves draped in the finest garments.

 Great read. Very thoughtful. I recommend it to all my fellow hominins.  

 Reader Vote:👍👍👍👍4 out of 5 thumbs-up [I rarely reward  perfection, but

Sophia Loren, now there's a five!]

Cheers, Jake.

"I thought everything would be better in spandex?"

*His portrayal of Göbekli Tepe does make me wince a bit. Until I read Civilized, I had a more triumphal view of the site as one marking the beginning of modernity. Ryan’s view is that the site is, in fact, a road-side cairn marking the downward path we have taken. This gives me (fresh-killed) food for thought!  

**One humorous example of the mismatch between our hunter-gatherer heritage and how we live today is in the style of running shoes first invented some years ago by the Nike sportswear company. Their shoe's design (along with most running shoes today) is not in keeping with how our bodies actually function when we run. Similarly, the vast majority of people, myself included, look forward to summer when we can wear comfortable and ergonomically correct footwear known as sandals! Ancient tech rocks!

Christopher Ryan, Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress. Avid Reader Press. Simon and Schuster, Inc., New York. 2019.

RANTS: MY CARONA! STORE CLERKS ROCK!

Ed the ESD Sufferer

Etching of One-Armed Bandit God

With Supplicant c. 2020

I don’t mean to come across like I’m belittling the severity of Covid-19 in earlier posts, it’s just that death-dealing viral pathogens get my defensive elbows out! There are hard times in countries like Italy, Spain, France, England and now the USA with thousands of deaths, and infection rates still going up in most parts of the world. It’s terrible, not only the consequences for those afflicted with the disease and their families, but because of the additional strains put on everyone with what looks like a growing tsunami of economic disruption, already greater than the 2008-9 recession, and with many comparing it to the Great Depression of the 1930s! Is this our deer in the headlights moment? Could be. 

And speaking of driving—I went to pick up a pizza and then went to a convenience store to get some lottery tickets.  (I’m starting to feel like that chicken in the “operant conditioning” experiment, tap-tap-tapping all day on the red button, hoping for my reward of GMO chicken-feed candy—AKA a lotto win—to stuff down my gullet.)

The warriors stepped from the jungle

and onto the beach.

….. At the pizza place they had the counter screened off with plastic sheets and you paid via debit machine. A guy came round and placed your order on a chair by the cash register. You take it and go. Same thing at the convenience store with a new, hard-plastic screen between you and the tired clerk, who puts on gloves for the umpteenth time. (New rule: convenience stores only for something I really need—I don’t want to spread my carona to overworked, stressed-out clerks. They have enough to contend with besides servicing my cheese-doodles habit! They are troopers all!

“How long have you been social distancing?!”

(from ESD Journal)

…..I went to my local grocery store today. No lineup outside like later in the day. Inside everyone seemed cool, calm and collected. Store is well stocked and running smoothly. It seems quieter, though; I don’t here people chatting much, perhaps simply because less people are in the store and it’s mostly individual shopping. The checkout lines were orderly—one person at a time to the cash registers; use only store bags (no reusables) and they don’t cost you extra. I am damn lucky living where I am (i.e. planet Earth, Milky Way) Imagine living next to a black hole! (Hey, that’s my wife you’re talking about!) That would be no joke.

…..Chatted with neighbour today as I was going out. Spoke more words in our short conversation than I have all month!


Yep, for now, it’s a Covid world, all right!

Cheers, Jake.