Here’s a beautiful bird’s eye* view of the canola fields just outside Durbanville, South Africa. Look for Table Mountain and Lion’s Head to its right, in the distance.
*Picture was taken with a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone.
[Photo from ‘Die Burger’ newspaper, submitted by Dirkie Heydenrych]
Wednesday/ ‘law and order!’ shouts the liar-dictator-conspirator
The reporting of Trump calling American soldiers ‘suckers’ and ‘losers’ is still fresh. Even so, recorded interviews with Watergate journalist Bob Woodward surfaced, of Trump knowing full well, as early as February, that the coronavirus was deadly and airborne, even as he lied about it to the country.
Voters already punished the Republicans over health care as the No 1 issue in 2018 (they lost the House). Hopefully, they will do so again in November. (Trump’s administration is asking the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act. If successful, this move would permanently end Obamacare and wipe out coverage for as many as 23 million Americans).
Here’s the American Medical Association in June: ‘Striking down the law at a time when the system is struggling to respond to a pandemic that has infected nearly 1.4 million Americans and killed more than 80,000 at the time of this writing would be a self-inflicted wound that could take decades to heal’.
Yet .. Trump’s game is to say: look at all the chaos and uncertainty! Law and Order!
Tuesday/ the hellscapes of summer
There was a place in the greater Los Angeles area that hit 121°F last week. That’s 49.5 °C. And so many fires— the fires that get worse every summer— in California, in Oregon and in Washington State.
Mostly sunny & smoke haze (87 °F/ 30.5 °C) for the city of Seattle tomorrow.
Monday/ the US men are all out
Frances Tiafoe (22, coached by South African-born Wayne Ferreira) was last man standing of the American men, in the 2020 US Open tennis tournament. He lost against Russian Daniil Medvedev in straight sets today.
Tiafoe won the prestigious 2013 Orange Bowl at 15 years old, making him the youngest boys’ singles champion in the history of the tournament.
Serena Williams won in three sets over Maria Sakkari though, who had just beaten her two weeks ago in an earlier tournament.
Sunday/ shocker: Djokovic disqualified
From the US Open website:
In tennis, there are two ways to be defaulted from a match: through an accumulation of code violations or by a singularly egregious act.
In Novak Djokovic’s case from the US Open on Sunday, the incident was firmly the latter. After losing his service game to trail 6-5 in the opening set of his Round 4 match against Spain’s Pablo Carreno Busta, Djokovic struck a line umpire with a ball hit in anger, and was ultimately defaulted from the tournament by US Open Referee Soeren Friemel.
Not only is the overwhelming favorite to have won, out of the tournament— he also forfeited his 2020 US Open prize money for reaching the 4th round (a whopping $250,000) and the ATP ranking points he would have gotten.
Saturday/ the Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade: a sinking proposition
It’s Labor Day weekend, and people are up to all kinds of crazy things .. like going onto a lake in relatively calm weather, and still managing to sink four boats.
There were no injuries. So it’s hard for me not to have a little schadenfreude over the mishap during the Lake Travis Trump Boat Parade.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Salinas (organizer of the boat parade) said he had seen boats of all sizes Saturday — from 60-foot yachts to eight-foot boats. Mixed with the number of boats headed in the same direction, their various sizes and the choppy water, Mr. Salinas said, accidents were bound to happen.
“You can have really great water one second, and it could get some pretty heavy swells in a matter of minutes,” he said. “Once boats get on a lake, mother nature has its own plans.”
Boaters were set to travel around the lake, which is about 15 miles northwest of Austin, at 10 miles per hour, according to the event’s Facebook page.
Other boat parades to display support for President Trump have taken place this summer.
Friday/ school starts .. sort of
The 2020/21 school year has started here in the Seattle school district, all online. It was a ‘soft start’, so as to allow for connectivity issues to be resolved, and for everyone to get settled in with the technology that will be used.
Thursday/ two months to Nov. 3
There it was, on the radio today: the undecided voter. Some clueless person from Pennsylvania that told the interviewer that neither Trump nor Biden was an appealing option, and that she ‘had not made up her mind’.
So! I thought: you’re telling us that you cannot choose between the blue skies of a sunny day, or the pitch black of a moonless night; between candidates that are polar opposites — one good, and one a destroyer of decency and democracy.
We cannot help you. Don’t bother. Just stay home.
Wednesday/ Table Mountain’s table cloth
Table Mountain (elevation 3,563 ft/ 1 086 m) in Cape Town, South Africa, has an inch of snow on it.
Snow on the mountain is unusual, but not unheard of (there was snow in 2017).
The cable car up to the top has reopened (with masks required & a limited number of passengers).
Tuesday/ here’s September
‘Oh look! another month’
– Tweeted by @Twitter
Mr Squirrel was sitting on my fence this morning, nibbling on a chunk of fruit from my neighbour’s tree.
