... you can write about whatever you want. That doesn't mean I will publish anything you write. There are standards around here. Be interesting. Don't be ugly.
९ ऑगस्ट, २०२१
At the Zinnia Café...
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Our favorite restaurant for years was the zinnia cafe in Webster Groves. It had a garden wall and the best tacos we’ve had, before or since. It lives on in our memories, even though it has been replaced by a pain management clinic.
https://www.stlmag.com/dining/memory-lane-zinnia/
There's a very nice curb side zinnia garden that I like to walk past on West Lawn. I can't tell if it's reseeded very year or if they plant. My zinnias don't appear to re-seed, and I wish they would. Stuff I read online tells me they should re-seed, but my zinnias clearly are not reading that!
Another curious thing happening is with my sunflowers, which all came from the same seed packet, but they're all vastly different heights, and different flower patterns. What has Jung done to me?
Beautiful flowers!
The NYT's Annie Karni is bothered by the backlash to her description of Obama's birthday guests as a "sophisticated, vaccinated crowd." She points out these weren't her own words, she was neutrally reporting the attitudes of some Martha's Vineyard residents, and she urges readers to watch the whole clip. Fair enough.
This is the part that struck me, and I don't see it discussed much:
"They were not required to be vaccinated. But most of this crowd is assumed to be vaccinated. So they are following all CDC precautions."
She seems to find it bizarre that she's being piled on for the implication that we don't have to worry about this event because these are Our People. I don't think I'm distorting too badly if I rephrase as follows: "This is a sophisticated, vaccinated crowd. We don't know they're vaccinated, but we can assume so, because they're sophisticated. So the fears of COVID spread are overblown, some say."
Ms. Karni is apparently unaware that some in her profession (not including her, I feel sure) have been known to launder their own views through "some say."
What stands out at first is the two-dimensional nature of the red flower. What causes this? Then a sense of sorrow due to the lack of symmetry in the missing petal in the south-east corner. Do pollinators (bees, moths, butterflies) favour flowers that conform to a certain standard? If so, I wonder if that standard aligns with our sense of beauty.
Could I bring to your readers’ notice a consequential debate happening at the top of China’s leadership? (Yes, debates do happen there).
A report in our South China Morning Postabout the “Zero Covid” vs “live with the virus” debate.
China’s Leading epidemiologist Zhang Wenhong argues that “most experts around the world believe Covid-19 would not go away soon” and that we must “study how to coexist with the virus” . Former health minister Guo Qiang pushes the Zero Covid Plan (ZCP). And does so with ad hominemcalling it “reckless” to avoid ZCP, though that may be anti-US sentiment speaking.
Zhang, btw, is described as “China’s Fauci” which is damming with faint praise or perhaps praising with faint damn…whatever.
At the very top Xi Jinping favours the ZCP because that’s what seems to have worked early days in Wuhan. Remember people locked into their flats? 13 provinces, 120 million people, locked down? Makeshift hospitals put up in a week? (To cope, by the way, with the fact that China has only one-tenth the ICU beds as the US).
I predict at my peril about Covid, as we’ve all got so many things wrong in this pandemic. Still, I predict that ZCP will fail. At least if China ever plans to re-open its borders. Which maybe it doesn’t. Who knows? It’s self reliant, after all. Especially since the rest of the world decided to “decouple” from it.
I’m on Zhang’s side in this debate. So are senior scientists in Hong Kong, like Dr Joseph Tsang, chairman of the HKMA. If it’s ZCP, he says “there’s no end in sight” for getting back to normal.
I used to pop over to China several times a year from my eyrie here in Hong Kong, done so for decades. And now not for two years and who knows when.
The article is here: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3144374/china-warned-against-following-doctors-orders-live-covid-19
China may have "decoupled" from the world in various ways but the volume of Chinese trade with the rest of the world is still gigantic.
Like the flu and common cold, Covid is never going away. Passing up opportunities to build immunity will increase hospitalizations, long term damage and death. Eventually everyone will get it. The question becomes "do you feel lucky". This is our new normal, get used to it.
Ann I am sending a link to a column in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, by a guy named Bill McClellan, because for decades he has waged a very tongue-in-cheek campaign urging men to wear shorts in our very hot summers.
I am also sending this because McClellan is a pretty good writer who I think deserves to be more widely known. He is our local Bob Greene. He writes mostly about St. Louis and St. Louisans, but he is often insightful and helps us make sense of our very, very complicated city.
Hope you enjoy.
AvoCat
https://www.stltoday.com/news/subscriber/mcclellan-it-s-summer-in-st-louis-don-your-shorts/article_dc628633-b6fd-5eb5-a15c-9bdf05636eaf.html
I thought the long cold winter had killed our single Gardenia bush--it was dormant and dead-looking even after everything else had bloomed out well. It was misshapen anyway so I whacked off a lot of branches as a first step to removal.
A week later there were tiny green leaves in and on various crannies and knobs, and now, months later, it has big bright green leaves all over. I don't know anything about their flowering except that we missed it this spring.
Also, what Howard said.
Howard said...
"Like the flu and common cold, Covid is never going away. Passing up opportunities to build immunity will increase hospitalizations, long term damage and death. Eventually everyone will get it. The question becomes "do you feel lucky". This is our new normal, get used to it."
Our county is supposed to be at level Orange, meaning we should be wearing masks in public, etc. I've noticed that not many are heeding this advice. The attitude appears to be "f--- it, we're not going through this again." I'm vaccinated, and I've noticed I have the same attitude though I will take precautions around those more vulnerable, such as the elderly.
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