San Francisco, California
Another view of the succulent Aeonium “(Blushing Beauty”) which still does not do justice to the way in which these lovely geometric flowerets climb over each other as they grow. This one at the bottom of the stairs is particularly bountiful, spilling out over the bricks and breaking off when the cumulative weight gets too great. These are not the plant’s strange flowers you see here (see days 8 and 39), they are the succulent itself - its crowded, messy, beautiful everyday life.
The picture reminded me this morning of the Chinese restaurant diagram that has been going around the Internet - the circle of tables, each chair labeled as to when its occupant came down with the virus, presumably from sitting so close together. It also brought to my mind descriptions we’ve heard in the past few days of conditions in the West Wing of the White House, where desks are crowded together, face-to-face meetings occur hourly and, until yesterday, folks were discouraged from wearing masks. Even today, the president is mask-less because, an aide told a reporter, he thinks wearing one makes him look weak.
This morning I came upon an article in Bloomberg News about how meatpacking plants hid from their own employees the spread of the virus within their facilities. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-05-07/coronavirus-closes-meat-plants-threatens-food-supply? Workers bringing their own masks from home were told to take them off because it might frighten the rest of the crew. As a result of the crowded conditions and inattention (or worse) of factory bosses, too many workers got sick and died. Then the president declared them essential, of course, so even when the danger came to light, the ones remaining could not go home to protect themselves.
Restaurant patrons, the White House staff, meatpackers - all of them collateral damage in so-called ‘leadership’s’ determination to get businesses back to “normal” before the election season kicks in for real, as if that’s even possible even if everything went ‘right’.
My apologies to the Aoenium for using this lovely photo to make such an ugly point. But as Dr. Anthony Fauci testified this morning to the Senate - more people than necessary will die as a result of opening up too soon without coordinated strategies, clearer guidelines, and (unlike White House staff) better testing capabilities. And death should not be political. Collateral damage, that’s what we are, as the country is probably heading backwards to somewhere near square one. At the very least, reopening prematurely means that I, personally, will have to confine myself to this garden for much longer than I expected. And (I say with surprising equanimity) maybe it means I’ll be here for the rest of my life.