Third Wave of Covid-19

We are living under new Covid restrictions here.  Movie theaters are now closed, as are pubs, etc.  It’s not a complete lockdown yet, but the opening hours of supermarkets and convenience stores are shortened.  Take-out only at restaurants.  Masks mandated in public.  

The First Wave of Covid-19 here was in the spring of 2020, followed by a lull in its spread.  In the entire year of 2020, Thailand only had 61 Covid deaths, and sometimes no deaths at all for a couple of months. 

The Second Wave started in December 2020 before leveling off a bit by February 2021.  The main centers of this outbreak were a Burmese migrant worker ghetto and an illegal Thai gambling den. 

The present Third Wave seems to have spread, in early April, from a couple of Bangkok nightlife clubs that may not have been following strict pandemic protocols – and the rumor is that some of the owners are in big trouble.  This is a much more serious wave of the virus, and it has spread widely throughout the country. 

Whereas 2020 closed out at New Year with 61 total Covid deaths, as of today our total pandemic death toll is 276, heading fast for 300. 

(To keep some perspective, Thailand’s population is about the size of the UK, whose Covid death toll is way over 100,000.) 

Covid vaccinations here are in a slow roll-out, with frontline heath workers prioritized.  Local production of the top vaccines should be available by June and July, with other vaccines soon to be approved.  News is that Expats like me who are over 60 will get free vaccinations – although I don’t know the timeline; I will ask my doctor when I see him for a routine checkup in June. 

Tuk is working remotely from home and only rarely goes to the office.  She does Zoom conferences with her boss and management team.  (Our cat, Pinkie, has to be confined to another room during these events, since she obsessively wants to be a Zoom star and must be kept away from the camera and microphone.) 

I only go out to buy stuff every two days or so at local convenience stores, and maybe once a week to a big supermarket via taxi, for things I cannot get here.  I miss the cinemas, my meet-ups with libertarian friends, and live music at The Rock Pub – but as a life-long hermit, I can always muster the inner resources to be amused and maintain peace. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Beltane

 

Beltane, the Eve of May, is when green life begins its return in the northern temperate zones – and how I miss it!  Six months in opposite, Samhain, aka Halloween, is when vegetation dies and when one must feed cattle from stored-up fodder for the following six months. 

Beltane is the Celtic “beginning of summer”, when cattle were driven out of their winter barns to the greening pastures.  After six months locked in winter stanchions, my father would let the cows out in the first week or two of May, when the grass was a-growin’ again.  The cows would buck and jump and run with wild excitement, and they would gorge themselves on new green grass.  Father’s favorite months of the year were always May and June. 

This holiday is also called Walpurgis Night in northern Europe.  One can consider it the Springtime Halloween.  Witches’ revel on that night, as in Goethe’s classic Faust as well as in certain Dracula stories. 

(Also, it is Camerone Day.  Vive La Legion!) 

-Zenwind. 

.

Jefferson Day!

 

Happy Birthday, Tom Jefferson.  To me, you are the epitome of the American thinker, the American libertarian radical.  Wish I could have met you. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Songkran, Early Rains, & Covid Third Wave

 

Songkran, the traditional Thai New Year, is tomorrow and the next few days, although it is a week-long holiday here.  Hottest time of the year, when throwing water is customary, yet with a huge Third Wave of Covid infections now raging in Thailand (especially in greater Bangkok) these celebrations will be canceled – just as they were last year.  Multitudes of Thai people are traveling out of the city to their ancestral provinces for the week-long holiday to reunite with family, and the Covid nightmare is only likely to spread and get worse. 

Bars and pubs in most provinces are now closed again for at least two weeks, although the cinemas are still open for now.  We hunker down.  And endure the heat. 

This year, the Rainy Season was predicted to come extra early and to be more intense than normal.  (It might be a La Nina thing.)  We certainly have been getting much more rain, much earlier than is customary, and I do appreciate the clouds that block the hellish sun.  The rain and accompanying wind are cool refreshment (although the humidity and oppressive heat always follow as soon as the storms pass by).  The government has instructed the relevant agencies to prepare for an extra heavy Rainy Season and thus take actions to avoid disastrous flooding (such as we had in 2011), but I somehow doubt that salaried government bureaucrats, with safe, appointed political jobs, will do anything that requires independent thought and initiative.  Sorry, but I’m a cynic. 

Tomorrow, I will celebrate Mr. Jefferson’s birthday.  Truest of American heroes. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Breaking in New Sandals

 

This is an annual ordeal.  Every single year, I have to buy and break in a new pair of shoes – actually, sport sandals – since I wear them out and wear them down in this heat.  My feet are extremely sensitive to abrasion, and always have been.  And I do not wear socks in this climate, so my feet get ripped up when breaking in a new pair.  I always carry a roll of athletic tape in my backpack to patch up wounds on my feet while on the march. 

I always go with sandals from The North Face, a great company, and until this year they had one model that I bought for three straight years, which broke in more easily since the contact points with my feet were identical.  Well, they discontinued this model, and I had to pick a new one.  It is wonderfully cushioned and soft on the footbed, but the ankle and toe straps are different, thus harsh. 

For many years, I had made the mistake of trying to break in new sandals in the Hot Season – not good.  Then I wised up and started breaking them in during the Cool Season.  But, in recent years, our Cool Season has experienced the bane of toxic PM2.5 air pollution, which makes marching hazardous and less regular. 

My sandals wear down from hard use, but also from my sweat in this humidity.  By the time one year of use comes round at the Hot Season, they smell.  And when the Rainy Season hits us in around June, and I stomp through tropical puddles, their wet smell is intolerable and cannot be disguised.  So, I have to semi-retire them annually. 

Slowly, painfully, I’m breaking in the new pair for short jaunts, while still wearing the old for long hard marches.  This is a cycle I’ve come to live with.  But I always carry a roll of tape. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Seasons

The Cool Season is over, and heat and humidity are again our normal condition every day and night.  Sweat city.  The toxic PM2.5 air pollution is still a problem, yet we are occasionally getting windy weather that thins it out a bit.  We still wear face masks for pandemic hygiene, but I am more concerned about the dirty PM2.5 air so I always wear a tight-fitting N95 mask when out and about. 

We are definitely into the beginnings of our Hot Season (until the Rainy Season gives us brief moments of respite starting, maybe, in June or July).  After all these years living here (and a year in Vietnam half a century ago), I still cannot comprehend how hot the tropics are.  It is a shock to this body, whose ancestral origins came from northern Europe. 

Today we had some rumblings of thunder and dark clouds – a bit unusual for March – so I took an umbrella with me on my neighborhood errands (e.g., to the pet store, etc.).  As I stepped outside, I had a classic memory of my father:  there was a unique coolness and scent upon the breeze, reminding me of my youth when he used to say, “It feels like it has rained somewhere!”  Indeed, it had rained somewhere, but we didn’t get any of it except for just the hint in the brief cool breeze. 

By the time I was lugging pet supplies and groceries back home, the sun was out again and “coolness” was a concept deleted from consciousness.  I arrived back home completely soaked, head to toe, in sweat. 

The pubs have just been reopened again, so I may venture into the city soon to visit my friends at The Rock Pub.  Movie selections are still thin, but I have some explorations in mind in the city, as there are food markets I want to check out for specific healthy selections.  Public transit is better than ever now, so it is much more comfortable to travel than it was five years ago. 

My physical strength has declined – and this really alarms me since I’ve always strived to be fit – and I blame most of this on my enforced physical inactivity in the last few years due to the PM2.5 pollution.  And, of course, part of it may be that I am getting older! 

(How did that ancient Indian sage explain it?  “Dukkha”, i.e., the impermanence of life and the entire suite of disappointments connected with comprehending that reality.  Accepting that reality was the first task; letting go of negative reactions to these facts of life was the important second task; then there is the experiencing of this blissful release; and finally, cultivating the optimal ethical path going forward.) 

I think it was the Rolling Stones who sang, “What a drag it is getting old.”  But – besides the physical limitations – I still feel incredibly young at heart. 

-Zenwind. 

.

February, late post

 

I am way behind on posting here, as I had always promised to post at least monthly, yet I didn’t post at all in January.  I do apologize.  But not much has been happening here to report on. 

We are doing well here.  The Cool Season had many more “cold” days than is usual in January, and that made taking a shower a brutal experience – since we have never had a hot water heater in our house.  The relatively colder water, plus the cool north wind blowing through my outdoor shower, made for a shocking and eye-opening wakeup. 

Movie selections in the cinemas are thin, and pubs (such as my home-away-from-home Rock Pub) are still closed.  So, there is not much reason for venturing far and away except to markets for specialized food items. 

The toxic PM2.5 air pollution has stopped me from long neighborhood walks.  We wear masks for Covid, but more for the air pollution.  Again, it is farmers burning rice stubble and cane that cause this pollution (with no wind to disperse the particulate matter), and the government won’t do anything because like all politicians they are whores to populist votes - with no concern for the rights of others to be free from the dirty drifting of toxins into their private spaces.  

I haven’t been using my laptop much, because sitting at it causes great discomfort.  Sitting + typing = Fibromyalgia pain.  I have pain in my hips when sitting too long, and then I’m awake with pain all night. 

It is much more comfortable to read all online content on my tablet, when I can sit, recline, stand, walk around, or lie back in bed – and I do read, obsessively.   My physical comfort prescribes tablet use – yet it is not easy to type on a tablet, thus my silences. 

I have many, many writings in draft – personal correspondence to family and friends, movie and book reviews, and philosophical rants.  Stay tuned, for I may someday publish them. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Happy New Year, with caveats

 

Happy New Year!  (To anyone who possibly might ever access this obscure monthly blog.) 

2020 was a crazy year in so many ways, but maybe we can, eventually, recover from it – because humanity has proven remarkably resilient through time, with the West surviving the profoundly stupid and irrational medieval Dark Ages that followed the collapse of ancient Classical Civilization and then reigniting and carrying the torch of Reason and Liberty through to our own times.  Human history, in overall sum, is a magnificent success story.  As a cynical optimist, I do see light ahead. 

I probably won’t see, within my own lifetime, radical Individual Freedom, and the strict limitation of any coercive power by governments, restored to the levels that America’s Founders (mostly) intended, but I am confident that later generations will discover it again.  Young people are always the shining hope.  History, for all its many disappointing regressions, implies that rationality often can gain the upper hand against ignorant superstition, emotional impulses toward surrender to tyrannical statist controls, and against the idea that some of us have the (fatal) conceit that we can dictate what others can do, peacefully, with our lives, liberty, pursuits of happiness, and with our justly acquired property. 

And America has regressed, egregiously.  For over a century and a half, civil and economic liberties have been violated by populist-demanded government decree. 

(Socialism, whether strict Marxist or of the “democratic” flavor, is not the main threat, since pure economic socialism demonstrably impoverishes all the citizenry except for the government elite.  E.g., think, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, the former USSR, Africa, etc.  It is economic idiocy and always crashes.  “Social ownership” of the means of production – outside of small cooperative ownership arrangements by consenting individuals within a free enterprise environment – almost always means government ownership.  And government control of the economic “means of production” has never worked.  But letting free individuals make their own economic decisions, under a rule of law, encourages cooperation, innovation, and such increased productivity that it raises the masses out of crushing poverty, and Marx even admitted this in The Communist Manifesto.  This is what history demonstrates.  “Counter examples” such as Sweden, are not valid, since Sweden realized their mistake, reversed course, and abandoned socialism; Sweden is now a predominately Free Market economy, albeit with heavy welfare-state tax burdens; they allow individuals to own the means of production and to freely trade with one another.) 

America’s regression from free market individualism for the last century has not been “socialism” per se.  It is a sub-species of socialism more accurately called “Fascism”.  (And I see Fascism, in its essence, as both a right-wing and left-wing ideology.)  Mussolini, a renowned Marxist in his youth, saw the failures of pure socialism (and its sub-species, Communism in Russia).  He saw that “social ownership” fails.  He drew upon his reading of the one hugely successful economy, that of the USA.  He studied the American Pragmatist philosophers, who said to disregard theoretical principles and just go with “what works”.  He saw that American capitalism worked, creating vast economic improvement for the entire society, especially including the working classes.  He also read and admired the American “Progressive” intellectuals and their (regressive) advocacy of greater government control over the stupid masses. 

(Interlude:  Why do I say that the American Progressive movement of a century ago was actually a “regressive” movement?  Woodrow Wilson had complete contempt for the US Constitution’s limitations on government power.  His, and other Progressives’, racism was evident, e.g., in America but also on their despising and blocking foreign immigrants.  Eugenics, coercively controlling individuals’ reproduction because they didn’t like their cultural presence.  War lust – leading Wilsonian Progressive Herbert Croly, in The New Republic (1917) urged the entry into the insane meatgrinder of WWI, because, “America needs the tonic of a serious moral adventure.” WTF?   Prohibition of alcohol – and the start of the War on Drugs, an outrageous act of puritan nanny state hubris that still unjustly criminalizes millions of Americans for peaceful, free enterprise individualistic activity.  The Income Tax, which countless Supreme Court decisions earlier had seen as unconstitutional; yet the Progressives got an Amendment passed.  The major sin of the Progressives was that they were elitists who thought they had both the wisdom and the right to legislate over the rest of us common folk and make us fall into line because it was for “our own good”, whether we knew it or not.  The obscene hubris of those who crave government powers.  The Progressives’ program of the seizure of immense government coercive power was actually raw Fascism, even as Mussolini was codifying it with a name.  Mussolini, before war broke out between the US and Italy, publicly admired FDR’s New Deal programs, writing that Roosevelt was “a good social-fascist.”) 

Re:  Is it socialism or is it fascism?  Before WW2, when Hitler had gained complete control of Germany, a European socialist journalist interviewed Hitler.  He asked (and I paraphrase): “You call yourselves National Socialists [NAZI], yet you have not socialized/ nationalized private property or industries under government control (social ownership).  How can you still call yourselves socialist?”  Hitler replied: “We don’t need to nationalize/ socialize private property under social ownership.  We have nationalized-socialized the people, therefore control of their property just follows naturally.”  Fascism is just a more “practical” species of socialism that allows its serfs to produce more by their pretended ownership and free agency, while the governing elite still expropriates their product. 

Thus, the relative economic successes of socialist regimes who have gone over to Mussolini’s model of social-fascism:  e.g., the People’s Republic of China, whose “social ownership” ideal of Marxian socialism still maintains their grotesque one-party dictatorship grip on everyone, while at the same time being “pragmatic” by learning from Hong Kong’s spectacular economic success when being by far the most free-enterprise economy in the world for a brief time.  Red China allows people to (nominally) own, to hugely produce and to profit (to a degree), and their economy has ballooned spectacularly.  But not so much their civil liberties, since they are still under the socialist “social ownership” principle.  Individuals there do not own themselves.  The government is the ultimate social owner. 

.

In other news:  Thailand has recently suffered a significant Second Wave of Covid infections, after many months of remarkably holding the line on increases.  A nation with a population size comparable to the UK, we have only had 61 Covid deaths this entire year, and our hospitals are never overly busy.  We wear masks and follow medical advice.  The most recent Covid death was the first here in two months. 

This Second Wave has mainly been from people coming into Thailand.  When they come legally, they are put into a two-week quarantine with testing before being let loose.  But many others sneak across borders.  Legal migrant workers are often crammed together in unsanitary lodgings.  The two biggest centers of infection this month were among Burmese migrant workers in a seafood processing center and other Thais in an illegal gambling den. 

The virus has spread quickly, and we are expecting the government to have drastic restrictions return on any group activities, as they did last spring.  Time to stock up on necessities and hunker down.  Dukkha – the shit just keeps raining down – such is life. 

Happy New Year to all, nonetheless. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Wearing Down, Yet Looking Up

 

Everything in this world tends to wear out over time.  Being finite is the rule.  Indeed, the Earth itself is in an inexorable trend to wear out – or at least to “wear down”, as the science of geology makes clear, that discipline of Deep Time.  Erosion ages the mountain ranges and washes them to the sea. 

My own physical strength, for one, has been slowly wearing out and eroding – as I’m sure yours has been (or one day will, for you relatively youngsters).  It’s the Sisyphus task, that endless uphill battle. 

Exercise helps delay the physical decay, but for many of us who are aging we tend to focus much more of our time on intellectual concerns – rigorous personal philosophical-ethical audits, checking our premises, and honest summings-up of a long eventful lifetime, with a view to learn from our vast repertoire of experiences and mistakes, and thus apply our reason to best enjoy whatever life span remains to us. 

Like the prayer of Moses in Psalm 90:  “Teach us to number our days, so that we may get a heart of wisdom.” 

My eyesight is changing quite radically, deteriorating.  Part of it is a developing cataract in one eye, but the rest of it is most likely the process of aging.  I have worn eyeglasses for distant vision since childhood.  When I was about 48 years old, I needed bifocal glasses for close-vision reading.  Now, at 70, I cannot read or focus on anything close with my bifocals, and this is probably another age-related change.  It is hard to see distance, too, so I could probably never get a driver’s license again unless a major correction. 

Yet – Looking up:

In recent days I took advantage of a rare day of low toxic air pollution (PM2.5) in the area and did a very long march hauling groceries, exercise I needed.  Today, I resumed my lifting routine with my dumbbells.  When I pace myself carefully ("numbering my days"), I can avoid injuries and build up strength (and perhaps get a “heart of wisdom” in the bargain).  Ain’t giving up. 

I am a hermit, and I relish the quiet peaceful time I still get to read and think.  As a secular Buddhist, the First Discourse’s Four Tasks are about all I need for the simple practice of serenity.  The life of the mind. 

I have a wonderful wife, who somehow puts up with my eccentric ways.  I have a close extended family in America, as well as friends and former students there, that I still correspond with.  I have great expat friends here.  I think I am as blessed and contented as Epicurus was, retired in his Garden in ancient Athens. 

A lifetime of learning – and of hard lessons – and many great and wonderful experiences.  Great memories, such as my climbing adventures (which I still often relive in dreams at night, e.g., cresting a summit ridge), past lovers, books read, intellectual comrades, and all the many interesting folks I’ve crossed paths with.  Great past; great present; great future. 

I am looking forward to many more decades of such an incredible life, even as Time is intent on wearing me down. 

-Zenwind. 

.

Yule-Midwinter Solstice Trek

 

Today was about as cool and comfortable as it ever gets here in the Central Plains.  The sun is warm but the wind is cool in the shade.  Low dewpoint and dawn temp in the 60s*F.  Like a fine summer day in Sugar Grove.  The air quality index (for PM-2.5 pollution) was the lowest in weeks.  All this signaled a chance to take a long walk in the neighborhood (with an N95 mask). 

I woke up at around 03:00 feeling cold.  I turned off the fan, but my bare feet were still cold, so I put a light blanket over my feet and legs – something I haven’t done in years. 

The most dreaded task of the morning was my shower.  Our house has never had hot water, so our water is whatever temp the environment is.  That is never much of a problem, usually.  Today, it was incredibly cold, by our standards.  Our veranda shower is outdoors, so that the cool morning wind really increased the effect of the cold water. 

Once I was bathed and stopped shivering, I ventured out on errands.  One, buy cat litter.  Two, get needed things at the pharmacy.  In all, it added up to quite a long bit of marching, more exercise than I had done in a long time because of the usual toxic PM-2.5 smog.  At first, I felt weak while walking, which was alarming and did not enhance my Zen.  But after a few kilometers, I got into my usual stride and really stepped out, feeling good. 

A curious thing about this midwinter solstice time of year:  the sun is at an odd angle I am usually not used to.  It produces a strong glare, even with sunglasses on.  Wearing a hat with a large brim, along with sunglasses, helps. 

The minutes and hours of daylight will now start increasing.  Rebirth of the Sun.  Happy Yuletide to all. 

-Zenwind. 

.