A Secret Walk

It keeps thinking it's rainy season. But didn't rain till eve today. Before that I took Bandita for a walk. We stopped at the baracade of bamboo poles and standing signs for other purposed - Sorry for the delay, there's a ceremony - Slow, roadwork. At the nearby narrow lane leading to the beach - looked longingly down - wall t the Prama Hotel to the left and to the Mercure to the right. Two women rode up on a motorbike. I asked if they knew when it would be open. One of them told me to go on in now. I said it's forbidden. She said it's okay if you have a mask. She got off her motorbike and pulled back a standing sign, gesturing me to go on in. I haven't seen any pecalang guarding it in a while, maybe a week. They followed on their bike. On our way in we we met a guy on a motorbike on his way out. Saw six othre people here and there in the thirty minutes we were there - three working. It was windy. It's been over two weeks. Bare feet in the sand. a nice break.

Beach opens soon?

A pecalang, neighborhood securty and service guy, at an entrance to the beach here in Sanur, said he thought it would open up on June 1st. Dogette Bandita and I sure hope so. She wants to run free and wade into the water and I want to swim. I can swim at a very nice nearby guest house pool anytime I want but I use my afternoon break to take her for a walk and usually don't want to then go to the Kolonial House a good two minutes away to swim. If I do, that's the pool I use cause it's longer than the other one below. It has so little chlorine I can't tell it's there but the other one has salt water which I prefer but it's shorter and it has a canopy over it so it's cooler. I never hang out at a pool or the beach. Swim and go home or stay and work on my laptop. Check out the Kolonial House site. It's hard to stay there when Bali's open because the owner Chris also owns the nearby beautiful Power of Now Yoga place at the beach and it's frequently filled with people going there or doing a teacher training. If you can get a reservation it's about fifty or sixty bucks a night. There are cheaper places.

More Rain

This morning's sunshower was a sprinkling. This afternoon it got dark and I could smell it coming. It rained hard now just steady. Thunder. On the porch. Bandi on the satte next to me. It's almost chilly. Got to turn the overhead fan off. More thunder. Got up to feed the monsters. A drop of Kuci's wet catfood feel to the floor. Bandi was waiting for it like a wetvac. After feeding her, see a drop of juice from the wet catfood has fallen to the counter and already tiny ants are around it. It's theirs. They are tiny wet vacs. They'll have it all cleaned up before dinnertime I assume.

Fixed the link to sunshower in yesterday's post. Here it is.

Rain

It keeps raining here in Bali this May. It's raining a little now. And it's past rainy season. It was a light rainy season - November through March. I can hear it but it's one of those unusual times when it rains when the sun is out. Sunlight and rain. What's the saying? The Devil is fighting with his wife comes to mind - Katrinka says that. I look it up and come to an interesting page on Wikipedia for Sunshower. where I read that often this phenomena is accompanied by a rainbow. And there's a neat list of such sayings in different countries, things that are said when there's a rain, really just a shower just now and I would guess that's the usual.

Boat of Dreams

This is an album from 1986 of songs of mine. Here's a page for it on Hear Now with links to Spotify etc. Just got this. Not sure how much info etc can put here.

Here's a page for it on my music site, Defuser Music dot com with the words and chords and credits.

 All the songs can be heard at both places.

School Textbooks in US on Climate Change embarrasing

How we are preparing and not preparing kids for climate change - Huff Post

Wrapping Trees

This is an Earth Day photo from the Austin Zen Center which I posted about today on Cuke What's New Blog with another view of this scene. I use this particular photo here because it's got that rope with hanging help or cloth doodads hanging from it in the Japanese style as they do with special trees. It's Shinto not Buddhist but who cares - it's a neat thing to do - to honor or attract good spirits, kami.

Trees with material tied around them can be found in many Asian countries, especially SE Asia - I think. It's done a lot here in Bali, mainly with black and white checkered cloth, kain poleng and especially around banon trees. Lets us know it's a holy tree with spirits not to be bothered. Environmentalists trying to save trees have gone ahead of loggers tying trees in holy cloth to ward off the axes and saws.

Factory Farms are our Wet Markets

Bill Maher on the human health consequences of our cruelty to animals

Distracted

Dear nonZense visitor. It's been hard for me to get over here and post something recently because I've been so distracted with these silly podcasts I've gotten involved with.  I mean making them, not listening to them. Working with audio is so time consuming. With print you can have a whole bunch right before your eyes and can search and cut and paste and all sorts of things. With audio, at least with the technology I'm using, it's linear and restricted by time. It's a plod along type thing. There are a number of helpful tools I can use to improve the sound but for the content I've got to listen. I find I can speed it up some - 130% is about as fast as I can deal with - but then I don't hear what it really sounds like. And there's a lot of technical business that must be attended to. So that whole podcast biz on top of the other stuff I've got to deal with has sucked a lot out of me and sucked a lot of time into its vacuum. But I'll swim up to the surface as much as I can to get some nonZense down here. Thank you for your consideration. - dc PS: https://cukeaudio.podbean.com/

Bali now set to open to Tourists in July

From the Seminyak Times

That's prez Joko Widodo, frequently called Jokowi. He's like Indonesia's Obama and sort of looks like him too.

So maybe Katrinka will be back then but maybe a week earlier. Expensive tickets. Ouch. - dc

Nothing

The Fugs great song Nothing came to mind today as that's what's on my mind. How inspiring.

Bali Semi-lockdown

This is a message to staff sent from the founding director of the Lighthouse, a program in Bali to help people with substance abuse problems.

As of today, May 15, the government in Bali has put in place restrictions about traveling in the island. Everyone is to stay in their district or town. If you leave your area for another area, there will be a checkpoint you must go through and you must have something in writing about why you are traveling.  People will be allowed to travel to other areas if it is an emergency (like hospital or doctor’s appointment) or a work meeting. You are also asked to carry a copy of your passport and something with your local address on it – driver’s license, mail you have received or something. This maybe won't be checked if you stay in your own area, but we would rather have you carry these things in case you are stopped and asked for them. If you have nothing with your local address on it, please let me know and I can create a letter for you from the yayasan.

If you need to travel for a work matter, such as a marketing project or outreach activity, please contact me and I can make the appropriate letter for you.

These restrictions are supposed to last until June 14, but please wait for the official announcement from the government about when the restriction is actually lifted before attempting to travel to other districts for anything non-work or emergency related. We will let you know when we get more information.

We're not thinking we've escaped it but glad so far

How Bali Escapted being a virus hotspot - Bloomberg News

New Zealand has a Good Leader

The bubble that 'beat' coronavirus

We Need Percentages in order to compare

Here is a message I sent to Al Jazzeera today. Greetings good people. News media worldwide uses the metric of how many cases each country has in order to compare them. What would be more helpful would be percentages. That the US has the most positives reported and most deaths and surely most excess deaths (to me a more signigicant number) has some meaning of course, but if it were also stated in terms of percentage of the population, it would communicate more.

I live in Bali and have appreciated your articles on Bali, Indonesia, and SE Asia in General. Keep up the good work. Thank you.

A Heyday for Big Time Environmental Vandalism

The Trump Administration Is Reversing Nearly 100 Environmental Rules. Here’s the Full List.
from the NY Times - thanks Gregory

A Tale of Two Olivers

I know two Olivers here in Bali. They're the two veteran expat recyclers. I met one for lunch and he invited me to see their setup at the big landfill. He told me where to wait for him but I wasn't clear where. So I went to the main office for assistance. Someone overheard me and said, "Oh - are you looking for Oliver. I said yes. "He's supposed to show up over there at that shed." OK. Thanks. So I went over there. Pretty soon a guy rode up on a motor scooter. He asked me if I was waiting for Oliver and he said him too so we sat there. Oliver finally showed up like a half hour later than we were supposed to meet. He asked where I'd been and I said I couldn't figure out where to meet him so I went to the office and a guy said you'd be coming right here. "He did?" "He meant me," said the other guy. So that's how I learned his name was Oliver too - almost. It's Olivier. He's French.

Happy Mothers' and Mother's Day!

Read about Anna Jarvis, the woman who created Mother's Day but not Mothers' Day

Mothers' Day was the idea of Anna's mother, Ann Reeves Jarvis. Anna never became a mother and hated and died penniless trying to destroy what she'd created as it became commercial overnight.

Chill out babe.

Critiques of Planet of the Humans

Fact Check and details minute by minute by the people who made it

Wikipedia page for the film

Why “Planet of the Humans” is crap - Here's a harsh one that agrees on a good deal (like that the big biomass biz is bad bad) but says there's so much behind the curve and out of date and so many cheap shots that it ruins what could have been a good film.

3 times Michael Moore’s film Planet of the Humans gets the facts wrong (and 3 times it gets them right)

Planet of the Humans: Reviewing the Film and its Reviews

Scathing Newsweek opinon article: MICHAEL MOORE'S NEW FILM TURNS HEROES INTO VILLAINS AND VILLAINS INTO HEROES

Michael Moore's 'Planet of the Humans' documentary peddles dangerous climate denial - Yale Climate Connections

Inside Climate News - Six things the film gets wrong

We Are Losing The Battle To Stop Climate Change - Real Clear Politics

And there's a lot more including You Tube critiques.

A Parting

In meditation this morning I thought, Okay that's enough. Gotta get moving. Then I experienced it as if I'd just said goodbye to some intimates whom I had been with visiting, as if I got a sense of them as a door closed and knew they understood that duty called and that we'd meet again. Still, we were a little sad. But it was time to go. 

Planet of the Humans

This documentary available on You Tube is not Michael Moore's. He's just backing it. It's completely the work of Jeff Gibbs. It's recieved a lot of criticism for being an attack on the green movement - some of the footage and information is outdated and so forth. So it's flawed and an update those parts would be good, but don't throw out the whole thing which is rather sobering and no surprise really. Big biz cashing in and creating more junk. I agree that the world has too many people who want too much. We don't want to change our lifestyles or reduce population and our solutions are not adequate so we're headed for disaster greater than than all the disasters that are happening. 

Good luck planet earth

Climate change: More than 3bn could live in extreme heat by 2070

Soybeans

From a note written to Bill Shurtleff, founder of the Soy Info Center:

I think I mentioned you in a podcast where I talked for a bit about getting tempe and tofu from organic non GMO soybeans here and Miso made by Japanese expats. I could have told more about the soybeans, how Suharto sabotaged Indonesia's healthy local soybean market by making deals to buy and import the cheaper GMO from the US and Argentina. We shop sometimes at a little good food place called Satvika Bhoga run by a couple born in Jakarta of Pakistani Hindu parents. Really good people - Deepak and Hira. They had an arranged marriage long ago. We've been to their home with a grey water system and mini biofuel maker from compost to cook with. They buy Indonesian organic non GMO soybeans from some mountainous area in Java and will give seeds/beans - not sure what - to anyone who wants to grow it here and guarantees they'll buy the crop.

What explains Bali's low coronavirus cases?

from Al Jazeera

That's the image they use with the article and one can see that sometime but the photo below represents a more every-day scene.

Beach Closed Again

Darn - can't go to the beach now. Chris who owns Power of Now Yoga (pictured) which is on beachfront can get in to go to his place - and feed Angelique, their cow or whatever, says he thinks all the surfers coming over on this side from Cangu is the cause of it, or, maybe he added, it's just something the government can do to show their serious. He also owns the lovely Kolonial House a good three minute walk from home - with two excellent pools, one with salt water and the other with so little chlorine you can't tell it's there. He's got one of his yoga teachers and his girlfriend staying in back, a nice man from India, and Ingred from Java, the manager, is staying there. Usually he's full with yoga students or other guests but not now. So I can swim there anytime. I rarely swim in a pool, the ocean inside the reef is nice swimming and spacious as heck. So we were talking today and he thougtht the Pecalang would get tired of manning the various accesses to the beach and the rules would go back to being reasonable. It really doesn't make sense to the few of us who use it - it's like there will be only a handful of people every hundred yards when it's open. We'll see what happens. It's not so predicable here. 

Push Up Punishment

for not wearing a mask in Sanur - a post on Facebook Sanur Community