Flying ant day
Today the air was full of flying ants. ThingTwo and I found the source and watched as strange white ants pushed the winged ants out of holes in the ground to start their 'nuptial flight' to build a new colony.
Many didn't get far - the surface of the pool was covered in drowning winged-ants. A disconcerting reminder of expendability and decimation in nature.
A strange phenomenon is taking place - while on the one hand we as a family are settling into this new existence and finding the days are getting calmer, more routine, the news from the outside world gets more grim by the day. While we try to minimize any chance of getting infected, I can see complacency setting in. Are we perhaps not washing hands as much as we were a week ago? Touching our faces more? We ordered food in last night, something we'd decided not to do. But I guess we are sticking to the main principle - we haven't been within six feet (2m) of anyone outside the family for two weeks. Quiet incredible really.
But still, the low hum of menace is there all the time. As we walk around the neighborhood we see piles of Amazon boxes and groceries on porches. Mr Husband says, "If things get really bad and people get desperate, neighbourhoods like ours will be targeted." I hadn't really thought about the Mad Max-esque scenarios that could develop, but there has been an ominous shift in the latest round of corporate COVID-19 emails in my inbox. I am starting to get emails from our banks saying things like 'Your money is safe with us' - slightly more alarming than not hearing from them at all! I remember on the morning of 9/11 talking with a friend whose reaction to the shocking events was to plan to take all his money out of banks and investments and leave America. I don't know if he ever did become an under-the-mattress kind of guy. If he did, he wouldn't be alone. A 2017 poll found that 25% of Americans don't have a bank account (unbanked) or are underbanked (have an account but also rely other systems such as payday loans).
Lots of people talked about moving to Canada at various points when we lived in the US in the early '00s - when Bush II got elected President in 2000, after 9/11/2001, and when Schwarzenegger became Governor of California in 2003. All our friends stayed put but we eventually did move to Canada two years after 9/11. Canada has been the destination for political emigration of Americans for centuries. During the American Revolution 15-25% of the population (300,000-500,000 people) who remained loyal the British retreated to Canada. During the Vietnam War 50,000-100,000 people fled north to avoid the draft - this was a tiny percentage of the entire US population at that time but still was the largest politically-motivated mass emigration in the US since the revolution. On the day of Trump's victory in 2016 google searches for 'how to move to Canada' surged by 350% in just over four hours!
For some, the urge to try and flee COVID-19 is either irresistable or necessary. In New York the wealthy are flouting the stay home order and leaving the city for their second homes, but facing the wrath of locals who don't want them or their germs. Same is happening in Devon in the UK. In India the opposite end of the economic scale is on the move. An estimated 100 million migrant workers have lost their jobs in the cities and are trekking home to their villages, some walking hundreds of kilometres. The news is full of images from India of huge masses of people crowded together on the roads, the antithesis of the other images haunting the Internet: the apocalyptic empty streets of the world's capitals.
I definitely don't feel any realistic urge to flee, but then things haven't got really bad here yet. Where would we flee to anyway? Is there anywhere left to go to that either doesn't have the virus or doesn't fear you bringing the virus? Maybe this is why the Silicon Valley gazillionaires like Musk and Bezos are obsessed with space, with colonizing Mars and the Moon - forget second homes in the Hamptons, the ultimate accessory in the future will be a cozy hideaway on the Red Planet.
Come the next Pandemic the chosen few will grow wings and take to the skies to build a new Silly Valley in the stars.
Many didn't get far - the surface of the pool was covered in drowning winged-ants. A disconcerting reminder of expendability and decimation in nature.
A strange phenomenon is taking place - while on the one hand we as a family are settling into this new existence and finding the days are getting calmer, more routine, the news from the outside world gets more grim by the day. While we try to minimize any chance of getting infected, I can see complacency setting in. Are we perhaps not washing hands as much as we were a week ago? Touching our faces more? We ordered food in last night, something we'd decided not to do. But I guess we are sticking to the main principle - we haven't been within six feet (2m) of anyone outside the family for two weeks. Quiet incredible really.
But still, the low hum of menace is there all the time. As we walk around the neighborhood we see piles of Amazon boxes and groceries on porches. Mr Husband says, "If things get really bad and people get desperate, neighbourhoods like ours will be targeted." I hadn't really thought about the Mad Max-esque scenarios that could develop, but there has been an ominous shift in the latest round of corporate COVID-19 emails in my inbox. I am starting to get emails from our banks saying things like 'Your money is safe with us' - slightly more alarming than not hearing from them at all! I remember on the morning of 9/11 talking with a friend whose reaction to the shocking events was to plan to take all his money out of banks and investments and leave America. I don't know if he ever did become an under-the-mattress kind of guy. If he did, he wouldn't be alone. A 2017 poll found that 25% of Americans don't have a bank account (unbanked) or are underbanked (have an account but also rely other systems such as payday loans).
Lots of people talked about moving to Canada at various points when we lived in the US in the early '00s - when Bush II got elected President in 2000, after 9/11/2001, and when Schwarzenegger became Governor of California in 2003. All our friends stayed put but we eventually did move to Canada two years after 9/11. Canada has been the destination for political emigration of Americans for centuries. During the American Revolution 15-25% of the population (300,000-500,000 people) who remained loyal the British retreated to Canada. During the Vietnam War 50,000-100,000 people fled north to avoid the draft - this was a tiny percentage of the entire US population at that time but still was the largest politically-motivated mass emigration in the US since the revolution. On the day of Trump's victory in 2016 google searches for 'how to move to Canada' surged by 350% in just over four hours!
For some, the urge to try and flee COVID-19 is either irresistable or necessary. In New York the wealthy are flouting the stay home order and leaving the city for their second homes, but facing the wrath of locals who don't want them or their germs. Same is happening in Devon in the UK. In India the opposite end of the economic scale is on the move. An estimated 100 million migrant workers have lost their jobs in the cities and are trekking home to their villages, some walking hundreds of kilometres. The news is full of images from India of huge masses of people crowded together on the roads, the antithesis of the other images haunting the Internet: the apocalyptic empty streets of the world's capitals.
I definitely don't feel any realistic urge to flee, but then things haven't got really bad here yet. Where would we flee to anyway? Is there anywhere left to go to that either doesn't have the virus or doesn't fear you bringing the virus? Maybe this is why the Silicon Valley gazillionaires like Musk and Bezos are obsessed with space, with colonizing Mars and the Moon - forget second homes in the Hamptons, the ultimate accessory in the future will be a cozy hideaway on the Red Planet.
Come the next Pandemic the chosen few will grow wings and take to the skies to build a new Silly Valley in the stars.
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