Reunion with some hiking friends – Possible developments for keeping a hiking club intact – The Presidential rally – Travel in Spain – Ghana invites black Americans to relocate – Evening statistics
AD, my friend from the Wanderbirds, invited several members of the group to accompany her in hiking the American Chestnut Land Trust (ACLT) today. She lives quite close to this delightful regional park and since she is currently aiding her husband, who is convalescing from chemo and radiation treatments for cancer, she has only a limited amount of time at her disposal. I met her, along with a few other friends from the group, and we went along the North-South Trail to Parkers Creek, which we crossed by using a raft that we pulled from one bank to the other by means of an overhead cable. Despite the overcast skies I observed at the beginning of the drive to the park, it turned out to be a splendid day, clear and not overly hot, with many fresh breezes and plenty of shade to mitigate the humidity. AD eventually had to turn back because she could be away from her home for only three hours, but I and two others continued to hike for a while, and we ended up by completing about 11 miles. The ACLT is close to the Chesapeake Bay, but it is much hillier than one might imagine, and we probably climbed about 1500 feet cumulatively. We saw three box turtles, including one whose black markings emphasized the brilliant yellow of its carapace. Frogs were chorusing in the streams and marshy areas bordering the trails.
AD is a member of the Wanderbirds’ Board of Directors, and she and I discussed the future of the club while we were hiking together. Transporting a group of forty or fifty people in a bus is not likely to occur for some time to come – possibly only after a year from now. At this point even carpooling remains inadvisable. For the present the club will continue to operate rather in the style of the hike we did today. A member who is familiar with a certain area will invite a group of other members to meet at the trailhead and hike together, but such groups will remain small and will consist of people about whose state of health the organizer feels comfortable.
We completed the hike in about four hours and the drive back home was little over an hour, so I arrived at about 4:00. The grass, which had still been wet in the morning as a result of the recent rains, had dried out by then and I was able to mow the lawn without any of the difficulties I would have encountered if I had attempted it yesterday.
It was thus not a particularly action-packed day for me (although seeing several old friends again after a three-month hiatus was certainly enjoyable) but it appears that others have spent their time in a manner less eventful than anticipated. For example:
“We’re going to be in Oklahoma. And it’s a crowd like, I guess, nobody’s seen before. We have tremendous, tremendous requests for tickets like, I think, probably has never happened politically before.” The presidential rally, which began with such high expectations, appears to have been a gigantic fizzle. The news yesterday morning did not focus on the rally attendees but rather on the dismissal of Geoffrey Berman, a prominent prosecutor from the Manhattan U. S. Attorney’s Office. Attorney General William Barr told Berman to resign after the latter had prosecuted one of Trump’s lawyers, investigated another, and even probed the activities of the President himself. Berman made it clear that he would not go quietly, which led to Barr firing him; and thus Berman’s dismissal, which was expected to create little fanfare, received more media attention than the rally itself. Mike Pence’s presence was delayed, since his flight was caught in thunderstorms that rolled over Andrews Air Force Base. In a further blow to his swiftly dwindling composure (never very firmly in place to begin with), six of Trump’s staffers committed the gross solecism of testing positive for the virus; and, what was even still worse, failing to conceal the fact from the press. The crowds Trump had predicted did not materialize. The overflow area, which was supposed to accommodate thousands of people and which contained a stage to enable Trump and Pence to make speeches, was nearly vacant. Only about 6,200 supporters were attending the event in the Bank of Oklahoma Center (BOK), which has a seating capacity for 19,000 people. For some inexplicable reason, the prospect of listening to the President bestowing praises upon himself and abuse upon everyone else, in the midst of torrential thunderstorms and 95-degree heat, did not appear to be as alluring as he could have wished.
Spain has lifted various restrictions. For the first time since mid-March, its inhabitants can travel freely and visitors from the U.K. and 26 European countries can enter without having to undergo a two-week quarantine. Tourism accounts for about 12% of Spain’s GNP, so it is understandable that the Spanish government wants to restore it quickly. Nonetheless Pedro Sanchez, the Prime Minister, said that hygiene controls must be maintained to prevent a second wave of the virus from occurring.
Ghana has issued messages encouraging to black Americans to settle in their nation – which is a bit curious, for when several freedmen in the 19th century emigrated to West Africa (specifically, to Liberia), they were rather resented than otherwise. Nonetheless, over the past several decades the government since the days of Kwame Nkrumah (the first president of Ghana when it became independent) has promoted “pan-Africanism” and has indicated that black Americans settling in would be welcomed. These messages have increased in frequency since the death of George Floyd. I’m in two minds about this. In general I’m suspicious of the claims of pan-Africanism. Africa contains over 3,000 different tribal cultures, with widely differing traditions and beliefs. The only African union that seems to me at all practical is something on the lines of the European Union: a political convenience, used to facilitate trade and travel without making the slightest pretense that the nations it contains are not very disparate entities. Frederick Douglass, the great abolitionist orator and author of one of the finest auto-biographies in any age or language, for a time considered the possibility of relocation to West Africa, both for himself and his fellow freedmen, but in the end he emphatically rejected that option: “We live here – have lived here – have a right to live here, and mean to live here.” I am Jewish and, like many Jewish Americans, I have not the slightest inclination to move to Israel; and I imagine that most black Americans feel the same way about the western part of Africa.
Still, Ghana is fairly safe and has a growing economy; and if any black American feels that he or she would live more comfortably there I cannot honestly argue against it. I can only hope that not many choose this alternative. It would be a great national humiliation if it proves that the attempt to assimilate the descendants of former slaves, which began over a century and a half ago, has failed.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM — # of cases worldwide: 9,037,950; # of deaths worldwide: 469,603; # of cases U.S.: 2,355,799; # of deaths U.S.: 122,246. The worldwide case count is now over nine million; it has taken only a week for it to increase by over one million. Chile and Peru have some of the highest case counts in the world; both have surpassed the case count of Italy, although their populations are considerably lower. Brazil’s official death toll from the virus is now over 50,000 and may well be much higher.