Today is Election Day in the United States. I had been thinking I could be sort of normal – write a blog post, go about my day, etc. My vote has already been cast, after all. I’m a hemisphere away from America and there’s nothing more I can do. Plus it’s probably going to be a few days before we even know the outcome, and fretting seems fruitless.
But now that we’re finally here – November 3rd, 2020, the day we’ve been breathlessly counting down to for four, interminably long years – I’m a tangled ball of nerves and the thought of thinking or behaving normally seems preposterous.
Before I descend into madness, most likely for the rest of the week, I want to share this picture I took over the weekend of a beautiful tree at Westdene Dam.
Westdene Dam is a small dam (lake) surrounded by a public park in Westdene, the next suburb over from Melville. Amazingly I had never been to this park until last Saturday, when I went there for a braai celebrating the Melville Food Program volunteers.
I think Westdene Dam flies under the radar because it’s a small park, and also because everyone seems to associate it with a tragic bus accident that happened there in the 1980s. When I googled the Westdene Dam, stories about the accident were almost all I could find.
It’s a beautiful park though – peaceful and well maintained, with a lovely playground, exercise equipment, and many beautiful trees. I couldn’t stop staring at the pepper tree.
During the braai I also did a quick, silly photoshoot with Tanya and Sean, who organized the Melville Food Program and provided support to so many Melville-area residents during the covid-19 lockdown.
If you’d like to know more about pepper trees, read this lovely article by Kathy Munro in the Heritage Portal. If you’d like to learn more about Westdene Dam (something other than the sad accident story), read this informative post in the Lagos to Jozi blog.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief U.S. Election Day distraction. I’ll go back to panicking now.
How have I never blogged about 44 Stanley Avenue, the coolest shopping and dining complex in Joburg, which is only five minutes from my house?
I guess it’s wrong to say I’ve never blogged about 44 Stanley; I’ve mentioned it countless times over the years (see here and here) when writing about specific restaurants or shops that are there. But I’ve never written a dedicated post about 44 Stanley as a destination and it’s about time I did – especially now, with the holidays upon us.
I’ve been dreadfully uninspired lately, struggling to think of anything I want to blog about despite having a long list of great ideas (many of which you, my readers, provided in September). I’m finding it hard to feel positive about life at the moment. But on Saturday Thorsten and I got the chance to visit Indwe Park, an indigenous garden and sculpture park in Braamfontein, and I knew I had my topic for today.
Given this week’s political nuclear bomb blast, it feels like a weird time to publish a light-hearted post about my recent (pre-election) jaunt through the United States. But I’m hoping you’ve have had enough of the U.S. election horror show – I know I have – and are ready (at least temporarily) for some wholesome American travel adventures. If so, please read on about my four-day visit to Maine, the northeastern-most state in the lower 48, with my sister, Susanna.
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It makes me smile, when I see it.