Weekly Chat (Non-Osprey), 23 August 2020

Diane:  Thank you for starting (I've been convinced it's Sunday all day!) and for photos.  Our garden is full of hummingbirds this year, but not the Ruby-Throated. Still, they all seem to head south (Central America, Mexico) for the winter.    Interesting about the Kites being so far north.

Lindybird: Have a lovely week in Wales with no boiler or other problems!

Muggy again here.  I've been posting odds and ends for sale on craigslist and our neighborhood site, including the chair that went 'boing' the other week.  It's still comfortable and at this point I'm asking little and prepared to accept even less!  :-)  

Hope everyone else is okay.  Still no word from bjane though; I've read that things are still grim in Cedar Rapids.

LINDY: I hope you have a lovely and peaceful time in Wales. Enjoy yourselves!

ANNETTE: The power is still out in much of Cedar Rapids--two weeks after the storm. People are struggling to truck in enough food to keep residents fed. In normal times, that disaster would have been the main story in the news, but with all the political theatre, no one is paying attention to their suffering. Once again, our government failed our people.

Honestly, the entire Midwest is in bad shape, not because of the storm but due to the economic collapse, which was actually well in progress before COVID-19 hit.

I shed a lot of tears this week. People in my rural community are going around to the stores and getting the gallons of milk that are at the expiration date and giving it away at our Farmers' Market. Gardeners and farm families are donating fruits and vegetables. They're also distributing bricks of free government cheese and other goods, just to help people survive. People get so excited about that free milk and food.... It's heartbreaking.

I also read that churches and a charity in my hometown (north of me up on the prairie) are bringing in an entire convoy of semi-trucks (lorries) filled with food and other goods to distribute because the people are so in need. They're holding massive drive-thrus at the shopping malls, so people can just drive up and get their sacks of food. They're also offering other resources to provide medical and dental treatment and other necessities. 44% of the renters in Indiana (and 40% nationwide) are facing eviction, because they can't pay rent. We are anticipating an explosion of homelessness.

It's going to be a brutal and desperate winter here.

TV licences? Really? Aussieland abolished radio & TV licences in 1974.

LINDA – Enjoy your holiday, even tho’ not the far country you’d planned. Your tiredness is probably just the never-ending lockdown.

DIANE – Thank you for bird pics. Terrible reports you have mentioned with so many out of work. Our govt has banned rental evictions. Food charities here are struggling to supply the needy.

Just a thought

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized.
In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed.
In the third, it is regarded as self evident. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

AQ:  Sometimes the self-evident part never sinks in (sorry - I see everything in relation to The Orange Menace and his cohorts/followers).

Diane:  That's just terrible. We haven't heard anything about that - and nothing about Cedar City (except for a recent article online in either the NYT or the WaPo.  The fires up north are only now heading up the news.  Our Food Bank has National Guard folks helping out and many of our stores are asking if we want to "round up" our bills to the nearest dollar with the extra to be donated to the Food Bank.  I think California's eviction ban has a deadline too, but not sure what Gov. Newsom will do.  I spoke to my friend up north in the fire area this evening and she says (and we saw reports on the news) that there simply aren't enough firefighters to go around.  We have mutual aid agreements with other western states, but I gather Newsom has also asked for help from Canada and Australia.   What a mess - and two storms due to meet up in the Gulf of Mexico next week?   

Good Morning. Thank you to Diane for stepping up once again and starting us off. We must have all written thousands of words over the last few years!

Sorry to hear that things are so grim there, Diane. We are all donating foodstuffs every time we shop, to the local Foodbanks. It's shocking to think that there are so many people out there in need.

Off to gather up the last things and get off: hoping that my hay fever will not be as obvious when I get some sea air.

Annette, thanks for trying to find out about bjanes situation, I do hope she is alright.

Time to sit. I had a late nanny nap this arvo, woke, rushed to kitchen to make zucchini slice for tea. Dau’s recipe, the same I made for her t’other week. It was much easier with her fetching ingredients and me chopping & stirring. Here in a rush, I had grated bits flying across my kitchen and I dropped the baking paper which unrolled. I managed to get the slice into oven in time. . . and then cleared up the mess.

A giant panda at The National Zoo has a live webcam where you can track the activities of Mom and her new baby. nationalzoo.si.edu/.../panda-cam   Apparently the folks there won't be able to 'retrieve' the baby to check it out for a couple of days....