Author: Steve

 

How do we put that number in perspective?

 

Here in The Valley, one small part of Texas, we’re losing 40 people a day, that didn’t otherwise need to die now.  40 people.  That’s the equivalent of a very bad mass shooting.  Every day.  For weeks and months.  Right here, in this little community around us.  I submit that our response would be completely different if these deaths were from mass shootings every day, yet the number of people is the same, regardless the cause.  And either way, it didn’t need to happen.

 

Our current national death toll from Coronavirus of over 1,000 people a day, every day, is the equivalent of a September 11^th attack every three days.

 

 

 

 

 

And the cotton is high.

 

 

 

Our morning coffee-on-the-deck entertainment.

 

Seventy-five anhingas rising in a kettle and then gliding off south! 

 

 

Anhingas don’t really have a big north-south range, but they do move farther south in the fall.

 

Then, later, a kettle of black vultures forms before heading south as well.

 

They have a bigger range than the anhingas.  On the range map it doesn’t even appear that they migrate, but some move north and south within their range anyway.  Or maybe they were just inspired by the anhingas and had to mimic them.

 

And a single crested caracara come up to look.

 

I know, it’s only August, but Fall migration, for big soaring birds anyway, is on!

 

 

I wasn’t expecting any reaction to the vice-presidential candidate pick; there were so many options to choose from that weren’t wrong; but when I heard Kamala Harris, I was surprised by the emotion I felt.  Yes.  A smart, strong, well-spoken vice-presidential pick, and a ticket that looks like America.  I felt unexpectedly happy, the happiest I’ve felt about a political event since Barak Obama’s 2008 presidential win.

 

 

 

A house in a low spot.

 

It’s not supposed to be in a lake, but still, it is.  And how do the people who live here get back and forth to the road, which incidentally, is still flooded too?

 

Water taxi.