It’s a kind of cockatoo that lives in Australia. These are in front of a feeder cam on a lawn in New South Wales. You can watch them live here: https://australianbirdcams.com/evans-head-cam/ if you tune in in the afternoon or evening from the U.S. Otherwise it’s dark because it’s night there in Australia.
Lockdown. For weeks. Not that lockdown is all that restrictive for us. We have a house with plenty of room, warm weather and a deck for sitting, a yard for yard work, and a neighborhood with streets and no traffic for walking.
Judy, however, is feeling up to new projects. And what does any new project require? Yes. That’s right. More flowers! And more rocks! Time for some shopping. But with social distancing. Outdoor shopping only.
So we dressed up as stage coach robbers and off we went.
To the plant nursery and the rock store.
It felt good to get out.
And another thing. This week we did something we have never in our lives done before. We replaced a water heater that had yet to make a mess! When we lived in Louisville, Colorado, the water heater, of course, was located in the basement which had no drain. Our early warning system for water heater failure was when we stepped into ankle-deep water. The old water heater here is rated for eight years. It has been in service now for eleven with not a hint of trouble. To honor its fine dedicated service and exceptional performance, we retired it and had a nice new 40 gallon heater installed. Angel, our favorite plumber, came in, kept his distance, we all wore masks, and everyone doused themselves with hand sanitizer after.
Life goes on.
Baby California Condor.
You can just make out the little tiny bird peeking out from underneath mom in the first picture.
Condor nest cam
https://explore.org/livecams/birds/california-condors-redwood-grove
You may have to wait for daylight to click on the link. Not much to see in the dark.
My friend Mike Lane, who was supposed to leave Viet Nam at the same time as I did, and was supposed to be best man at my wedding, got held up in-transit and missed our ceremony. John Duncan another returning veteran stood in for him.
We did connect with Mike eventually at Fort Campbell, but he got out of the Army shortly after his return and disappeared into the mist. (We drove him out the gate on his last day. He started taking off his Army clothes in the back seat of our ’59 Plymouth station wagon while we were still on Post, but the MP stopped us at the gate because Mike was out of uniform. We waited for Mike to put his clothes back on so the MP would release us.) When he next turned up in our lives was a few years later in the Pacific Northwest. He came to dinner at our house in Issaquah, but by then he was head-over-heels for Guru Maharaj Ji, and the Divine Light Mission. We couldn’t have a conversation with him about anything else; he was so excited about his new-found devotion. That’s all he could talk about the for the entire excruciating evening.
That was it. We never heard from him again. We called his parents in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, but they had lost touch with him too. We’ve googled him a few times since and searched Facebook in recent years, but to no avail. What happens to a person after they’ve fallen in love with a fifteen-year-old perfect master? How does a person’s entire being suddenly get that devoted to a person or cause, and what happens when it’s over? What happens when the fifteen-year-old perfect master turns sixteen? Does that change anything? What happens to the devotion when the perfect master moves on? The Divine Light Mission is long gone now, so surely Mike’s devotion has had to move on as well.
I’d love to have dinner with him again and hear about his life since last we met; hoping he had a life after Guru Maharaj Ji.
