Homeward

One of the vexing issues with posting daily essays to Facebook is it can be difficult for me to update various threads from previous essays without a search function to locate those previous mentions.

Be that as it may, I've posted occasionally about my grandchildren's domestic quail and the surprising development that one adult female gathered her eggs and those of her companions, built a nest, and has been sitting on that nest for the past month.

This strain of quail is known to abandon its eggs, but this female apparently didn't get that memo.

One of her babies hatched last week -- a cute, tiny fluffy creature with a high-pitched squeak.

It had stayed close to its mother's side (literally under her wing) until Wednesday, when a visitor left the gate to the quail run open and the baby escaped to the yard, under a fence, and into the neighbor's lot.

All of the other adult quail escaped too, except for the mother bird, who stayed close to her nest and issued repeated calls for the baby to return.

Discovering  what was happening, my six- and nine-year-old granddaughters recognized the baby's squeals from the neighbor's yard and alerted their father, who retrieved the chick even as a hungry blue jay circled overhead.

Reunited with its mother, along with the other adults, who had not strayed far from home, the baby returned to safety from life out in a perilous world.

That incident reminded me of so many things about raising human children -- their inate curiosity and urge to explore, our parental instinct to try and protect them, and the need sometimes for the help of strangers to aid a lost soul find his or her way back home.

***

There are no known helpful strangers for our news cycle. It rolls on, like a hamster wheel, churning out bad news after bad news. Brace yourselves.

* U.S. Flood Strategy Shifts to ‘Unavoidable’ Relocation of Entire Neighborhoods --Using tax dollars to move whole communities out of flood zones, an idea long dismissed as radical, is swiftly becoming policy, marking a new and more disruptive phase of climate change. (New York Times)

* Dozens of Christian leaders have signed a statement defending science and calling on fellow believers to follow the advice of public health experts during the coronavirus pandemic. The list of 76 leaders includes Christian writers, pastors, theologians, scientists, doctors and seminary leaders. They say they are deeply concerned about the “polarization and politicization of science” that is emerging in some Christian communities during the COVID-19 crisis. (HuffPost)

* Six feet may not be enough to protect against coronavirus, experts warn -- Factors such as crowd density, ventilation, face masks and whether people are silent, speaking, shouting or singing should all be considered. (Washington Post)

^ Northern California firefighters are making some progress containing record-breaking blazes. Tens of thousands of people remain under orders to evacuate across the region. Gov. Gavin Newsom said a monster of a fire near Santa Cruz is "another demonstratable example of the reality of climate change." [HuffPost]

* California Gov. Gavin Newsom on wildfires:“If you don’t believe in climate change, please come to the state of California,” he said. “We will educate you.” (New York Times)

* A Big Sur sanctuary for California condors was destroyed by fire. [The San Francisco Chronicle]

* The 17-year-old Kenosha shooting suspect is a fan go guns, police and Trump (CNN) 

* More than 100 Bush-McCain-Romney alums go for Biden (Politico)

* Amazon unveils Halo to battle Apple Watch and Fitbit — tracks activity, body fat, and emotions (CNBC) The emotion tracking is the latest in a long line of attempts to quantify our emotional lives.

* "Powell’s Books, the venerable independent bookstore in Portland, has had enough with Amazon and will no longer sell books through the tech giant’s marketplace. In a letter to the store’s community of customers on Wednesday, Powell’s owner and CEO Emily Powell said that she was taking the standto mark Independent Bookstore Day, which falls on Saturday..." (GeekWire)

* Trump’s company charged the U.S. government more than $900,000 -- New receipts obtained by The Post show the Trump Organization charged for rooms at Mar-a-Lago even when the president wasn’t there. (Washington Post)

***

Did anything else happen last night? Let me think hard, so hard that my head starts to ache. It's the kind of headache you can only feel when your soul is being sucked out of your brain, blowing a hole that can never be repaired. You might call it is a stroke, I call it an invasion by evil incarnate.

Yes, let me think hard. 

Oh, it just came to me like a violent earthquake deep in your belly that makes you retch every sweet taste you've ever savored in your time on earth. It tastes like fire and vomit.

The Dark Lord, Voldemort, gave a speech last night. He was surrounded by his Death-Eaters.

The sad thing is this ain't fiction and it ain't a children's story.

***

Homeward bound
I wish I was homeward bound
Home, where my thought's escapin'
Home, where my music's playin'
Home, where my love lies waitin' silently for me

-- Simon & Garfinkel

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