Daily Kos: Good News

              Good morning, good morning all ye Seekers of Consolation, Hope, Uplift and general Better Vibes for the living of your days. The Daily Kos Good News Round Up is live and “On Air” on your pixel screen, glowing with colors (unless you have been tinkering with your settings). Once a month the GoodNews Steering Committee takes a deep  breath, grits their collective teeth, and look away toward the floor and say, “OK, let WineRev run the ship for one day.” And so here we are…..and although its only been 5 lines on the screen (rolling over to 6) so far things look OK.

This place is a meeting and collecting and disbursing spot for News of the Uplifting (so you’ll have to get your helpings of Doom scrolling in other places on the ‘Net) where the Good Newsie producers and readers gather (as “Gnus”—snicker, snicker) in Gnuville for mutual jollity, reassurance and even jocularity. Myself I enjoy opening up the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch for everyone to stop by with (or acquire) various morning beverages (coffee, tea, mocha-cocoa, mimosa) in whatever strengths and flavors you like……especially if you’re bringing in your own. Otherwise there are stories for perusing, recs to make, comments to chip in, snark to unload with, puns to provoke groans, explanations and digressions of the off-beat, esoteric and unusual from those who know that Stuff to the rest of us who don’t, but who appreciate being brought up to speed.

               My own take is to post stories and links to set the table for your input, output, uptake, down-take (if you can define it) and also to throw in Good and Goofy nuggets from the May 15ths of decades and even centuries ago. People like us were doing STUFF, and a fair bit of it is worth recalling.

                 Also, a few months back on one of my monthly hosting days I posted some stuff about some of America’s First Ladies that many here found interesting and have asked for more. So this month I give you two more to fill out your dance card or bingo squares.

Let’s rock on!

Good News in Arts, Music and Literature

                 Yes, the header here includes “literature.” After all, reading good stuff is an amazingly helpful activity, cherished by young and old. Now to get to the things that make you ponder, dream, yearn, lament, take heart, or cheer for a villain catching justice in the neck, there is the matter of learning to read. Before that come words……made up from letters…..that represent sounds. Humans have many forms of these and have had in many ages and in many places.

Now there are those who have instruments they aim at the sky, listening…..hoping…..that maybe, just maybe, out there among the stars, there might be other sounds that could mean words, (no sample yet of “Eep, Opp, Ork, Ah-Ah” from Elroy Jetson so far) that could mean…….. Contact! Yet now comes THIS EXCITING STORY from our own planet that it seems like sperm whales have…..an alphabet, and the clever people listening underwater think they just might be learning how to spell it……and “read it”…..not quite there yet.

(Sort of like when you as a speaker of English encounter a language like, say, Estonian. Hang around long enough (full immersion of a different kind than listening to whales) and you too figure out “vaip” is “carpet/rug”, that “tee” (pronounced “tehh”) is NOT a hot drink much beloved by the British but OF COURSE means “road/street”, and that “aitah” (pronounced “Eye-TA(short “a’) HH”, with a strong “h” sound on the end) should not be answered with “gesundheit/”God bless you” but that rather than imitating a sneeze that other person is politely telling you “thank you.”)

Sounds like those scientists hanging around the Whale Saloon are getting closer to doping out just what means what. So whale literature may be coming sooner than you think.

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                   Of course most of you reading here this morning are quite fluent in English, enough so that you know the subtleties, most of the exceptions, and some of the oddities of our Native Tongue. The other week I confessed to my own frustration with the word “its” in all its various uses with and without the apostrophe (my own approach is to claim this is the only word in the English Language that is correctly spelled with 3 apostrophes: I’T’S’, so that whichever usage is correct, well, its in there somewhere, so just pick out what you need.)

That confession led to one of the Gnusies here posting THIS HYSTERICAL LINK to a compilation of grammar issues (srsly) crossed with “X and Y walk into a bar…….” joke intros. Great stuff to read aloud to the sweetie in your life, but the No Mouth Liquids Rule is in effect. IOW how to mangle the English language while laughing all the way.

Now on this day of May 15 in previous years, the arts, literature and music have all had a turn as well.

                1759   Vienna.  Birth of Maria Theresia von Paradis, musician and composer. Only child of a court musician, Maria went blind between the ages of 2 and 5. Nonetheless she learned to play the piano at concert level and had a pleasing voice and was a noted and popular singer. Her talent was impressive enough that both Salieri and Mozart seem to have written pieces for her. In the 1780s she began teaching at a music school and also composing her own works. Wrote several songs, some piano concertos and even a few operas.

          1856     Chittenango, New York     Birth of Lyman Frank Baum. He was a dreamy sort of boy who hoped to be an actor. Early on he decided he didn’t like “Lyman” as a first name and went by “L. Frank” the rest of his life. At age 12 enrolled at Peekskill Military Academy but had to drop out 2 years later due to a heart condition. Tried his hand at acting with no luck. Then ran a store for a while but it went bankrupt. He was a reporter for a local paper, but the pay was awful, so he became a town-to-town peddler selling china. He had a stroke of luck when a publisher took a children’s story he had written that became a popular book. He began writing more seriously and in 1899 published “Father Goose, His Book” which became the best-selling children’s book that year. The next year he had another lasting hit: “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” (It even got made into a movie….)

              1863     Paris   Ever since the Louvre was converted from a castle/armory into a museum back in the days of the French Revolution, the visual arts have held a special place in French culture, so much so that there are Official bodies passing Official Remarks on various works of art and their artists. Well, in the spirit of the French Revolution (“you can’t tell us THAT!”) a group of artists rent a space and open a show today they call the Salon des Refuses; those whose works have been refused/rejected by the Official Salon.

            Who are these hell raisers and rebels? What do THEY think they know about art, huh? Who did these canvasses anyway? An American…? Really? James Whistler…..hmmm. Who else was a Salon Reject? Paul Cezanne…..Camille Pissaro…..Henri Fantine-Latour…..Edouard Manet…..

So, you think anybody will remember those guys and their stuff?

1st First Lady of this Month:

Anna Tuthill (Symmes) Harrison

            Anna Tuthill Symmes (Harrison), born on a New Jersey farm in 1775. Her mother died when Anna was one year old. Her father had joined the Continental Army as a colonel and tried raising Anna on the side. This proved impractical, so when Anna was 4, her father took her on horseback from their farm, left behind his Continental uniform and dressed as a British officer so he could enter and pass through occupied New York City. Took her out onto Long Island to be raised by her maternal grand-parents (the Tuthills) while he went back to the Revolution.

                  After the Revolution Anna’s father’s law practice boomed (became Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court.) When Anna was 17 (1792) he was given title to an enormous land tract in the Ohio Territory, so he moved there, bringing Anna. (Dad served as Territorial Governor, and also helped found the town of North Bend….and Cincinnati (which was a bigger hit than North Bend.) The next year she marries a rough-and tumble US military man, William Henry Harrison (age 21). In 1801 Harrison is named Territorial Governor of Indiana, so they move to Vincennes (serving as the capitol). Their house becomes the unofficial state nerve center, housing the governor, hosting cabinet meetings, having Senate debates in the front parlor, welcoming dinners with the Territorial Supreme Court.

         In 1814 William is elected to the US House, then the US Senate, and then named as Ambassador to Columbia. Anna did not go with him to Washington or Bogota, but rather moved back to North Bend, Ohio (for the next 26 years) to be with friends and raise her children. The Harrisons had 10 children in all (the most children of any First Lady), but sadly, 1 died at age 3, and 8 (!) others all died before age 50, so only one of her children outlived her.

In 1840 Harrison wins the Presidency and in February of 1841 takes the stagecoach from North Bend to Washington to be inaugurated. Anna stays behind, battling depression and grief (2 of their children died in the last 11 months, 8 months apart) and she was seriously ill. As she slowly recovered, Harrison was sworn in as President (first Whig in the office) at age 68 (oldest for first term until Reagan.) Despite a heavy rainstorm that mixed with sleet, he insisted on delivering his Address, hatless, out of doors……the longest Inaugural speech ever, 2 1/2 hours. He caught a cold that turned serious.

By late March Anna had recovered, arranged for servants to pack things up for the White House (including furniture; Congress was stingy about actually furnishing the place). As she was preparing to take the stagecoach East a courier arrived with the news that Harrison was dead of pneumonia, having served 30 days in office.

Anna Harrison became the only First Lady never to Iive in, or to even visit, the White House. (Martha Washington didn’t live there either, but only because the White House hadn’t been built yet, or the city of Washington either.) She arranged to have William’s remains re-buried in North Bend. In the next 5 years 3 of her daughters and 1 son-in-law died. Coped with life by extensive letter-writing (Congress did not grant First Ladies a pension, but they did vote her a “franking privilege” for life: she could send mail without postage.)

(Postscript: One son of John Harrison’s was one of those grandsons of Anna who joined the Union Army: Benjamin Harrison. He later became President. John Scott Harrison thereby became the only person in US history to be BOTH the son of a President, and the father of a President.)

Good News in Society and Politics

                      “Be of Good Cheer.” A little antique phrase, sometimes heard around Christmas or New Years. How about cheering…..really cheering? You know, a certain Saturday afternoon in November, when Ohio State meets Michigan on the gridiron to play some REAL football? And Ohio State scores? Or Michigan fumbles? Yep……now THAT is cheering! Cheering is the Olympics! Cheering is the 1980 Winter Olympics and “Do you believe in Miracles? YES!”

And now comes scientific word that Cheering….yelling your head off with hundreds or thousands of others at the same time in the same place…..GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH and well being. A fascinating read on some Japanese research into Yelling En Masse.

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                    On a politically cheering note and cause for good cheer, Wisconsin’s gerrymander special (affecting state legislative boundary lines for both houses and also US Congressional district lines) is in the cross hairs. The new Supreme Court 4-3 liberal majority in Madison is taking dim view of those lines.            

            Now comes another story of Good News on voting. The Wisconsin Supremes are taking up a different case dealing with a GQP effort to cut way back on ballot drop-off boxes (you know, one thing that can make voting easier…..for more people.) LOOKS LIKE VOTER SUPPRESSION is running into rough waters in the Badger State…….GOOD!

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              On a more pugnacious note, Ukraine is fighting for its life against Russia, and is getting help from many other nations. Estonia, member of NATO, with a common border with Russia, a nation formerly under Soviet & Russian rule, has been one of those helping out, sending arms, ammo, medical supplies, etc. Is it enough? Well maybe….or maybe not. NATO has been leery of actually sending “boots on the ground”, worried about an escalation into a larger war.

But still….enough is enough. THIS STORY REPORTS the Defense Minister of Estonia says publicly there are serious conversations going on for Estonia to send TROOPS to Ukraine, carefully noting these would be assigned to Rear Area duties (ambulance drivers, warehouse work, etc.) and NOT to combat roles. No final decision yet, but thought you’d want to know its on the table……

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Of course, society and its politics have been around for a LONG TIME, producing all sorts of things with pondering, considering, recalling and even worth fighting for.

         1248     Cologne, (now) Germany With all the pomp, ceremony and ritual the Church can muster, on this day Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden lays the cornerstone for Köln (Cologne) cathedral. It took years…many, MANY years……. to finish….added stained glass windows when stained glass was invented; added a pipe organ when pipe organs were invented. Survived the Reformation. Definitely ran over its completion date: was officially, FINALLY completed on October 15…….1880, 632 years later…..(talk about persistence…..and faith…..)

               1817   Philadelphia   This day is the founding and opening of the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason. It is the first private mental health hospital in the US (still extant as Friends Hospital.) Since the Republican Party was not invented until the 1850s there is no truth to the rumor that former inmates were connected with that event….

         1862  New Orleans     The Union Navy led by Admiral Farragut captured this city back on April 25 and the Union Army is on occupation duty. The local population (of the South’s largest and most industrialized city) is furious. In particular, the Confederate women are vocal and public about the Boys in Blue on occupation duty. A couple days ago one hot headed woman stepped out on her balcony and heaved a (full! Yuck!) chamber pot that hit Admiral Farragut on the head. That tore it. The new Union Army military governor is a lousy soldier but a cunning student of humans: Major Gen. Benjamin F Butler. On this day he issues General Order #28 declaring that any woman by word, gesture or action insults or demeans the US flag or any of its military men is liable to being treated by the military as “a woman of the town plying her avocation.”

            Every lady in town was appalled at being publicly linked to “ladies of the evening” and worried just what the Blue soldiers did, and might do, with and to such women. So, the harassment stopped. (Confederate President Jeff Davis was so upset he personally ordered any Confederate soldier capturing Butler to execute him on the spot for such degrading of Southern women.)

             Butler was a real SOB…..but he was OUR S.O.B….and he actually did good things in New Orleans for economic uplift of the poor (charging the local 1% elite for the funds) and city sanitation (yellow fever deaths in the summer of 1862 were 2 (count ‘em!)…..versus a previous 10 year average of 1400 deaths each summer.)

            1868  Kolberg, Prussia (now Poland)   Birth of Magnus Hirschfeld, doctor, reformer. Became a doctor in the early 1890s. For this era he turned to a cutting edge subject: sexual abnormalities. After several years of research and visiting several other nations and cultures, he reached the conclusion (and published) that many of these were not abnormal. DOUBLEHEADER DATE  Berlin  Maybe in honor of his own birthday in 1897 Dr. Hirschfeld and 3 others together co-founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee to advocate for the legal rights of sexual minorities. This is now recognized as the first ever LGBT rights organization. (In 1897! In public! Whew! Those people were courageous….)

          1930   Oakland, California AND Cheyenne, Wyoming  (Now there’s a city pairing for you!)  The Boeing Air Transport (a forerunner to United Airlines before it united with other airlines) flight takes off from Oakland, bound for Chicago. This is a commercial, passenger flight, but it’s a LONG distance to Chicago for airplanes in 1930, so the plane sets down (as scheduled) in Cheyenne to refuel. But in the air, history has been made: Ellen Church becomes the 1st female airline stewardess in the United States and one of the first in the world to earn her wings.  

2nd First Lady this Month:

Mamie Geneva (Doud) Eisenhower

            She was the 2nd of 4 children born (in 1896) into a well-off businessman’s family (the house had a few servants), although 2 of her siblings died in their teens. While born in Iowa, before Mamie was 1 the family relocated to Denver, where they loved the summers but hated the winters, so they had a 2nd house in San Antonio, Texas. Mamie’s school record is then a mix of attendance in both cities, ending at age 18 with a year at Miss Wolcott School for Girls in Denver.

                 In the winter that next year she met, and then in the coming summer, married, a 2nd Lt. stationed at Fort Sam Houston outside San Antonio, Dwight Eisenhower, career Army man. That career took Mamie to 33 different homes in the next 37 years (!), mostly in the US but also the Philippines for a hitch and another in Panama’s Canal Zone. In Panama the Army hired local women for various jobs but refused them admission to the base hospital, for racial segregation reasons. Mamie & several other Army wives established and funded a free hospital for these women (and their friends and relations) and dared the Army to tell them what they should or should not do when various bigots objected.

When peace came in 1945 Dwight was named President of Columbia University, so they lived for 3 years in New York, followed by another 3 years together, this time in Paris as Ike was appointed Commander in Chief of NATO (which was just being invented and organized.)

          In 1952 the Republicans nominated Eisenhower for President and the war hero was popular, but for the first time the possible First Lady was part of a Presidential campaign as well. There were lapel pins and bumpers stickers that proclaimed “I Like Ike”, but also fistfuls of buttons everywhere proclaiming “I Like Mamie, Too!”  

            For the Inauguration Mamie found housing for her (Afro-American) staffers in white and segregated Washington DC. She arranged for the headline popular entertainer for the Inauguration events to be Marian Anderson, the black singer from 1939 at the Easter Sunday performance at the Lincoln Memorial and now an opera singer. After taking the Oath of Office (in front of radio microphones and now even television cameras here in modern 1952) Ike turned to Mamie and right there kissed her in front of everyone, a First Lady first.

              In two terms in the White House Mamie was a stickler for everyone on staff doing their jobs well, but she often arranged for birthday cakes for them, sent cards for their wedding anniversaries, asked after their families and worked hard to know them by name and personally. She adapted well to the “Supportive Wife” motif, which resonated with the public. Her fondness for the color pink was legendary, to the point that a major paint company re-named one of their shades “First Lady Pink.” In all those tract houses going up everywhere to invent suburbia, the master bath decor was usually one of three options in plastic tile: white, sea foam green….or “bubble gum” pink “just like Mamie’s favorite color.”

            Despite the public image she aided Ike in subtle political ways, as on matters of race relations (particularly after Brown v. Topeka to kick off desegregation of schools; in 1957 Ike sent US troops to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the peace when local officials were unwilling to do so.) There was also a custom in a new President’s term to host a White House dinner for the US Senate, presided over by the Vice-President and the First Lady. Mamie oversaw the arrangements and the invitations to 95 of the 96 Senators. That way, when the President himself “casually” dropped by “for a few minutes….. just to say ‘hello’” Ike was able to put some subtle distance between himself and fellow Republican and lightning rod Senator Joe McCarthy…..who had not received an invitation and was missing from the event…..

             After the President had a serious heart attack in 1955, Mamie threw herself into fund raising and public support for the American Heart Association, which produced a gusher of volunteers and funding for research. Toward the end of the 1950s she and several other Army wives she knew worked to create Knollwood, a place in Washington DC for widows of veterans who had become indigent and without family. Knollwood became a hospice before the term went into wide circulation.

                 After the Presidency the couple lived for a time in Gettysburg. Mamie was back in the White House to see her grandson David marry Tricia Nixon. She passed away in 1979, with Pat Nixon and Rosalyn Carter sitting together for her funeral.

Good News in Science, Tech & Engineering

               Those smart people in the labs, in the field, tramping here, connecting there and thinking all the time. We owe them a lot (and they are n the Front Line of saving all our butts from our collective, global challenges.) And by gum, they are making a difference for all of us!

THIS HEARTWARMING STORY brings important word that Renewable Energy is visibly GAINING on the global level. More and more of the world’s electricity (which makes modern life possible) is coming from Green sources…..and has now passed 30% of the world total generation. YAY…..and Keep going!

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          And even when the sun is shining, well, to quote an old song, “big wheel keep on turnin’/’Proud Mary’ keep on churnin’”. Those elegant, long-armed wind mills are turning the cranks on generators in a big way to add to our Green electric supply. But look, Mother Nature and evolution have been working on harnessing wind (for pollination……for flying) for a LONG time. Some things have not worked (Buffalo Wings proved impractical for flying….thank goodness…..but they are a decent food source, and the bison don’t seem to mind walking) but other things have (like bird WINGS for flying.) Now comes THIS FASCINATING STORY that windmill arms can be made more efficient (and get more power out of each turn of the crank) if the arms are shaped to resemble…..condor wings! As those birds can ride thermals and breezes for seeming hours without flapping…… looks like this could be BIG.

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     Now while Big Oil and the fossil fuel industry is raging, raging against the dying of their profits, other businesses are noticing electrification is GOOD for their business and are hustling to cash in. Its showing; in 2023 over 1 million new electric vehicles were sold in the US, a 7-figure milestone, and more coming. To get in on the money to be made there, Honda is stepping up its game. They have JUST ANNOUNCED they will spend $15 Billion-with-a-B to build 4 EV factories in Canada to build EVs for the North American market. $15 billion ain’t chump change……and has even more impact than you might imagine on Canada. Recall Canada’s population is about 10% of the US…..so $15 billion there would be something like a $150 billion deal here…..which would be a Big Deal. So very cool!

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                   A good bit of what’s going on in Renewable Energy is classified as “Infrastructure Spending”, which it certainly is. We’ve seen this before in the US: the transcontinental railroad, the invention of the FAA to construct a grid of civilian airports, and, in the 1950s and 60s the Interstate Highway system. This last involved pouring 42,000 miles worth of concrete all across the country.

Now where exactly that concrete got poured in towns and cities involved a LOT of input, like from highway engineers, and local businesses (“nearby, but not too close, but with an exit ramp”), and local politicians (“NIMBY”—not in my back yard…..put it in THEIR back yard.) Whose back yards? Sadly, there were many places where freeways were run through places where “those people” lived and worked: immigrants, the poor, accented English speakers, or minorities. Communities were uprooted, or severed, or just flat out destroyed.

Now while the past cannot be undone, amends can be made. The Biden Administration has gotten Infrastructure bills through Congress and into law (and we need public spending for a lot of projects that will benefit the public.) But in an effort to apologize and undo some of the damage from years ago, IN THIS STORY DOT Secretary Buttigieg meets with black mayors of various cities to identify projects aimed at UN-DOING, and the new laws contain money for just this sort of atonement for some of the harm from past projects. A form of Concrete Apology, and a lesson to us all of how we can do better and be better as people.

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And now, a look at the tinkerers and dreamers of May 15 from decades ago:

             1793  The castle of Coruña del Conde, Spain  Diego Marin Aguilera is the oldest of eight children. His father died when he was just in his teens and he became responsible for raising his siblings. He worked fields and herded sheep, goats and cattle for several years. He created several (un-patented) inventions connected with farming. He was also fascinated by birds, particularly eagles and vultures.

             In his mid-30s he performed endless calculations and spent six years building a machine out of cloth, wood and feathers. He hired the local blacksmith (named Barbero) to make certain moving joints and stirrups out of iron. The local villagers thought he was unhinged because he mentioned this machine could make him fly. On this night(!), taking advantage of a full moon so as to not frighten the neighbors, Aguilera, one of his sisters, and the blacksmith Barbero, together lugged the machine into this (abandoned and dilapidated) castle to its highest wall, looking out over a valley.

        Aguilera said, “I’m going to Burgo de Osma, and from there to Soria, and I’ll be back in a couple days.”  He climbed aboard, put his feet in the iron stirrups, checked that the moving parts moved, and jumped off. The blacksmith and sister reported he reached a height of “6 or 7 varas” (equivalent of about 5 or 6 meters) and glided “431 Castilian varas” (over 350 meters.) He crossed the River Arandilla and on the far bank passed over most of a meadow when one of the iron parts broke and he crashed. His sister and the blacksmith hurried from the castle, crossed the river, fearing the worst. Instead, Marin was bruised and scratched, but whole. He was mostly upset with Barbero’s sloppy welding job that ended his flight. (The villagers thought he was either a lunatic or a demon and burned his craft the next day. Marin fell into depression and never tried again.)  

      The American Institute of Aeronautics credits Aguilera for a gliding flight of over 360 meters. He is hailed as the “Father of Spanish Aviation” and a few years ago the Spanish Air Force put up this monument to him on the Castle Grounds.

                  1889  Paris  To celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the French Revolution, France invites the world to a party: today is the opening of the Paris Exposition (a World’s Fair). One of the entry gates has a striking Entry Arch, a Tower really…..designed by a Gustav Eiffel (they left it up after the Exposition closed…..you might have heard…..) However,  even though this was Opening Day, the elevators in M. Eiffel’s Tower were NOT READY….so, to take in the view visitors faced (and in a good number of cases TOOK!) the 1710 steps to the top….after paying 5 francs for the privilege. (By comparison, admission to the grounds at one of the 22 gates (the Eiffel Tower was just one of these…..although more visible than most….) was 40 centimes, at a time when a ‘workingman’s lunch’ in a Paris cafe averaged about 10 centimes.)

All sorts of exhibits and wonders on display: first appearance of the dishwashing machine, electric powered streetcars, an engine that burned liquid fuels but Herr Rudolph Diesel had invented this to not use spark plugs, moving sidewalks and escalators, and the fluorescent light bulb. (Thomas Edison attended, noting a rival for his incandescent bulb.) American George Washington Ferris built one of his enormous new amusement rides, and his “wheels” became part of every amusement park and carnival show for decades.

                1891    Eindhoven, Netherlands  Scientific inventions are flowing everywhere as the modern age becomes, well, modern. Taking a leaf (and maybe a license) from Edison, on this day brothers Gerard and Anton Philips began their Philips & Co. operations by producing of light bulbs. Philips Co. evolves with the times to become THE major player in Europe in electronics to this day.

AWWW!

              And yeah, there are Good people out there who do Good Things, so look for them and pitch in, OK? I usually take a morning walk for exercize each day. On Mother’s Day Sunday on my usual route there’s a street that is a major turn off for a grocery store & strip mall. I usually cut across the parking lot, but there, near the turn-in, there is a storm sewer grate. A duck was there….no, 2 ducks, the hen and the drake….and a cluster of ducklings! All by the grate, traffic going by and all of them looking frantic.

I got closer and the drake flew off. On the other side of the street are a set of apartment houses…..no pond or water, but a good bit of lawns and bushes, and no traffic to speak of. So I waited for a little break in the traffic (being a Sunday morning helped) and went into “shoo along mode” behind the hen and the ducklings followed her. Drivers saw what I was doing and were happy to stop and give me thumbs up. Then one SUV made a turn into the parking lot, parked close, and the driver, a friendly-looking guy in his early 30s hopped out.

                 I got Mama duck across but then the ducklings were so small they couldn’t get up the curb, so I had to give them little boosts. When I finished I looked back and there was the young driver. He had gone over to the sewer grate and lifted it out and was down shoulder deep inside. I crossed back over and asked, “Are there some ducklings down there?”

                 He said, “Yeah, but I think I got ‘em all.” He had them in his arms and handed them off to me. I carried 5 of the 6 them(!) across the street (always one upstart, you know, who got loose) but the guy got out of the manhole, caught the little guy and brought him over too. All 12 peeped and squeaked and followed Mama to some shade under some leafy bushes. The guy hefted the grate back on and we figured they had smelled the water and then the small ones had fallen in. We shook hands and mentioned this made for a good Mother’s Day for one Mama Duck.

Here’s hoping things will be safe for the brood.

And here’s hoping all your News is Good, comforting and inspiring.

Shalom.

PS : From comments below

I posted this as a reply but will get maybe more visibility here in the main body:

OK just back from this morning’s walk. Not too far from the “Duck Rescue” from Sunday there is a bit of a ravine with something of a pond at the bottom. Its just at the other end of the apartments that I “shooed” Mama duck and her ducklings to.

The ravine sides are quite steep so the city years ago put up a chain link fence for safety reasons. But, as happens, things have grown up, the ground has frost heaved, little kids have found “really neat places” to have a fort, so there certainly spots where a duck could waddle through (and ducklings would have no problem at all.)

I watched the pond from up above and counted a solid dozen drakes paddling around. I saw 2 or 3 duck hens also on the water but none of the wee ones. Fingers crossed that everyone got there and are making a go of it.

Thought everyone would like a report and update.

Shalom.