This & That: Rant & Relaxation

First the rant. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (remember her? One in a long line of people lying for Trump from the White House Press Podium) challenged herself with a little public speaking the other day, commenting on the end of Roe v. Wade. She claimed that now kids in the womb will be as safe as kind in the classroom. 

!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Did she hear herself?  OMG Really? Would that be the Sandy Hook classroom? Uvalde? Both those schools have/had to be torn down because the surviving kids and teachers are too traumatized to go back inside them. How about any of the other hundreds on the list of schools where kids have gotten shot? Just how safe do today's kids feel in their classrooms?

Maybe we should all ask her just what plans she has for instructing a fetus how to deal with active shooter drills?

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Now for the relaxation. I finally got up to Crex Meadows outside Grantsburg, WI, this summer, taking along a friend and her young adult son. We all could use that break, and it was soothing. Drop the problems behind and get out and drive around lakes and meadows, seeing lots of early summer flowers in bloom, taking pictures of those, interesting trees, lakes, and wildlife. A couple of beaver lodges had gotten bigger with another year's attention, one with a beaver swimming into it - of course before we got within camera range.

The day was cool, fairly cloudy and windy, but it was a break between muggy heat and rain days. Phantom lake, always the second stop after the information center, had close to a hundred trumpeter swans on it, and shallow waters were full of water lilies starting to bloom. A duck escorted her brood of  new chicks around tightly grouped, just for the camera, right? A doe crossed the road far enough and quickly enough ahead, dodging into tall grasses along the lake and disappearing before either of us could raise a camera.

Other birds were showing off for us and our cameras. Rounding one curve we saw a pair of sandhill cranes in bright reddish brown feathers  being dive bombed repeatedly by a pair of red winged blackbirds. At one point they got close enough that one crane tried to snap back at them, contorting its neck in odd ways I'd never witnessed. The blackbirds finally managed to drive the cranes away, and with the show over we drove off.

Just before we got to the northern rest area, I stopped for a large bird ahead of us on the road. My friend asked if it was a turkey. After a couple photos while it stood still before flying away, I saw it well enough to tell her, "Almost: it's a turkey vulture."

Unfortunately by them she'd run out of time and needed to head back home. But it had been a wonderful day. We will go back again, when we have more time.