Monday, January 10, 2011

I live with two little ones, in a somewhat remote locations. There is no Globe & Mail or other informative paper thrown at my door step, nor is there one available in town. Lately our radio towers were knocked out for over two weeks, leaving us with no radio at all...Truth be told, I rarely turn it on anyways. When I get time to be on the computer it is to email or to prepare a new Blog Post! The Treehouse Network seems to be the only station that my TV is ever tuned in to...In a nut shell I tend to live in a "news shadow", somewhat self imposed, somewhat geographically imposed. Understanding that, today, lightswitches are still relatively new and running water is still hit and miss, it becomes easy to imagine life, just a few years ago, when we had no Internet access at home, no radio (heck no CD player) and the phone was still a new toy for Sean!! Event's were happening around the world that I knew nothing about and only, eventually, heard about through chatter at work some weeks later...like hurricane Katrina, for example...It went right passed me...

Just last week my Dad and I were talking about the changing patterns in climate and how he & my Mum took down a hand full of old trees from around the house as a precautionary measure. I was saddened a bit to think of the old trees gone...I can't imagine what the house looks like with out them. I think the conversation was sparked by me telling Dad that we went from -42'C to +2'C in 36 hours & how odd the wind felt as it blew in. During our chat I learned that there has been mass flooding in the State of Queensland in Australia. That this flooding is on a catastrophic level. I had no idea. There was that news shadow again. My mind jumped to a woman named Betty...I don't know Betty, well, not really but she is a fellow blogger who stumbled across me one day & send me a comment about one of my posts. She & I have been chatting back and forth, through our blogs, ever since! I'm sure you have seen her name if you read the comments that people post here! If you ever took the time to see where these comment makes live (by clicking on their names), you'd see that Betty lives in that mysterious & magical place called Australia!! So now, I worry....you see, I may not have MET Betty & I may not really KNOW her...but I read her Blog & we have made a connection that has continued for some months now so ,I FEEL like I know her, & maybe I do, even if just a little bit. So now I worry. And now I have to figure out the geography of a massive continent that I know nothing about, to see if she is going to be OK. Did you know that Magpies are one of my favourite birds in the Yukon, and that I love to garden? Betty has a beautiful garden & she love to spend time in it with her grandchildren!! Funny, Betty has Magpies in Australia too...they look a bit different, but, she has magpies.


Here is Betty's blog address: http://gumleaves.blogspot.com/
(here you will find a flood update)

Betty, I hope that your family and friends in Brisbane are going to be fine! I hope that if they are affected, that it is, at the very least, manageable and that they are able to pull together and weather the storm. From someone that enjoys reading your thoughts and stories...from very far away.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi,

I went on Betty's blog!!
She wrote an article today, she said her and his family are fine. I don't know if you read that... So don't worry Heather.

Love

Angie

Betty said...

Thanks so much for your concern Heather. That was a great post and I think it is amazing and wonderful that we can keep in touch this way though we live in such diverse places but still have much that we can talk about.
These floods are of such magnitude and so devastating I can't imagine how people in Queensland are coping. I worked in Qld. in a bank over thirty years ago for two years and made good friends in Brisbane. I've kept in touch with several over the years and my concern is now for them along with Naomi's parents.
Thankyou again and I'll keep you informed.

Matt, Kara, Hunter and Cavan said...

I am the opposite Heather! I am a total news junkie. I don't watch it on CBC (our only channel) and I rarely have the radio on, but I check out a number of news sites throughout the day. I like reading the news because I can pick and choose the stories I want to read. Many days I prefer to stick to the good news. Reading too much of the dark topics gets me too depressed. And many times I only get through reading the headlines before the boys haul me away from the computer.

These computers sure are amazing for forging relationships though, eh? :)

Glad to hear your friend Betty is doing alright!