Excellent

The bigger ponds had large Koi also and a few years ago the people in the business park and homes along the nearly 1 mile of the River Walk were always calling the cops because homeless and migrants from areas of Latin America were they eat wild meat were catching the turtles and Koi and roasting them over fires in the park at night.

No, highly rated by wild game cooks. I have a wild game cook book and an American Indian cook book that have recipes for wild goose.

My family favored wild goose for Christmas and thanks to my Dad and his turkey hunting buddies wild turkey for Thanksgiving. When my Grandparent's (Dad's side) were both alive and the family farm hadn't been sold yet, we also had homemade bacon, sausage and ham plus roast chicken on the menu the also. Homemade rolls, biscuits and cornbread on the side of course.
When the relatives and friends gathered for holidays, we would have 20-40 or more people eating at the farm for at least one meal during the day.
The 4th of July was fish fry day, everyone took turns going fishing for a week or two before to make sure we had lots of fish; bass, blue gill, crappie and catfish done Southern Style, rolled in seasoned corn meal and fried in about an inch of fat/lard from the same hogs that produced the ham, bacon and sausage. And it had to be in a giant cast iron skillet. Grandma had an 18" one and to make it really authentic it was on a welded spider grill made from rebar. It didn't matter if the 4th was at the cabin Granddad owned on the hunting club lake or the farm, the fish and fried potatoes were done over a wood fire with the grill and cast iron skillet.

Yes, those geese just took me on a long drive down memory lane, and it was GREAT!

Yada Yada Yada!!!

The US's handling of COVID was the worst, except for all of the other countries in the world.

Pretty neat image. Cowboy shaman. And yes, it does remind me of Rockwell's work except Norman usually used more subdued colors.

That would explain that "look".

The park were I go to photograph water birds is a nearly one mile long man-made river with waterfalls, rapids, ponds, paths and bridges that was built in a large concrete flood control channel. The over population of turtles got so bad it seemed the banks were lined with them and duckings, goslings and shorebird babies seldom lived to grow up. They thinned out the turtles, so now you only see a very few scattered here and there. On my last trip, I rode my mobility scooter the whole length of the park and didn't see any turtles.

As President Trump is not an MD and most especially not a Virologist he was following the advice of the government and other "experts", like Fauci and the CDC among others.
They were the ones who didn't quite figure out what to do.

Then there is the nature of the American People. We don't like being told what to do by"experts" or politicians. We don't like to be restricted in our movements and we are probably the most mobile nation on Earth. We are constantly on the move for work, shopping, just for fun and more Americans both numerically and % wise move addresses per year than anyone else. Not only that, but we also like to congregate for meeting, movies, sports etc. etc.
All of which tends to negate the anti-COVID measures if people were following them in the first place. Hell we even had door to door sales people coming around during COVID - we put a sign on our front door stating we would not be answering the door.

As to our large numbers of deaths during COVID, well take all the above and combine it with our nearly 340million (#3 behind China and India) population and our nearly 100% coverage of statistics and it is no wonder our reported deaths were so high.* China I am at least 99% certain did not give accurate numbers just for politics sake and India has many millions of people living in small villages and city slums who seldom interact with the government or report deaths, they just have a family service and bury them. Many people still believe that the dead should just be dropped in one of the sacred rivers so even if the government came by to check on the deaths from COVID there are no graves, just a body that drifted away on the river and was eaten by water life. So their numbers were probably even less accurate than China.

And then there are parts of Africa, parts of Asia & remote areas of So America etc. etc. etc. I saw articles of entire villages in Africa being a ghost town, no one to count the dead and when the government checked they just dug trenches with a bulldozer, dropped all the bodies in, burned the buildings to hopefully kill the virus and moved on down the road to check the next village. I saw similar things in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive, bulldozers and back hoes digging large holes in the cemetery next to our base and then trucks of bodies in piles pulling in and soldiers tossing them in until the hole was full, and a dozer pushed dirt over them then dug the next hole. That happened several times a day for a couple of weeks. So if you tell me it didn't happen in many places during COVID I will call you ignorant if I am in a nice mood and a liar if I am in a bad mood.

*Remember all the reports that many places deliberately over counted COVID deaths for benefits and aid? Someone comes into the ER/Trauma Center/Morgue dead from a traffic accident, heart attack etc. etc. and they also had COVID = just put them on the Covid death list. It was a lot less work for the severely over worked medical staffs. Who were already running to another in the endless line of patients or bodies coming in. No string of lab tests to determine the cause of death, no need for an autopsy etc. etc. just put another name on the COVID list. Reportedly that happened in a lot of places around the world. Too over worked to test and make accurate records.

Nice shot, but only one duckling?

The geese are fun to watch. There were a couple of lakes and refuges near my home town that were migration rest stops and they would feed on the deliberately poorly harvested crops nearby (they paid the farmers to do that). At the height of the migrations you measured geese by the acre.

As to the walking on water, I a have done it many, many times, the water just has to be cold enough for a while before you attempt it.

Pretty soon we may have UHH members and posters who don't even use or own a camera - they will just do AI.

Let's see, My oldest son is 5'10", a Staff Sgt in the Army Reserves who volunteers for every overseas assignment that comes along*, Jump Master, Iraqi Veteran, his Reserve company does hand-to-hand training regularly and his fitness is what you would expect from someone like him. A mugger or even two would not be advised to take him on with bare hands.
So he can defend himself without a gun in some circumstances. But he prefers using a gun because that way the other guy doesn't have much chance of hurting him.

*He sees it as a way to see the world at Uncle Sam's expense, so far he has touched over 20 countries and spent time in about 12. Next month he leaves for a year stationed in Germany, but I get the impression Germany will be a base to visit other places.

Our daughter on the other hand is 5'3", 124 and a Pediatrician. Not exactly a Women's Wrestling or Boxing type and petite on top of that. She does know how to use sharp things, like scalpels since she has studied surgery. But doctors don't walk around carrying scalpels. So besides not being a good bet with even one unarmed mugger for self-defense she would need a gun. I taught her to shoot and with pistols, the bigger the hole and the louder the boom they more she liked it. If she asked I would hand her any gun I own, but for her size hands I would urge her to take a snub-nosed .38, the hammerless .32 Mag that belonged to my mother or my compact 40 S&W pocket model.

"God created mankind, Samuel Colt made them equals."

Haven't seen him.


Seriously, I have a few cousins that way back then made me wish they weren't my cousin. Esp in the age of mini skirts and then micro-mini about the time I got our of the Army. A couple of those skirts had something to do with my wife becoming my wife.

The first time our daughter saw this photo, her comment was "Miles of legs!"
And NO! I didn't buy those pants. My Mother worked at sears and was always buying me the latest "In" fashions. They were fine wool and I referred to them as "my horse blanket". But Mom and Debra liked them.

Amazon, Costco, Sam's, Walmart, Sears and others with a big online presence were booming-online. The brick and mortar stores both large and small had less traffic and lower sales.

The delivery companies were over worked, hired more drivers, rented more trucks etc. In our neighborhood there was one elderly UPS retiree with just his old company cap and a six passenger golf cart delivered small packages every day of the week for a while. He told one of the neighbors that he was making 3-4x his pension delivering small packages 6 hours a day. Because of the open work cart and his great personality, school kids who were homeschooling on Zoom would take breaks to ride their bikes with him, talk to him and help him drop off packages so he didn't have to climb in and out and walk so much. When UPS got another truck and full-time driver the kids were disappointed to not be helping anymore.