The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: November 9, 2019
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walks the sodden pasture lane.
Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
Is silver now with clinging mist.
The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.
Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise
• Robert Frost
• • •
Questions of the Week
When are moderate evangelicals going to come out of hiding and condemn the vituperation of the neo-fundamentalists? (Hey Roger, we did this last week!)
Is “Jesus Is King” really just a Carman album, a pep rally for Our Team?
Why do 300,000 Texans want to secede?
Is the continued neglect of Native Hawaiian culture in favor of scientific advancement worth it?
What does this phenomenon say about us?
Do Democrats have a religion problem?
• • •
November Odds & Ends
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From The Onion
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From The Onion
WASHINGTON—Describing the French Canadian municipality as a “world-class city,” Nationals players admitted Thursday that their World Series win would be way sweeter if the franchise stilled played in Montréal. “We’ve never really considered D.C. our home, and we all grew up bleeding Expos blue,” said World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg, speaking in French while lovingly referencing Montréal’s architecture, cosmopolitan culture, and its “incredible cuisine.” “The first thing we did when we got back to the locker room was sing Québec’s anthem. Man, could you imagine driving our parade floats down Catherine Street? It’s great to finally get a ring, but it’ll be a little bittersweet to celebrate with a bunch of D.C. bureaucrats who are just looking for something to do.” At press time, Strasburg admitted to taking some solace in winning a World Series without Bryce Harper.
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From The New Yorker
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After learning that two of Rudy Giuliani’s associates had been charged with federal campaign-finance crimes, millions of Americans expressed their stunned disbelief that Giuliani had associates.
“By ‘associates,’ do they mean people who actually associate with Giuliani?” Carol Foyler, who lives in St. Louis, said. “This whole story doesn’t add up.”
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Finally, this one’s for Mike the Geologist, from Uncyclopedia
• • •
Music this week
My son and I are going to see my favorite band Wilco in concert this week. Can’t wait! Here’s a video from their most recent album, Ode To Joy
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And, as an added bonus, a live performance of our unofficial theme song here at Internet Monk, “cherry ghost” and all…
• • •
Evangelical Hall of Shame this week
James MacDonald declared “biblically disqualified” for ministry
Comedian John Crist cancels tour over sexual misconduct allegations
Ongoing skirmishes between Paige Patterson and Southwestern Baptist Seminary
In the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2019 American Values Survey, white evangelical Protestants are fully disrobed (from the always sane and clear-sighted Michael Gerson)
Anne Graham Lotz continues her kooky prophetic speculations
Paula White Cain joins the Trump administration and says DT wanted to build “a house for God”
• • •
Finally, what would Mr. Rogers think?
I am often asked what Fred would have made of our time—what he would have made of Donald Trump, what he would have made of Twitter, what he would have made of what is generally called our “polarization” but is in fact the discovery that we don’t like our neighbors very much once we encounter them proclaiming their political opinions on social media. I often hear people say that they wish Fred were still around to offer his guidance and also that they are thankful he is gone, because at least he has been spared from seeing what we have become. In all of this, there is something plaintive and a little desperate, an unspoken lament that he has left us when we need him most, as though instead of dying of stomach cancer he was assumed by rapture, abandoning us to our own devices and the judgment implicit in his absence.
• Tom Junod, “My Friend Mr. Rogers,” The Atlantic
The Internet Monk Archives 
According to other blogs I frequent, JMacD has already begun his comeback, including a Signs and Wonders kickoff about Words of Prophecy from somebody at a gas station in Wyoming.
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I think it’s the other way around.
Remember: If the Beast represents a corrupt political system and the False Prophet a corrupt religious system, which is always the Boss and which is always the Fawning Flunky? “IT’S IN REVELATIONS, PEOPLE!”
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Among other things.
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I am very skeptical of Signs and Wonders and Prophecies and Spiritual Discernment that cannot discern the difference between Donald Trump and Jesus Christ.
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As Dr Tournier put it in the first chapter of The Strong and the Weak, “permission to do what until now has been forbidden.”
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The difference is that Jesus paid his taxes!
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But those Denominations are Lukewarm Apostates and Heretics!
NOT the Real True Church!
“B-I-B-L-E! THAT”S THE ONLY BOOK FOR ME!”
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You can’t be a Christian unless you bend the knee, burn the pinch of incense before the Trump, and Take His Mark.
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I think that’s a combination of “What a lot of anticlimaxes” and “Rags to Riches to Rags in three generations”.
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No, he’s the REAL Second Coming of Christ.
Sunday’s posting had to do with Christians and mental illness. A lot of which overlaps with Spiritual Warfare and Gifts of Discernment. IF YOUR SPIRITUAL GIFT OF DISCERNMENT CANNOT “DISCERN” ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DONALD TRUMP AND JESUS CHRIST, WHY SHOULD I TRUST IT WHEN YOU TELL ME THIS PICTURE ON MY WALL IS “FILLED WITH DEEEEEMONS!”?
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He can always try counting on a Presidential Pardon.
According to Giuliani “The President has the power to Pardon anyone for anything whatsoever.”
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Yet Christian Leaders have always been longing to be the Power Behind the (Iron) Throne of a Truly Christian Nation.
If you’ve heard the interpretation of Revelation where the Beast represents a corrupt political system and the False Prophet a corrupt religious system, remember one thing: IN ALL CHRISTIAN APOCALYPTIC, WHICH OF THE TWO IS ALWAYS THE BOSS AND WHICH IS ALWAYS THE ADORING FLUNKY?
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It’s called “Net Drunk Syndrome”.
Amazing how when you’re anonymous behind a handle, safely out of fist range, and have 50,000 friends(TM) upvoting anything you post, you can act completely off your meds and then some.
And Christians are no exceptions.
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“Blood and Soil” was not originated by the Nazis. It was originally the name for a Nostalgia Genre of a simpler agrarian past popular in the hardship and chaos after World War One. Best quick description would be “Little House on the Prairie auf Deustch”. The Nazis just hijacked and took advantage of this longing for a Simpler Cleaner Mythic Past.
Another, more specific, aspect of Blood and Soil was before their 1933 Coup-from-Within (when they still had to win elections), the NSDAP positioned themselves as The Guardians and Protectors of Traditional German Family Values against the HOMOSEXUAL Chaos of Weimar Berlin (a snapshot of which was dramatized in the play/movie Cabaret).
P.S. Compared to Communism (the other Political CULT of the time, based on Karl Marx’s economic analyses), Naziism was pretty half-baked for a “radical ideology”. Primarily an inconsistent Personality Cult centering around their Cult Leader and little else.
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64 in two weeks.
Cue up the Beatles song.
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One writer broke out the late Boomers into a separate “Generation Jones”, a transition sub-generation incorporating traits of both Boomers and Gen-Xers. Like how border pidgins (like Spanglish and Alsatian) incorporate two different languages.
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Same here.
My DM: “HUG, why are you so down on Boomers? You’re a Boomer.”
ME: “That doesn’t mean I have to like it. My birth year forever associates me with the biggest bunch of Arrested Development Narcissists to come down the chute in four generations.”
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The URL of the link includes the words “Ezekiel 38”.
During my time in-country, this was known as “The Nuclear War Chapter of Ezekiel”, and was the “half” of the 3 1/2 book Bible of the time. (The other three were Daniel, Revelation, and Hal Lindsay’s Late Great Planet Earth.) It gets included in the End Times Checklist crossed over with Revelation under the title “Gog & Magog” and was the first “action scene” of Left Behind: Volume 1 — “IT’S PROPHESIED! IT’S PROPHESIED!”
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“…Lotz appeared on “The Jim Bakker Show” last Wednesday…”
And that’s where I stopped reading.
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Thank you Dana – a bit of a more realistic response….
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extreme liberal and extreme conservative is what I meant to write.
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Sorry – like this on both sides – extreme liberal and extreme democrat…. had for us conservatives but not necessarily trump behavior supporters to read most of what is written here anymore.
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A mainline pastor [ female ] in a neighborhood church has denied the physical resurrection of Jesus from death. I got a relative who attends.
The good thing for her church; she came cheap.
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I’ve been outside the “Evangelical bubble” ; read their writing all the time plus attending on occasion.
I will say this; I suspect the average congregant is more conservative then the Bishops, pastors and denominational leaders.
But you can read about Mainline heresy pretty much weekly. And they continue to wither.
________________
BTW, the husband of Rachel Held Evans has now declared himself to be agnostic; doubts he will see his wife again. That is very, very sad actually. There are 3 children from the marriage I believe.
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Well, yes and no.
A local zoning issue and ongoing issues has created situations where neighbor who used to nod and wave now glare and even speak invectives and insults at public meetings.
It is all about the world is changing and most of us old farts JUST WANT IT TO STOP.
Well not me but that makes me the enemy.
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BG was neutral only when compared to how things are today.
Sort of like my father (born 1925) was NOT a racist and it cost him at times in the 60s/70s and onward. But to day he would be considered one.
The goal posts have/are moved/moving.
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Arrrg. “are” -> “or”
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Sorry but your bubble doesn’t include what I said.
My family history and relatives are all over the evangelical system. And all of those permeate it. My father and grandfathers names are etched into corner stones of an SBC where most of that is true. And my father would be appalled at it. I have other relatives who are pastors across huge swaths of the country where this is all true.
Nice bubble you live in.
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LCMS? YEC is a basic part of their DNA.
The LCMS people I know ignore it. So what does it mean to attend a church but ignore the statement of the leadership. And give them money?
Protestants? 5 Points are nearly so. Isn’t it official?
And so on.
Regional. In practice. But that means that many local churches are not faithful to their leadership.
Sort of like the strongly RCC who ignore the dictates on birth control.
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I’d be unpleasantly surprised. I could see how that would be the case; even in my own mainline Lutheran parish much of the culture among the laity is shaped more by evangelical subculture than by Lutheranism. Fortunately, the doesn’t extend to David L’s list.
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Seneca not only misrepresents Main Lines, but also his native Evangelicalism…
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OTOH, you can attend an evangelical church where Jesus is name-dropped and sung to every Sunday but the pastors and congregation care quite little for the things He cared about. People in glass narthexes shouldn’t throw bricks.
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You’d be surprised. I think it’s much more a regional phenomenon than a denominational one.
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Ditto, Robert.
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Seneca, I don’t find David L’s list “over the top” but congruent with my 50+ years of experience in Fundamentalism (cofC) and the Evangelical Circus.
Also, I have found more faith of the risen Christ within the several Main Line churches I’ve been a member of.
You, sir, would do well to explore outside of your bubble.
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B.S. Every week in my mainline church we profess belief in the resurrection of Jesus when we say the Apostles’ Creed. That is common in the mainlines. You need another source of information, not fake religious news.
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“The D’s don’t have a religion problem. The Evangelicals have a political problem. And a few more.
I’m more and more becoming a none. As I have wandered about lately looking for a church I find more and more of:
You can’t be a Christian unless you are YEC.
You can’t be a Christian unless you are a 5 pointer.
You can’t be a Christian unless you vote the R ticket.
You can’t be a Christian unless you believe life begins when a sperm penetrates an egg.[1]
(I want to know when people begin. Lettuce is life.)
You can’t be a Christian unless you believe in papal infallibility.
You can’t be a Christian unless you agree the RCC is evil.
(And that the Baptist Church stated in the days after the death of Jesus.)
You can’t be a Christian if you allow a woman to teach men.
You can’t …..”
I’m a life long Evangelical. Those are pretty sweeping accusations that I’ve never heard expressed in any of the churches I’ve ever attended. Way over the top.
HOWEVER, you can, as a NONE, be very comfortable in most Mainline Churches where belief in a Risen Saviour is not necessary; in fact any specific belief doesn’t appear to be necessary to full membership or serving as pastor or staff.
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We can’t get ourselves together and we don’t know how because there is no undivided we. For example, it’ not only the case that some of us (our generation) would like to do something to prevent rising fascism across the world, but don’t know how; it’s also the case that some of us are fully on board with the rise of fascism across the world, and are cheering for it as it ascends. I wonder if the next generations will be any less divided in facing these threats. In regard to fascism, I fear that future generations may become less divided by embracing it — for instance, it is easy to imagine the existence of a nondemocratic, eco-fascist movement becoming popular. Remember that the Nazi movement in Germany was strongly attached to idealization of the natural world, and to reviving not only a pre-modern idea of the Volk, but also to reviving the natural world as it existed before modernization. Blood and Soil was the motto. Getting “back to the land” was part of their radical ideology.
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Definitely. I could not agree more. There’s a reason the founders of this nation wanted separation of church and state. Historically, Christianity has always lost its way when it has allied and aligned itself with the state and worldly power.
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evangelicals own trump now
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even the word ‘Christian’ these days calls up Donald Trump’s image
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We planted a Japanese maple in the front yard in the early Fall. I hope it survives the winter here, which is, according to the weather experts, likely to be colder and wetter than usual.
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Regrets, maybe. Envy? Not so much. The next several generations are going to have a tougher time than we Boomers did, considering the crises they’re going to be facing. We can’t seem to get ourselves together to even begin to cope with the threats of climate change; we don’t know how to deal with the rise of Facism in many parts of the world, including our own; or, as US citizens in particular, how to approach the extreme political polarization of our own country.
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True, especially considering that the new “Leader of the Free World,” since the advent of the current occupant of the White House, is East-German-born-and-educated Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. A lot has changed, some of it for the better, since the Berlin Wall came down—even if it hasn’t ushered in Utopia.
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P.S. Happy birthday codger. I turned 59 three days ago so I’m on your heels like flies, as we say in Texas, on shit.
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Power, in the words of Steely Dan, is “Like a Sunday in TJ”(Tijuana), “It’s cheap but it’s not free.”
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Stuart,
Embrace your power! Then give it the hell up! Life is so much more fun when your sneaky and weak. That’s the gospel isn’t it?
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LOVE that Wilco video. Frikkin’ funny. Great stuff.
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beautiful . . . we were blessed with beautiful Japanese maples in our front yard when we lived in the South . . .
good memories
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“It’s to Christians’ shame that we do not advocate for a whole life ethic, including real care for people from womb to tomb, and abolition of the death penalty.”
THIS !
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This is terrible news, Susan. I guess this is the comment that got ‘stuck’ but was released later.
We will certainly pray for the good people of Australia during this crisis, you bet. Please keep us informed.
Stay safe. Sending hug.
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“Also the data is piling on that most Abortion voters aren’t voting on that issue but using that issue as a proxy for white supremacy.”
You people are certifiably insane. It’s because of stuff like this that ugly times are coming.
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The problem with accusing the Democrats of having a “religion problem” is that the group that is most likely to publicly and vocally identify as “believers” have already decided to oppose everything the Democrats stand for. Hard to find “overlap” with someone who already considers you the kissing cousin of Antichrist and has zero interest in even talking to you, let alone negotiate with you.
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It’s a good thing he’s not as close to the president as she is.
Interesting note: Trump was deeply influenced by the Power of Positive Thinking teachings of Norman Vincent Peale from childhood into maturity (maturity?). It’s not a giant leap from Peale to Lots.
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You won’t find any of that in most of the mainline congregations and denominations across this country. Perhaps you could find a church home among them.
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I’m still waiting for an opportunity to use “ok, pastor”.
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Bingo!
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I thought of you, Susan, when I first read about the fires. I am so sorry. You and your lovely country are in my prayers.
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The D’s don’t have a religion problem. The Evangelicals have a political problem. And a few more.
I’m more and more becoming a none. As I have wandered about lately looking for a church I find more and more of:
You can’t be a Christian unless you are YEC.
You can’t be a Christian unless you are a 5 pointer.
You can’t be a Christian unless you vote the R ticket.
You can’t be a Christian unless you believe life begins when a sperm penetrates an egg.[1]
(I want to know when people begin. Lettuce is life.)
You can’t be a Christian unless you believe in papal infallibility.
You can’t be a Christian unless you agree the RCC is evil.
(And that the Baptist Church stated in the days after the death of Jesus.)
You can’t be a Christian if you allow a woman to teach men.
You can’t …..
As long as most of the above say you must vote R the D’s will get everyone else.
Sigh.
[1] Read this if you want a scary end game of life (and personhood) begins at conception.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/what-every-member-of-congress-should-know-about-vaginas/2019/11/01/cd895d60-fc0d-11e9-8190-6be4deb56e01_story.html
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before Thanksgiving
the old Japanese maple
austere and ready
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And mine.
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Indeed.
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I think most real-life neighbors still treat one another relatively well. The anonymity is one of the big downsides of the Internet. That’s why I don’t use a pseudonym (though I have used initials, rarely, when I feel in danger of being flamed…).
I do think the Democrats have a religion problem. Not O’Rourke’s thing about tax exemption, no. There seems to be little will on the part of the Dem candidates to engage religious believers and find out if and how their concerns overlap. Yes, the Republicans also have a religion problem – pandering.
It’s to Christians’ shame that we do not advocate for a whole life ethic, including real care for people from womb to tomb, and abolition of the death penalty.
Dana
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Lord, have mercy on the people of Australia.
Dana
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+1. Feels like I need to wash it down with a vodka and tonic… and I don’t even drink hard liquor.
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Good one Chaplain Mike!
Good one.
Your wit is quick.
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I am dismayed to hear this Susan.
The Australian people have my prayers and solidarity.
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Lotz is kookier, DeMar more dangerous.
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Folks isn’t it obvious at this late date that all these generational titles and lines of demarcation are just advertising? Ways to peg you as a consumer so you’ll just buy more crap you don’t need? All younger people think they’re the latest and greatest. All older people are full of regrets and envy.
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
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🙂
Brava !
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Was wondering how long it would take for that to show up here. 😉
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Mostly at Trump rallies, but it’s true–they’ve gotten permission from the highest office in the land.
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(Insert tongue-sticking-out smiley)
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But they’re getting there…
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Yep.
I’m not interested in my mayor’s theology, and more with what she is going to do to keep motorists from interfering with my life. Jesus speak mostly makes me think someone is ducking the issue at hand
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James MacDonald has been turfed out of Harvest Bible Chapel, permanently? No great shock there, but I doubt that he’s going along with either “restoration” or “an extended period away from ministry.” I’ll bet he’s back in business, essentially unchanged, in six months. See also: Driscoll, Mark.
Also, I miss Mr. Rogers.
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ok, boomer
🙂
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That, Steve, is, all by itself, terrifying. Trump is as amoral as it gets.
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Very much this. Anonymity reduces inhibitions; Fox news reinforces a lot of the worst in people. Fox News watching, Trump-voting, Twitter users write a lot of things they wouldn’t feel at all comfortable saying face-to-face.
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Thank you. Early Boomer here–born in 1947. Not all of us have morphed into conservative bigots. A lot of us are still working for the things we worked for when we were young.
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+1
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Four years after the Berlin Wall fell the European Union was formed. Germany may have had an actual wall but Europe had been divided between western capitalism and eastern Soviet style communism since WWII. My wife grew up in West Germany (on an American military base) but we visited a unified German a few years ago which was a new experience for her. After the fall of the Berlin Wall came the collapse of the Soviet Union. Just because an era of world peace was not ushered in doesn’t mean the fall of the wall should be downplayed as irrelevant.
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I wonder if it would be fairer to say that Twitter represents real people in the same way that Trump represents white conservatives: i.e. an amplified and distorted caricature of the reality, but one that nevertheless reveals disturbing things that are buried under the surface that people don’t necessarily want to acknowledge are there.
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As someone turning 65 next week, I’m getting scared over the increasing anti-Boomer backlash in this country. We are in the majority, have all the power and have made very comfy lives for ourselves. maybe I should flip the script and start screaming that I am a persecuted minority – its worked for evangelical Christians who adore Donald Trump. I could maybe even get a White House office down the hall from Paula.
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I am more and more convinced that evangelicalism never fell far from it’s fundamentalist roots – and when push came to shove, they chose to “go home” rather than change their tune.
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It’s hard to claim Democrats have a “religion problem” when over 50% of Democrats are Christian, and atheists only make up 10% of the party.
It’s certainly true that Democratic politicians tend to be hesitant to use religious language – although there are exceptions, like Buttigieg. But given the ways that the Republican party has used Scripture to justify all manner of sin (child separation, adultery, white supremacy, etc.) having politicians who don’t quote the Bible all the time is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Why is it that SoBs like Mohler, political animals like Falwell and charismatics like Ms Cain or whatever husband’s name she now uses are considered evangelicals when they never were before? The animals now run the zoo.
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The Children of Billy Graham have not followed their father’s example of being politically neutral. Rev. Graham would meet with any American POTUS regardless of their party.
His kids are political hacks that embraced the most anti-Christian POTUS ever when one looks at the character of Trump. But for the religious right, political power trumps the Gospel.
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Barr must be deciding if it’s a conflict of interest for him to issue a warrant for his own arrest.
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For many “evangelicals”, Trump is their moral lodestar.
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Not to worry! Attorney General Bill Barr is aggressively investigating the case! LOL!!!!
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https://www.917thewave.com.au/news/local-news/saturday-scorcher-could-break-mandurah-weather-record/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-08/queensland-fires-force-thousands-to-evacuate-in-cooroibah/11682680
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Yes it is Susan.
A son and his family live in a suburb of Sydney.
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They have proven that they will vote for *anyone* who will pay lip service to “Christian values”, no matter what their personal actions are, so long as they oppose abortion and will hate on the same people they hate on. Rational value judgments have nothing to do with it – it’s all tribal.
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For late Boomers (late bloomers?), or at least a significant segment of us, caught somewhere between Boomer and Gen X mentality and experience, this song, written in 1985, was, or could’ve been (if the Replacements, who wrote the song, hadn’t been so typically late Boomers in their failure to live up to expectations of them and their finger-flipping all but intentional self-destruction), our anthem: Bastards of Young.
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Read about Australia’s fires Tom, that is depressing.
Susan
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We hear about California, why not us down in Aust??
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Paula White and Anne Lotz; two more example of kooky fundamentalist magical thinking that kowtows to tRump.
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Brunch today is…depressing.
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I was 30, born in the last five years of the Boomer generation.
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Some of the Boomers. We’re not all the same.
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The Epstein Memes
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/11/the-week-in-pictures-epstein-meme-edition.php
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Yep, I was 16 when it came down. We watched in the classroom. Lots of talk of what would be possible with the “peace dividend”.
The Boomers, our parents, quickly found someone else to throw bombs at. 😦
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+1
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> Do Democrats have a religion problem?
No, see the last two elections. I’d argue the GOP has a religion problem.
“””So why bother with religious outreach?”””
I am with most of my fellow Democrats with the answer of “Don’t”.
“”” I’d say attack the hard-line anti-abortion laws being passed around the country while embracing the old Clintonian “safe, legal and rare” mantra”””
This is common peanut gallery advice. Yet the notion that one will ‘win over’ single issue voters with moderate positions is nonsense. Also the data is piling on that most Abortion voters aren’t voting on that issue but using that issue as a proxy for white supremacy.
“””Make the climate crisis the pro-life issue of our era. It’s about our children’s lives, and …”””
Same, if Pro-Live voters were actually voting Pro-Life that would make sense. Since they are not, it doesn’t
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I love that wonderful Frost poem. Love it.
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I don’t think we actually encounter our neighbors on Twitter, at least not a lot of the time. We often encounter cancerously metastasized versions of them, minus the restraints that are a normal part of social and communal identity, which are elements of real identity. It’s like experiencing your neighbor higher than a kite on mind-altering and emotion-enraging drugs, and calling that an encounter with the real person — but it’s not. Mistaking the illusion of such an encounter for the real thing is part of what is driving our severe social and political dysfunction in these frightening days.
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I remember when the Berlin Wall came down, how so many talking heads and regular people were predicting a new era of international cooperation, peace, and prosperity that would result from the end of the Cold War. A popular song about the event rhapsodized, “There is no other place I want to be/ Right here right now/Watching the world wake up from history…” It hasn’t quite turned out that way, has it?
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Re: the Anne Graham Lotz article about her “kooky prophetic speculations”, wherein Gary DeMar, “president of American Vision, a nonprofit that aims to ‘restore America’s biblical foundation'” attempts to correct her: Which one is kookier, Lotz or DeMar?
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I did post about Aust bushfires, I was not published.
Please CM put my comments up.
Susan
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Before you start munching waffles and whatever, please give prayers for the people affected by the ‘bush fires’ in New South Wales and Queensland in Australia. The Firies are doing a magnificent job but at times it is just a retreat situation.
These fires are different to the Californian wild fires but just as destructive. Not just homes but people’s livelihoods and farms are gone.One village is no longer. The police can’t even get to this village as the bridge giving access has been burnt out. They are gaining access on trail bikes.
Three people dead at last call. 6000 people evacuated from an area in Queensland.
Schools, Town halls and facilities just gone. 150 houses gone. Many in hospital for smoke inhalation and burns.
The Mayor of one Shire Council has lost her home as she helped those who had lost all.
A huge area impacted in the north of NSW and south Queensland.
I was born in the Glen Innes town and spent a lot of my youth and holidays in this wonderful area.The fires east of Glen are experiencing horrific infernos. The 2 deaths reported are from this area and one from an area on the coast at Taree.. Latest news tonight is that the fires are growing closer to Glen. Glen has a population of about 7000.
So much sadness. It is not yet Summer. I dare not draw breath on the prospect on Summer fires.
My town where I now live had bad fires some years ago so I know the distress felt by those in the grip of today’s fire event.
Tuesday the inferno will return to New South Wales and the worst is anticipated.. The winds will return from the wrong direction. The Australia bush just ignites.
Water bombers and helicopters and Air Tankers are in full force but the winds are going to be a further increased problem this coming week. Ground forces are working double shifts. Fire crews from interstate are on their way. This is the Aussie spirit. We support our own.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-09/nsw-fires-emergency-day-leads-to-injury-and-damage-assessment/11688620
Susan
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