#WATWB February 2020 A Fridge for Firies!

Welcome to #WATWB We Are The World Blogfest for February-ish 2020.  Our co-hosts this month are:

Sylvia McGrath,
Peter Nena,
Shilpa Garg,
Eric Lahti,
and Belinda Witzenhausen.

Please hop on over to check out their pages and any others with the #WATWB.

I’m late! And… I can’t blame the short month.  Meanwhile, did you….

hear about a fridge for firies?

Sourced from The Canberra Times – National Museum of Australia curator Craig Middleton, left, inspects the Bungendore roadside fridge with owners Scott and Claire Hooper. The fridge has been donated to the national collection. Picture: George Serras, National Museum of Australia.

The Canberra times reports it was the fridge by the roadside that stood as a symbol of community spirit through a harsh, dry summer, harbouring icy poles, drinks and snacks for the firefighters trekking back and forth along the Kings Highway.

At first, Claire Hooper was not convinced at the idea of her husband to put a fridge out the front of their house.  It was intended for refreshing passing fire fighters.  Scott convinced her and the adventure began as the Canberra Times continues the story.

Firefighters left memorabilia – helmets, masks and brigade badges – with the Hooper family, thanking them. People kept coming from far and wide came to keep the fridge full.

“The New Zealand guys were here – they were here for a seven-day stretch – and they stopped in to say thank you.

“We’re trying to take photos of them, and they’re making us stand next to the fridge; they’re trying to take photos of us. And we were like, ‘Guys, no. Come on’,” Mrs Hooper said. “It’s just been unreal.”

For many weeks fires raged across Australia.  Much of our forests in the Eastern States were destroyed.  Smoky haze covered our cities and towns.  Some folk on the South Coast were evacuated and returned to their homes multiple times. In the midst of all the horror local stories emerged. It is truly wonderful to be able to tell this local one.

A local radio station MIX 106.3 even organised a convoy to celebrate the fridge and the Coopers generosity in donating it.

It truly is a sight to see people doing such down-to-earth things to make a difference in dark times.  Cheers to all who contributed!

 

 

 

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To Forget

To Forget

 

We at table

talk –

to forget.

Muse over a morning

of banter and doings

of what we do –

To forget.

Pick up pages

of someone else’s

story, in a book,

escaping to….

Forget

The window hazy

The smoke entering

Open door

We remember.

Lest we forget –

The furrowed and frazzled brow

Of Firies*:

their boots

seared to the soles.

Sear not their souls

too much

we plead

as images roll in,

role in too,

as politicians posture.

The worn weariness

worn like a day’s drearies,

As its been months’ now

that our bush has burned.

But

We remember

The Firies

and those who

offer water

shelter

food and

their love

tapped away on keys

that carry updates.

We remember

sacrifices made

by volunteers

leaving homes,

some leaving

country,

at the call

of the crisis.

Children paddle

families to freedom

Sons bear medals

Meant for their Fathers

Under the smoky

Southern sun.

 

 

*Firies is a term of endearment for Firefighters.

Simon C.J. Falk 6 January 2020

Fields of Broken Dreams

Fields of Broken Dreams

There has been much sadness in our world and nation of late.  Added to this, each of us has a network of loved ones weighed down in difficulties of their own.  Yet, in all of this, the goodness of humanity still abides.  This little rhyme wrestles with the pain and the potential of such a paradox.

Fields of Broken Dreams

Sometimes it feels as if we walk

Through fields of broken dreams,

Wishing as we face the odds

That it wasn’t as it seems.

We grieve the air disasters,

Where lives flew off in a plane,

To the final sounds of “Alright, goodnight!”

Then they were never seen again.

Lives that had been a-flying

Were shot down from the sky,

Followed by calls to ‘shirt-front’ the responsible,

And still, we know not why.

Then, closer to the home front,

Fires blaze across the land,

Ashen faces lament ashen places,

And many houses no longer stand.

Then there’s all our local sadness,

The dead, the dying and the lost,

The marriages that are no more,

Make both the measured and measureless cost.

As we face up to it,

And walk through the rubble of these fields,

We fossick through the stubble,

For any meaning that it yields.

As the ashes moisten

From the dew and soaking rain,

As the beloved bodies are buried,

And people go home again.

As the sands of time grind onward,

And the broken pieces rot,

A healing slowly grows within,

Till we see what we have got.

The broken shards of pottery

Form drainage for a newly potted shoot,

For from the stench of rotting compost

New life is forming root.

We bare our scars of brokenness,

Shining in new springtime sun,

And from our anguish comes compassion,

As we realise we are one.

For we all feel it in our guts,

For those trapped in the Lindt shop,

Our hearts too plunged in the ocean

As the aeroplanes did drop.

We walk these global fields together,

Through the ashes and by the streams,

And we’ll walk on to tomorrow,

With more wisely tempered dreams.

Simon C.J. Falk                    7 January 2015