Bad news, good news - sort of

For today's connection, I could have gone with Wisconsin, if ihe news coming out of there wasn't so sad and depressing. We probably drove past Kenosha on our way back to Chicago after our IPW post-fam in 2014, having done all sorts of lovely things in and around Milwaukee and Madison. I especially remember the joy of discovering the amazing things in The House on the Rock - and, as regular 😀 readers will remember, it was on this trip that I was first introduced to Blue Moon beer, so that was important. (Sadly, it's no longer obtainable in NZ, though the Baby has brought me some back to enjoy hoard.) I must, of course, mention cheese, too.

I had a great time on that trip, and will retain my positive feelings about Wisconsin despite the recent hideous news from there - but instead I'll go with something much more cheerful that is also in the news.

We've just got to see the first photos and footage of the baby rhino recently born at Auckland Zoo - a little cutie, not yet named, 65kg and drinking about a dozen litres of milk daily. She is so sweet, galloping and jumping about, the first rhino born here for 20 years. She's a southern white rhino, which is the most populous of the five species, but that's still not saying a lot really - their numbers are still dropping steadily, mostly because of poaching to supply horn to stupid people in China and Vietnam.

On my rhino charity trips to Africa, I was introduced to all sorts of organisations which are doing valiant work to protect rhino there, and had a heart-warming encounter with babies at a rhino orphanage. Covid initially was a help to the cause, since even the poaching networks had to shut down. Now though that evil scum is stirring again, and on top of that the sudden end to tourism, with all its jobs, has meant that local people are out of work and hungry, so they're going back to poaching, selling intel, and simply killing animals themselves for bushmeat. It's grim. So really, not much different from Kenosha, it turns out. Sorry about that.