Covid-19 Update

Hello humans. I wanted to give everyone a quick update as to what is going on over here at the moment.

 First things first: I’m fine. Never better.

Last week I went to the café downtown to have some coffee. I wasn’t really sure if the place would even be open due to the scare and so many other places being closed as a precaution. As I approached the front door of the Café Delicious, I noticed that the air con unit was running, so that was a good sign. But I was in for a surprise. When I entered the shop it was actually packed with people. Not panicked people, but smiling, conversing, happy people. I ordered my meal and asked if there was a bathroom or a sink where I could wash my hands. The waitress looked at me as if I had written ‘idiot’ in red lipstick across my forehead and replied in a very thick Aussie accent ‘They’re across the street, mate’.

So that’s why I always saw people crossing the street when I was in there. Mystery solved. I set my things down and walked over to wash up. One odd and noticeable side effect of this virus and the direction to wash our hands for at least twenty full seconds, is that I keep catching myself singing “Happy Birthday to You”. This is a song I can’t remember ever singing in my life. I had reasoned that this was only for the sake of timing out my hand washing and was therefore harmless, but as I returned to the café and sat down, I recalled that the melody for this popular birthday song was rumored to have actually been stolen. I immediately struck upon the idea of finding the original words and singing those instead.

It turns out that the origin and ownership of the tune is a long-running and bitter dispute. In 1893 two American sisters named Patty and Mildred Hill wrote the melody and lyrics for the purpose of creating a song that would be easy for children to sing. Patty was a Kindergarten principal and Mildred was a pianist and composer, so the two set about creating something together. Their original song was called “Good Morning to All”, and this song was about as simple as you could get. The lyrics read:

Good morning to you. Good morning to you. Good morning, dear children. Good morning to all.

But it was so simple and catchy that soon everyone was singing it. The Hill sisters quickly tired of their melody being used without permission, since they had actually filed a copyright on it. However, and here’s the tricky part, while “Good Morning to All” was copyrighted, “Happy Birthday to You” was not. The sisters had devised alternate lyrics to be sung on the occasion of a child’s birthday, but hadn’t copyrighted that version, which was technically a different song. However that changed in 1935 when the Hill sisters finally filed a copyright for the second song as well. People such as Irving Berlin and Walt Disney had to pay hefty sums to use the song in their projects, and in one notable case a planned documentary on Dr Martin Luther King had to be shelved because the fee to feature the song in a key scene was far too expensive for the filmmakers to afford. The terms of the contract specified that the claim would expire in 1991. In 1981 the copyright actually wound up with Warner Brothers, who continued to make loads of money from it, claiming that the copyright was legally binding until 2030. (As of 2010, the royalty cost for a single use was $700 US) That is, until the company was taken to court. To make a long story short, Warner Brothers ended up having to pay millions of dollars back to people whom they had wrongly charged and the song is now in the public domain, where most people always thought it was anyways.

The upside of my brief historical foray into Wikipedia, was that I now had the alternate wording I had sought, and was ready to make use of the newly acquired lyrics. That is until I was washing my hands later that same day and ‘My Darling Clementine’ ended up coming out of my mouth instead. That’s pretty much what I’ve been singing to myself ever since. The song doesn’t make much sense, but it’s certainly catchy!

In other news.

While Australia has declared a state of emergency and panicked people are fighting over toilet paper, Monto is so far away from everything that the people here aren’t overly panicked. (Well, not Australian people anyways. I suspect that the a certain obnoxious person from California is likely the reason there was no toilet paper on the shelves last week!) No worries though. By the following week the shelves were fully stocked again. I have very few expenses, endless water in the rain tank, a limitless supply of eggs, and friends nearby who always seem to have extra tomatoes and beans. It’s a pretty incredible evidence of Jehovah’s ability to care for our needs in times of trouble! I’ve also got two large planting boxes to make use of if I want to start growing some vegetables (though the shop in town has posted a sign limiting people to only one packet per seed type).

We talked to a girl in the ministry last week and asked if she was concerned about the virus. She said that in the past when there were disease outbreaks, they weren’t really affected out here so she wasn’t overly worried. But then again, there have been confirmed (single digit) cases in Gladstone and Rockhampton, which are two and three hours away respectively, so it’s not as far away as might be preferred. But here on the ranch I’m sitting pretty in my little bubble of grass, birds, and fresh air, so it’s not bad. Apart from the occasional walk to the grocery store, I have no reason to go out, plus working from home is a huge advantage right now as I can keep saving money even as companies and businesses are closing down and laying people off.

Who would have thought that my trip to Australia would have coincided with a long drought, historic fires, a new pandemic, and the looming potential for a major, worldwide economic crisis?! I had no idea my arrival here would herald such epic disasters. Perhaps the ‘Mo-pocalypse’ has finally begun.

But seriously, here is a snapshot of what is happening in the country at the moment.

There’s currently a ban on non citizens and non residents entering the country. Recently even the borders between the six Australian territories have closed to each other and, most recently, individual towns have even closed their borders. Unless you MUST travel you aren’t supposed to leave your own town. Gatherings of more than 100 people were previously banned, but after hundreds of imbecilic people gathered at Bondi Beach against suggestions to self isolate, the government has now outlawed all non essential gatherings at venues, including places of worship. Bondi was quickly closed as well. Only ten are allowed at a funeral and only five allowed at a wedding. The AFL opened its season playing a game to an empty stadium, so the sporting world stands to lose a fortune. Likewise, Qantas has stood down (laid off) 60 percent of its workforce, so the transportation industry stands to take a massive hit as well. Not to mention that with the new laws, many people are suddenly out of jobs, so it’s very serious. This is changing what it means to be ‘Australian’, and part of that is that there are no happy “gooday’s” or gatherings, no barbecues and beers with mates, and the prosperous feeling here is being replaced by very real worries about the future of the economy and the country. I’ve ordered a mask in anticipation of the eventual flight onward to who knows where after my tour here ends in November, but it has yet to arrive.

Meanwhile, at our hall we are setting everyone up with Zoom in order to be able to attend our meetings from home. We’ve also wrangled everyone onto WhatsApp so that we can keep in touch regularly, and it’s working out very nicely. We plan to commemorate the memorial at the house I’m currently staying in. Most will tie in, but we will have five people here and stream the talk to the others. We’re also setting out to write comforting letters to people in our territory in lieu of the door to door ministry and cart witnessing. As you all know, this year has been unprecedented with the cancelling of assemblies worldwide and interference with the Memorial invitation work, of all things! Not to mention that many will have to buy wine and make bread in order to commemorate this important event at home this year.

A man was recently overheard talking to another man on a bus about the epidemic at hand. He remarked that Jehovah’s Witnesses had vanished. “In the past they were always out there with magazines and leaflets even in times of trouble. For them not to be out now is significant. Mark my words, something big must be about to happen”. (Loosely quoted) He had a good point though.

At difficult times like these it’s important to remember the words of Jesus at Matthew 6:26 regarding the birds and how God takes care of them. If we keep putting the Kingdom first, Jehovah promises to provide all of the other things we need. Here in Australia I was recently able to learn a new aspect of that lesson and my teachers were none other than a friendly magpie and a handful of butcher birds.

Many has been the morning when I would be awakened very early by the sound of a bird singing outside my sliding door. But not just any bird; it would either be Check the magpie or one of the butcher birds I had befriended. They had learned that I would give them food and they also knew that they could get my attention by persistently singing their beautiful songs to me. Often I would be groggy and sleepy, but when I heard my little friends chirping at the door I just had to get up and find something to give them.

When we trust in Jehovah, something similar happens. When times are difficult or scary and we pray to our god, he hears us. The sound is beautiful to him. And just as I couldn’t stay in bed when I heard the birds, when Jehovah hears our prayers he can’t help but act to take care of us. It’s his pleasure to do this, but for our part we need to remember to ‘sing’ to him on a regular basis.

On another occasion Check showed up with an injured leg. He could hardly put any weight on it and I worried that he was badly hurt. Often he would hop on one leg, stand on one leg, and often collapse when he tried to bend down to peck at something. I felt so bad for him that I made sure he had all the food and water he needed. I thought about him a lot and wanted to spend time with him. For his part, Check kept coming back as though he trusted me to help him. Our god feels the same way when he knows we’re struggling with something. If we keep coming to Jehovah for help, he eagerly does all he can for us until things improve. But we need to trust that he will do that and do our best to stay close to Him. 

Check has recovered nicely, by the way, though he now has a crippling addiction to peanuts.

This current crisis is a good test run for the much scarier times to come when the Great Tribulation hits, but it’s also a great opportunity to build our trust in Jehovah’s organization and its guidance. Getting through all of this safely will bolster our confidence that He will take care of us no matter what happens in the future. In the meantime life continues and I’m actually quite happy to work on things here at the house and patiently endure the beauty and tranquility around me until things improve. I’ve included pictures so that you can better understand the hardships I’m dealing with at the moment.

So that’s it. All’s well here. Stay safe everyone!

I finally finished a video that I’ve been working on for a while now, so I will unveil it in the next post as we return from a camping trip to bring in the new year by giving the Queenslander a much needed facelift!

Stay tuned.

• 

• 

• 

•