What community looks like.

Photo copyright. Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Wings received a call yesterday advising him that tribal agencies had put together "a supply box" for each tribal member as part of their pandemic-management efforts; all he had to do was swing by and pick it up. 

It wasn't one box; it was three cases. One case was truly eco-friendly toilet paper, 96 rolls designed for low-water environments which will work for folks with low water pressure or, like us, low-flush toilets. A second case was 30 rolls of paper towels; no, not the giant Select-A-Size, but 30 rolls that will work just fine. The third case was that brand-new storage tub with lid you see in the photo, filled with the following: 4 boxes of generic Kleenexes; one box of nitrile gloves; one box of fifty surgical masks; one giant tup of sanitizing wipes; 1 gallon of pine-scent liquid cleaning detergent; 1 gallon of concentrated Dawn dish detergent; 2 cans of sanitizing spray; 2 large bottles of Purell hand sanitizer; and two small dispenser bottles of liquid hand soap. 

This is . . . RICHES. And the stress it took off us, both financially and otherwise, is incalculable, because now? We don't need to make a supply run, out in public with a pandemic still raging, in the latter half of this month just for these basics. [Also, knowing that this aspect of life is covered for a good while? Allowed us to take that part of our budget and help a couple of other folks yesterday.]

The Pueblo has done absolutely amazing things for its members during this pandemic. They still managed the holiday dividend, which is small by colonial measures but is absolutely essential for folks at the end of the year. They also managed a larger one-time cash payment to help folks get through the pandemic, plus a stimulus of sorts to help those with small businesses, and Wings was able to use that to order supplies in a time when our sales were absolutely nonexistent.  They also distributed gift cards to one of the local grocery stores, which we are planning to use at the end of the month to stock up again on food. They've been in the forefront of distributing masks from the very beginning. And now this. Folks were putting serious thought into what people need now, and how best to use federal funds to keep people alive and well and safe. THIS is what community looks like.

And it's what's been noticeably absent from federal and state "efforts," which seem mostly centered around making sure that people don't get a penny more than they can help, all while trying to shove them back out into the public, unprotected, as fast as possible.

Y'all could learn some lessons from older ways.

And this couldn't have come at a better time. There is no economy now. There's nothing. People are literally dying all around us from the government's failures, and I don't know how we keep them, or us, alive unless I can cover the bills. We have lost SO much to 2020, so very, very many people, and the gifts and the talents and the knowledge and the wisdom they carried too often lost with them. People have needed so much more help than we could give them, but we did as much as we could, even when it put us in a bind, and we will need to do much more of that this year. We have shelled out close to 2 grand over the last 2 weeks, $600 just the other day to fill the propane tank, which I was not expecting to have to cover right now on top of everything else. At some point, I'm going to have to make it up somewhere, and my Patreon still has nearly $300 in subscriptions for DECEMBER (and now another $300 for January, too) STILL UNPAID, so folks, please check your cards and the expirations. So:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (coffee is the biggest deal now, frankly);
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And if you've been contemplating a purchase? This would be a very, very good time to do it; I've got to make it this staggering outlay somehow. There's even new work, here and here and now here, among other new pieces from last week and last night, too, so please watch for them and share the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.