Neighborhood Portraits: the bird lady

Meet Rachana; her mom (featured with her) is Honduran and her dad was from India. I hope I captured the fact that both these ladies are sweet as can be.

Rachana has a special gift with animals: she has two cats that are trained to do tricks and walk on leash as dogs do and this little bird that is always with her.  It too does a number of tricks: it hangs upside down, rolls over, plays dead, flies back to her after being put in a far off tree, etc.  The only thing she has to be careful about is a pair of hawks that 'patrol' the neighborhood.

I'm glad I got to spend a bit of time with them today because events unfolding in this country are bleak. Washington DC has now been added to the growing list of cities under curfew. I see lots of emotionally tortured postings and hand wringing along with protest walks and riots, but very little by way of concrete actions (or even proposals) to get us past this insane situation, where you have to fear for your life because of the color of your skin... And given how emboldened fascists and racists have become thanks to Dear Leader, I'm not sure I see an end to any of this...