diversify photos on Flickr

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Country Bus began in North Devon in spring 1985 with a single minibus and it wasn’t until a year later that they diversified into operating anything larger. After that, rapid expansion saw them take-over Blue Embassy, quickly followed by Stamps of Honiton. This gave them a presence across the whole of the North and East of the county, winning contracts as far away as Exmouth. It was not to last though and by September 1989, they’d gone bust and it was all over. At its 1989 peak, the fleet strength was some 35 vehicles. Cawlett was the beneficiary of many of the contracts and picked up some vehicles too, extending Southern National territory into Honiton and stabling some buses in Monkton (the former Battens Coaches premises, also used by Country Bus and Nightingales). GHU 639N was one of three Leyland Nationals operated and was a Bristol Omnibus machine when new. It’s seen here at Exmouth in the company of OUC 33R, the only double-decker to have been operated.

Country Bus livery was dark green and cream, although not all vehicles (such as the DMS – still in Pulham’s livery), received it. The DMS, would pass to Filers of Ilfracombe before finding its way back to London as an open-topper with Big Bus.

Thin threads by Amir Jina

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The previous month, there had been a flood in this village. One way that people prepare for floods is to lift all of their precious belongings onto a raised platform (called a Matcha) inside their houses. This woman had received warning about this flood very late. She quickly put all of her belongings on the matcha. She also put her one month old daughter up there, while she ran out of the house to move the animals to safety, to find her husband, and to save what little food she could from their fields. When she returned less than an hour later, her baby lay dead, fallen from the matcha into the rising waters.

Outside her house, hearing the muffled clack of a pedal-powered sewing machine, I saw a small grave with some simple toys resting on top.

Peoples' lives in rural Bangladesh often hang by a thread. In households too poor to do anything but grow food for themselves (and perhaps a little extra to sell if there is a good harvest), what happens when those crops, their only lifeline, are destroyed by a flood, or a cyclone? Protecting their livelihood is the highest priority.

A sewing machine can provide alternate sources of income so that families have income not totally derived from their vulnerable crops, and perhaps can even save money. Diversifying their income like this helps them to not only reduce disaster risk, but also to help them adapt to a changing climate as explained in the previous picture. It cannot make up for their losses, but it can make those losses less over time.

To see why I was in Bangladesh click here, or take a look at the previous or next photo in the series.

If you are interested, please view the series to see what I found and what I learned in my few weeks in Bangladesh, visiting some of the most vulnerable people anywhere on our planet.

And That's No Papal Bull! by RC (Rufus) Roark

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I guess after being in the ring with those truly Machiavellian millionaires in the Vatican--trying to get them to diversify their portfolios and use at least some small part of their filthy lucre to be more socially active, to get The Church back to a more Sermon on the Mount/Yes, in fact, you ARE your brother's keeper kind of Christianity, on the theory that a Church that is not an advocate for the poor and downtrodden will become a Church that is increasingly irrelevant in an increasingly poverty-stricken and oppressed world--His Holiness figured taking a swipe at The Donald was punching well below his ex-nightclub bouncer's weight. Of course, I don't see that playing the Trump card will have much affect on the match, since the Republican base in general has never had much use for Catholics anyway, and most if not all the Evangelicals among them seem to have flocked to those "God Wants You To Be Rich NOW!!!" mega-church ministries where the theological interpretation of "The Lord helps those who help themselves" is "Help yourself to all you can grab and to Hell with everybody else!"

I need to thank Hello Chicago-Star Trek Forever for giving me the idea--he's the one who first posted a pic of the two them together (or, at least, the first one I saw), which led to my comment on same, and inspired this 'toon.

In fairness, even though the 'toon makes reference to it, I should point out more emphatically that Pope Francis does not support Liberation Theology, nor did he as the former Father and Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, and, in fact, has spoken out against it. However, his opposition would appear to be not against its social activism, but against its use in fomenting Marxist revolution. Which makes sense--godless atheistic communism not exactly being what the Catholic Church is all about. As a Christian, I'm not a proponent of Marxist revolution myself, and neither is my little activista here, either. If she's waving a Kalashnikov and got a copy of Che tucked into her bikini bottom, it's just to serve as a reminder that sometimes your enemies aren't nearly as annoying as some of the clowns allegedly on your side--the ones who seem hell-bent on proving that Marx was right when he said that as the rich grow fewer and richer and the poor become more numerous and poorer, and as the petit bourgeois begin to lose their place and be driven down into the proletariat, rather than make common cause against the common enemy they will become reactionary and cling even more desperately to the old ways in a selfish--and doomed--attempt to retain their position of small privilege. Which leads me to say that, in fairness, maybe I should also point out that The Donald didn't exactly say, "The Pope doesn't know everything!". But, screw that--I'm conducting psychological operations here, not practicing unbiased journalism.

Diversified Aviation Management LLC | 1991 Bombardier Learjet 31A | cn 31-060 | N311EW by Dean Heald

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KLAX (Los Angeles International Airport) - 01 JAN 2023

"Pegjet One One" from Licenciado Gustavo Diaz Ordaz International Airport (PVR/MMPR) - Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - on short final to RWY 25L. Operated by Pegasus Elite Aviation.

Production Site: Wichita (ICT)

Year of Manufacture: 1991

Delivery to Ameritrust Texas Financial Corporation: 12 AUG 1992 as N156SC

Hex Code: A0E20C

Passengers: 8