If anyone has ever worked or talked with a refugee or asylum seeker, none of this is surprising. The US gives so little assistance to resettling refugees that it’s truly embarrassing.

They get three months of bare minimum help - often through religious “resettlement” groups who receive the funds. After three months, they are expected to get a job, pay their own rent, navigate life in the US (including driving), and speak English well enough to do all of that.

They get almost no extra healthcare, rent assistance, food assistance, trauma therapy, or anything else beyond that point unless they are able to navigate the systems to do so. And to be honest, that is difficult enough for someone born here. It’s almost impossible for a new refugee. What little assistance they do get after the first 90 days is often due to community and church groups, not the US government.

Theoretically, they have case workers etc. through the resettlement agencies, but it’s a total mess. It’s an absolute disgrace, and we can and should be doing better to support refugees and asylum seekers. Especially if they are going to get dumped in a small town with no resources. I really understand residents’ frustrations, but I also hope this ugly episode teaches people how woefully inadequate our refugee program is - and helps them advocate for change! We can do better.

Happy to help!

Interesting! I always use the Latin when talking plants for that reason. Common names can get so confusing. I had no idea they even called them “snowflake” here in the US - they have always been leucojum to me!

I concur with the bot. It’s definitely a leucojum, not a galanthus (aka snowdrop). The flowers are more rounded and circular in leucojum and they can often branch on one stem. Snowdrops have more separated, oblong petals, and only one flower per stem.

Here is a good article (with dissected blooms) to help differentiate between these two early spring beauties! https://www.morrisarboretum.org/blog/snowflakes-vs-snowdrops-pendulous-beauties-early-spring

Happy spring!

Ugh, yes. The joys of small businesses, alongside the rare spam call about “funding.” Thankfully these emails all go to my spam filter now! But it is super annoying.

Oh, that’s so great that the dog is trained to signal to go out. I hope it’s an easier time for you, too! Best of luck!

We were just thrust into this scenario with an elderly family member, and now we have a cute senior dog. It’s going okay, but it’s been an adjustment.

First, get vet records and/or go ahead and establish care at a vet. Vets are extremely busy after everyone adopted pets during COVID - so better to go now, and make sure pup is doing okay.

Second, you’ll need the basics immediately - food, bowls, leash, collar, bags, etc. Hopefully your situation is easier and your friend can pass that stuff along.

You’ll also need to figure out potty timing. Dogs love being on a schedule. I don’t. So it may be a big adjustment to not sleep in, and to go for 5 walks a day at the same time every day. But congrats, that’s what you’re signing up for. Our dog is also a tiny breed and was never trained properly, so we are getting up at 4:30am to avoid accidents in the house. Does it suck? 100%. But we are still learning how long he can hold it overnight without an accident. We’re up to 5 hours now and we increase it a little bit each night. There may be a learning curve for you too.

Lastly, we also have an elderly cat and he’s fine as long as the dog stays ~3 feet away. The dog is terrified of him, so it’s usually fine. If he does get close, the cat hisses and growls so they mostly have a détente. I do keep any eye out on eating time, because the dog is scared to eat if the cat is like 3 feet away staring him down. We’ve also tried hard to make sure they get equal attention and love. Still, the cat isn’t thrilled about having all this hyperactive little brother energy around. We’re all just doing our best!

I don’t manage our PiHole, so easier said than done. I’m the non tech spouse (although not clicking ads or on TikTok all day, lol) but I can’t bug my spouse in the middle of the day to whitelist something for me. I can easily disable it myself and it takes 10 seconds. I could learn how to whitelist, but TBH I have enough tech to keep up with for the business already.

My most frequent issue is that links created through an email service provider like ConvertKit will get blocked by PiHole.

I’m a small business owner and so I get a lot of other people’s newsletters, on purpose. I like seeing what mentors and colleagues are doing with their businesses. But a link to their website, a blog post, anything really will almost always be blocked by PiHole if it’s sent via an ESP. This kind of “tracking” (email clicks from a small biz I know and trust) is something I am totally fine with.

It’s easy to disable for 1 minute to click through, but sometimes I forget that the PiHole is active and I can’t figure out why the links aren’t working.