IN these days of self-isolation, home-fitness-training regimes, humourous videos on Facebook, hook-ups on "Zoom" along with endless self-help advice from cooking to "painting like the masters" there are many within our community experiencing incredible sadness due to the loss of loved ones.
You only have read the "Death Notices" in the daily newspapers or online to realise that for many these times throw up intensely personal challenges in times of bereavement.
Funerals that would usually provide a time of relative "closure" are, because of the lock-down laws, now confined to people within that specific bubble.
For everyone who is experiencing this sadness it is a time of incredible stress and is is especially intense for our Maori and Pasfika communities. This is, in no way, meant to diminish or understate the grief of all cultures but rather to highlight the sadness that many are experiencing.
Spare a thought for anyone who cannot grieve with their family or friends; send best wishes to people who are experiencing great sadness and remember "We're All In This Together".

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IT'S increasingly difficult for charities to raise much needed funds but the current Covid-19 crisis has provided an even bigger challenge.
One charity spokesman told me that it was "quite chilling when we look forward to the year and the years ahead and wonder how we'll cope."
That should send a huge warning to the Government about how even more support will be needed in these cataclysmic financial times.
We often like to put the boot into the Aussies but the Federal Government across the Tasman has pledged to provide $100m to 300 charity organisations.
Perhaps we'll have to follow that lead.

THANKS to a reader who sent this photo into "Straight From The Dugout". The sign was set up on the northern approach to the "new" Auckland Harbour Bridge that was opened in 1959.
The bridge took four years to build and was originally a toll bridge as the photo depicts. Tolls were 2/6 (Two shillings and sixpence) per car which equates to about $5.50. The tolls came to an end in 1984.
Ironically if the tolls had been kept in operation and modernised similar to the electronic tolling we have in operation nowadays a second Harbour crossing or even the Northern Pathway would have been financially sustainable.
Please send through any photos from "yesteryear" and I'll post them.