It rarely fails, here in the Ottawa Valley that winter will not agree to leave in due time, but prefers to grudgingly make its exit with another, quite unneeded display of its ill grace, leaving us yet again the obligation to dig ourselves out from under its ill humour.

Yesterday's inclement weather that arrived in the guise of a farewell tour, clogged highways, shrouded landscapes, screened the atmosphere with heavy blowing gales of snow. As fast as one could shovel, the snow piled up again. Accidents on roadways abounded. Municipal authorities pleaded with motorists to stay off the road if they could manage to, but this was an otherwise-ordinary working day and people were driving of necessity.

City buses broke down and the flow of traffic was further impaired. Children being bused to and from school on rural roads were constrained in their anxiety to return to homes - where power line interruptions due to trees falling on them meant they would have few daylight hours left to do their homework - sat for lengthy periods when the buses got mired in snow, awaiting rescue of tractor pulls.

Homeowners, already weary of shovelling out their walkways, driveways and porches over the long winter months, were put to it again. On the upside, the expectation that spring really is not far off on the atmospheric horizon.

She lives rurally which is why she is able to have such a large number of animals sharing her space. If she lived in an urban area she would be permitted at most to be able to license only three dogs to share her home with. As it is, she has ten, various breeds and sizes and temperaments. Most of them are rescue animals.

I was surprised when she said she had decided to take her huskie-German Shepherd mix, a rescue many years ago, from Iqaluit. He is the largest of her dogs, an emotional creature, loving to be noticed. She usually takes with her the boxer, a dog that was brutally mistreated, and whose reactions are sometimes really unpredictable. I might have thought for convenience sake she would take her 3-1/2-lb Pomeranian.

She sent along two links of videos resulting from her CTV studio appearance that had been posted on YouTube, and I watched them.

Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkGNqb07x9M&list=UUOYxMz070f7jYMjoHk36dGA&index=2
 Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b1t31McnDA&list=UUOYxMz070f7jYMjoHk36dGA

She had told me she'd had a really enjoyable time during the interview. That there had been a few occurrences backstage before filming began when she had put a nervous little dog, a companion to one of the hosts, at ease. The two hosts had brought along their own dogs with which they were experiencing behavioural issues, and she gave them advice.

She looked pretty well at ease. Her interlocutor seemed skilled at drawing interviewees out, making them comfortable, extracting for the viewing audience issues of interest to them. Her dog Jordy made himself right at home.

I thought it was a very good interview, that she had comported herself well and confidently. She told me that after filming had concluded and she had gone into a store en route back home, at the cash register another customer turned to her and complimented her on her appearance and advice to dog owners, that she had quite enjoyed it viewing the show.

How's that for instant feed-back?

We have been neighbours, acquaintances, friends for a long time. The family's daughter now living in Toronto with her husband, has two children of her own, of an age analogous to how old she and her brother were when we first met their parents. Our relationship has always been beyond cordial; concerned and interpersonal. We commiserate with their misfortunes, and congratulate them on incidents of good fortune. They communicate to us the highlights of their lives, and we reciprocate - to a degree.

She is open and friendly and he exceeds his wife's friendliness exhibiting a curiosity about others that appears at time to absorb him. He looks the same now as he did when we first met over two decades ago; frail, white-bearded and inquisitively probing of everyone in the neighbourhood. She looks different; young and vibrant with glistening black hair and an ethnically beautiful face; she has aged, face lined, with streaks of white in her glossy hair.

As long as we've known him he has been idle far more often than he has been gainfully employed. He hasn't worked a day in the last ten years, nor will he ever work again. Apart from the fact that he suffers from acute depression - not evident in casual contact - he has suffered incidents of physical incapacity necessitating operations which have left him more impaired than pre-surgery. He toddles about continually; she plods off to her full-time paid employment.

Their son is the most compliant, filial-respecting child imaginable, and now in his third year of university. Both parents are absorbed in the welfare and future prospects of their children. Somehow there is always sufficient funding for whatever the children require to aid them in their aspirations. Lately, my husband has avoided speaking with the father, though not with the mother or the children with whom relations remain beyond cordial.

One day last fall, while speaking with father and son, the father suddenly launched into an insulting diatribe against the son, a searingly humiliating scenario that played out in front of my husband who felt insulted on behalf of the son, who absorbed the abuse silently. A situation that led to my husband's epiphany that our neighbour was a bully and a tyrant, displaying inexcusable behaviour injurious to his son.

Soon afterward, in a display of jocularity not shared by my husband, an incident occurred that further cemented my husband's resolve to maintain a distance between himself and our long-time friend and neighbour. We had been slowly walking up the street, absorbed in conversation between us two, barely aware that a vehicle was creeping up behind us, when suddenly a loud horn blasted its way into our consciousness.

Behind the wheel of his car sat our neighbour and friend, splitting his sides laughing at our sudden alarm and discomfiture. I have since tried expostulating with my husband, to just let it go, forget it, put it behind us and resume normal communication with this neighbour, but my husband prefers not to. With the coming of spring and frequent opportunities to greet people exiting their homes in more pleasant weather the situation will become increasingly difficult.

An opportunity that eluded us sixty years ago is now on the cusp of presentation to our granddaughter.

In our time at her age, our parents were anxious for us to no longer be financially dependent on them. The idea was for us to leave school as soon as possible, to become part of the wage-earning demographic, and add to the family's ability to pay its bills. I felt devastated, informed by my mother that I would not return to school, that grade ten at high school would represent the highest academic attainment I could aspire to. My husband was permitted a few more years than I before he too was expected to launch himself into a working wage.

This, despite that we were enterprising enough through expectation and necessity, to find ourselves part-time employment whose profits were turned directly over to our parents. Truth to tell, we did not live in abject poverty, since both our parents owned their own homes albeit with mortgages, working hard to pay the bills. The need for higher education of any kind simply seemed not to have occurred to them, to aid our passage into maturity and a secure future.

For our children it was different; we meant, passionately, for it to be different for them. They, we agreed, would not be denied any opportunities. However they aspired we would support them. We too lived not in poverty, but with a severely straitened income, a budget so tight that concerns over paying all our bills were ever present, but we managed, frugally. And our children did use their opportunities to attend university to enable them to explore those areas of future employment that beckoned them.

And now our granddaughter, at a time in her schooling that has already far surpassed what I was allowed to achieve, is busy exploring her opportunities, looking at the various universities within this country whose programs would fulfill her expectations. She has many options and means to make the most of her opportunities, as she should.

The world was aghast with horror at the grim news out of China last year when a toddler was hit by a vehicle on a busy road and no one seemed to notice or to care. The little girl was struck again and again by subsequent vehicles entering the intersection where she had been initially hit; the original driver, and succeeding ones seemingly unaware and uncaring, speeding on, leaving the child to die.

Eventually a street cleaner, a humble woman who had observed the dreadful spectacle, rushed to the child, to attempt to staunch her mortal wounds, to no avail. But surely the touch of another human being might have given some comfort to the dying child.

It is easy to sit in judgement on another society, another culture. Decrying it as having lost touch with human values. People living in oppressive conditions become uncaring, unresponding to the needs of others, their empathy drained. Or so goes the argument. The Chinese themselves turned in the anguish of disbelief upon themselves, at that time, berating themselves for their careless attitude to the draining of a human life.

And in Canada? On a busy winter workday morning this week in Calgary a state of social oblivion appeared to have overcome the humanitarian impulses and emotional attachment to relieving the problems that life sometimes visits on strangers to which others are witness.

A 55-year-old woman was struck by a vehicle, and the driver simply continued on driving. No one seemed to notice or to care about the agony of a human being lying helpless on the road. Cars sped by, no doubt swerving at the last moment to avoid the hapless lump of flesh. One car did not avoid her, and she was struck again.

Passersby seemed not to notice. A woman, seated in her kitchen whose window overlooked the street, heard some commotion, instinctively sensed what had occurred, dialled 911, and rushed out of doors to locate the victim and give comfort, seeing all the while traffic swirling heedlessly around herself and the dying woman, with no one having the human decency to stop, to offer assistance. One man did attempt to alert traffic to bypass the victim.

People busy with the immediate concerns of their busy lives; driving to work, taking their children to nursery or school, anxious to beat time. This is not a society that one can be proud of.

Our sweet little toy poodle, Riley, has a recurring problem with lipomas. When he was young he had developed a sizeable lipoma that we felt was really quite worrying. We decided it made sense to have him operated on, and it was removed. The surgeon who had conducted the operation assured me that we needn't be concerned for the future; that lipoma would never return. But it did. And more appeared, as well.

Occasionally one of the lipomas - a fairly health-innocuous fatty deposit that gathers under the skin and can be very small or grow to impressive proportions - will begin of its own accord to shrink. Our veterinarian said he had never heard of lipomas disappearing on their own. These managed to, somehow, and he could see the evidence, from the condition of the skin where they had formerly stretched it.

To our queries whether his diet might possibly have anything to do with the development of the lipomas we were always informed unequivocally that diet plays no part in their formation. Riley's physical movements have never appeared to be impeded by the presence of the lipomas; they tend to grow on either the right or left backside, under the groin in clusters or singly, swelling the skin and producing large humps. He doesn't appear to suffer any discomfort with their presence.

We embark on our daily walks in the ravine, winter and summer. He is now approaching his 13th year and is no longer nearly as rambunctious as he was when he was younger. He toddles along diffidently, but speeds up when it suits him. He hasn't done any jumping in years or leaping about. He has a robust appetite and appears completely normal in all respects.

I've decided, finally, to remove grains from his diet. All commercially prepared dog foods have grains in them. But it's possible that the grains may lead to allergies in our little guy. I'm willing to give it a try. We've always fed him a high-quality dog kibble, and added a daily fresh vegetable salad, as well as additional cooked chicken to his diet.

I've taken instruction from my daughter, to prepare a recipe for him that excludes grain. It has lean minced chicken, sweet potato, red lentils, carrot, spinach, broccoli, garlic, olive oil, turmeric, parsley, ground flaxseed, basil and rosemary in it. He won't be short of his basic nutritional needs and then some. I'm willing to give it a try, hoping that by some miracle of interaction between metabolizing these food products and his needs being fulfilled the reactions that have caused those lipomas will cease.

Over our years of home ownership my husband has assembled a fairly good library of how-to-fixit manuals and books. Plumbing and electrical primarily. And over our fifty years and more of home ownership he has done more than his share of hands-on repairs in all manner of ways, including installing electrical systems extending our various basements' use for home living with a growing family.

I can recall dripping faucets, back at a time when there were no dripless faucets and washers had to be changed continually, a real headache, particularly in hard-to-reach spots under cabinets. I remember once, sitting at dinner with our children in their pre-teen years, when we suddenly became aware that the light fixture above the kitchen table was dripping.

My husband whipped into action, shutting off the water supply and soon ascertained that the bathtub tap upstairs over the kitchen to which access was only possible through cutting a hole in the clothes cupboard in our youngest child's bedroom was responsible. Our budget was too tight to call in a professional, and my husband managed to fix that leak. It could have resulted in a real catastrophe.

In our current house, built 23 years ago, the plumbing that was installed was far superior to anything any of our previous houses had. But about ten years ago my husband decided he would install ceramic floors in the laundry room, powder room, kitchen and breakfast room. While he was about it he decided to half-tile the walls as well; to the ceiling in the case of the breakfast room. And since he was doing all of that he decided to rip out all the sink counters, re-build them and tile them as well.

With that came the decision to replace the faucets in the kitchen and the powder room, and he decided to buy quality. American Standard had a model that came fitted with a filter, so that was what he opted for; the filter requires changing whenever it becomes clogged with the minute flotsam it removes to cleanse our potable water of impurities. The one in the powder room is produced by Kohler, and both come with lifetime guarantees.

When problems have arisen over the years - and a few have - my husband simply calls the manufacturer's long-distance line and they immediately courier out a replacement part. This happened yesterday when it seemed the one-handle bathroom fixture had somehow begun leaking. My husband went on-line to get information on how to disassemble the fixture, and then called the company to discuss the situation.

The woman who responded knew exactly what had gone wrong, described for my husband the technique he would use in fixing it, and immediately sent out a replacement part. Sometimes buying quality makes good sense.

It was the truly unique way he spoke, emoted, his facial expression, certainly not his physical appearance, aged, wanly complexioned, white haired, that evoked his identity in my memory. Ken? I asked tentatively.

We had dropped by our local Salvation Army Thrift Shop and were looking through the books neatly shelved there. We often come away with valuable additions to our home library. Just as often as we drop off books there that we no longer see any value for, mostly light reading material like detective novels that my husband favours, along with autobiographies, history, art and other types that he gives emphatically greater value to and retains.

We'd placed our little dog Riley in his carrying case for comfort, in the child seat of one of the shopping carts. That cart stood close by and alongside where I was perusing books. I soon became aware that a tall elderly man was peering at the top shelves directly in front of where I had parked the shopping cart and sleeping Riley. I speedily pulled the cart out of the way and heard the man laugh and tell me that hadn't been necessary; he had no problem reading the titles from his vantage point.

The voice made me look more closely, and although I did not recognize his face, I did recognize the way his mouth curved when he spoke and his jaw slightly twisted, although his face was quite symmetrical otherwise. At the sound of my enquiring voice and his name, he turned directly toward me, scrutinizing my face in turn, and then recognition spread in a smile over his face.

It had been well over a decade since we'd last greeted one another as familiar acquaintances given to walking our dogs daily in the ravine. When his dog, Blackie, died at a venerable 16 years of age for a larger breed, Ken posted obituary notices all over the length of their routine ravine rambles so everyone who knew him and his dog would be informed. Thereafter, neither Ken nor his wife Hilda ventured into the ravine again.

Ken had retired from the Canadian military. He retained the bearing of a military man. He was affable, charming, jocular, saw the light side of everything and no sentence could pass his lips without being curved somehow toward hilarity. Not even his fond memories of a companion pet that had meant so much to him.

He had been originally from Vancouver, posted through his job in the military at one point, to Germany for an extended stay. Where, though he was married with two children, he somehow moved away from his family into a liaison and eventually marriage with a German woman. On his retirement, they remained in Ottawa where he had been working latterly at the National Defence Centre.

Nor had he simply rested on his laurels after retirement; he took up a position as a reliable, always-available blood-plasma courier with the Canadian Blood Services, delivering the product to various hospitals in the Ottawa Valley region, sometimes driving for long distances, in all kinds of weather, summer and winter.

When he was absent from home, Hilda walked Blackie. Her temperament was slightly standoffish, although not unfriendly, and dour, quite unlike his. It's odd how opposites in behaviour and personal characteristics are often attracted to one another. Ken still refers to Hilda as 'Babe', so obviously somewhere in her personality is a hidden affinity for lightheartedness in her intimate life.

They had just returned, he told me, from a two-week vacation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, in the Bahamas, and loved it. Usually the trips they make are to Germany when they're informed that some family member has died, to attend the funeral. Or trips to Vancouver to see his children and grandchildren, but the difficulties in those relationships seem hardly to make the trips worthwhile with the bickering and the alarm they feel in witnessing how the others get along between themselves.

He had mentioned, years ago, that they might transfer themselves back to Vancouver, but thought otherwise of that plan, which in fact we thought had occurred. We live at opposite ends of the ingress to the ravine, miles distant from one another.

But he said, it's a six-hour flight to Germany from Ottawa, a six-hour flight to Vancouver, so they're in between each destination which calls them on occasion to attend a wedding or a funeral. Grinning broadly.

So there, it's done, and over with. At 76 years of age, pushing 77, I've had done what many teens experience. In fact, right alongside me in the recovery room at the private clinic I attended which employs the services of a half-dozen local specialists in oral surgery, there was a teen-aged young man to my left, a teen-aged young lady to my right. Both appeared to have undergone a procedure they would far preferred not to have to. They looked absolutely miserable. The young man's mother was in attendance at his side.

I recall our youngest son at age 18 being admitted to hospital in Toronto for (impacted) wisdom tooth removal - in hospital because the procedure would be paid in full by the Ontario Hospital Insurance Plan only if it were to take place within a medical institution. I remember when we were 16, my husband had an impacted wisdom tooth removed by his then-dentist. Who succeeded in botching the job incredibly, hacking away at the (then) poor boy's gums unmercifully, and extracting the offending tooth bit by bit, in shards and pieces. Of which shards and pieces continued to make their way through the gum for a full year afterward; my youthful husband become accustomed to feeling them make their way through, and carefully plucking them out.

When I remarked to my granddaughter that I was scheduled for the wisdom tooth extraction, she inhaled, then exhaled.  Talk of medical procedures tend to upset her; the very thought of blood and/or pain is one best left undisturbed. She warned me what would happen; I would be in pain and have to use painkillers for days and days. I would be reduced to eating mushy food. I would be 'indisposed' for a prolonged period of time. My face would be distorted and swollen.

How do you know all this? I asked her. Her school chums, their experiences in undergoing the procedure, how awful it was, what an ordeal. I told her I'm in good physical shape, healthy and strong and I'd have no problems. She sighed, and said she agreed, but without tonal conviction.

I've written a note of appreciation to the dental surgeon, and accessed a professional rating site. There, I'd read a critical rating for this very same surgeon before undergoing the procedure. His bedside manner did not rate highly for this disappointed client, nor did his professionalism. I added my rating which gave an excellent review to all the medical and administrative staff at the clinic (and there were plenty), and an especial note of appreciation to the expertise of the oral surgeon who made what might have been an ordeal, a simple, swift and painless procedure.

On arrival back home we enjoyed brunch (no food or drink prior to surgery), cleaned up the kitchen, and then I deployed myself to do the usually Wednesday bathroom cleaning routine.  I feel great!

The compost pail in the kitchen is emptied twice a week rain or shine, winter or summer, into one of our two compost bins in the back yard. Into that pail goes onion skins, vegetable trimmings, corn cobs, melon and orange and grapefruit skins, avocado pits,  eggshells, teabags, coffee grounds, used paper napkins and anything else that seems like reasonable organic fodder for the rich compost that results after a year's energy-production as the materials collapse into one another, degrade and become soil-enriching humus through decomposition.

Over the years, that annual spread on our gardens of the resulting compost has led to good returns in our gardens. It has also led, on occasion to the mysterious growth of some types of vegetation that I have been unable to identify. We've had all manner of vines spontaneously erupt in our gardens as a result of that annual spread of compost. The compost is laid on the soil in the gardens in the late fall, and it gradually works its way into the soil to enrich it.

Some springs there are so many seedlings coming up in inconvenient places I simply pluck them like weeds. Other times, out of curiosity, I leave a few and attempt later as they mature, to identify them. We have had some fairly productive tomato vines that have introduced themselves in various parts of the garden, as a result. Last year I became aware, fairly late in the growing season, of odd-appearing vines. I transplanted some to more convenient locations, and plucked the rest. While a few eventually did produce flowers, it was so late seasonally that nothing came of them.

About ten years ago there was a sudden influx early in the spring of vines, vines everywhere in all of the gardens, and I simply removed them. I did leave a few, however, and one seemed to have appeared in a particularly appropriate place, right by a trellis which it began speedily to mount. One day we noticed - without being able to imagine how we'd overlooked its presence for so long - a nicely emerged melon, obviously a Honeydew melon.  We tied the vine securely to the trellis, hoping that would help with the growing weight of the melon.  And in July it was fully mature and ripe for plucking. Which we did, enjoying it tremendously for breakfast one day.

This morning I withdrew from the refrigerator a Honeydew melon that was grown quite far from where we live. It was produce from Honduras. The label on the fruit read "Melons with Purpose". A rather idiosyncratic bit of labelling, whose message seemed fancifully ambiguous. The purpose being to please the palate of the discriminating? The purpose being to feed melon-appreciative consumers? The purpose being to tantalize with the possibility that its seeds might after composting become viable?

Who knows? Thought- and amusement-provoking, in any event.

It is impossible to understand how human beings can descend into such depths of depravity, become so brutalized that they believe they have a right to destroy the lives of others.  And this is done in the name of religion. The very concept of belief in a merciful, almighty spiritual overseer whose purported dicta to the human race is to be tolerant of one another and worshipful of the one who advocates for peace among humankind, the impetus.

Atrocities take place with stunning regularity between sects of the same religion, a religion whose faithful encompass the width and breadth of the world, from Asia to Africa, North America to Europe, the Middle East and the Near East. With horrendous affliction of purpose, powerful bombs rip apart the lives of countless innocent human beings.

This is seen in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Syria, among others. Where at one time in history Protestant and Catholic Christianity was at war with itself, centuries have since passed with the emergence of humankind into the modern world. Modernity does not appear to have had a moderating, humanizing effect among those whose Islamic religion impinges on every day of their waking lives.

There does not appear to be any restraint on the part of the faithful who assemble their wrath in a global jihad against the world outside Islam, as well as the world of Islam itself. Humans seem to respond to the 'spiritually guided' challenge to march in conquest in the name of Islam, but it is their version of Islam, and all others become their victims as carnage and mass slaughter ensues.

While the greater mass of those whose lives is dedicated to the worship of Allah and the veneration of the messenger Mohammed struggle to themselves come to an understanding that it is indeed Muslims who slaughter Muslims.

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The trace of a flying object in the sky over Chelyabinsk (still from a dashboard camera). Photo courtesy of Nakanune.RU.(RIA Novosti / Oleg Vinogradov)

Nature permits us to live in her varied and sometimes misunderstood landscape and for the most part we are able to do so without too many untoward incidents demonstrative of her incalculable destructive power. From time to time in various parts of this world we inhabit close to one of her uncountably numerous stars, we are reminded that we live on the cusp of disequilibrium.

It's just as well that the human spirit is resilient enough to recover from such shocks. We have been imbued with the ability for our minds to rationalize, to believe that such occurrences are rare enough as to present themselves as clearly non-representative of the security we feel throughout the normal course of our lives and the events that impact on them.

It is mostly those with the professional knowledge, those experts who specialize in the study of rare events like meteorite trajectories and impacts - like earthquakes and massive tsunamis, like global weather systems, like volcanic eruptions, exceptional heat-or-cold conditions, droughts, past extinctions - who are aware of the potentials. And even they take comfort in the assurance of these events representing off-chance rare occurrences.

And life goes on.   

We have especial sensitivities, psychic antennae, if you will, alerting us to the presence of others allowing us to identify them, not as individuals but as members of a particular group. It is these sensitivities that make it possible for members of an ethnic group to recognize others despite their having been transformed in subtle ways, through exposure to other cultures manifested by social-behaviour alterations that sometimes conceal their origins.

Most Jews, for example, can pick up signals, in speech patterns, in physical characteristics, in mode of communication that the stranger before them, wherever they come across them, in their own country or on foreign visits shares their heritage. Just as there are patterns often visible or identifiable that betray gays who prefer to remain gender-anonymous. We also become skilled, through no inclination or effort to do so, but through simple observation for no evident purpose, in identifying other backgrounds that present throughout the course of normal human interaction. All of these perceptions can enrich the store of our knowledge as long as they are absorbed neutrally.

One of the cashiers at the supermarket where I shop regularly in my neighbourhood for my groceries has facial characteristics of a kind fairly typical of the Middle East, and I am of the certainty that she is of Semitic origin, an Arab. I do regularly come across others like her, wearing the traditional headscarf, in similar such settings, and their religion and origin is thus readily identifiable. This woman working in the grocery supermarket wears no outward manifestation of religious adherence; she may be Christian, she may be secular.

It seems clear to me that just as I recognize her origins, she recognizes mine. She and I representing an ancient inheritance, and one rife with suspicion, fear and strife between Arab and Jew. Our relationship is cordial and neutral, as it should be, with verbal courtesies exchanged, just as they are between myself and others, neighbours reflecting like origins. Of course, it is primarily because we live in a country that stresses its pride in pluralism and equality that makes these facades possible, but I would like to believe there is depth to the facade, transcending suspicion, fear and worse. Simply because we cannot ever discount the human traits that many people exhibit leaving them open to cordial relations with anyone.

While at the same time I know that this society like most others has more than its share of those who clasp their belief in the inferiority of those whom their clans, tribes and religious affiliation classically term the despised other.

Several days ago one of our ravine-walking acquaintances had informed us that he had come across evidence that one of the natural denizens of the ravine had become a victim of what might have been a raptor. None of us has seen any indication that the great barred owls that had inhabited the ravine for several years was around, lately. Nor have the sharp-shinned hawks that return every spring yet made their entrance to seek out prey.

Yesterday dawned sunny and the temperature was mild and inviting. By the time we got out for our daily ravine walk the sun had been eclipsed by a broad cover of pewter-coloured cloud enveloping the entire sky. From time to time we could see clear evidence of the sun trying to burn through without success. It was a beautiful, pre-spring type of day.

Two-thirds through our ravine perambulation, I noticed a wisp of a feather floating gently down to the snowpack of the forest floor. I paused briefly to examine it and called back to my husband that it resembled the downy underfeathers of a bluejay because it was coloured a soft grey. And then another and then another came floating down, ephemeral and dainty. I looked up and saw from a considerable height that more feathers were floating down to the ground.

We both halted and looked about and finally, there in the upper reaches of a deciduous tree we could see a bird, perhaps the size of a robin but with a more elongated tail. And it was busy. Holding something down on the crotch of a bough where it was positioned, its head would go down and appear to drag at something, then come up, and as it did, down came another feather making its slow and lazy way to the snow-covered ground.

We tried to get a better sight-perspective, and from the back it seemed to me that the wings of this bird criss-crossed as it raised and lowered its head to its prey. My husband thought it was most likely to be a sparrow-hawk. We remained there, watching for a while. It was completely oblivious to our presence for we were, of course, very far below where it sat, indulging its appetite. It would likely be a nuthatch or a chickadee, poor unfortunate, that the kestrel had caught, pinned down and was consuming.

In our salad days when our children were in their mid-teens we enjoyed challenging ourselves by mountain climbing, to view the exquisite landscapes of towering mountains marching off into the distance once we had summitted to a mountain top. We were in fact spurred on by the immense curiosity and sense of adventure of our youngest son. We climbed Mounts Moosilauke, Clinton, Eisenhower, Little Haystack and Franconia in the White Mountain Range. Later, we did alpine camping with our younger son in the Rockies in British Columbia, and climbed in the Great Smokies as well as some mountains surrounding Tokyo.

Those were, for us, extreme adventures testing our physical capabilities, endurance and determination. Nothing like the exploits of those whose ambition it is to climb the great mountains of the world, more than five times the height of the tallest mountain we ever climbed, in extreme weather and geological conditions we couldn't even begin to imagine. People whose imaginations and ambitions are fired by the prospect of meeting new challenges, and surmounting difficulties that would make most people blanch with fear at the danger to life and limb inherent in those extreme altitudes, geologic formations, and weather patterns. With storms fierce enough to simply blow people off the sides of precipitous mountain sides.

Joe Simpson's account of his own trials and tribulations in his finely detailed, incredible first-hand account of  mountaineering skill, trust, hope and survival in an Andean climbing expedition he shared with climbing companion Simon Yates in the Cordillera Huayhuash of the Peruvian Andes is a classic in survival against all odds. They undertook the mounting of a 1985 first-time summit, undeterred by their many previous experiences that had sometimes turned deadly for other climbing companions.

They had decided to climb the west face of Siula Grande. On their descent, things went badly wrong. "I hit the slope at the base of the cliff before I saw it coming. I was facing into the slope and both knees locked as I struck it. I felt a shattering blow in my knee, felt bones splitting, and screamed. The impact catapulted me over backwards and down the slope of the East Face. I slid, head-first, on my back. The rushing speed of it confused me. I thought of the drop below but felt nothing. Simon would be ripped off the mountain. He couldn't hold this. I screamed again as I jerked to a sudden violent stop.

"Everything was still, silent. My thoughts raced madly. Then pain flooded down my thigh -- a fierce burning fire coming down the inside of my thigh, seeming to ball in my groin, building and building until I cried out at it, and my breathing came in ragged gasps. My leg!
"I hung, head down, on my back, left leg tangled in the rope above me and my right leg hanging slackly to one side. I lifted my head from the snow and stared, up across my chest, at a grotesque distortion in the right knee, twisting the leg into a strange zigzag. I didn't connect it with the pain which burnt my groin. That had nothing to do with my knee. I kicked my left leg free of the rope and swung round until I was hanging against the snow on my chest, feet down. The pain eased. I kicked my left foot into the slope and stood up. 'I've broken my leg, that's it. I'm dead. Everyone said it ... if there's just two of you a broken ankle could turn into a death sentence ... if it's broken ..."

Through extraordinary devotion to aiding his climbing partner, Simon Yates was able to eventually manage to lower Joe Simpson through extraordinary discipline, strength and manoeuvring despite impossible impediments. Until, finally, he 'lost' him when Joe fell into a deep, dark crevasse and Simon was forced to descend on his own, convinced of his companion's death - to survive himself against all odds. Yet Joe managed, through determination, despite the anguish of pain and despair, to exert himself beyond all normal human striving, to save himself.

In the Andes, a specially chartered Uruguayan military plane carrying a passenger load of civilians comprised in part of a young Uruguayan rugby team en route from Montevideo to Santiago, Chile for a competition game, crashed into a mountain in the cordilleras in 1972, with 45 people aboard. Some of the passengers, seated in the rear of the Fairchild twin-engined turboprop were sucked out of their seats as the plane's tail end broke off the body.

The fuselage continued after the wings broke off, hitting the rocky edge of a mountain, carrying with it most of the terrified passengers, as the plane hurtled into the mountain, landing on its belly in a steep valley, sliding on the sloping surface of an extraordinarily deep snow pack, hitting the ground at 200 knots. In the desolation of a mountain slope packed with snow, the passengers slowly roused themselves, the injured in horrible pain, all of them in dreadful shock. The pilot was dead, the co-pilot, crushed beside the pilot by the control panel, died more slowly.

Their story, told by writer Piers Paul Read in his book Alive, and the following film, is one of human hope, perseverance, courage and integrity of purpose. After the devastating crash that miraculously left the bulk of the passengers alive, some critically wounded who would die of the morbid injuries they sustained in the crash, those who were sound of body and strong in mind, set out to save themselves and others from the slow agonizing decline that would lead to death. Their energy, inventiveness and dogged determination led finally to the rescue of the remaining 16 Uruguayan youth who survived two months of grim deprivation and agony, to rejoin their grieving families.

Little dogs unwittingly seem to wish to overcompensate for nature's stern injunction through genetic inheritance setting them firmly on a life-course lacking power and physical prowess. On average they seem to tend to be more hostile to the presence of other dogs, of people, and express their suspicion with barking tirades.

There are, of course, exceptions, since no rule is infallible, nor generalized observation monopolistic of reality. Our daughter has, among her stable of various-sized and breeds of dogs, a three-pound Pomeranian. That tiny tyke barks, hilariously, when he is irritated. He is not averse to meeting others, either canine or human since his temperament is more inclined toward generosity of spirit.

On our walks in the ravine lately we've come across a beautiful little Chihuahua trotting briskly along with its human companion, a genial young man who takes his responsibility toward the little creature seriously enough to wrap him in a minuscule winter coat during the winter months. Despite how often the little dog sees us, he rushes toward us aggressively and belligerently yaps, in an excess of outrage that we dare share the trails he must surely believe to be his alone. He is so anxious to convey his vexation at our appearance that he dances about on his tiny back legs while exerting himself to prove his ire against us. An adorable little thing, he is, but if he were a large dog he would present as a potential menace.

Yesterday we came across, for the first time, a teacup Yorkie, its normally fluffy haircoat damped down with the freshly falling snow. Although ours is a toy Poodle, this little creature was much smaller. And it went into spasms of utter delight to come across people on the pathway; ourselves and another walker with whom we were speaking at the time.  This little mote of a dog danced eagerly around us, happy to be noticed, so swift in bouncing about from one to the other of us, if you blinked you might have thought it was more than just one dog flitting about.

Soon, its human companion caught up with it, and with him was a large old yellow Labrador, whom the person informed us was warmly protective of his tiny companion. That being the case, though I offered that we would be willing to take possession of this fiery little spark of life, if he was of a mind to release him to us, I was willing to let the matter go, viewing the ferociously possessive attitude of the protector.

In Afghanistan the government admits to using torture on Taliban-linked detainees.

In Papua New Guinea a 20-year-old woman is accused of witchcraft, and burned to death.

In Chechnya, the largest Islamic folk hospital in Europe, people are treated by healers performing djinn (spirit) exorcisms, by reading Quranic verses aloud.

In Pakistan and in Iran as well as other socially progressive countries of the world, charges of apostasy can be cleansed by capital punishment.

In Saudi Arabia and Iraq among other countries where Sharia law informs justice, women may be stoned to death on charges of adultery.

In Egypt, incidents of rape are as starkly common as in parts of Africa. The ancient Coptic Christian population is on the verge of seeking safety elsewhere as refugees from Islamism.

In India, gang rapes and deaths of women and children remain part of the culture of female subjugation.

In China, squadrons of Internet-savvy recruits conduct cyberwar tactics on American institutions and corporations.

In North Korea, a third underground nuclear test has taken place, in a country that threatens its neighbours and promises attacks against the United States.

In Iran, the ruling Ayatollahs reject international concerns of their intractable journey toward nuclear warheads and their perfecting of missile delivery services in aid of their often stated intention to destroy the State of Israel.

In the United States no day goes by without yet another news report of additional crimes committed by gun-owning Americans whom the lobbying National Rifle Association labels "bad guys" making life difficult for law-abiding, gun-owing Americans.

In Vatican City the current pope resigns office due to age and health concerns, leaving his successor to continue grappling with the handling of ongoing sex assaults by priests.

In Canada, the government has had to retract a bill titled Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act introduced to the legislature that would have modernized its Criminal Code to allow for Internet and telephone companies to hand over personal customer identification in the interests of apprehending criminals, because the general public protested interference with their privacy rights.

There's a bit of a surprise in the morning news. Not that the reading public is not often surprised with revelations of news as one story after another becomes a controversial issue taking the interest of the wide public.

It is the Roman Catholic element of the world order of religions, however that is affected and shaken to its core by the news coming out of Vatican City that Pope Benedict XVI, in personal recognition of his failing health, age and inability - as he sees it - to fulfill all the obligations of his exalted spiritual status as the elite theologian and shepherd of a vast flock, by his revealed intention to resign.

Pope Benedict XVI announces his resignation in a surprise statement

Since, in the modern era, we are accustomed to hearing the gravely sad news of another pope having passed away while still in office, this is a departure from what has been the norm. The drama and suspense around the selection of a replacement will draw the attention of the public until it has been revealed who Pope Benedict's successor will be.

In all likelihood, whoever that eminent personage turns out to be, he will not be accorded the persistent and unsurprising criticism from a variety of sources at the background, and the deeply-held theological convictions that have vexed this present pope's time in office. Nor would any individual be likely to excite the close inspection for that post as did he, until that time when a black, an oriental, a gay, or finally, a woman is selected.

Love, equality and goodwill in God's care of His flock, to all.

Parents: be aware. What you do, how you react, the manner in which you nurture your young will come back to haunt you. In your golden years, your silver-haired dotage, your daughter will recall events of a half-century past and in her mature but adolescent mind resent the manner in which you felt entitled as a mother to provide her with life lessons.

This is a modern day and age we live in now. Messages can be swiftly conveyed through electronic messaging. And one day you may open your email and find such a lengthy, detailed and condemnatory message awaiting your pained scrutiny. Do not, when your children behave in a manner you think is injurious to their future character, react in haste may be the takeaway message here.

For the result, as laggardly as it is in arriving, may be immensely shocking to your sensibilities and your own memory which may not quite accord with that of your offspring, but the presentation is one perception, a damagingly lingering one that you will, at this juncture, be unable to restore to any kind of ameliorative perspective.

Below, one such message that might arrive one dark night:

When I was young you taught me certain things and those ‘things’ formed the basis for who I am. All of those things are very precious to me as they are the foundation blocks for the person in myself that I do respect – however I learned those things because I was strong and not because they were taught to me as they should have been – with logic and intelligent control rather than as they were taught, with exasperation and unreasoning anger.

 

As parents we lead by example whether we intend to or not. You told me when I was young I had better learn to say sorry and mean it, you told me I had to learn how to accept constructive criticism – I have done all of that. It was never enough. You taught me that I had to be responsible, admit when I was wrong, I had to be self-aware and self-disciplined. That I should not be lazy or close-minded. I have done all that. I have worked so damn hard my entire life, on myself as a human being and as well to make a living and support and nurture my daughter.

But I did not and still will not accept criticism that lacks logic and is un-founded. I would not assign respect to those who had not earned and that is something I still will not do.

I did everything you REALLY told me to do – except for respecting those who had not earned my respect.

Two Brothers and a Sister:

1. Two brothers, one in particular harass a sister:

a. The sister has finally had enough (as the parents fail to intercede and tell the boys to stop);

b. The sister (she is only 5 or 6 years of age) says to the boys – ‘you are Bug-hers’ (pronounced as buggers);

c. And the mother suddenly pays attention and ‘says you just swore, I am going to wash your mouth out with soap’

d. The daughter pleads ‘but mom I did not swear, they are bugging me – being rude and mean, putting me down, so they are BUG-HERS as I am a female’

e. And the mother does not listen and proceeds to wash the innocent girl’s mouth out with soap;

f. So the girl has an early lesson about her place in the world – her pleading means nothing, her logic means nothing, her brothers can say as they please – of a derogatory and belittling nature about the sister, and she must suck-it-up or she will be abused not only be the boys but as well by her mother.

g. Only a bully washes a child’s mouth out with soap. Only someone without the self-discipline to adopt logic and address a situation with real PERSPECTIVE.

h. THE LESSON LEARNED – the boys learn that they can torment the girl, that they can do no wrong, and the girl learns that she is thought of as bad, her real intent, her voice did not matter, she is of less worse than the boys.

2. The child gets horribly car sick when in the back of the car…

a. The older brother is assigned the privilege of riding in the front seat of the car;

b. The girl gets so sick – car rides are agony;

c. She pleads to sit in the front when she is starting to feel really sick;

d. She is told to ‘no’ and only when she throws-up is she ever allowed to then sit in the front.

e. THE LESSON LEARNED – the boy learns entitlement and arrogance, the girl learns that she is worth less than the boy, and that she will not be listened to no matter how politely and earnestly she pleads.

3. The girl is very good at playing the flute, but on a daily basis the brother puts her down, constantly making derisive comments;

a. The girl speaks to the mother and tries to explain how this is hurtful;

b. The mother dismisses it;

c. THE LESSON LEARNED – the boy learns entitlement and arrogance, the girl learns that she is worth less than the boy, and that she will not be listened to no matter how politely and earnestly she pleads. Eventually she is accused of being controlling, manipulating and of lecturing – because she does everything she can to try to be heard – but no one is listening.

4. The girl is a teenager now and is listening to the music of her generation, she has the volume turned down to a respectful level so as not to disturb others in the house – as the rest of the family only listens to classical music) the mother walks into the room;

a. The mother says to the daughter ‘What did we do wrong in bringing you up? What is wrong with you – why do you listen to that awful crap?

b. The girl responds – I like this music and I still listen like classical music too, why is it wrong to like both?

c. The woman looks at the daughter and says ‘we are disappointed in you, thank god your brother’s don’t listen to that crap’.

d. And she walks out.

e. THE LESSON LEARNED – the girl is once again seen as ‘bad’ yet she did nothing bad, and once again her brothers are ‘better’ than she is.

5. The girl tries to be ‘normal’ despite the fact that her values are different from most people’s she tries to make friends and hang-out with them – after all she is a teenager now;

a. She always tells her parents who she will be with, where she is going, when she will be back and even calls them on the phone from friends houses if she wants to stay a little longer than expected.

b. She hangs out with her friends in the park behind the house, evening – her parents know exactly where she is, and the daughter never comes home past 10:00, she is only yards away from the house;

i. Her parents know she does not do drugs or drink;

c. She is just being a normal well-adjusted kid;

i. She comes in at 10:00 only to hear from her parents – ‘what is wrong with you, why do you have to do that – your brother’s don’t they are happy to be with us’ What is wrong with you? We worry when you are out and don’t like it – we can’t relax’

d. The girl says but you know where I am, (just yards away from the house), you know I always come-in on time, you know I don’t do anything bad – I am doing nothing wrong’

e. And then the mother and father scream at the girl – we can’t relax! And so on and so forth.

f. Well the girl knew that it was not her fault – she did nothing wrong – in fact her parents should have been proud of her as she did not drink and do drugs as all the other kids did.

g. But what she heard instead was ‘Your brothers would never do this to us!

h. Do what to you, the girl thinks. She was 100 yards away from home and the parents did not have the self-discipline and PERSPECTIVE to just allow her to be NORMAL.

i. THE LESSON LEARNED – the girl is once again seen as ‘bad’ yet she did nothing bad, and once again her brothers are ‘better’ than she is. It does not matter if she is considerate (unlike other kids) and always keeps in-touch to let her parents know when, where, who what – she is still going to get yelled at and put down.

Without water, the indispensable-to-life chemical, no living organisms would have developed on Planet Earth. We are here because there is water. NASA has sent its Mars Rover to that planet to attempt to discover whether organic life ever existed there, and the search for water on Mars is ongoing. There is water in its frozen form, and indicates of dry riverbeds, that water once flowed freely on Mars. Why not, then life of some kind?

This view shows the patch of veined, flat-lying rock selected as the first drilling site for NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS 

 Signs of water, sulfur and chlorine along with carbon-rich chemical compounds have been extracted from the dirt analyzed in Curiosity's on-board laboratory, Space reports .However, the substances may not to have their origins in the Martian surface, but might be part of Curiosity's contamination along its way. Scientists have not reached a conclusion on this yet.

 Just curious. We are always curious, wanting to know more and more again about nature, science, the world directly around us and we probe as much and as distant as we can into the far reaches of the Universe to inform ourselves of how we were created and what created creation.  The force of nature is also the background of the force of our natural curiosity.

We live with water, it surrounds us; from distant space we can see the vast oceans of our world. We explore, as much as is now feasible - and much now is - the deep craters of the Earth's crust, under our vast seas, and find there, to our amazement, living organisms, at a depth and pressure and distance from any light source that could never have been imagined with our current knowledge of how and where life exists.

Still, although we are existentially dependent on the presence of water - we are ourselves comprised of mostly liquid - and require it for our daily irrigation, it demands respect because it represents an enormously powerful element. Too much of it and we lose our existence. We breathe oxygen through exposure to the air around us; through evolution we can no longer filter air from water through our lungs, though we first appeared as amoebas in the primal slush of evolution.

Snow falls on Copley Square in Boston

And when water freezes becoming ice and snow, pelting us through climatic extremes, its beneficence is withdrawn and it becomes a threatening element. We will never be adequately prepared to deal with the excesses of nature. Our great cities are challenged to cope with conditions inimical to human life. Our power sources are threatened and ordinary life comes to a standstill, we are briefly frozen in time, waiting for nature's onslaught to subside.

We rarely give thought in our daily lives to places on Earth where overwhelming blizzards and huge, deep snowfalls are commonplace because we don't inhabit those places. In the great mountain ranges of the world, the Himalayas, the Andes, the Great Rockies and elsewhere those who live in the footsteps of these stony towers of ice and snow have become accustomed to coping as best they can. 

And we, with our penchant for altering our environment to suit our lifestyles and technologies, our futures and its aspirations through scientific advancement benefiting our vision of ourselves as masters of all we survey, are reminded, from time to time, that Nature herself allows us this conceit, to shield ourselves from the reality that we are her creatures, wholly dependent for nurturance and survival on her whims.