As far as weather this November of 2022 is concerned up to the present our cup runneth over. We've had a much-appreciated spate of warm days, and ample sun, just what we don't normally expect from the penultimate month of the year. And today was no different. It dawned mild and continued that way. But since the forecast was for early afternoon rain, we decided we'd take our puppies out for their usual afternoon walk a little earlier than usual.

Before that happened, however, we tuned in to the annual Remembrance Day ceremonies. A ritual of sadness but one that ensures that the memory of those who fought and died -- against an ideology whose issues run counter to all that civilized nations value; peace, security and rule of law leading to equal justice for all -- would be  gratefully remembered. 

The ceremonial military acknowledgements married to the civilian version of remembrance held in quiet review of another year gone by in an 80-year history of the last global war that wasted too many lives. The ceremonial focus on the military role in its critical mission to free humanity from the talons of fascist Germany and its Axis partners. The deaths and disablement of countless numbers of military personnel to be grieved in a public gesture of memory renewed.

Countless other deaths of civilians, men, women, children, the elderly who died as 'collateral' damage unspeakably awful in its wide sweep of indigestible numbers. And finally, the unthinkable reality of a war within a war that led to the carefully orchestrated murders of millions of Nazi victims considered society's outcasts in Nazi ideology. To focus on the dreadful plight of Europe's Jews alone, illustrates the epitome of human depravity. We mourn them all, each and every one. And mourn more deeply that the world in turmoil made no effort to 'notice' the genocide by a stratagem that would lessen the number of its victims. A stratagem as simple as welcoming Jewish refugees from the slaughterhouse of Europe into the lands of the free world.

We who now populate the world barely recall the grimness of those war years; those alive at that time are becoming more scarce among the living. But the veterans and the civilians who were young in 1939 to 1945 live with their dim and distant memories. We ourselves recall a post-war influx of refugees. And recall the war years as well when rumours of gas chambers and giant ovens were validated in hushed, shocked tones.

Humanity is adept at surfacing through the murky depths of disasters we ourselves produce. We are resilient and live in hope for the future. The future we live in now as the present sees dreadful regional wars taking their toll now just as they did then. Now and again there are attempted genocides but none quite so successful as the Holocaust proved to be.

We, in the present era, can leave the distemper of the past behind as we pursue daily lives of peace and tranquility even while there is an awareness of the deep dysfunction within the global community of humanity.We acknowledge the haven of life in wealthy and peaceful countries where we can, while deploring bloodshed elsewhere, take our own lives to the level of deep satisfaction in the pleasure of existence.

For us, it is the simple pleasures, the fact that we can do as we please in a free and equal society. For us, the simple pleasures revolve around comfort and plenty; there is nothing we lack to enhance our lives. Danger always lurks, whether it is the threat of racism raising its voice, random violence in the streets committed by the psychopaths around us, or nature imposing a pathogenic pestilence to alert us to the preciousness of life.