It was a fascinating book to read, capturing my attention as I read late into the night, inspired to keep going, finishing it in record time over the course of a week's bedtime reading. Much to take in, to ponder, to wonder at, and to admire, in this woman who so relentlessly and at great personal cost, followed her rational intelligence to bring her to a place in her mind that recognized truth and reality, to spurn medieval cruelties and inhumane misconceptions.

Is Ayaan Hirsi Ali a racist? She was born in Somalia, from which she escaped to avoid an arranged marriage, and she eventually became a member of Parliament in the Netherlands.

She helped produce a film with Theo Van Gogh which criticized Islam's treatment of women. Van Gogh was shot to death by a Muslim in retaliation, and a note was pinned to his chest with a knife — a note that threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

(From the website Citizen Warrior)



Her journey from childhood in Somalia, on to Kenya with her mother and siblings, then Saudi Arabia, back to Kenya, eventually to Holland and from there to the world stage is a mesmerizing journey of enlightenment and empowerment. Her keen intelligence and unstoppable determination, abetted by her voyage of discovery catapulted her to world attention when she disowned Islam and its barbarities hidden behind a public veil of "peace" and "tolerance" that was in fact, anything but peaceful and tolerant in intent and practise.

Taught as a child that "Suspicion is good, especially if you are a girl. For girls can be taken, or they may yield. And if a girl's virginity is despoiled, she not only obliterates her own honor, she also damages the honor of her father, uncles, brothers, male cousins. There is nothing worse than to be the agent of such catastrophe." As she observed what was happening around her to Muslim women, particularly when contrasted with the lives of women outside Islam, she understood what her mission in life was to be: a champion of Muslim women's basic human rights.

Her journey to spiritual and rational enlightenment took her from her early years as recounted in her book "Infidel", from a point where her mother cursed: "May the Almighty Allah take you away from me! May you rot in a hole. May you die in the fire! What can I ever expect of you? You communist! You Jew!" to the point where she understood finally that the accursed Jews, the very depths of depraved humanity, were anything but and that equality, respect and interaction between peoples is what leads to generosity of spirit and understanding, and finally peace, both spiritual and practical.

Her parents, her extended family, her clan and her tribe disowned her, for her outright and very public rejection of Islamic values. And there was a fatwa issued for her death. She had been forced by her eventual insights to make a choice between family/clan/religion and her release from darkness into acknowledgement of truth and justice. It was her choice to make, and the journey she made in search of the truth was fraught with many instances of uncertainty and fear. But it was a journey she completed and took pride in.

In the acknowledgements of her book "Infidel", she made grateful mention of the assistance and companionship of many people in the wider Western world outside Islam. One of those she mentions is "Susanna, my agent, my friend, my sister - and even sometimes my Jewish mother!"

Her journey was a long, painful, troubled and frightening one. Her strength of character and inborn sense of right and wrong, absolute justice and compassion, led her to her own very personal liberation.

With the onset of winter weather and the few snowfalls we've experienced thus far, some of our acquaintances from our neighbourhood wooded, trailed ravine have been telling us of their woes respecting their dogs' misfortunes in accidentally losing some toenails. The cause is evident; their nails have grown far too long and are therefore susceptible to accidents.

Normal routine hygiene maintenance of dogs is inclusive of regular, as-required nail trimming. No dogs, it seems, really take to having their paws, and more specifically, their nails handled - for the purpose of trimming those nails. Our two are no exception; they are hyper-sensitive about their nails, particularly those of their front paws for reasons we don't understand.

We keep telling ourselves we've got to get around to trimming those nails. And we keep forgetting, so many other little things intervene to take our attention away from this simple, routine task. This morning, finally, we managed to get around to trimming Riley's nails. He was not very appreciative of the attention given him, snarling, growling, generally being extremely unpleasant. Typical Riley behaviour.

Our daughter, who knows more intimately all manner of vital things about the responsibilities of dog owners to their pets, has written a helpful article about just that; trimming dogs' nails, so here is a small portion of that article:

A dog's nails consist of an outer shell which is comprised of dead cells (like our fingernails). The outer shell (a hard material) protects the soft tissue - the blood supply, called the kwick. If your dog has light coloured nails you can usually see the quick through the nail shell. This makes it easy to see where you need to cut the dog's nail…just below the kwick.

If your dog has dark-colour nails and you are uncertain as to where to clip the nail…look underneath the nail. You will see that the nail looks solid (completely filled in) from underneath - up to a point. After that the nail appears hollow - all you see is the nail shell - no fill (no kwick). By taking a look at the nail from underneath, you can see where to cut. Until you have more confidence cutting your dog's nails, just clip a little off the end. Once you gain confidence you can clip a little more of the shell.

What tools do you need to clip your dog's nails?

For very small dogs you can use a pair of dog nail scissors. For larger dogs you need to use a dog nail clipper. Some people also file or use a hand or motorized file to grind their dog's nails down.
Karen the Ottawa Valley Dog Whisperer Links to this post

I have not navigated the mysteries of life, its passages, corridors and byways alone. I have much to be grateful for. That my destiny has been linked to that of another. Although he is hardly 'another' in a deep sense of our communion as life's shared partnership. We have spent most of our lives with one another, comforting and guiding, searching and enjoying, mutually ministering and celebrating and mourning together.

I am, to this day, amazed at the breadth of his interest in all manner of concerns, and his ability to master so many of the creative arts that make life so pleasurable and beautiful. We both have a deep appreciation of the arts, although it is he who is capable of producing his very own beauty, and it is left to me to admire his aesthetic creations.

We have, together, for over 60 years, shared a delight in the artistic and creative work left by their originators for others following them in time and orientation to treasure. I'm not certain, however whether it would enhance our lives or create another kind of inherited misery for us to know the details of the lives of those who have passed before us, leaving us the legacy of their art.

There is that air of mystique, where one cannot but wonder - at the passage of time, at the messages, oblique and imagined, that others have left for us to ponder.

A brilliant Gothic fantasy, one reviewer rhapsodized about Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf". And, it appears, it has staying power as a classic, one of those films one would wish to re-visit, time and again, to find ever-more-revealed hidden features, messages, revelations of critical importance to understanding one's own inner insecurities and phantasmal nightmares.

Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin

Last night, we decided we would view the film. We generally set aside Saturday night for this kind of entertainment. "Hour of the Wolf" could not be characterized, however, quite as 'entertainment'. It looked vaguely promising, even setting aside the bleakness of the description of the film's trajectory. And, after all, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman are themselves living legends of the serious film industry.

Of course, there is also the mystique of genius surrounding Ingmar Bergman, whose many films which mine his own inner sanctum of memory and familial dysfunction have made him famous. There is something truly bleak about the Scandinavian vision of normalcy and hapless human behaviour (?!) and the manner in which it portrays human interactions; similar to the human misery in East European films.

This one put my husband to sleep in short order, but I didn't mind, because we were cuddled together on the sofa, ostensibly to share a viewing experience of great merit. What it was, actually, despite that The Hollywood Reporter had gushed of it as "A manifestation of unique genius", was, to me, a lugubrious, self-indulgent bleakness of enormous proportions.

Just my opinion, of course. It unveiled itself to me as an unfortunate cross between a film about Vincent Van Gogh's dreadfully sad life driven by both his inner demons and his great art, and the film about "The Return of Martin Guerre".

The snow that fell yesterday morning was fast disappearing, joining previous snowfalls in melting into the creek to raise its levels, helped considerably more by the heavy rainfall we experienced a few days earlier. Which event, had it been as cold as usual for this time of year, would have resulted in a considerable snowfall.

The beaver dam, just a few hundred yards on from where we cross the first bridge in the ravine, seems more than adequate to task of holding back the water level in the newly-created beaver pond. Critical to the beavers' over-winter survival, since it must be of a sufficient depth to ensure that the creatures can live there comfortably, underneath that portion of their pond which will freeze over throughout the colder of the winter months.

It's obvious how busy they have been in storing up supplies for winter. We've noted for the last month or so the growing absence of young poplars along the near banks of the creek, where their sharp teeth have cut down trees, during the night-time hours. Some which they started to produce their wedge-cut in, appear to have been abandoned at least temporarily, because of their girth, with more attention given to the immature trees. Some of which have been hung up in the tangled branches of adjacent trees, but which the enterprising beavers have somehow managed to pull free.

Yesterday, for the first time, we saw that they had ventured further up the bank of the creek, above the trails, to begin selecting other potential food sources, having appeared to exhaust the inventory of young poplars closer to the creek itself. Until they clear away those later selections by dragging them into the water and cutting them into useful storage sections, we shall have to clamber over the now-recumbent trees splayed across the trail.

Usually he waits until the last minute. Then he scrambles about frantically trying to think of something special for my birthday. For me, that something special is him. I really need nothing else, and I tell him that. When we were really young and had little money for anything but necessities, while we were raising a family of three infants, I had once berated him for not remembering my birthday with even a tube of lipstick, anything to have me know he cared.

Of course he cared. That was the problem; we had far too much cares. Since then he has never, ever forgotten how much I looked forward to a gesture. The gestures that mean the most are those he takes care with, like the various birthday cards he has designed and thought about over the years. And there have been plenty of those passing years. It has been over 57 years since we were married, well over 60 years of our lives that we've been together as constant companions.

I know he's been absenting himself for periods of time ascribed to the necessity of finding little bits and pieces of tools for his workshop, any explanation that appears to sound reasonable. Hoping to find some item that he feels I would enjoy having. He has dropped hints about a new computer, jewellery, and my response has been that I have everything I want in my possession already.

Yesterday he stated baldly he was setting out for a nearby shopping center. I told him again, what I felt about it. But he rarely listens to anything I say when he's already made up his mind. From his expression on his return, I could readily determine that he was satisfied with this shopping expedition. Obviously, he has satisfied his need to present me with something special on my birthday.

To own a female is to own a prized possession. For it is a woman's body that brings forth the new generation. And it is a woman who nurtures that new generation. And it is women who have, through the millennia, suffered the gross indignity, psychical harm, physical battering that comes with representing property rights.

We live in a modern era, the 21st Century. We live in a presumably egalitarian world where women, under the law, have equal rights with their male counterparts. That is, of course, contingent on where you live in the world. And, of course, it is also contingent on the males living alongside you if you're a woman treasuring those values.

It is one thing to guarantee a social condition by law, another to guarantee that all those who live under those laws will surrender to its justice. Human beings are flawed in many ways, among those is the inherent belief that seems to be sequestered deep within the inner psyche as a genetic inheritance that one gender is supreme over the other.

Tribal, clan and religious influences to the present day shape their societies to accept and believe that women are inferior to men and as such must naturally submit to men. Accorded all the rights of another kind of livestock, their potential as bearers of the new generation is bargained for by their menfolk, the ownership of which is seen as a fundamental guarantee of survival of his genes.

Which leads, in many societies, to brutal control measures like infibulation, a more bodily-invasive attempt of control than the chastity belts of an earlier era and invention. Tribal, clan and family honour are paramount, and a religion based on a dark age of nomadic tribal protection of possessions against the malign intentions of an opposing tribe uses power over females to dishonour to consolidate their customary control over women.

In Kingston, Ontario, a trial holding the Shafia family of father, wife, eldest son to account for the planned honour killing of the family's three teen-age daughters and the father's first wife, is just winding down. Witnesses for the Crown have testified to the horrors of daily life for three girls whose ambition it was to escape the stifling, brutal confines of their family life.

The kind of honour accepted through the demands of Sharia law or fundamentalist Hinduism and the debasement and subjugation of females in a country like Afghanistan or India has been imported to Canada. Canada has seen a series of such honour killings, from teen-age girls in rebellion against the paterfamilias-clan-imposed 'laws' of submission, to those of wives killed by husbands.

It is beyond belief sometimes how implacably cruel, and miserably ignorant human beings can be in their sub-human relations to one another.