"Bey, where have all these human bones along this road come from?" Balkian asked the captain disingenuously.
"These are the bones of Armenians who were killed in August and September. The order had come from Constantinople. Even though the minister of the interior [i.e., Talat] had huge ditches dug for the corpses, the winter floods washed the dirt away, and now the bones are everywhere, as you see", Captain Shukri replied.
"Upon whose orders were the massacres of the Armenians committed?" Balakian probed.
"The orders came from the Ittihad [i.e. Unionist] Central Committee and the Interior Ministry in Constantinople", Captain Shukri explained. "This order was carried out most severely by Kemal . . . vice-governor of Yozgat. When Kemal, a native of Van, heard that the Armenians had massacred all his family members at the time of the Van revolt, he sought revenge and massacred the women and children, together with the men."
Balakian's questions did not upset the captain. He seemed to enjoy filling the long hours in conversation with the priest, inured to the evil he recounted: of the thousands of men hacked to death, of 6,400 Armenian women systematically robbed of their possessions and murdered along with their children, actions he consistently referred to as "cleansing"(paklamak in Turkish).
The mass-murdering Ottoman officer even seemed to develop an affection for the Armenian priest, offering to protect him from all harm if only he would convert to Islam.
Through conversations with Turkish officers, Balakian learned every aspect of the Armenian tragedy from the government's perspective. In his exchanges with survivors encountered along the way, the priest also deepened his knowledge of the Armenian experience of the genocide. He wove both perspectives together in his remarkable memoirs, first published in Armenian in 1922, thereby discharging his duty as a witness to what Balakian dubbed the "Armenian Golgotha".
Surviving the genocide was easier said than done. By preserving cordial relations with his captors and, in his own words, putting his trust in God, Balakian lived one day at a time, always at risk of sudden death. During the length of their forced march, the priest and his fellows confronted the magnitude of the horror that had befallen the Ottoman Armenian community: the bodies of the dead, the pleas of starving survivors, the shame of those who had converted to Islam to save their lives. He recorded the details in his diary as the caravan made its way across Anatolia to Cilicia towards the Syrian Desert. The accounts of other survivors of the Armenian genocide confirmed much of what he wrote.
Fear of violent death that might come at any moment without warning compounded the daily experience of brutality, exhaustion, and deprivation. Many Armenians chose to take their own lives rather than face the cruelty of strangers. Even Grigoria Balakian, who had vowed to survive, was driven to contemplate suicide. When accosted by an armed gang near the Halys River, Balakian and his comrades agreed to drive into the torrential waters in the event of "inescapable disaster", as many had done before them.
"Surely this deep grave of tens of thousands of Armenians would not refuse to take us too into its flowing turbid currents . . . and save us from harrowing and cruel deaths, at the hands of these Turkish criminals", he recalled. Only Balakian's presence of mind in negotiating the caravan's way past the gang spared them all on that occasion.
Manuel Kerkyasharian, who called himself M.K., was only a nine-year-old boy when he watched his mother dive from a bridge into the turbulent waters of the Euphrates. Natives of Adana, M.K.'s family had been deported to the Mesopotamian settlement of Ras al-Ayn (in modern Syria). An only child, M.K. saw his family robbed by armed gangs and beaten by the gendarmes sent to escort them. His mother's feet swelled painfully from the extensive marching, but she struggled to keep up with the caravan, knowing the fate of those who fell behind.
One night, when she knew she could walk no further, M.K.'s mother made a terrible request of her husband: "Lead me to the river's edge. I am going to throw myself into the water. If I stay, the Arabs will kill me with torture." Her husband refused, but a neighbour understood her fears and carried M.K.'s mother on his back to the banks of the swollen Euphrates. Her young son and a priest followed them to the river, but M.K. averted his eyes when she threw herself into the torrent. When he turned back, he saw his mother briefly before the current carried her away.
Within two days of his mother's death, M.K.'s father died in his sleep. The young boy was now an orphan with no one to care for him. He watched as soldiers killed a number of women and children who, like him, had been left behind by the caravan. He was robbed of his remaining clothes down to his underpants and abandoned by the roadside alone -- hungry, thirsty, and terrified.
The Armenian priest Grigoris Balakian encountered many such orphans along the way. At Islahiye, near where M.K. was orphaned, he encountered an eight-year-old boy begging with his eleven-year-old sister, both nearly naked and dying from hunger. The elder sister explained "in a schoolgirl's proper Armenian" how all the other members of their family of fourteen had died, leaving the  children to fend for themselves. "How I wish we hadn't survived". she sobbed.
Buffered by forces beyond his control, young Manuel Kerkyasharian did survive. He found himself among Arabs and Kurds, people whose languages he did not speak and whose actions he did not understand. Some gave him food and clothing; others stoned and robbed him. He witnessed acts of terrible brutality and crossed plains covered with Armenian corpses. He was rescued by four Kurdish women who found him wandering on the open road and took him back to their village as a domestic servant. He spent the remainder of the war years moving among the Kurdish villages on the Turkish-Syrian frontier, living off the kindness -- and fleeing the cruelty -- of strangers.
As he moved between the villages of south-eastern Anatolia, M.K. encountered a number of Armenian children and young women who, like him, had taken refuge among the Kurds. Many had been collected from the death marches and taken to work in the homes and farms of the Kurdish villagers. M.K. met several young Armenian women who had married into the families of their Kurdish protectors....

From: The Fall of the Ottomans -- The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan

Unusual, strange, puzzling, all of those apply, and more. We may have arrived at the calendar-certified Autumn Equinox, but the weather conditions we've been facing have been most definitely hot, humid and totally reminiscent of the dog days of summer. This summer there were no usual long periods of hot and sunny weather. No complaints; we didn't mind the all-too-ample rainfall which also netted us from time to time alternately bright skies and mild temperatures; it was a summer that the older contingent of any population could appreciate.

As long as you weren't among the not-inconsiderable number of people living in vulnerable-to-flooding areas that necessitated evacuations, awaiting floodwaters to subside and homes to be cleansed of their effects, restoring them to  habitable conditions. A shock and misery for anyone forced by circumstances to undergo such disturbing and nasty episodes in their lives.

By some strange quirk of nature, however, summer finally woke up, realized it had forgotten to arrive, and has made its tardy appearance, totally confusing fall. We've now had two weeks of hot, dry and sunny weather. Only two weeks earlier it was cool, windy and wet. We were moseying about in the ravine on the woodland trails wearing jackets against the cool temperatures. Now we're pretty hot on our treks in there. Actually no; in the forest confines it tends to be much cooler, the sun filtering through the canopy doesn't really heat up the atmosphere in there as it does once we're back out on the street again.

But because it's so hot people tend to believe that it's intolerable anywhere in the out-of-doors, the result of which is that we see few people enjoying nature, ambling along on the forest trails. Of course, the heated temperatures also mean that any extraordinary expenditure of energy takes its toll; something people would prefer, understandably, to avoid. Our forest is ravined, there are many steep and long hills to climb and descend, after all.

Yesterday, as we had only been in the woods for about fifteen minutes, just over the first of the three bridges crossing the creek  in its depths, Jackie and Jillie heard and saw someone coming in the opposite direction. Someone on a bicycle, so we hastened to restrain them, though they were barking furiously and my husband called urgently to them to return to us. As we crossed the bridge and looked up the hill we would be climbing, we realized that someone had fallen from a bicycle and was half-lying on the gravel of the hill's pathway.

Calling out, we hurried over to find a young girl nursing the heel of her palm that was well cut by the gravel she had fallen on, and bleeding, but not as profusely as her left knee which was deeply scored with wide, grated furrows weeping blood. She was a lovely child, with smooth, sunburned skin and scant clothing, wearing flip-flops. In her fall one of her flip-flops had torn. She was calm and told us that the pain was ebbing, as she gently padded her bloody knee with the tissues my husband had handed to her. We stayed with her. She told us her companions would soon be along. She was obviously cycling much faster than they, since it took awhile before two other girls came along at the crest of the hill. The girl we were with had tried to brake when she saw the bridge below, losing control of her steering so the front tire of her mountain bike had caught in a bit of a ridge, causing her bicycle to keel over and her with it, a third of the way down the hill where we'd found her.

They were such heart-achingly lovely children, all three girls twelve years of age, making the most of a lovely week-end day. My husband walked the injured girl's bicycle, a really heavy affair, down the hill, over the bridge, and up the hill on the other side, to a flat portion on top where they would continue to bicycle to what we thought would be home. They thanked us and with cautionary words from us ringing in their ears set off again as we continued our way in the opposite direction.

A half-hour later as we began to ascend yet another hill we caught a glimpse of the three girls bicycling furiously along the trail that crested and bypassed the one we were on. Obviously the discomfort of badly scraped knee and hand had subsided sufficiently to enable these three little Amazons-in-waiting to continue on their determined path on a lovely, albeit very hot afternoon, instead of aborting their intention and returning home to nurse a wound.

Just as experts in the field of science and (weightology) inform us that the insects inhabiting our globe are so many trillions of times more numerous than mammals like humans that their collective weight outdistances that of other creatures, I sometimes muse to myself that surely given the number of publications, books, magazines, new and vintage that find shelter in our house must surely challenge the furniture for weight.

We are omnivorous readers, we just are smitten with the printed word and language and stories and history and all that makes reading so eminently worthwhile in entertaining and educating ourselves and spending our time usefully engrossed in the written word. The result of that is we have become, over the years, bibliophiles and bookrats. And of course the corollary to that is the inevitable; our home is packed with books.

From time to time we resolve to make a sad and sorry effort to discard the lesser varieties of books that we've read. Not from generosity of spirit, necessarily, with the thought of 'sharing' them with others of the reading public, but for the same reason a drowning person will attempt to reach the surface of a lake, to breathe. So occasionally we make a stab at winnowing the occasional bit of printed matter and taking bags along to thrift shops to place on their shelves for sale to the public at giveaway prices. Which is, incidentally, where we also acquire a good many of our own books.

It's somewhat like pulling teeth though, you'd do anything to avoid the dreaded event. So we scrutinize very, very carefully what we're (un)willing to part with. Second-take titles and authors, reconsider, and in the end cannot bear to part with some, while hardening ourselves from the wish to 'save' more of their number and end up 'sacrificing' them to the alter of tidying up and removing some of the weight their numbers impose on this poor house.

Still, there are times when our personal library comes up short, and we venture to our area public library for titles of specific authors not in our collection. As did my husband yesterday when he went along to our much-frequented branch of our fair city's public library. It's large, with ample shelving. And it's yet another source where we acquire books the library de-commissions, and there's even a separate space there, a room given over to donated books operated by 'Friends of the Library', where shelves groaning with books are sold for $1 apiece, some exciting titles and a lot of dross.

So, on yesterday's library visit my husband searched on the shelves for some of the celebrated works of Ernest Hemingway, a man whose writing altered completely the structure of modern writing, known for his outstanding novels, and in his earlier days a journalist. None on any of the shelves. Not listed in the card catalogue. Something clearly amiss. He looked to see what was available on the shelves of classic literature; sparse to completely absent. At the desk, speaking to a librarian, a confused look met his enquiry. Never heard of him; what's the name again?

A librarian unfamiliar with the Hemingway name. She obligingly checked other branches' inventories and a few disparate titles came up at several for Hemingway. She offered to order any of them in for my husband to pick up. We're still trying to digest the reality that someone who graduated from an academic library sciences course to quality for employment as a librarian had no idea whatever who Hemingway was, a total mystery to her -- and that libraries in our area are bereft of his immortal works.

Today it's official; the first calendar year of 2017 marking the entry of fall. All the signs have been there for weeks on end. We hardly needed the official recognition to convince us that autumn has arrived. Surprisingly, and contrary to expectations, however, we've been enjoying over a week of solid summertime weather.

The funny thing about it is that throughout the summer months we were exposed to weather more representative of early fall than summer. And now that fall has arrived, summer has decided to make its (temporary, alas!) appearance. Not that we aren't grateful for its presence, not at all. Warm temperatures prevailing, so warm that at night it's almost, but not quite uncomfortably close. Our bedroom windows admit whatever breezes might be passing by.

And also alert us to the sound of the visiting raccoon shunting aside the top of the composter, lightly placed so that removing it represents no effort whatever. Which is a vast improvement over locking it into place and the raccoons in their frustrated determination, taking to wrecking the composter. Besides which, why would we want to deny those clever creatures any food they want that we've discarded?

We also hear the gathering geese packs overhead as they make their way gradually toward their southern destinations in anticipation of winter. And the softer, sweeter tweets of the night-flying songbirds fleeing cold and misery to come.

In the forest, on our daily trail perambulations, fallen leaves are beginning to pile up. These are the early ones that simply dry up and fall without turning spectacular colours, for the most part. The rest will follow in good time.

Ottawa became the capital city of Canada when before Confederation Upper and Lower Canada (late 18th Century -- Ontario and Quebec essentially) couldn't agree whether Toronto or Montreal should become the capital, and they finally settled for a lumber town on the Ottawa River, halfway between each. The Ottawa River was the venue of exploration and trapping by French-Canadian voyageurs at the time, and trade with the native populations, while logging was mostly controlled by entrepreneurial Americans who speculated that the great forests represented valuable investments of their time, energy and funding.

The city where once, when the Rideau Canal was being built, labourers were susceptible to contracting malaria, the seat of the federal government, is essentially a government town, but its population has swelled enormously. It's a picturesque and lovely city with ample greenspace both within and surrounding it. The two rivers bisecting it east to west and north to south, make it all the more interesting, with the Rideau emptying into the Ottawa. While the Ottawa river separates Ontario and Quebec.

Taking the Eastern Parkway, the green space along the Ottawa River presents as parkland where people congregate to enjoy the opportunity to picnic, hike, bicycle and slip their light watercraft into its flowing waters. The National Aeronautical Museum is located there, and across from it the RCMP stables for its much-vaunted Musical Ride performances.

Gatehouse to 24 Sussex Drive, PM of Canada's official residence

Approaching old north-central Ottawa, a glance across the river brings in a close-up view of the communities along the banks of the river, on the Quebec side. They present a picture-postcard view reminiscent of the late 19th Century, much as small towns in Vermont with their church steeples and white clapboard homes strike nostalgia through those postcard scenes.

We were headed for Byward Market. And though it was a weekday, it was also inordinately warm for this time of year, although the sky had succumbed to the presence of rain clouds, dark and menacing after a brighter morning. Tourism buses park everywhere and anywhere they can to debark their passengers on walking tours of the area called the Parliamentary Precinct and beyond, where many foreign embassies are located, and trendy shops, along with historical buildings.

Byward Market is a short walk from Parliament Hill, and teeming with visitors, tourists from abroad and from other venues in Canada alike. The Byward Market shops are colourful, funky and attractive. The emphasis is also on cafes and restaurants and with this late-summer weather everyone seems to want to seat themselves at outdoor terraces and patios, to enjoy meals while watching the parade of passing humanity.

Young and old, feeble or vibrating with energy, the market draws people. To shop at the various stalls selling produce, art, jewellery, clothing, and exotic goods from afar. The character types viewed there range from the oblivious-to-others, to the preening, self-conscious youth who are there to be seen so their uniqueness can be noticed and admired -- perhaps by others like themselves. It's a place where tattoo art and body piercings are so common that those without seem in the minority.

In the near distance there are views of the Parliament Buildings, now largely behind massive scaffolding as remedial work long overdue is being undertaken. Building cranes, in fact, are in evidence everywhere in downtown Ottawa and beyond. A good view can be had of the American Embassy from many streets in the Market; the original Embassy located directly across from the Parliament Buildings was a distinguished, American vernacular neo-classical building, not to be confused and never could be, with the current brutalist building resembling a huge nuclear reactor; so much of necessity have the times changed.

A more aesthetic style of post-modern architecture can be seen in the National Gallery of Art, along Sussex, and close to a war memorial dedicated in fact to peace as though wishing could make it so. The National Gallery's style is that of a crystal palace distinguished by glass dyhedrals; its emphasis lingers on Canadian art, art of First Nations, and of course its inventory of world-class European art of previous centuries. A whimsical sculpture sits on the plaza in front of the Gallery, named 'Maman'; a giant spider with eggs under her belly.

A much older historical piece of architecture is represented, leaving the area, by the Catholic Cathedral which had a central place in the religious adherence of many of the region's French-Canadian population, serving an ever-diminishing number of the faithful as the Church has seen and continues to see a steady drop in attendance and affiliation. As the world turns.

The largest of the woodpeckers, the pileated, has now returned from the boreal forest to our own nearby woods and its peal of lunatic-sounding cries can be heard reverberating through the trees. We catch glimpses of one now and again on large old tree trunks, but never as close as years ago when one of the pileated simply sat where he was despite our close, admiring presence. They're a striking looking bird, primitive in appearance, with a bright red cap, their size notable. They're so large it's doubtful any other creatures would presume bother them and consequently they have no fear of anyone.

Another sound that used to be common in the woods and now only appears in the early spring and in the fall when birds are in transit, is that of the bluejay. Unlike the pileated, which will spend the winter in our forest, the bluejay is just passing through and won't stay long, but as long as he does we enjoy hearing its sharp, shrill call ring through the woods.

That fall is upon us is now undeniable. From the forest canopy to the forest floor, all the signs are there. On the forest floor, bracken drying, some turning yellow, soon to disappear and the floor is taking on a rather naked look as a result. On the other hand the deciduous trees are beginning -- even before a general colour change takes place when the tree's sap descends to its roots, no longer maintaining foliage -- to drop desiccated leaves, some that have turned bright colours, others simply dried up.

Fungal pop-ups in various complicated shapes and surprising colours provide another source of fall entertainment as we move through the trails, coming across their presence from time to time, marvelling at the diversity of them, from shelf fungi to mushrooms.

We've seen very few acorns from the oaks this year; perhaps it hasn't been a good year for acorns, but the hazelnuts that only a month ago seemed to be plentiful in number though not yet mature enough, are no longer hanging from the shrubs that bear them. In all likelihood many of them have been put away in some squirrel's pantry for the winter months' consumption. Pine cones, on the other hand, are plentiful this year, hanging like fall ornaments from the tops of the pines. Remnants of pine cones are scattered in neat little piles on top of tree stumps, on the trails, signalling where squirrels have busied themselves deconstructing the cones to reach the seeds within.

Jackie and Jillie, our twin puppies, take little note of such things, but they do focus on the feral apple trees in the ravine where, at certain ones where we know the fruit tends to be more sweet and juicy than at others, they stand and wait, their expectation that they'll be treated, more than obvious. They're rarely disappointed; though the thimbleberries are now less numerous as treats, the apples remain a reliable source to enliven our walks in the forested ravine; we haul down one for them and another for ourselves to nibble on, as long as they last.

There are times in life (sigh) when you just have to confront necessity and task yourself to perform jobs you'd far prefer to ignore. A case in point? The agony both we and our twin devils experience now that fall has ensconced its season in the forest and the wonderful wildflowers whose fresh presence so entranced us have developed those nasty little burrs of all sizes and grasping capabilities that stick to the hair of our two little poodles.

Truth is, though it doesn't seem all that long ago since they were groomed, their hair grows so quickly it's downright overwhelming and for the last little while they've looked like small black ragamuffins. The longer the hair, we reasoned, the more they attracted burrs to fasten deep within their haircoats making it difficult to find them and remove them.

Jackie (left) -- Jillie (right)

Jackie and Jillie haven't much enjoyed the clean-up operations that follow our daily jaunts on the forest trails where they're free to poke their little heads here and there and enjoy the freedom to pick up countless burrs. Sometimes they're large ones and truly wretched, sending their sharp spurs deep enough into their legs that they're aware of their presence and try themselves to remove them only to have them re-fasten from leg to muzzle. Their ear flaps sometimes come away with a ball of thistles.

So the two little imps may have come to the conclusion that their former friends (us) have turned into their tormentors, prying and pulling and snipping and grasping, exposing the poor little mutts to a level of discomfort newly discovered and to be avoided if at all possible. Not possible.

In any event, out came the grooming equipment; scissors of all sizes and levels of sharpness, to be carefully wielded with the determination to make the little beggars aesthetically presentable and in tidying them up make them less vulnerable to picking up those burrs. An additional problem is when they happen to haplessly step on sap covering fallen cones, leaving their footpads sap-covered which then glues tiny stones and burrs deep into their pads. Removing those is a real challenge.

The reasoning went that grooming would help. At least a little? They'd come away from our woodland ramble less full of prickles. We hoped. They'd have to suffer the horrors of being groomed, a process they don't much care for, nor do I particularly, since convincing them to submit to the irritation of being 'still' for a relatively prolonged period of time to enable me to snip away at their hair is a good thing, represents a lost cause. Even when I told them in a tone I felt was rather convincing, that their suffering under my scissors-administration would prevent daily anguish over burr-removals.

Finally, it was done. They had been reduced in size by at least a half. Tubby little Jillie after her grooming quite resembled skinny Jackie. You'd think she'd be pleased. And Jackie looks so reduced in size with his hair cut that it's possible he just might disappear altogether. Actually, it's made it a little more difficult to distinguish them from one another at first glance; though there are, to us at least, physical differentials we're aware of that no one else is.

Our venture into the forest was pleasant as usual. Hotter than usual, as well. Higher humidity linked with sun and elevated temperature and an absence of wind made for a fairly warm hour or so on our usual circuit. The terrible twins are always on the lookout for squirrels, worth a short and swift spurt of energy until the squirrel disappears up a tree trunk and they're left puzzled. We did come across a tiny chipmunk, and though we saw the lovely little creature, they hadn't noticed it, though it stood a few feet away from Jackie for the longest time, each on opposite sides of a large old pine.

And did the grooming work? Like a charm. We were surprised and extremely grateful on our return home to discover, when we cleaned up their little paws that nothing was stuck in their pads today, and nor was there even one burr making its home in their haircoat. Another bonus? They look pretty spiffy.

And that nice, groomed look should least at least -- a day or two, at most.