Black and White

We seem to have entered a period where we have nothing to say. No, that's not quite right. I think there is so much to say that it seems absolutely overwhelming. It is plain crazy to write a post and not mention all the things that are confronting our planet, our world. But to actually consider all of that, and then write something about the beautiful snow and the heron in the yard, is insane.

I could never play the game-show Jeopardy. Contestants need to have all the answers the moment they read the clue. My brain doesn't work that way, that quickly. Answers take time. Connections require thinking, percolation, a glass of wine, maybe even some laughter or tears. Oh yes, here's why Alexander Litvinenko's death is so outrageous, and outrageously horrific. Did we need to know how Polonium 210 can kill so quickly? That there is something so lethal and small, that it's like a tiny nuclear bomb going off in the body? How would it be if someone were to drop some of that into the water supply of a major city? Did you know that there is Polonium 210 in cigarette smoke? Or that one gram of Polonium 210 can produce 140 watts of power. Pick me, Mr. Trebak, I know the answers about Po.

The Washington Post told us that despite what our administration is ignoring about global climate change, fauna and flora are taking their cues from the planet, and there is a trend to move northward. And those things that already live north, well, there's nowhere else to go. There is the inevitable death and species extinction. "The magnitude of impacts is so overwhelming that many biologists are now calling this the single most important problem they need to work on," said Parmesan. "You can save all the habitat you want, but if it is not any good climatically, what is the point?"

We watched a documentary on Global Dimming. It claimed that soot and pollution have actually masked the real impact of greenhouse gases and global warming. There is a good and important environmental movement engaged in cleaning up soot and pollution, but the impact of that newly clean air may ultimately reveal the true devastation of how hot our planet has become.

We are thinking about all of this.

And, notice, I have not even mentioned the debacle that is Iraq or Jordan's King Abdullah's comments about three civil wars in the mid-east by 2007.

Heron perched by the pond in snow

We had snow all day on Sunday, and it really was beautiful. If beautiful is a stark black and white snapshot, which of course, sometimes it is.