Hints of Spring ... one hopes

In recent days, tentative signs of winter's passing are beginning to appear.  One of the most obvious is the temperature.  After my arrival in February, it had consistently been the warmest of the past three years.  Then, during the last days of February, it suddenly plunged and became the coldest.  Since March's arrival, however, the trend has reversed itself.   For the past few days, the daily temperature has begun soaring to the point where this year is once again the warmest.  Thus, Rue Froide (Cold Street) in my village's bourg (Old Town) no longer has the same effect of dread.

Two days ago, the sun was shining and the sky was blue, not the milky haze that we seen so often.  The weather was absolutely glorious. It was one of those days when it is very difficult to imagine anywhere in the world that is more beautiful.  I could almost feel the plants on my terrace beginning to burgeon.  Indeed, since then, my forsythia, with its exuberantly yellow buds, has begun to blossom.  Even the lavender that I cut back last fall in the hope that it will flourish is sending forth small shoots of green.  I wandered down to the lake shore to visit the beach, now deserted, that will be crowded during the hot days of summer.

We who are here are so incredibly fortunate.  We are not those public employees whose unions are being targeted by right-wing zealots.  We are not those terrified civilians in Libya, whose hopes for better lives are being bombed into rubble while the West dithers unforgivably about something so basic as establishing a no-fly zone.  We are not those terrifed victims in Japan, whose mourning period for lost loved ones has barely begun.  Even worse, the dread of what could happen with the damaged nuclear reactors that once provided them with so many necessities and facilitators of modern life hangs over their lives.  And not only theirs.

The controversy over the development and use of nuclear energy is once again reignited.  There is too little being done to develop energy sources other than those that are fossil-fuel or nuclear based.  This will continue so long as our world is dominated by those who seek power and profit for themselves and who care too little about the world around them or the people in it that they harm in their selfish quests.

At the same time, there is reason to believe that all is not lost.  We finally see stirrings of revival and unity among fractured union movements in the United States.  Recall efforts to rid local governments of the most flagrantly selfish and hypocritical politicians and legislators are also being successfully mounted there.  This is happening there even though the so-called "Mainstream Media" has remained deafeningly silent throughout.  The rebels in Libya know that their cause is a just one - even though the West that purports to support them and offers no to little assistance temporizes.  The tyrant will ultimately fall.  And the people of Japan who survived the two most deliberately awful bombing attacks in 1945 that this world has ever known will provide us all with lessons in how to survive this latest catastophic debacle.