I am watching a program on The History Channel which talks about The Little Ice Age; right now they are talking of the accompanying heavy rains that washed away fields and led to widespread famine. From 1371 to 1391 there were 111 famines in Europe; the Black Death found this environment fertile for its spread and the population was reduced by one third. The story of Hansel and Gretel had its roots in these famines.

People blamed their neighboring areas and many were killed for witchcraft. The Pope blamed the foul weather on witches. Some say 50,000 weather-affecting witches were burned at the stake.

And now, global warming? Careful, don’t wear a pointy hat.

As we near the end of the hour, I am learning that The Little Ice Age was 500 years long and in the middle of that span was a 70 years really cold spell caused by a lessening of the number of sunspots sending radiation to earth. During that 70 years, glaciers greatly advanced consuming villages.

A new plant, the potato, was introduced into Europe but the French refused to adopt it; while England and Ireland and the Netherlands ameliorated their famines, the French grew more hungry and restive and the show makes a connection between this and the French Revolution. (See, I guess the peasants wouldn’t eat potato bread.)

A book written in 2002 about this topic is  The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History – 1300-1850.

So what caused the warm period before the icing age? Ah, that is probably another show.

When and why did people, especially students, get the idea they could just take a gun or guns and start killing people in classrooms? Isn’t there something else they could do to express their angst? How about punching a bag or a wall? And why are they just shooting anyone, even the nice person in row three who once lent them a pencil or made a place at the lunch table for them?

A lot of question marks.

I few months ago, I didn’t know Chiari Malformation existed and the I gave across the topic while doing some research on CarePages. Frankly, I feel lucky that I don’t have it and I feel really bad for the people who do. It is a bottom-of-the-skull thing; it is a PAIN thing. As I understand it, you are born with it and it may lie dormant for a long time; then again, it can assert itself in childhood. It’s trademark is PAIN. A lot of it.

Obviously, I do not understand it very well, but I understand these CarePages I have been reading. One of them was featured on the CarePage homepage, along with an invite to read Gabe’s story. Reading it may be difficult, but, hey, living it is . . . Well, that is the stuff of nightmares.

One day sometime late last fall the dog was following me around the kitchen, pawing at my leg for something, even though he had already gone through such possibilities as having been fed, having been let out, and having been petted. I told my grandson to give him a Milkbone. “That’s your answer for everything,  just throw a dog biscuit at it,” he replied. Well, yeah, it sounded like a good idea to me, and I offered him one to give to his English teacher. So now I don’t even hesitate; I hand out two or three at a time to the dog. I have come to terms with my one trick negotiation strategy, and the dog is happy with it.

Now, I need something for me, a solution for my woes. Twinkies probably are not the answer, but I don’t want to be too hasty – cheesecake might be close to the mark. Seriously, though, what can I do to placate my inner puppy, to make me feel all comfy and content and up for the next day, or for finishing this one?

I am thinking about becoming a hermit, but with cable and internet service and lots of books and maybe meals and snacks that mysteriously appear at my door. I could construct a wonderful existence in my mind – a lovely setting, marvelous house, brilliant weather all the time, some ocean, some mountains; that could take some time to get all the details straight, so I guess I’ll get pretend I’ve been out in the cold and have stumbled on this warm room with sofa and blanket . . . and maybe a soda on the coffee table.

I have found quite a few errors in previous posts and have had to go into the edit mode and fix them, which is a pain in the neck. My problem is that I am impatient and don’t proofread; on the rare occasions that I do, I tend to see what I expect to see.  I am going to try to be better about this because maybe someone I know might actually come upon this page, and I would look stupid. Come to think of it, I would look stupid to a stranger stopping by.

I feel better for having admitted this flaw.

This show on AMC is only seven episodes long, or so I am told; I am beginning to think it might have a nightmare quality to it – a black, black comedy becoming a black hole of “Whoa, what we do when things go not just south, but to the South Pole.”

In the extensive promotion for the show, interviews with the main character indicated it would show a nice man becoming a “bad” man. Well, I watched this show about a man with lung cancer deciding he could make a bundle of money for his family when he brother-in-law, a DEA agent, said there might be around $700,000 that was recovered in a drug raid.

Ah, I forgot to mention that Walt – that’s his name – is a chemistry teacher, and, apparently, a smart one.

Without going into every twist and turn of the plot, in the beginning you found yourself laughing as you would at an outright comedy and then it creeps up on you that these are things are not pratfalls – a bathtub full of hydrofluoric acid and a body does fall through the seeing. However what falls through does not resemble a bathtub or a body; it is red goo.

In the next episode they clean it up, with sponges and buckets and gas masks. In the teaser for next week, the doctor tells Walt’s wife that it is lung cancer and tells them both that it has spread.

Four episodes to go. What happens? Will she become a partner in crime. Will they murder together? And if they do make money, will the DEA guy figure out it is drug money and seize it?

Oh, by the way, the wife is pregnant.

I need to get a picture of this so you can really appreciate what I’m writing about here. It is a simple thing: the second story vintage windows in one building on Main Street were replaced with rectangular ones that sort of look like they belong in a 1950’s American Brick building set. Considering Main Street is a historic district, I don’t know if this is technically okay or not. Visually, it is not. Around these rectangular holes are new bricks which fill the space left by the old windows and those bricks really, really stand out, saying, “We are here to fill a hole.”

Frankly, I think the person who did this should be defenestrated.

I think it is more than her intelligence, more than her ability to take and present beautiful photographs, more than her ability to tell a story – her story – well. I think a lot of people would like to be Pioneer Woman, or if not exactly her, to be someone living on that modern-day, yet turn-of-the-century ranch, in Oklahoma. A clean innocence of the prairie, the cold of winter and the heat of summer, the power of the land and the mystique of the American West.

A physician for a father, an upscale childhood, a USC degree, a spin in the world of business and tall buildings and a boyfriend with a house by the Pacific. Then later: four healthy children, scions of one of the most prominent ranching families.

It would be a good fantasy to escape into, and every morning, you can click on her website and be there . . . and carry the essense of it through your day.

Yes, yes. Oh, the things we take for granted. I am certain the guys at Valley Forge would have really preferred to be have their feet as comfy as mine are right now – and I wasn’t even outside in the real snow cold. I just walked by a door that had been opened for wood for the fire in the warm house.

Jeez, I feel like a wimp. I am a wimp. I need to remember this the next time I mention soldiers suffering and the go on to  another subject in a couple of minutes.

Hey, here’s a forum on which you can share some of the “heart-warming” stories of the hospital; hey, here’s a forum on which you can discuss lifestyles and stories from the gleanings of conversations with employees; hey, here’s a forum on which you can address some new ideas that are cropping up in medicine – such as the fact that according to US News &World Report, the 18 top US hospitals are investigating complementary and alternative medicines; hey, here’s a forum on which you can chat about a whole lot of topics that could help people feel a community bond to the hospital, a sense of knowing that these people care, that they are human themselves and not just M.D.’s who did okay on the MCAT and passed nursing boards.

Operating on hearts is important, but so is reaching out to the heart of the community, to those people who may spend some of their most intimate moments with you. So make yourself comfortable, think of the people out there – of how a person’s whole world can be flooded with the joy of a healthy new child, the sadness of losing a loved one or the anxiety of the unknown – and share with them. Share with us.