I’m eating my cereal and staring out the kitchen window when M arrives at the bird bath, now filled with seed for feathered friends not gone south.

M is Marnie, a cute and friendly pine martin who regularly stops by to check the bird feeders and to sniff out any snacks spilled at the compose bin.

Usually, I am pleased to see her. She is an endearing critter with silky fur – mostly brownish black, but grey-tan on a face featuring soft dark eyes that give her a loveable look.

 I’m not so pleased to see her today. She has arrived as I am reading some alarming news.

The morning newspapers are reporting that the H5N1 virus – commonly called a bird flu – is galloping out of control. It is killing millions of chickens worldwide, and now is infecting more and more wild birds, especially waterfowl and shorebirds.

The virus led to the deaths of 52 million birds in the United States last year. 

More alarming is the news that a mutant H5N1 strain is infecting mink, which continue to be raised by the millions on fur farms. 

Mink are excellent virus mixing vessels. They harbour both human and avian viruses and can produce mutant strains transmissible to humans. They carried the COVID-19 virus and are believed to have generated two new Covid variants that spread to humans.

Mink belong to the weasel family and so does my pine marten friend Marnie. So, there is concern that if H5N1 goes unchecked in mink farms it could spread to similar animals like pine marten and other mammals such as we humans.

H5N1 has been around for two or three decades but rarely is found in humans. That’s a good thing because the virus is deadly. There have been fewer that 900 human cases worldwide in the past 20 years, but 53 percent of those have been fatal.

Medical researchers are worried that H5N1 strains produced by mink will spread like wildfire through wild birds, small mammals and into human populations. They warn of an H5N1 pandemic that could take tens of millions of human lives.

One way to help curtail H5N1 spread is to stop fur farming. Animal rights groups say more than 100 million animals a year are raised and killed for their fur. Most are mink and fox. They cite abuse as one reason for ending fur farming.

Mink are crowded into small cages until they are ready to be killed through gassing or electrocution. Some are fed food containing poultry, which can contain avian flu viruses.

Their skins are used to make coats. winter boots and mittens that keep people warm. Mink fur is dense with thousands of hairs per square centimeter, making it one of the densest and softest furs available.

The fur also is used to decorate purses, hats and even keychains.

However, pressure from animal rights groups, plus more evidence of zoonotic diseases have been hitting fur farming hard. Production of fur in the European Union fell from 38 million animal skins in 2018 to about 11 million in 2021. 

Technology has given us alternatives to animal fur, and more people are accepting them. Revenue from the global faux fur market was estimated at 24.7 billion dollars U.S. last year. It is forecast to grow at 4.8 per cent annually, reaching $28.4 million by 2025.

Roughly two dozen countries now have banned fur farming. Fears over new virus strains coming from fur farms are expected to lead to more bans.

Canada still has fur farming but it is a business in steep decline. In 2011 there were 347 Canadian fur farming operations. Last year the number had dwindled to 97.

Meanwhile, the chances of avian influenza appearing in backyard bird baths or feeders is considered low. The federal government, however, recommends precautions such as removing feeders that are open to poultry or waterfowl.

Also, feeders should be cleaned every two weeks and disinfected with a solution of one part household bleach to nine parts water. They should be rinsed well and thoroughly dried before being reused.

Regular cleaning and disinfecting hopefully will keep all our feathered visitors, and  Marnie the pine marten, H5N1 free. 

 It’s been an unsettling week. 

My two oldest children were born on Valentine’s Day, two years apart. So, I had to consider whether to cancel their birthday celebrations.

Cancelling Valentine’s Day has become a major issue. Some Ontario schools have banned Valentine’s Day celebrations, saying they are not inclusive.

A handful of schools in other parts of Canada and the U.S. also have banned or restricted Valentine’s Day activities. So have some countries, including Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Valentine’s Day has been considered a Christian celebratory day not accepted by many people of non-Christian faiths. Buddhism doesn’t directly discourage Valentine’s Day but emphasizes other ways other cultivating love and happiness.

Some school principals say we live in a diverse society with schoolrooms composed of students of different races, religions and cultures. If they come from families that do not accept Valentine’s Day, they feel excluded at school when other students are exchanging cards and sweets.

Their answer to avoid exclusion is quick and simplistic: Cancel Valentine’s Day so no one feels excluded.

That’s the wrong answer. Cancelling things not socially acceptable to all is wrong-headed, and harmful.

If we cancel Valentine’s Day because some don’t accept it or believe in it, perhaps we should also cancel Hallowe’en, Christmas, Easter and other events that might make someone feel excluded. Some people don’t accept Pride parades, so should Pride events be banned?

Banning and cancelling have become a favoured approach by people professing to help create a more inclusive and equitable society. In most cases their intentions are good but their actions are negative and create conflicts.

For instance, families for whom Valentine’s Day celebrations have been a tradition might feel angry at being deprived by a minority that does not share their views. 

Backlash from such situations has created toxic anger – even hatred – against some minorities and immigration. It has fed extreme right-wing theories that foreigners are taking over the country.

Right-wing anti-immigration attitudes have been moving into general populations, especially in the United States. A Gallup Poll last summer found that almost one-quarter of Americans surveyed believe that immigration is a bad thing. 

We don’t need that kind of negative nonsense here in Canada. Thankfully, we don’t have a whole lot of it. Yet.

An Environics survey last fall found that seven of 10 Canadians support current immigration levels, which now stand at roughly 400,000 newcomers a year. That is the largest majority recorded on Environics surveys in 45 years.

That support will be eroded, however, if we continue to restrict or ban things that some groups do not support. We all need to promote ways to help us to learn about and understand each other’s culture and beliefs. Especially people working with our children in our schools.

The most misguided thinking on Valentine’s Day bans comes from the belief that it is a western religious celebration.  There have been several Saint Valentines throughout ancient history but their stories are confusing and clouded by unproven embellishments.

The Catholic church has removed Saint Valentine’s Day from its general Roman calendar, a liturgical calendar that indicates dates to celebrate saints. The church said the day was removed because aside from his name, nothing much is known about Saint Valentine.

The day became associated with romantic love back in the 14th or 15th century. In the 18th century the English began the tradition of expressing love with flowers, candies and cards.

And that’s where we are today. Valentine’s Day is a major commercial celebration that generates tens of millions of dollars in spending each year. Any religious connections have faded into the mists of ancient history.

There are few provable facts about Valentine’s Day but here are a couple of interesting Fun Facts for Kids from the We Are Teachers website:

More than one billion cards are exchanged for Valentine’s Day every year.  Teachers are the No. 1 recipients. 

And, 20 percent of pet owners give Valentine’s Day gifts to their pets.

So let’s get positive and see the day as it really is today: A day about love and kindness. 

We live in a world that could use all the love and kindness that it can get.

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It’s February, and as the singer-songwriter Don McLean wrote in his 1971 smash hit American Pie: February makes you shiver.

It isn’t February cold that makes McLean shiver. For him, February is the month in which “the music died.”

McLean wrote American Pie as a tribute to rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson Jr.) who died in a plane crash on Feb. 3, 1959. 

American Pie (‘American as apple pie’) has been described as one of the most successful and debated songs of the 20th century. Its nostalgic, ambiguous lyrics tell not just of the plane crash as the death of early rock and roll, but American society nosediving toward its own crash.

It is a masterpiece lamenting the loss of innocence and idyllic life to a darkening mood changing America.  

 lyrics are prophetic. Although written more than 50 years ago, they can be applied to today’s United States, a country staggering under the weight of gun violence, international tensions and destructive climate change.Listen to the song’s chorusSo bye-bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee
But the levee was dry

When he wrote those words McLean is said to have been referring to The Levy, a hometown bar where he went to get a drink but missed last call. Therefore, The Levy was dry.

It’s easy to relate those lyrics to a dry levee today when we see global warming turning the Colorado River system, which provides water to 40 million people, into a trickle.

The song’s lyrics can be applied to other dangers facing today’s world.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candlestick refers to U.S. President John Kennedy facing the threat of nuclear war during the 1960 Cuban missile crisis. Substitute Joe Biden for Jack Kennedy and Cuba’s Fidel Castro with Russia’s Vlad Putin and his threats or nuclear war over U.S. interference in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Or, how about the lyrics in one of the song’s last stanzas – And in the streets, the children screamed . . . . 

They have reason to scream in the streets today. Already this year American gun violence has killed 169 children ages zero to 17 and wounded 400.

Total gun deaths since New Year’s Day are approaching 4,500. Mass shootings since Jan. 1 now total 60 – nearly two a day.

And, of course, the lyrics “A generation lost in space” are easily related to today’s American drug crisis. More than 1,500 people a week die from opioid-related overdoses while millions more are suffering with opioid addiction.

American overdose deaths have been rising since the 1990s with tracking agencies reporting more than one million drug deaths since 2000.

Versions of American Pie have been sung tens of thousands of times by performers in the past 64 years. Madonna released a version of it in 2000.

A new version, recorded recently in Ukraine promises to touch the hearts of millions of people disgusted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its deliberate killing of civilians.

It is called Ukrainian Pie and is a tribute to the courage and fighting spirit of the Ukrainian people, plus a tribute to what the recording company calls the magical music and lyrics of “the greatest American popular song of all time.”

The new version was composed by American lawyer–lyricist Hal Pollock and is sung by Ukrainian Alex Kozar. It was recorded in Kyiv, presumably when Russian bombs were not exploding.

Here’s a taste of the lyrics:  

If the Ruskies think they stand a chance

They better wear their big boy pants

No squatting for a Hopak dance

When we make ‘em eat Ukrainian pie

Hey Zelensky

Fly high Ukrainian guy

Let them eat their borscht

With our Ukrainian pie

While Putin drinks his vodka

And his generals die

Tell the Ruskie soldiers bye-bye

Make ‘em eat Ukrainian pie

A video of Ukrainian Pie is making the rounds on social media, notably You Tube. It also is being sold, with the profits to be distributed by the Ukrainian government for humanitarian causes in Ukraine.

There are times when we might want to despair over living in a world of selfishness. 

This week isn’t one of them. 

That’s because the first week of February every year brings a reminder that confirms the basic goodness and selflessness of humans. It comes in a powerful piece of history not known by many, forgotten by some.

Eighty years ago this week the SS Dorchester, an aging luxury liner converted to a U.S. Army transport ship, was sailing through Torpedo Alley between Newfoundland and Greenland. It carried 904 soldiers and others headed for the war zones of Europe.

At 12:55 a.m. Feb. 3, 1943 German submarine U-223 locked the Dorchester in its sights and unleashed four torpedoes. One found its mark, exploding in the ship’s boiler room. 

Many troops in the lower areas of the ship died instantly. Others clambered through the dark and confusion to reach the upper decks. 

The ship listed, taking on water quickly. Some of the Dorchester’s 14 lifeboats were damaged by the blast and the crew managed to launch only two others, plus some life rafts.

Survivors later described scenes of desperation amid mass panic. Some told of four first lieutenants treating the wounded and comforting the terror-stricken while helping to get them off the ship. 

Those four lieutenants were military chaplains assigned to provide spiritual care to the troops fighting Hitler in Europe. 

During the chaos. the chaplains opened a storage locker and handed out lifejackets. They urged soldiers to jump off the sinking ship and into the icy waters where they would have a chance of being picked up accompanying ships. 

“They were passing out life preservers from boxes on deck,” survivor Oswald Evans said later in a sworn affidavit. “When these were gone, I saw them take the life preservers from their own persons and hand them out, too.”

Another survivor, Grady Clark, described what he saw after jumping into the ocean:

“As I swam away from the ship, I looked back. The flares had lighted everything. The bow came up high and she slid under. The last thing I saw, the four chaplains were up there praying for the safety of the men . . . They themselves did not have a chance without their life jackets.”

Others told of the chaplains standing on deck, arms linked and singing and praying as the Dorchester slipped beneath the surface. The singing and praying heard by the men in the water was in Hebrew and Latin, as well as English, because the chaplains represented different faiths.

Chaplain Alexander D, Goode was a reform rabbi and son of Rabbi Hyman Goodekowitz. 

Father John P. Washington was a Catholic priest recently assigned to the 76th infantry division in Maryland.

Rev. George L. Fox was a Methodist minister highly decorated as a medical assistant in the First World war. 

The fourth chaplain was Dutch Reformed minister Clark V. Poling, son of Rev. Daniel A, Poling, Baptist minister and an advisor to U.S. President Harry S. Truman. 

The four chaplains were among the 672 who perished in the ocean that night. Only 232 survived, some possibly in the life jackets given to them by the chaplains.

After the Dorchester sinking Rev. Daniel Poling established the Chapel of Four Chaplains in the basement of his Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia. It was dedicated to selfless service and interfaith cooperation.

The chapel moved to different locations over the years and now is found at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard. 

In testimony before Congress, one survivor, Benjamin Epstein, reflected on what he had seen that night:

“To take off your life preserver, it meant you gave up your life. You would have no chance of surviving. They (the chaplains) knew they were finished. But they gave it away. Consider that. Over the years I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times. Could I do it?  No, I don’t think I could do it. Just consider what an act of heroism they performed.”

In a world that today seems to have gone crazy, I like to believe that the spirit of the four chaplains remains, giving us the courage and selflessness to help each other. 

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