A woodpecker has spent the last two days assiduously pecking away at a hole in the siding just outside my study. He was making fine progress towards the insulation long ago pumped in through the tiny hole. Knowing his efforts were misdirected, and, irritated by the constant banging, I covered the hole with a metal plate. Silence and natural sanity reign again. I wonder how long before his belief that a siding-hole is a potential breeding ground has him back pecking? The radio broadcasts BBC news each hour. So I am well versed in the Pope’s visit to Brazil to prop up the church against loss of the faithful to evangelical movements that are not as strict about those dogma that have sustained the church for centuries. I also have heard long discussions about the decision to beatify the war-time pope, who some say collaborated with the Nazis; others say the war-time pope merely maintained a respectful silence. As the grandfather of Jewish grandchildren I am appalled. But that is religion and breeding for you; and the man is dead. In the Belle Plaine library I accessed, on an ancient computer, the news that the Dene declare the Thelon Basin to be a “birthplace, the place where God began.” And they defend their right to hunt and kill there “for if there are no caribou, we die.”

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