Spanish views from a small town

There have been many images and news reports coming out of Ukraine about how Russian troops have massacred and tortured civilians. Mass graves have been found, and women have come forward claiming they had been raped, a few saying their own children had been forced to watch. These are details that make many think back to World War II. Stories have popped up of survivors of Babi Yar, and the horror they lived through. But, on European soil, there's been other massacres that people seem to have forgotten about. Srebrenica. In July, 1995, with Dutch troops from the U.N. looking on and doing nothing to stop it, about 8,000 Bosniak men were summarily executed by Serbian commandos. Of the roughly 14,000 Bosniak women and children rounded up and sent out to other towns, thousands were raped. Children were raped and some were killed, some of them snatched out of their mothers' arms when they wouldn't stop crying. A knife across the throat did the job. The commanders, Serbians, were...

So, I was wrong and Putin did attack Ukraine. The man isn't a rational, thinking human; he's a megalomaniac who doesn't care about anyone but himself and the "glory" only he can bring to his country.  The problem for Putin isn't so much that Ukraine looks to the West, and wants to join NATO, and perhaps the European Union. If we look at that angle, we can see that the Baltic states and Poland belong to the Union, and to NATO. But Poland's government is leaning away from the rest of the Union, and slowly becoming less liberal, less open. Ukraine was opening up. Belarus, in between, has been taken over by a tiny dictator that is bosom buddies with Putin. Putin wants Ukraine to become another Belarus, easily molded to Russia's (Putin's) needs and wants. Putin was happy when a puppet dictator was in Kyiv, but the Ukrainian people don't want anything to do with another dictatorship, so Putin is punishing them, before he puts in place his own handpic...

Day 3.  This is becoming the literary lockdown. I've gotten through two Ian Rankin books, the last one of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano, have started one by Donna Leon, with another of hers in the wings, and have dug out a couple I want to re-read. The spring cleaning can wait, I suppose.  My symptoms are of a disappearing cold. My nose has stopped running, and is simply a little itchy, with partial blockage when I lie down. The back of my throat still has some phlegm, which is the result of the infection being put down by my immune system. I can take deep breaths with no problem at all. I could very easily be out and about, but I can't, ethically. So, my walks will have to wait. By the time I do get out, the buds will probably be swelling, and a leaf or two might have started to peep out. We have a fruit tree that has started to do just that, flower included. This has not been a harsh winter, at all. My hopes for a freak, late snowfall are fast disappearing in th...