The Bark Of The Day

It all started with a simple e-mail from John to his coworkers. They were about to start a special project at the major healthcare organization John was working. He and his wife had just adopted Mojo from the Animal Friends pet shelter in Pittsburgh. One of the four principles John tries to follow is that your attitude will determine your altitude. MojoaEUR(tm)s name and his demeanor definitely reminded John of that fact. So he sent an e-mail as Mojo stating that on the first day of the project.Well, Mojo was voted the team mascot! His picture became displayed throughout the department. One of JohnaEUR(tm)s duties was as a subject matter expert. John approached his boss about sending a teaching e-mail to help everyone focus on their jobs each day. He sent an e-mail from the team mascot to help everyone want to read the message. It contained a quote from a famous person throughout history. He then applied the quote to that dayaEUR(tm)s lesson, and The Bark of the Day was born.At the core of The Bark of the Day are the beliefs that John has always tried to follow. These four beliefs are as follows: attitude equals altitude; perception is reality; live life in the spirit of thankfulness; and most importantly, practice forgiveness to yourself and others.When John retired, he stopped writing those e-mails. About three weeks into his retirement, while reading a book by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, he was inspired to write this book. It is his hope that you will find the book entertaining, thought-provoking, and helpful in adopting those principles in your own life.

Zane is a tricolored sheltie who lives on Beach Road. He’s a little dog with a big voice, and every day during his walks, everyone in the neighborhood hears him barking. One neighbor thinks he’s the happiest dog she’s seen—and probably the yappiest. Some of them don’t like that very much, but most of them just shake their heads and laugh at the small dog with so much joy to spread. One day, when Zane and his owner walk by the art gallery in town, the sheltie begins barking a warning that something is wrong, and he refuses to move. What could be going on? His owner does some investigating, and soon she sees the gallery owner hurt on the floor. Thanks to Zane’s barking, help soon arrives, and the little dog’s friend is saved. In this children’s story, a small dog with a big voice and an outgoing personality becomes an unexpected hero in his neighborhood.

Woody plants are some of the tallest, largest, and longest-lived lifeforms on Earth. Their raw materials have literally framed and supported past human development, continues to do so today, and may aid humanity to combat and cope with future challenges, like climate change. All of the ecological and societal achievements of woody plants are due, in part, to a thin barrier between their internal and external worlds: bark. There is a lot of bark, too. Current estimates find that there is >40 million km2 of bark surface area, which is nearly as large as the entire Asian continent! Bark acts as both an environmental barrier (to pests and fire, for example) and an interface between woody plants and their environment. Even when bark is shed by a plant, or if a plant dies, bark persists and continues to act in the environment over years-to-decades. In forests where woody plants lose their leaves every season, bark, again, persists. Thus, bark has many opportunities to interact with the water cycle—from the top of live and dead tree canopies to the bottom of the forest floor. This Collection shines a light into this ‘bark side’ of the water cycle, examining several core concepts and new discoveries from the companion article collection in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change. There are several reasons why the ‘bark side’ of the water cycle requires our attention. First, most precipitation over land falls over forests and must pass through their leaves, bark and litter to reach the surface. At the surface, freshwater resources are getting scarcer and their management is becoming more socio-politically and economically complex. Finally, climate change is altering the patterns and timing of precipitation supplies around the world; however, the land surface and climate models used to predict and adapt to climate change only superficially include bark’s roles in the water cycle. Therefore, it is possible that an increased curiosity and awareness of this veritable ‘bark continent’ and its importance for our planet’s water cycle can improve the appreciation and conservation of forest ecosystems and related water resources.

At the fall of Bataan on April 9 1942, over sixty thousand American and Filipino troops were rounded up by the Japanese and forced to march 65 miles from Mariveles, on the southern end of the Bataan Peninsula, to San Fernando, Pampanga, in Central Luzon. Anyone showing a slight weakness to walk was instantly bayoneted in the back. Estimates of the number of total deaths from the march range from 5,000 to 8,000. Thousands more later died from malnutrition and disease in the abject conditions of the Japanese POW camps. One of the fortunate survivors was Sergeant Bob Reynolds who penned his combat memoir Of Rice and Men in 1947. With a cool, philosophical perspective, he details the harrowing experience, from bitterly defending Bataan on starvation rations, through the many atrocities of the March, and finally his miraculous survival in Cabanatuan POW Camp and, later, in Manila's Bilibid Prison.