The World is Full of Small Weird Miracles

There was a day, a few years ago, when I was walking Emily, the household dog, across the overpass that spans the highway near our house.  We were on the far side, starting down the ramp to the sidewalk, when I observed a middle-aged woman on the street below us.  She was walking her dogs, two affable looking German shepherds. When one of them stopped to do what a dog stops to do, the woman picked up the leavings in a plastic bag, as one does.  And then she did something curious: she went...