Various parts of the world have seen societal unrest, with people rebelling against rising food and energy costs. Drought conditions prevailing in prairie states and provinces in North America, along with diversion of corn from food stock to alternate energy source have also hit the market.

More people in previously under-developed markets are now challenging for their right to increasingly scarce resources, from food to energy, causing shortages and higher prices.

In Canada, where consumers are far more sheltered from high costs in those areas than most parts of the world, and where the weekly food shopping basket cost has represented a fairly low percentage of a family's quality-of-life outlay, there has been a new, creeping escalation of costs.

Energy, with the exception of natural gas for home heating, has steadily risen in cost. And energy costs related to the production of all commodities including food, along with transportation costs also adds to the price of products and food as well.

Yet, in Canada, even though the elevation in cost of basic provisions and basic foodstuffs has now begun to rise, at a rate that has escalated the cost of living sharply, Canadian consumers are still fortunate that despite the rise, comestibles remain moderately priced in comparison to elsewhere in the world.

Canadian shoppers can indulge themselves like few other consumers are able to do, even on relatively fixed incomes. We have an array of basic food products from all corners of the compass available to us.

And, despite the newly-inflated costs, our total food dollar spent weekly still comprises a more tolerable burden than elsewhere in the world. For which we are all grateful.

I suppose because I've been reading so much non-fiction lately, focusing mainly on human relations in the direst of circumstances due to religious, sectarian, ideological, territorial and tribal conflicts, I felt I was due a change. It does affect your mood, after awhile; even while it informs and enlightens, at the same time it is extremely depressing.

So I turned back to fiction, as kind of needfully morale-boosting antidote to all the gloom about unchecked, unbridled and malevolent human emotions. Not that any of these characteristics are necessarily absent in fiction; quite the contrary.

When I finished reading Bharati Mukherjee's Desirable Daughters, a novel that is compelling in some ways, entertaining and certainly informative, it was still disappointing. The quality of the writing is excellent, but there's also a missing quality; one did not tend to view the protagonists with much compassion; perhaps it was the flaunting of intellectual exceptionalism, the garishly casual wealth.

I turned then to a Japanese novel by Keigo Hiashino, Naoko. At first blush it appeared to be clumsily realized and written, the author in dire need of a good editor. Oriana Fallaci's Inshallah, while a fascinating read and masterfully written, was badly overwritten and also in need of a discriminating editor. Her book flaunted her genius for arcane and elaborate details. A penchant she seemed to share with the later books of Umberto Eco, lavishing upon the pages of their novels their splendid but often too verbosely descriptive details adding little to the novel.

There must be something about modern Japan to explain its fascination with the supernatural. That would edify the curious thinker about why it is that so many Japanese films are puerile and fixated on a mysterious other world that impinges on our own. They're a far cry indeed from The Pillow Book of Sei Shonogon and Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji.

But I'm reading Naoko, at night, in bed, before falling off to sleep and as improbable as the story line is, it's managing to retain my interest thus far.

Sad news that is, that yet another series of deadly tornadoes has ripped through several south-eastern States. Two hundred people dead in five states as a result of those ferocious weather conditions. We're informed that this type of thing is a regular feature of certain geographies, particularly in parts of the U.S., and that it's just because there's more on the ground to be targeted than ever before that the death toll and the path of destruction grows.

We're aghast when we see the kind of destruction that occurs close to us here in the Ottawa Valley, particularly with our proximity to a wooded ravine where we spend so much of our leisure-activity time. The winds here had the howling resonance of a renegade locomotive, as we made our way through the ravine this morning. The trails were just bristling with detritus the wind had torn from upper tree branches.

We felt ourselves fortunate to get out at all, given the steady rain that had pounded our windows all night, and the ferocity of the thunder-and-lightning storms that had preceded the rain. We woke to an utterly drenched world under dark clouds. But as we were having our breakfast the skies cleared until there was a wide, sparkling sheet of blue with the sun burning off the rainwater that had settled into pools. And the wind gusts seemed to bend the trees in half under their blastingly fierce thrusts.

We cleaned up from breakfast in a hurry and prepared to embark on a ravine excursion before the wind brought in any more rain. It was warm and humid out so we thought we could get away without rain gear, but then thought better of it. Before we set foot out the door the blue was gone, replaced by dirty grey, and the rain came thundering down. We waited, and not too long, and suddenly the ragged grey clouds succumbed to blue again.

One sad sacrifice to the weather was a lofty old pine which sat directly beside the trail at one juncture and which was now ripped in two, having been torn apart by the winds. We could see its interior riddled with insect colonies, yet it had been a healthy enough specimen. Now the snagged stump sat there forlornly and beside it, directly over the trail, the remainder, its many limbs thrust into the ground, holding the trunk aloft and horizontal, sprays of green needles lamenting the unfairness of it all.

Take your choice: feast or famine. Unfortunately, where nature is involved - the environment and the weather we receive - there is no choice; we take what we get because there are no options. Sometimes things work out in our favour, other times they don't. Weather-sensitive areas of the world suffer droughts, deleteriously impacting agriculture, livelihoods and food availability as well as soil sustainability, or a normal year ensues and food is available for due consumption and for storage.

The same kind of situations impact on peoples' lives through floods threatening their ongoing occupation of homes and areas susceptible to flooding because they're located on floodplains. Currently, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba and throughout the U.S. where flooding becomes a yearly concern in spring, there have been mass evacuations as rivers become swollen beyond their capacity.

And for fortunate people like those who live in the Ottawa Valley, where the potential for earthquakes occasionally disturbs peace of mind, especially in particularly vulnerable areas built upon sand and clay which magnify the effects of earth movement, we do not so much fear overwhelming rains leading to floods. Area rivers do swell beyond their capacity to contain the temporary water build-up in spring melt, but flooding is generally contained to specific areas. Still, the soil conditions added to extreme water saturation often lead to catastrophic landslides. No area is exempt from its own very special environmental-climatic conditions.

This year the Ottawa Valley broke all previous records for April rainfall, and the rain is still continuing. The impact is minimal other than the annoyance factor which everyone can live with. Yesterday we had a brief break in an all-day rain, and we hastened to get out for our daily walk in our nearby ravine, where the creek at the bottom was in full flood, and the trails underfoot were slippery mush. An hour into our circuit a warning of rain resumption was recognized in the onset of a light drizzle and we opted for a short-cut that took us another 20 minutes to emerge from the woods.

Once we settled ourselves back at home again, after rinsing the mud off our little dogs' legs, the heavens unleashed another downpour, culminating later in the evening in a firestorm of lightning and thunder claps; nature applauding another faultless performance.

Is there anything more gratifying than the message implicit in a grandchild's communication that there is excitement and enjoyment in learning new things on a continual basis? Committing for example, to science projects? Exerting oneself to discovering amazing details of the natural world and absorbing the minutiae of scientific discoveries?

And what could conceivably be more fascinating than astrophysics, astronomy, the creation of life in the Universe? The knowledge that we are ourselves constructed of the chemicals that circulate and coalesce to form stars and other heavenly bodies. We are, then, ourselves imbued with the material of the heavens, though we are far from heavenly in our hubristic assumptions that humankind is the master of our universe. A discovery that will come to her much, much later in life...

Hi Grandma!
These are all the pictures I'm going to try to use for my poster. I'll explain what each of them are on the poster and write a little description of each underneath the photo. Most of them are artists depiction's of what each may look like, and or their actual size It's kind of impossible to explain them all through an e-mail so you should probably just enjoy the pictures The pictures consist of nebulas, supernovas, black holes, blue stars, explosions of supernovas, nuclear fusion and etc, Earth, Moons, Jupiter, Uranus, (actually not pronounced your anus, but pronounced as your-a-nus, if that makes sense), Neptune, Jupiter and its four largest moons, the Solar system, Neutron Star (that's the one with the blueish circle in the middle and the big radiation lines shooting out either end of it), actual images of a Supernova, the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and our moon ), the gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune with the other planets), the planets with the sun, the sun with other giant stars, and smaller stars, and the sun compared to supergiant stars. Oh, I also learned that Jupiter has 60 moons, Uranus has 27 moons, and Neptune has 13 moons. Both Uranus and Neptune have clouds too! Love, Angie

It's a thankless task. One abhorrent to most people; either to agree to volunteer themselves as door-to-door canvassers on behalf of a charity or for ideological purposes, religious or political - or to welcome that knock on the door of their privacy looking for support. Little wonder the vast majority of people don't respond to the request to become involved in their community through volunteering in that particular way.

I know what it's like to start a campaign to raise funds for a charitable medical-social cause. I've done it from the ground up. And I did realize a satisfying measure of success, managing somehow to vitalize people into the concept that we have an obligation both to ourselves and to the wider community to become involved. If not us, then who? Precisely. But that was forty years ago.

And since then I've been involved at a periphery level in so many campaigns for so many charitable service and medical causes. I sigh to myself that it's time my neighbours took their turn. Yes, we live in a busy world but it was no less busier when I became involved as a very young woman. I am no longer that young woman. It means little to me to receive awards certifying my long involvement.

My husband has for years asked me to give it a rest. I've vowed to no longer be involved. But when those calls come, there are too few who respond, and guilt pricks my conscience, so once again I take up the slack. No sooner have I completed one obligation to a singular cause then another raises its head asking for a like dimension of support.

Have I yet mentioned how much I detest going out there knocking on doors, becoming the recipient variously of welcome or scorn for my efforts? Those efforts on behalf of the very people who cannot spare anything of themselves. Who take, but give nothing themselves.

So, where are all those responsible members of society anxious to ensure that their efforts make for a better, more hopeful society?

He is a kind and considerate man. He has asked me on several occasions whether I would like him to help me work out a weight-lifting routine for myself. I thanked him; didn't think so. Even after he had persuaded me to go ahead, lift a few weights, see what it's like. I was neither persuaded nor particularly impressed.

For myself, that is. I figure I get enough exercise, with our daily-damn-the-weather excursions into the wooded ravine near our house with our two little dogs in tow, struggling up hills, slithering downhill. And cleaning this fairly largish house. Not to mention the brief, but effective exercise routine I've done for the past 50 years which manages very nicely to keep me limber; I can still lay my hands, palm down, flat on the floor without bending my legs, for example, and remain nimble enough gardening.

But for him, I am impressed. We are, after all, 74 years old, heading toward 75. And he has always busied himself both before and since retirement with many different types of projects. Many of which require both the skill of dexterity and physical strength, let alone creativeness. So I'm glad he's instituted a weight-lifting regimen for himself, to increase his muscle mass.

Given the obesity problems besetting modern society, it would be useful for many more men to elect to maintain a similar routine.

A nice-weather-day sandwiched between chill temperatures, wind and rain. We had our hour-and-a-half ravine walk with our little dogs, then took them along with us, in their over-the-shoulder carry-bags into our local advance polling station for the 2011 general election.

We weren't certain whether we'd find crowds at the elementary school gymnasium, ready to vote their political choice, or a paucity of people. Fortunately, the big rush to vote had dissipated by the time we arrived. The scrutineers informed us that the crowds of people who formed a long, impatient line of would-be voters for hours after noon opening had finally cleared out. Nice timing on our part, we thought.

And then we could understand why people had been impatient, for a new impedance to voting had been added (in the sense of consuming more time, making for more inefficiency in the process) for this year's vote. Not only must voters bring along with them the voter's registration card they had received in the mail, pre-vote, validating their registration and clarifying the process, along with an additional personal piece of identification (driver's license, utility bills, etc.), they must also patiently stand by while a polling station clerk painstakingly writes down by hand what already exists on the list held by the other clerk; the name and address of the individual. Once the writing process has been concluded, the voter is asked to sign their name alongside the hand-written entries of the clerk.

And then, the carefully folded ballot is proffered to the voter, whereupon he/she may take him/herself to the semi-seclusion of the booth standing hard by, to cast their vote. That additional time-consuming process, along with the fact that there was only one table with three clerks (temporary workers, usually older people who are party faithful and who have been nominated by the party they support on the basis of their work on behalf of the party), and one polling booth for the entire community being served.

The slow and clumsy inefficiency of the workers failed to impress. But the women's eyes did light up at the sight of our little toy poodle nestled in his carrying bag, whereupon one of them asked brightly if that might be the little dog who had bitten off the end of the nose of a greeter at Home Depot the week previously. Ouch.

She knows what she wants as far as a career goes, and that's a good thing. She has long planned to attend university and knows that she needs good high-school credentials to permit her to attend the university of her choice. She has always been fairly self-motivated. No need to remind her, ever, to ensure her homework is done. She is mindfully fastidious about her homework, settling down to tend to it immediately upon her return from school.

She is rather less meticulous about focusing on studying for tests. She will study, but half-heartedly. She was given her science mark for this term in grade 9, circulated individually to all students in her class preparatory to inclusion in their term report card. Her mark was 72%. Not a bad mark, but not outstandingly good, either. Something she is well aware of.

She is annoyed with her science teacher, a woman whom she greatly admires and with whom she has had very good relations. Her standards for a teacher's quality of performance as an educator and as someone who is capable of motivating her students are quite high, and this teacher passes the mark with room to spare. Usually.

Her science teacher, she said, informed her that she had higher expectations of her than what that mark illustrates to be her capability in the subject. She knows she can do better, her teacher stressed, and she expects her to make more an effort in the coming term to eclipse by far the mark she received this time around.

I tell her I'm fully supportive of her teacher. She is capable of doing better. She hasn't the will. She has convinced herself that science is beyond her, that the topic in its various manifestations is a mystery to her, that she just doesn't 'get it'. I tell her that her teacher has recognized the depth of her intelligence and her lack of interest in the subject, evidenced by her unwillingness to work a little harder at 'getting it'.

Both a good, caring teacher and a grandmother are permitted this expression of their expectations of a student's abilities. She would far prefer to be congratulated on the basis of having received a passing grade. Sometimes that just isn't enough. Even though she argues that science is not a requirement for her chosen field; law.

This street was full of families with young children when we moved into our house twenty years ago. There was a sprinkling of retired people, and we were not yet at that point ourselves retired. Our children, however, had long flown the nest and lived their own, independent lives.

We observed the children living on the street in their infancy, growing into primary-school-age, secondary and university. Some have since graduated, left home to strike out on their own, living in places as far off as Australia, Hong Kong, the United States, and the far reaches of Canada. Others have reached the point where they're new university students, embarking on the education that would lead them to their chosen fields of employment.

Hard to believe the fresh-faced youngsters we watched play in their driveways, toddle along with their parents, or being pushed along in strollers, are now so fully-grown and emotionally developed. True there is the odd one out who left before fully accomplishing a high school diploma and whom everyone knows deals drugs from his home, but he is the exception. In his favour he is a pleasant, very well-met young man. One trusts he merely dabbles and has not adapted his values to hard drugs.

It's always amazing to see the physical development of these children when the vision of their childhood remains fresh in our minds. Sometimes, it seems, equal to that of our own children and beyond, though the time distant between them is doubled in length. And then, too, there is now a higher proportion of retired people living on this street, although some original residents have left the neighbourhood. And in their place another kind of renewal as young families with very young children have moved in.

Time and the ordinary tides of the human yardstick....

A pleasant little surprise; this year's canvass kit for the Canadian Cancer Society includes felt-paper stick-pin daffodil giveaways. Spring: renewal and hope; resounds with the thought of the devastating effects of cancer. And, possibly because it is spring, people tend to be more cheerful, more giving. At least I've found that to be so, over my long volunteer-canvassing career.

When I canvassed in February for the Heart & Stroke campaign people seemed hesitant to part with their charitable dollars, even though most people, when and if they give, are modest in their donations. They're grudgingly unwilling to look forward in time and social awareness; more given, it seems, to complaining about the unrelenting cold, sleet and icy misery.

I finally kicked myself in the unwilling part of me to get out and begin that April canvass, last night. I hate canvassing, but so does everyone else, and no one, it seems, can find enough time left over in their busy schedules to volunteer to go door-to-door in neighbourhoods to ask for donations to assist the operation and research capabilities of our various health-and-service charitable organizations. So, out I went, the weather being sufficiently clement, unlike today's nasty cold and icy rain.

My neighbours, particularly those living on the upper portion of the street where we also live, and who have known me for several decades and I they, tend to be welcoming, warm and generous. It becomes an opportunity to renew acquaintances after the long indoors winter months, and people are garrulously given to insisting I be indoors with them as we relate personal experiences and neighbourhood gossip.

Enabling me to exchange goodwill overtures and sincerely-shared concerns. In the process helping to raise funds for another of our excellent social-medical causes. I feel I do little enough to advance the well-being of others in our society, and this way remains yet open to me.

I keep telling myself and my husband that the current year is the absolute last I will do this, but since no one else seems to offer their time and energy to it, I continue to volunteer. I tell myself next year I'll be 75, time to give it a rest, let someone else take over.

And then I remember that my group captain who also canvasses her own street is 85 years old.

Some small dogs have irascible personalities to the point where they behave in an aggressively vile manner. Ours are not like that. They prefer being among people. The older one, a miniature poodle, is not particularly gregarious by nature, she can take or leave communication, but the younger one, a toy poodle, is mad for notice by people and eager to reciprocate. We rarely leave them at home alone, preferring to take them with, wherever we go. Highly intelligent dogs become very upset when they're left to their own devices, they would far prefer to be with their companion-humans.

Since they were puppies, she 18 years ago, and he 11 years earlier, they have been accustomed to accompanying us, by being placed in carrying bags which we sling over our shoulders. They're both unobtrusive, draw little attention, and remain quietly complacent, often enough just settling down deep into their bags and falling asleep while we go about our business.

Then came community news that a woman with a shih tsu had created quite a dreadful situation in a local Home Depot store. The shih tsu had been seated in the infant seat of a shopping cart and when a woman who was a store greeter bent toward the dog to pet it, it leaped at her and bit off the end of her nose. The woman with the dog expressed no compassionate concern, let alone a sense of personal responsibility, only a sudden desire to leave as expeditiously as she could manage - which she did, escorted out of the store by one of its managers.

By-law officers and paramedics arrived on cue, the former to investigate the occurrence, the latter to see to the poor injured woman's condition. A doctor later stitched the loose skin of her nose in place and restored her left nostril, but informed her that she will carry the physical scars of the attack for the rest of her life. As for the psychological trauma, she will doubtless forever recall the other woman's lack of conscience.

Needless to say, stores that had formerly looked the other way using their own discretion when dogs were brought onto their premises will think twice. A municipal by-law exists that forbids the entrance of a dog other than a service animal anywhere food is sold. The careless and unthinking attitude of one individual is all it takes to unsettle a balanced situation of social goodwill and in the doing, contribute to pain and suffering and future misery for one unfortunate victim of a dog attack.

Whenever we see him, and that is often enough, he is, other than in the summer months, wearing a bright red shell. The lightest of water-proof jackets, no lining, with the zipper always one-quarter down, revealing his exposed, tender white neck. I have to resist an impulse to yank that zipper up, and wonder whether his wife remonstrates with him about exposing his bare flesh like that in inclement weather.

Even in the winter, he wears that red shell. I've asked him whether he doesn't feel the cold, and he laughs, assures me that when it's cold and miserable he wears layers under that red shell. Still, I wonder about him. He's elderly, looks older than he actually is, which is about six years younger than us. We seem more robust, although that's not necessarily so. He's out there daily, with his two ski poles, briskly marching up all the trails, taking his quotidian exercise. A creature of routine, like us.

He ventures out at such times when he knows his wife will be all right on her own for an hour. He is her sole caregiver. When he fell ill last fall, was rushed to hospital and problems discovered with his heart, post-surgery they both were admitted to an recovery-care home; he to actually recover his health and she because there was no one but him to look after her. They were very anxious to return to their own comfortable little house nearby the ravine.

Up until a short while ago she was capable of standing on her own in the kitchen, and she was still preparing their meals. She can no longer comfortably stand on her own; he has devised a low counter arrangement she can readily access in her wheelchair and when she feels well enough she insists on continuing to prepare their meals. Everything else devolves to him.

His name, Max, is not short for Maximilian as I thought it might be. He's always cheerful, always happy to stand about and talk. Unlike many others with whom over the years we've assumed a friendly acquaintance Max does not have a companion animal. He walks for the exercise it represents in any kind of weather, robustly concentrating on covering the trails in as short a time-frame as he can.

He's a sweet man, Canadian by way of Switzerland. Now that's different; we've no idea why he might have thought to leave Switzerland for Canada. Originally, I'd thought his accent, faint though it seemed, was middle-European. Czech, or Hungarian, for example, but no, Swiss. He keeps himself informed of world events, and he is faintly opinionated.

And from him we learned that little tidbit about black and grey squirrels coming out of the same litter; which explains why black squirrels are considered to be of the grey squirrel family.

Spring is off on one of Nature's tangents again. We've been greeted with nasty winds, icy temperatures and pounding rain. Certain to drive the last of the snow and ice from our wooded ravine. And flooding the creek into a smelly, muddy waterway swallowing the clay banks of its edging and carrying along flotsam and jetsam, rude and pedestrian.

Yesterday was daytime-dark, with thick, bruised scudding clouds obscuring the sky; rain so heavy that our house windows were partially scoured and the backyard resembled a mudflat. Our little dogs had no wish to venture out more than absolutely necessary to relieve themselves.

And we felt fairly out of sync with ourselves, unable to go out for a daily walk in the woods, confined to the house. Nature rules at her own discretion and prerogatives. Amazing how we assign a gender to her; assuming her to be imbued with many of the pejorative characteristics normally associated with females: shrillness, hysteria, intemperate conclusions, emotionally fragile, demand, vituperative, unstable.

Is that fair?

He is a little sun dog, not in the astronomical sense of course, but in the sense of a very small creature yearning continually to feel the warming rays of the sun directly upon his skin. He seeks out the sun. In the winter months vainly searching for its decidedly weaker rays as he pads about the house with little success.

We have placed little beds for him at various points of the house where, with the spring sun warming the atmosphere inside and out, he can find places at certain times of day where the sun is at strength and soothing.

From the time he was a puppy, eleven years ago, it became quickly evident how much he hated being cold. Witnessing him shivering once the month of September arrived, we accustomed ourselves to dressing him in small warming shirts that mitigated the cold for him. As the season progressed into late fall and finally winter his little shirts became increasingly heavier and warmer to ensure his comfort.

Now that it's Spring, the irresistibility of the sun's presence draws him to ask continually to be allowed out on the deck, to sun himself. Even when the temperature hovers at the freezing mark. Somehow, the sun seems warm and comforting enough for him to ignore the cold surrounding him - at least for a little while...

The rites of Spring are upon us. Sometimes the arrival of spring and the rites associated with it are as elevating and as clanging to the senses as Igor Stravinsky's memorable like-named musical composition. We are elated when we hear and see the arrival of the first robins, see geese returning to the north. And we are impatient with the stubborn presence of ice and snow reluctant to leave.

But yesterday for the first time we wore ordinary hiking boots on our daily walk in the woods, finally shedding our winter boots with their add-on cleats, simply avoiding those portions of the trails still sheathed in thick ice.

And this morning, a bright sunny mid-April spring day, absent yesterday's briskly cold wind, there was a racket outside on the road as the municipality sent out equipment to clean the roads of winter detritus. I spoke to the usual people who come around to clean the exterior windows and they'll arrive toward the end of the month to do just that.

And I've finished goading and prodding myself to stop my usual spring procrastination and begin the household spring cleaning. Among which chores was to turn over our bed mattress, put on another mattress covering, store the puffy duvet for retrieval next winter, and dress the bed anew with fresh, bright springtime coverings.

A spirited pick-up, and about time.

Might be a good idea right about now to make a reading selection that perhaps hints at the possibility that the soul is capable of transcending the baser instincts imprinted into humankind from primeval times to the present. There are so many books written into which the sad story of our inability to rise above the muck and mire of abysmal hatred for one another is interwoven.

Whether on the macro- or the micro-scale of human interaction we seem all too often to choose the path that leads to self-destruction with the thought that somehow 'we' are intrinsically, by birth, ethnicity, religion, ideology, social hierarchical standing, superior to the 'other'. And with that thought fixed firmly in mind, the other becomes somewhat less than human, less deserving of decent regard and therefore intolerable to us.

The compelling novel, The Ancient Ship by Zhang Wei, written originally for the Chinese reading public, and translated for a Western audience, traces the history of a small, northern town, the complexities of its heritage and pride, the rivalries between its family clans, growing industrialization and the intersection of natural environmental alterations in the landscape. Finally, and most tellingly, it details the influence of modern Chinese history and the role of communism in a village where communality is already deeply entrenched, but the new imperatives wringing all the goodness and compassion out of its people.

The recounting of the utter degradation of societal values, and later social mores - the dreadful, destructive behaviour adapted by people for whom that alteration in their values became all too easy - and the horrible manner in which the mob mentality was manipulated and used to sinister effect, utterly descending into depraved immorality and brutal slaughters, tells the story of a nation in the throes of lunatic social disorder.

The impossible suffering of people confused and fearful of the changes taking place around them, altering their lives, making them victims and onlookers to unbelievable human misery does not make for easy reading. The deprivation and starvation visited upon villagers for whom drought in an agrarian society spelled existential disaster is realized in the telling of an ancient legend made modern.

I would not hesitate to recommend the book for those of sound mind and well balanced in their understanding of human nature. It is a well written book evocative of a not-so-distant time in history. Even those in the West can recognize through rumours then clarifying truths (that amazed and shocked those who considered themselves civilized) that left us incapable of apprehending that millions died in a paroxysm of social and political upheaval, leaving tradition and pride in the mire of muck that the galloping horses of the Apocalyptic Great Leap Forward left in their wake.

My new personal physician, a beautiful young woman with, I believe, outstanding professional capabilities, happens to be on maternity leave at the moment. I required that a medical prescription be renewed and the clinic out of which she works will not issue them by telephone request, requiring a visit to the prescribing physician.

Makes sense, in that an brief evaluation can be conducted before issuing a renewal to ensure that all is well. In her absence, one of her colleagues saw me, a far older man whose manner I quite liked. I explained, when he prepared to take my blood pressure, that it would be high as a result of a verbal altercation I'd had with my daughter, soon to be 50, yet still emotionally manipulative. I didn't mention that it always seems to be high when it's tested at a doctor's office (white-coat syndrome).

He casually dismissed my concern, said it was "in the normal range", although I didn't ask for the values, and I doubted his assertion. Pleasantly surprised nonetheless and not prepared to challenge his calm authority. He would, doubtless, have his professional reasons. I am not his patient after all, and he may have thought to inject a lighter tone, to relax my obvious tension.

Wouldn't have been helped by the lugubrious feeling that overtakes me while in the waiting room, as I read a novel I've brought along. There have been so many doctors' appointments lately; and I never leave the house without a book. This one is A Casual Brutality by Neil Bissoondath, a consummately creative author, whose magic with language and description is a marvel, but the sad undercurrents of his story and the violence implied and described underlying it all, is supremely depressing.

Why wouldn't I select a more upbeat book to raise my spirits as I wait to see a health professional, and when my blood pressure is so routinely checked as an indication of my health? Beats me.

In the soft, quiet darkness of night the sudden distant thrum of thunder began to reverberate from far off in the atmosphere.

Following a mild day with sunny intervals, with the great bowl of the sky becoming leaden with gathering clouds we anticipated the potential of thunder storms with the coming night.

And then, there they were, bruising the air with their clangs and bangs, piercing the darkness with accompanying electric stabs that fired our bedroom into flashes of celestial light, transforming the experience of a restful night into one of constant awakening, as one series of thunderclaps after another hurrying to do their theatrical part in the unfolding drama, succeeded with another and yet another languidly passing thunderstorm.

The torrential rains accompanying the sturm und drang of the heavenly display of unbridled power accomplished what a series of mild days and light rain had been unable to, up until then; melting what was left of the snow and the ice. Heralding true spring and the awakening of our garden flora.

My intention was to skip deep-cleaning the house this week, because of a post-surgery appointment with the ophthalmologist, interrupting my household routine. I would, on the day previous to the appointment, do a quick-clean of the house, and leave it at that. I guess the older we get the more we cling to routines, any disruption of which becomes a threat to our peace of mind.

I'd cleaned the bathrooms, and the kitchen, and decided to dry mop a few of the downstairs rooms, vacuum lightly, and wash the floor in the foyer, the laundry room, the powder room, the kitchen and the breakfast room. Not on my hands and knees as I do weekly, but using one of those stick-mops and a pail of soapy water. I don't very often deviate from my usual technique, but with my concern for a quick and easy dispatch, decided I'd resort to that.

The floor mop had an old sponge in it last used months ago when I'd washed the tile floors in the basement rooms. We had put away three replacement sponges that fit into the mechanism so I discarded the old one and attempted to replace it with one of the new ones. These replacement sponges had been purchased years ago, never used, never taken out of their original packaging.

I began the process of washing the first of the floors using the newly-installed sponge and piping-hot soapy water. And the sponge simply began falling apart; small bits, large chunks, it disintegrated even as I was using it. I struggled to remove it, and replaced it with another of the new, unused sponges. And it too fell apart, even while I was using it to wash the floors. Same with the third one; the cellulose sponges had simply become denaturized over time.

I hadn't got very far with them, unfortunately, in washing the floors. And had to resort, after all, to getting down on hands and knees to finish the job properly. Feeling extremely irritated about the failed initiative.

For our Saturday evening entertainment quotient to complete our enjoyment of a perfect spring day, we viewed a classic. The best-known novel of Lord Buchan, former Governor-General of Canada, a British Aristocrat, a bitter anti-Semite, and a celebrated writer. The 39 Steps was made into a film, and was directed by the most famous man of his times, Alfred Hitchcock. And it was a 1935 production. Its vintage preceded our birth by a year.

It turned out to be a dismal waste of time. Perhaps not for aficionados of creaky, over-emoted films; we found it completely lacking any lustre, but for some spectacular scenery of remote, mountainous areas of Scotland.

Film-making is one of the more modern arts. But as a genre it seems to fail far more often than it succeeds as an art form transcending its pop-culture value. Values that have become increasingly degenerate, unfortunately.

As an art form it cannot stand the test of time as have other forms of art; literature, music, the plastic arts, painting, architecture and even the theatre arts. We have the examples of Shakespeare, Murasaki Shikibu, Handel, Bach, da Vinci, Albrecht Durer, the arts and sculpture and architecture of the ancient Greeks and their famous copiers, the Romans. These are the durable arts, those that elevate humankind and speak to our very souls.

Whereas the dregs of popular culture degrade the common human spirit.

What could be more sublime than Nature's gift of grace in this Northern Hemisphere, finally ushering in the return of Spring. Awakening of a Saturday morning to a day flush with the brightness of full sun, and warming temperatures.

After a leisurely breakfast, with adequate time for the chill of overnight to dissipate, we venture out into our backyard garden with our two little dogs, to look about us and evaluate what another 24 hours has wrought.

Imagine that, after the long, dull days of icy winter with its down-jacket imperatives, able to venture out-of-doors, finally, sans jacket into the newly-benign micro-climate of our backyard.

Irresistible fragrances for our little dogs to pursue and delight them, while we ventured here and there, assessing the state of the emerging garden. The bergenia leaves, fresh, green-and-red soon to send up their flower stalks. The emergence of fresh green day-lilies.

And over there, those tiny early-spring purple-iris look-alikes. And can it possibly be? A small honey bee, busy within the interiors of those minuscule flowers, luxuriantly afoot in pollen.

The hawks that return each spring to our wooded ravine are back. We've heard their wild, piercing cries as they spiral the warming skies. They will nest again and once again, produce offspring. The small, furry wildlife in the ravine will once again fall prey to their insatiable appetite, feeding their young.

Crows have also returned in their numbers, roosting in the trees, mindful of opportunities. They peer down at us having noted our routine and swoop down to capture the treasures that we leave behind for the squirrels and the chipmunks, and the chickadees who also take advantage of such opportunities. They're amazingly clever birds, those crows, for we have witnessed them cracking open peanuts not only with their bills but by thrusting them forcefully against branches.

And the pileated woodpecker, busy looking for insects and grubs under the bark of trees, taking its toll on healthy-looking pines as well. A beautiful creature with an anguished cry, looking like a primeval, evolving bird.

We had two robins in our backyard, one standing directly atop the little peak of the roof, looking like an inanimate object in its stillness; a beautiful ornament of spring.

One supposes it is in the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy to worry constantly about her elder-status and the newly-imposed restrictions of an aged body on her independence and self confidence.

But all of the aging body's gradual and all-too-soon functioning slips begin to come together and it's worrying. In fact, I believe we are more concerned about her decline in physical functioning than ours. We're almost age-analogous but it almost seems we're in more robust health than she is.

She is, after all, a small black dog who has reached her nineteenth year. Her eyesight and hearing are impaired, and although her internal organs are in fine shape for her age, there are new physical constraints commensurate with her age. Obviously complicated by her lack of full sight, and the lack of confidence that brings to the issue of simply forging ahead. She can no longer accurately gauge physical challenges.

Sometimes, like this morning when she feels suddenly rambunctious and literally bounced back into the house after being outside to relieve herself, she forgets her new limitations. And her co-ordination goes off, causing her critical cadence to falter. Evidenced when soon afterward, she followed me up the stairs to the second floor. The stairs are carpeted, so it wasn't a matter of slipping on hardwood. She just went off kilter, and awkwardly slipped.

I heard her, behind me, and turned in time to see her collapse down several steps, attempt to right herself, but unsuccessfully, and the slide back down the stairs continued, from half-way up, to the bottom step. I followed and scooped her up, her heart beating wildly as she squirmed to escape my arms.

Wrong thing to do, I'm sure, evince that concern for her, trying to comfort her. Her preference was clearly to forget the incident, and escape direct contact with the steps, at that moment.

The velvet, pumpkin-coloured loveseat in our bedroom is where she spends her nights. That loveseat constitutes her bed. It represents her night-time resting place, one she chose years ago.

She is elderly and fragile now. Her memory is not what it once was, her eyesight and her hearing badly compromised by the inevitable ravages of age that arrive when a little dog is 19, as she is. It was a long time coming, but gradually her faculties began to ebb.

We are always on the alert for her safety. She has to be carefully guided, during our daily walks. She has forgotten the routes so long familiar to her, through the nearby forested ravine. She demonstrated, this winter, a tendency to walk into walls of snow, then became thoroughly confused. She also, from time to time, forgets the lay-out of our house, the only one she has ever known. She will make wrong turns and fall down the stairs leading to the basement, so that is now shut off to her.

When she scrabbles about, getting herself comfortable on the downstairs sofa she sometimes forgets the limits of her space, and falls off, causing further confusion to her, although not yet any physical harm. Last night, after four a.m. we both awoke, sensing something amiss. In the dark of the bedroom there is still faint light cast from various sources, and we could see she was not asleep as she always is, on the little loveseat.

We arose from bed and began calling to her, searching for wherever it might be that she had got herself. We both roamed through the house, looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found, and we became increasingly anxious for her whereabouts and her security. Finally, we realized she hadn't gone far, was in fact, curled up fast asleep on a black shirt that had been discarded for the laundry temporarily lying on the rug beside the bed. Black-on-black is difficult to detect in the dark.

We're thankful that neither of us stepped on her in our panic to find her. She obviously fell off the loveseat, was confused, found a haven on the discarded tee-shirt whose odour she obviously recognized and placed her trust in.

This is a very nice street we live on, in a middle-class neighbourhood of a middle-class city of a middle-class country. We share the street with a collage of other types of home-owners; each house slightly different than the others, although they represent tract housing. People have stamped their values and personalities on the homes they live in. It is a short street of single-family houses; many detached, others are town homes or condominium-type homes.

The people living in them make their livelihoods as civil servants, blue- and white-collar workers, military officers, health and legal professionals, truck-and-delivery drivers. By and large it is a friendly street. Those living on the street are a fairly representative group of Canada's immigration inheritance, originally hailing from Russia, China, Egypt, Bangladesh, India, and Eastern Europe, with a sprinkling of French-Canadians among the third-generation Anglos.

Most people are warm and friendly, while some exhibit a wariness born of their experiences in their countries of origin. The least-friendly tend to be those with a long history of life in Canada, those whom we could classify as native-born, though not of aboriginal extraction whose mother-tongue is jealously French. If, in this majority-English-speaking enclave, they are addressed in English, they take immediate umbrage.

The barometer of my awareness is awakened and refreshed each time I agree to represent a local or national charity, volunteering to go out in my neighbourhood to canvass door-to-door for charitable funding that will inevitably help the entire community. I have developed, over decades of observation, a yardstick of assessing peoples' values and priorities and social consciences; or lack thereof.

We're convinced it's habit, nothing more that leads our little black poodle to resist when we're out on our daily walks; balking, hanging back, and actually digging in when she's gently tugged to encourage her to move forward.

Although she is now into her nineteenth year, she is still in very good physical shape. Our veterinarian is astonished at how well her vital organs are doing their work; her lungs, her heart are in fine shape, and her mobility is excellent. Her sense of smell has not been diminished, although her eyesight, and her hearing have been impacted by age, and she has lost teeth. Her appetite remains robust, and occasionally she bursts into a joyous expression of vitality, when she suddenly begins to whip about in a frenzy of accelerated action, when she welcomes being chased for fun, for briefly explosive moments.

It's this daily walk in our wooded ravine. We've been taking her into that ravine since she was a puppy and she is now an elder stateswoman - or so she seems to believe. It does seem, at times, that she rules our roost. She will, if we don't take her bodily down the stairs of the deck, leap from the top of the deck to the gardens below, rather than trust her failing eyesight to negotiate the steps downward, although the ascent seems no challenge to her.

We don't miss many ravine-walk days; when the weather is cold, blustery and snowy, she and her smaller companion are suitably geared with boots and jackets. But over the years she has slowly, deliberately, begun to balk at the first half-hour of our round-trip over the trails in the woods. Usually, once we hit the middle-mark of our day's roundabout she picks up pace and leads the way, jauntily. Having observed how she negotiates our daily walks, our Apricot male, 7 years younger than she is, has emulated her and now frustratingly, irritatingly, does as she does.

It's baffling, and perhaps only a dog psychologist could begin to hazard a guess as to why these two little dogs behave as they do. Over-coddled? Perhaps. But we know, although they do not, that these daily physical, recreational excursions lead to their ongoing good health. And ours.

We tend, in our modest way, to indulge ourselves on Saturday nights. Starting off with together preparing a pizza. I include wheat germ and wheat or oat bran in the dough that I prepare and roll out. Just enough mozzarella, and loads of mushrooms, tomato, green, red, yellow and orange bell peppers. The pizza literally groans with the weight of the vegetables. It's a virtuous, nutritious, appealing-to-the-taste-buds meal. With red grapes to finish it off.

But just a few minutes before I was preparing to remove it from the oven, an important telephone call. One that kept me on line far too long. So the pizza was very well done, its crust more than crisp, but no big loss after all; it tasted just crunchingly-fine.

From there we went on to view a film. We get these films, either video or DVD, from the Sally Ann (Salvation Army thrift shop), selecting those we haven't yet seen that look promising, that we may or may not have read a review of, and that we anticipate will have entertainment value. Last night's was a dud, a soporific, absurdly badly-realized social satire whose send-up quality was enhanced not one whit by the promising presence of Dame Helen Mirren.

And then, this morning, we slept in late. Something I don't appreciate. On the other hand, if we slept in late it was likely because of a sleep deficit, so I must grumblingly accept that. And to make things seem far better, it's a brilliant spring day, with the wind more than offset by the sun's presence, melting the remaining landscape snow.

Better yet, our public broadcaster had a solid hour of Bach's melodiously sumptuous music. What more could one ask for?!

This morning dawned brilliantly. A wide blue sky and a spring sun already beginning to warm the atmosphere, causing more of our accumulated snow to melt. From our backyard, the incomparably beautiful trill of a pin-striped song sparrow.

Last night I read in bed until 2:00 a.m. I'm reading The Ancient Ship, by Zhang Wei, translated from the original Chinese into English. It is a little different than most Chinese-translated novels I've read of recent vintage. And it is a compelling read.

My granddaughter, like her grandfather and grandmother, is an avid reader. She has also become an excellent writer. When she has a school assignment to write an essay - she has just completed the American classic To Kill A Mockingbird - it becomes a credible critical work, her perceptions well realized and her ability to convey her impressions a credit to a fourteen-year-old girl.

She would, I fear, find little to interest her, nor would she have the patience, to read The Ancient Ship, although her literate tastes will have ample time to mature. The novel represents a fascinating narrative of a small, isolated village graphically portraying clan rivalries and the tides of history pulling its citizens into an eddy of swirling circumstances beyond their control. Most of all, though it is the universal characterization of peoples' own passions betraying their futures that grasp one's attention.

"Everything was ruined by people who knew nothing about water" Sui Buzhao bellowed, his body twisting in the hay. "After Uncle Zheng He died, the goddamn ships, all eight or ten of them, sank, killing all those people. There were cracks in our hull and we tried to stop the leaks with our bare bodies. They didn't trust the Classic of the Waterway, so they deserved to die, disregarding even the life of the helmsman. How the hell could it end well? I puked until there was nothing but bitter bile in my stomach, and the barnacles cut me bloody when I went down to stop up the leaks. I bled while reciting the Classic of the Waterway until I was hoarse. the ship sailed to Qiyant zhou, and as stated in the book: 'You must fix your direction with care and make no mistakes in your calculation. The ship cannot veer. If it heaves to the west it will run aground, so you must heave east. If you heave too far to the east the water will be dark and clear, with many gulls and petrels. If you heave too far to the west, the water will be crystal clear, afloat with driftwood and many flying fish. If the ship is on the right course, the tails of birds will point the way. When the ship nears Wailuo, seven geng to the east will be Wanli Shitang, where there are low red rock formations. The water is shallow if you can see the side of the boat and you must be careful if you see rocks. From the fourth to the eighth month, the water flows southwest, and the currents are quite strong ...' but no one paid any attention. These men finally had to cry when the waves rose up around midnight. It was useless to cut the mast, for the current ripped the ship apart. I'll curse them for the rest of my life because of what happened to that ship."

That's how I felt, thoroughly discombobulated. And why should that be? Is my mind so organized that if something goes out of whack in the order of things, it is forced to scramble to recover itself in an orderly fashion?

I realized when I came downstairs after hours of poking about on my computer, filling the blogosphere with my thoughts and impressions, that the dishwasher hadn't been properly turned on. So I wasn't able to empty it, and had of necessity to start it at a late hour. Which necessitated that I had to empty it first thing in the morning, thus upsetting my ordinarily disciplined routine. Routine so rigid that I cannot spare a few minutes to do something like that?

We're retired old folks, after all. Nonetheless, I forgot all manner of things that are normally done sequentially, even though seconds before ignoring them I had recalled them to memory, only to have them instantly flushed away by another, following thought. Well, I managed, somehow, to get through the morning, preparing breakfast for our little dogs, for us, baking chocolate cupcakes, preparing a bread dough, putting on a chicken soup to cook, and performing a perfunctory clean-up operation; vacuuming, setting things to rights.

Still, the thought lingers; is my mental equilibrium for recalling the minutiae of routine really so fragile?