Inexorably approaching my 75th year I find it exceedingly irksome to be addressed by my first name by people I don't know, have had no previous acquaintance with, and who are, invariably, just latterly out of diapers, so to speak. Wet, both behind the ears and elsewhere on their anatomy.

But then, two decades earlier I similarly chafed at the loosening of social conventions that made it seem perfectly all right for strangers to express this kind of familiarity. I protested then, as I do now, albeit not vigorously, but to little avail.

Invariably, when I quietly suggest to a young person that I would prefer to be addressed with my family name foremost and a suitable prefix, the stunned disbelief that crosses the face of that individual expresses perfectly their social ignorance.

In fact, when it occurs, as it does infrequently, but did yesterday afternoon when I informed a young woman who must have been between nineteen and her early twenties that I would appreciate her not using my given name without my express permission, she haughtily responded in a quite offensive manner. It was clear that I had offended her sense of social entitlement. Social propriety was obviously something she had never been exposed to as an antediluvian convention irrelevant to her awareness.

It was obviously quite clear she had no idea whatever that she had offended my sense of personal space.

At one time, not all that distant in the past, social convention had it that as a matter of universally-applied respect conferred upon others, only an invitation to intimacy of expression would suffice to permit someone to address another person by their given name. Now, the rudely impertinent convention is to do so on a most casual, self-entitled basis.

It would be refreshing to see a return to social courtesy that was once extended to everyone, but appears now to have been abandoned to a misplaced perception of social equality.

We've no complaints, they're good neighbours, have been good neighbours for the past two decades. We've watched their children grow from infants to young adults. We've always wondered at the disparity in temperament and personality between the young parents; he pathologically anti-social, and she gregariously cheerful.

We have long had a neighbourly arrangement that when we go away on holidays in the summer, she will undertake to ensure that the exterior of the house looks lived-in. She helpfully waters the many garden pots we place around our gardens and removes flyers and advertisements from our porch mailbox. And we return the compliment on those occasions when their family goes off for their brief get-a-ways.

He must authorize anything that anyone in the family, including his wife, undertakes to do. If he forbids her to do anything, she must heed him. And she does. He will not offer, nor will he agree, should anyone ask him, to help anyone in any manner, nor will he lend out a tool to anyone, even if the tool is a simple garden device which she uses, not he. He will go out of his way to avoid meeting anyone's eye, cross the street rather than greet someone he has known for many years.

He is basically a decent fellow and undoubtedly means well, but he has been cruelly endowed with a cringing inability to socialize with other human beings.

What puzzles us the way they've allowed their property to deteriorate; in some ways to the point of no return without the investment of deep-pocketed emergency repairs. Their roof's condition is unbelievably awful, with deeply curled shingles to the extent it should have been replaced years ago. Their windows have not been regularly painted on the exterior and the result is deep rot has taken hold. Their gardens which were once her pride, have been allowed to run rampant, weeds overtaking the perennials. An exterior door leading to the garage, not steel core, but paper-thin plywood, is rotting away. It's sad and a pity.

She does what she can, she informs us. She believes that once he retires from work outside the home he will turn his attention to finally replacing leaking plumbing, door handles that have broken, and other bits and pieces of annoying break-downs. That is unlikely to occur, since his white-collar job leaves him ample time to do simple tasks around the house, but which he never does accomplish.

The cause is certainly not a lack of wherewithal, because their mortgage has long been paid off. They replaced their van a year ago with another van, along with a convertible, to give them two family vehicles. It seems to be exterior display of a frail ostentatious kind that is of importance, to the neglect of underlying solidity. Is this an expression of their values? Evidently, although not conclusively.

Puzzling, indeed.

I wonder how it is that Homo sapiens with his majestic achievements in the arts, philosophies and technologies, has paid so little attention to the preservation of his species that he continues, more vicious than almost all other animals, destroying his own breed, for power or pride or pelf. I wonder why he underrrates the uses of decency and compassion while overrating machinery and its mystiques, devoting half a billion dollars and inestimable energies to a ballyhooed handshake in the sky - Apollo-Soyuz - while fumbling its meaning on Earth's surface. I wonder how it happens that the great brains of the U.S.A. have felt so little responsibility for the lesser brains that nineteen million of us are now discovered to be illiterate, that our vaunted economies have permitted deficit spending programs to enclose us in a mighty tower built mostly of sand and false reliance on the future, that with six percent of Earth's population we heedlessly consume forty percent of its goods. Where has foresight gone?
I wonder if H. sapiens harbors an unrecognized built-in self-destruct mechanism, or if scattered warnings and the Club of Rome - altruism is not charity but necessary - wills serve to correct our atrocious housekeeping. Can heuristic research and global action save one-third of our planet's people from malnutrition, with damage to brain as well as body, or starvation; prevent disastrous climate changes - deserts spreading - or arrest the pollution of oceans, rivers and air, and the damage to Earth's ozone buffer? Will twentieth-century despoilers leave anything to posterity except our sphere's - oval's - empty shell?
Since the beginning of this century, man has devoured more natural resources than in all previous history. Can he or will he reverse that course? Who will instigate such global action? Are there members of our species broad enough of perception, deep enough of concern for mankind and strong enough in determination to persuade warring neighbours to live and let live and join an effort to rescue Earth?

Good questions all, born of the musing of an intelligent, well-experienced and perceptive mind. This is the mind-expressions of Mary Welsh Hemingway, from the concluding chapter of her memoire, "How It Was", published in mid-1970, in which she describes her life as the third wife of America's iconic Nobel Prize winning writer, Ernest Hemingway.

Paradoxically, these are the musings of a woman whose writing ability paralleled that of her infinitely far more famous husband. Improbably, these are the musings of a woman who enthusiastically shared both her husband's vaunted passion for big-game hunting, and his less-elaborated love of companion animals, along with a 'respect' for wildlife. This is also a woman who became knowledgeable about bull-fighting, accompanying her husband on his many trips to Spain and Mexico for the bull-fighting seasons, glorying in the gore and mystique of baffled bull versus deadly-skilled matador.

Finally, this is a woman who became accustomed to the luxurious leisure of living surrounded by a coterie of servants, in their Cuban mansion, for whom caviar and champagne, partying and drinking became a delectably privileged way of life, along with a multitude of friends and admirers and hangers-on.

An entitled, literarily aristocratic woman, who lived the good life, who consumed far more of her share of Earth's bounty than most, but who laments the burden humankind has placed upon the planet, our abuse of its largesse, our propensity to violence. Violence against others of our species, needless to say, choosing to ignore the violence perpetrated against other animals, not of our species.

Isn't that always the way? That revolutionary action is so often undertaken not by the poor and the dispossessed but by the bored and the wealthy and the entitled...

Since we had, in any event, increasingly spurned what appeared on television, and viewed and valued it less as time went on, it is no great loss to find ourselves now without a television set. Its presence performed more of a distracting rule than an informative or entertaining one for us, in any event.

And now that we're free of its presence and the habit-born curiosity to see 'what's on', only to discover 'nothing much', it isn't being mourned in its absence.

Instead, we've turned our attention to other, more deserving time-and-attention-consuming habits. Like reading, conducting conversations, doing research on topics of interest, using both the Internet and our home library, and finding great satisfaction there.

We will, doubtless, in due time, relent and avail ourselves of a newer, more technologically advanced set that will accommodate the 'new and improved' signal reception.

In the meanwhile, we have at present the presence of a week's-worth of valued house guests. And they kindly offered to entertain us last night with a scintillating performance of 18th Century music, more enjoyable by far than the fare available elsewhere.

Its large, hulking dark presence no longer squats in a corner of the family room. Its presence always seemed somehow offensive among the light, colourful and attractive objects that sit in that room where we spend so much of our time.

We bought that 32-inch set not long after we moved into this house, just over 20 years ago. It has been a reliable workhorse of a machine, giving us fairly good reception and a limited number of stations, since we reached the conclusion many years ago that we weren't at all interested in fattening the bottom line of cable companies. Instead of a monthly cable- or satellite-reception fee, we decided to invest in health insurance for our two little dogs, but that's another story altogether.

With the deadline for changeover to the new system of television signal reception to high definition, we thought we'd procure a box to convert the old signals into the new, and a new interior aerial, but that didn't do the trick; our old television set appears to be simply too old to be technically amenable to the changeover.

We don't appreciate feeling pressured into the purchase of a new television set. Mostly because television watching is not integral to our lives in any meaningful way. I rarely watch television and my husband has become increasingly disgusted with the quality of programs available, and also, truth be told, resentful of the hold it has over his evening attention, far rather preferring to read intriguing and useful literature than watch insignificant television programs.

So out it went. Heavy as sin to cart it out of the room. And into the garage, where it now sits, glowering with annoyance that its presence within the house has been usurped. Until we decide how best to rid ourselves of it entirely, it will remain there, useless and rejected.

Amazing, actually, if the mood strikes one, alternatively, what can be picked up on the Internet.

She is a horribly irritating dog, despite which she's her favourite among the others. Impossible to impress upon this dog that she mustn't behave as she does, so excitably, so spontaneously excitable. It doesn't help her morning moods one bit that this dog has developed the most impossible habit of leaping onto her bed to wake her in the morning, heaving herself over her chest and her folded arms to ensure she's up when she would appreciate a few more minutes in bed.

Of all the dogs, it's only this one that goes missing when they're put out and she doesn't feel like pooling them together in the big pen. This one is the mischievous one that goes off on a gambit, who knows where, to return an hour or more later when she feels like it. Just the other day she did it again, and when one of their neighbours came over to report he thought he'd seen a coyote in the distance and wanted to warn her because neighbours are helpful to one another living in the countryside, she remembered after he'd left how much Patsy looks like a wolf, from a distance.

That day, she had experimented with a skin-cleansing recipe she'd found on the Internet; mixed together oatmeal, honey and some water and plastered it all over her face. Patsy behaved impossibly badly, leaping up to lick it off her face repeatedly. She threatened to discipline her, but nothing worked. She would tell Mom when she got home from work. She couldn't wait for school to start, and then she'd get some relief from Patsy following her everywhere.

Patsy sat with her, early in the morning waiting for the bus to pick her up for high school, and was there when she returned in the afternoon. As for the oatmeal mask, it had worked fairly well. One thing, it tasted good enough for her to vie with Patsy in eating it off her face. And it certainly made her skin feel soft and smooth.

Simply put, his enthusiasms run away with him. He happens to be an enthusiastic, inveterate, incorrigible shopper. Focusing his main interests and energy on food and food products. He's as enthusiastic an eater as he is an experimenter-with food. Over his lengthy career as a hominid he has learned to bake bread, put up pickles, make marmalade, and use a barbecue in (almost) every conceivable way possible.

The end products are usually excellent. As his partner, then I have little to complain of. Except.

The thing of it is, because he is so enthused about food, about shopping, about acquiring produce and products to whet the palate and promise to rise to the occasion of expectations, he becomes what I consider to be reckless in his bold choices of foods, both quantity and quality. If something is 'on sale' it becomes instantly irresistible.

And how much is too much? Too much is more than two people can readily consume during the course of time in which that food will no longer be at full edible-and-taste-nutrition condition. When he succumbs to the allure of something on sale that is different, perhaps, or a produce that he enjoys, he more or less forgets the limitations of our refrigerator and our stomachs.

And when we have house guests, although I have pre-planned a meal schedule to my satisfaction, he will nonetheless hie himself out to the area's many supermarkets to lurk the aisles in search of 'good buys', and different, quality products that take his fancy. Should I complain? Not too often, as it also happens.

Since invariably when he brings home the bacon, he also prepares and cooks it.

Like most people, we enjoy having the opportunity to tingle our taste buds pleasurably with ice cream. And we like to have a few buckets of ice cream on hand in our refrigerator so that when the mood strikes to enjoy that delectable treat, we don't have to venture too far.

We're not too adventurous, don't particularly enjoy ice cream that has been tampered with to include all manner of other goodies, like broken chocolate, cookies, and a variety of other treat-temping-for-children items that transforms the simple pleasures of having the stock flavours of vanilla, strawberry and chocolate morph into something completely other.

And then, a few weeks ago, there was a fascinating and taste-damping article in the week-end section of our local newspaper. Setting out clearly and alarmingly the kinds of ingredients that are commonly present in commercial broad-appeal ice cream and ice-cream-products. Leaving us nonplussed and unimpressed with what we and other oblivious ice cream lovers have been imbibing.

For example, Guar gum included as a water-soluble fibre thickener, which is also a laxative. Including sodium citrate as an emulsifier, along with sodium chloride for preservation. And the colourant tartrazine, a coal tar derivative that can increase hyperactivity in children and inflames the lining of the stomach.

And then there's sodium benzoate, a preservative that is also used in fireworks, that causes the loud whistling sound when they go off. Diet ice creams may also include dimethylpolysiloxane, which is a silicone used in contact lenses, shampoo, and caulking.

Oh right, and microcrystalline cellulose, a polymer derived from wood pulp, used as a fat substitute and anti-caking agent. And artificial flavours "typically produced by fractional distillation and additional chemical manipulation (of) naturally sourced chemicals or from crude oil or coal tar".

You get the picture. We're now in the market for our very own ice-cream-maker. So we can control the ingredients in the ice cream that we consume.

Yesterday gifted us with a sternly glowering sky, promising to dump ample rain on our landscape. We need the rain, so no complaints, not really. Not from us, in any event. A different story for people who have scheduled ahead of time and depend on the weather co-operating to ensure their plans are successful.

As for us, despite the overhead dark smudgy clouds moved swiftly along by a wind up there, with only more dark smudgy clouds to take their place, we still enjoyed a long woodland tryst with nature. The squirrel population, red, grey, black are instantly alert to our presence and come a-running to ensure they get their daily peanut treats.

After our walk we still hadn't experienced a downpour, although a light sprinkle did occur from time to time. I felt somewhat guilty about not having spent time in the gardens of late, cleaning things up, just the usual stuff of ensuring that neatness prevailed and the garden did not submit, as is its wont, to utter bedlam. So, despite the incipient rain - or because of it and the shelter from the sun's rays - I spent a few pleasurable hours snipping and exhorting the garden to order.

And then, down it came, just as I was finishing up, just as our next-door neighbour was inviting the presence of cars driving up, dropping off work buddies to enjoy an afternoon of leisure, sun and fun in their backyard pool - an annual event that went awry this year.

At midnight, when we were ready to turn in for the night, nature turned on the faucet at full blast. So little Button and Riley couldn't go out as usual before bedtime. Despite which, they slept in this morning, as we often do when dawn doesn't bring sunlight coursing into our bedroom windows, but instead continued darkness, because of the ongoing rain.

And this morning they had to wear raincoats to get out there in the backyard to do their business.

Canada is just now changing over from analog to the new television reception; the final date is the end of this month of August. I don't imagine there are that many Canadians who have not yet taken the trouble of addressing the issue. We have not yet done so.

We don't subscribe to cable, don't pay monthly fees for augmented reception through any kind of exterior antenna or microwave-type receiver. Figuring there's not all that much worthwhile on television. We've relied on a pair of little rabbit ears seated on top of our two television sets, for as long as we can recall.

Our major television set, the larger of the two on the main floor of our house is eighteen years old. The second one, much smaller, sitting on a library shelf, is ten years old. Both work very well, no complaints about performance. But then, they're both Japanese-manufactured, with high levels of quality control.

Time, I guess, to change over. To procure a black box for at least the larger of the two, and then think about whether we're interested in changing over to one of the new high-definition sets. On our own sweet time, and if we feel it's worth the effort.

Environment Canada's radar system appears to have gone down all over the country yesterday. There had been an earlier weather watch alert for violent thunderstorms in our area, but we get these alerts often and don't pay much mind to them, they're part of a normal summer, after all. And truth is, we enjoy those thunderstorms that erupt so unexpectedly drowning the over-heated atmosphere with cooling rain, bringing out brilliant colour in the landscape, thrilling us with the sounds of rolling thunder drawing nearer and nearer...

Yesterday was yet another hot and humid day. When we both completed our indoor tasks for the morning, we set out as usual for our daily ramble in the ravine beside our community, with our two little dogs. They're long past the age when they eagerly looked forward to being in there, rambunctiously cavorting and enjoying the free atmosphere. We'll never be too old, I believe, to enjoy the opportunities that contiguity of landscape has afforded us.

Just before we left the house the sky was full of ominously-dark clouds, heralding thunderstorms, but then there was an appearance of blue, and some sun, and off we set. If it rains moderately-to-lightly there is enough of a woodland canopy to keep us reasonably dry. But then, thunderstorms never result in moderate rainfalls; they're short, sharp and heavy; nothing stays dry caught out in such deluges.

There was the slightest edge of apprehension, of being caught out in the weather during our ramble. When we go the full length of our usual loop it takes us anywhere from an hour to an hour-and-a-half to complete, much longer than it used to, given the slow pace of our two little beasts ... and me too, truth to tell.

We've had these events often, and it's rare that we get caught out. Usually we tend to make it back home just as a storm is on the verge of breaking, or it has started, with the light patter edging on heavy downpour when the storm clouds themselves rise directly over us. On this occasion, as we moved steadily through the trails, thunder kept warning us and thrilling us at one and the same time, but it tended to be elsewhere, moving off in a southerly direction.

My husband felt confident that the series of thunderstorms that were so busy overhead would keep avoiding hitting us directly; disappointing us, actually. I felt otherwise, that a deluge was inevitable and close to occurring. We cut short our walk by about one-quarter of the usual length, by diverting onto an intersecting trail to complete a different loop. And the thunder seemed to follow us closely. It wasn't until we were almost out of the ravine, ascending the last hill, that lightning too appeared.

When we reached home, we lingered outside awhile, scrutinizing the heavens, thick with darkly smudged clouds moving rapidly on this windy day. We enjoy watching and listening to an oncoming storm as much as we enjoy witnessing these storms in progress, marvelling at the wind, the copious rain, the rolling thunder and impressive lightning.

All of which descended upon us a mere two minutes later.

Swiss-born Max seems to exemplify to us the values of his birthplace; self-reliant stoicism. Our ravine-trekking schedules haven't seemed to mesh of late, but yesterday afternoon we came across one another. He, stick-thin and determinedly alternating left-hand walking stick, right-hand walking stick, in plowing dedicatedly-ahead, strenuously pacing himself with his daily exercise regimen.

Last year this very same time he had been hospitalized for a scheduled surgery. Midway through surgery his heart suddenly stopped, throwing the operating theatre into a cyclone of reactive mediation, as other surgeons were hurriedly contacted from within the hospital and arrived in the surgery to assess his condition and how best to respond.

His daughter-in-law, an emergency-room nurse at the same hospital was informed. She instantly contacted his son and before long they were both waiting tensely for further news from the operating theatre. A heart by-pass ensued, as a previously undetected condition was attributed to the surprise collapse.

Max, who provided 'round-the-clock care for his wife who is no longer mobile, was placed in an acute care wing of the hospital for a short period of time, then transferred to a medically-staffed nursing-and-rehabilitation-care centre for recovery, joining his wife who had preceded him there. After three months of nurturing and follow-up, recuperation complete, they were both able to leave, and resume independent living in their own home.

Max's daily forays to the ravine, an integral part of his recovery and continued strength-and-aerobic regimen to maintain his physical health, take place in the hour or so he feels he can spare from his wife's side, while she is napping.

He was in a bit of a hurry to return home, his quotidian spurt of energy-output completed, because he was expecting the imminent, appointed arrival of a building contractor. The main bathroom of his house is being converted, to make it more wheelchair-accessible, the lip for the shower removed, among other things.

Meeting Max on our forays into the woods on the occasions when we do, we are invariably struck by his good cheer, his incisive consciousness of political events around the world, his dogged determination to live life fully appreciative, as well as he is able to.

Our wayward second digital camera has arrived. Intact. Thanks to our New Hampshire hosts who mailed it back to us. My husband said he regretted its loss, not for the intrinsic value of the camera itself, but because he had taken photographs of me and our granddaughter and we'd never now see them. That was before we had been alerted that the camera had been found.

Now that it was once more in our possession and within it lay the photographs that my husband had taken, far fewer in number, but different than those that I had taken with my camera, I downloaded the photos to my computer. And then reviewed the photos.

Despite his artist's eye, I felt that those that I and our granddaughter had taken were superior in quality than his. But it was when I saw the photos of me, the close-up shots of my 74-year-old face, unaware that he was taking photos, looking worn and creased and lost in thought that the shock set in. They were, in a word, gruesome in the extreme.

I had no idea, really I hadn't, that I looked so aged and grey and grim. Yet there was the evidence, staring back at me. All the face-forward photos were immediately deleted by me. I felt utterly crushed.

And here I was, vain that I had aged so comparatively well; looking, I was so often told, "younger" than my years. Well, here was the proof that I looked my years, and more.

The worn and wrinkled face that I saw wasn't quite the face that I was exposed to when I looked in the mirror. My failing eyesight doubtless made light of the grim, grey wrinkles and furrowed brow. There was no escaping the reality of those photographs, however.

Except by deleting them. As though by deleting the photos, the reality of my visage might change back to what I delusionally perceived it to be; gently aged and rather becoming. Little did I realize that I was 'becoming' just what my age insisted I be.

A humbling experience, far removed from pleasant.

I usually bake desserts only once a week, as a bit of a break from our usual dessert-fare which is generally comprised of fresh fruit, particularly fruits in season and throughout the summer months that's usually berries of one kind or another. Cherries have been available for the past month, both imported and from the Niagara region of Ontario.

I happened to see an appealing looking recipe for a cherry pie, not the kind I would usually prepare, with fruits only. This one had a baked cream-type filling, over the cherries. The filling needed three egg yolks, so the egg whites were set aside in a small glass jar in the refrigerator for use at another time.

The cherry-cream pie turned out very nicely, giving us both fruit and satisfying our sweet tooth in the process. The almond-vanilla flavouring in the milk-and-egg filling complemented the halved cherries baked together, very well indeed. We quite enjoyed that pie, and had it for dessert on Monday evening as well as Friday night.

And this morning it was time to make use of the left-over egg whites. No better time, I thought, to
bake a batch of coconut-macaroon cookies. And that is precisely what I did.

We were temporarily waylaid yesterday afternoon during our later-than-usual woodland walk with our two little dogs. Having come across a neighbour who lives at the bottom of our street, whom we haven't seen in ages. She used to walk two glorious red-haired Golden Retrievers, both now gone.

Walking with her was her sister, endowed like her, with flaming red hair. And with them walked her sister's dog, a large-boned dog that looked like a cross between a standard poodle and a Golden Retriever whose pelt was almost as red as its owner's.

Because we were standing in a little group of four people with three dogs in tow we didn't at first notice Stumpy's presence. Partly because Stumpy was smart enough to try to conceal his presence from the large dog's notice. When I noticed him I responded to his silent demand and threw a large peanut toward him; as often happens it bounced off the top of his head, but he didn't mind, quickly grasping it and leaping immediately afterward onto a tree.

Which is when the large dog finally noticed him and went into an ecstasy of hunting mode, frantically begging our little stump-tailed squirrel to return. Because I had been dropping peanuts into their usual accustomed cache-placements behind us as we had walked along before coming across our acquaintance, squirrels suddenly began appearing as though out of nowhere, consumed with the need to gather what I'd left for them, and the dog hardly knew where next to turn.

While we continued talking among us, and the large dog was distracted, Stumpy returned no fewer than six times to acquire additional peanuts. He has us very well programmed.

Nothing is immutable, but some dogged traditions seem as though they are.

In our family it is the unfailing-Saturday-night tradition of making a pizza for ourselves. The bread dough is prepared early in the day and then sits complacently oiled in a covered bowl, awaiting roll-out in preparation for loading the top with the ingredients we prefer, and those are fairly standard for us.

It's a simple bread dough, basically a touch of sugar to raise the yeast in warm water, flour, salt and a sprinkling of olive oil...but then I always add wheat germ and bran before the flour and the following kneading process.

As for the toppings, simple enough; tomato paste, sweet basil, oregano, "pizza" spices, sprinkled with mozzarella, topped with tomato, green, orange, yellow, red bell peppers, mushrooms. And for my husband's half of the pizza, pepperoni slices.

This time we thought we'd do something different for a change, to challenge our palates - not that we ever completely tire of the same-old. We'd do a Mediterranean-themed pizza. We topped the crust with tomato paste and herbs as usual, and a sprinkling of mozzarella, then anchovies, olives, goat-cheese-feta, broccoli, green pepper and chopped Vidalia onion for extra zing.

Not bad, but no cigar, either. I ate my portions quite contentedly, my husband picked at his. Good thing the grapes we had for dessert were fresh, crisply sweet and mouth-wateringly juicy.

Next Saturday ... same-old.

The universality of living creatures requiring ongoing nourishment to prolong life is undeniable. When the larder is empty, animals forage or hunt, people visit their nearest food supermarket to stock up on edibles. Simple as that. Most of us simply get in our cars, drive to the supermarket we're most comfortable with, and do a weekly shopping.

We've noticed, the last few weeks, that the shelves in the supermarket we most often tend to shop at, have been less than full of products. Weren't quite certain what to attribute that to, but thought perhaps it had something to do with diminished summer-time staff, people away on holidays, commodities deliveries intermittent, that kind of thing.

The supermarket we've been shopping at for the most part over the past decade and more is, in any event, not one of those large, well-appointed, and lavish-selection-over-stocked big box stores. It has a limited selection of products, and a limited price range. We are aware that, shopping there, we save at least 20% on our weekly food bill. As long as we're able to acquire a full range of fresh and attractive fruits and vegetables, everything else falls into place, since we rarely buy processed foods and have a limited meat menu. The fish available there is generally sufficient to our needs and preferences.

But then, suddenly, the fresh fruit juices we're accustomed to buying, the store-brand butter, the lactaid-reduced milk, and preferred cleaning products, among other items, have been missing. I had to ask an accommodating, gentle-mannered store employee to check for me whether there was any milk, butter or juice in the store's inventory, and each time he came back with an apology; the store was out of those products.

I can do without some things, but not the fundamentals. Asked him what could explain the absence of these foods, and he responded with a lame "well, sometimes we have problems with our suppliers", pretty standard stuff. I've heard that one often enough over the years when items like bananas and the tomatoes we favour were out of stock.

Which he was, of course, enjoined to respond with, quite obviously. I then spoke to the manager and the reason for the stocking lapses was revealed; the store is emptying its inventory. In anticipation of closing down and moving to a new, larger and upgraded location now in the building process, nearby. In the interim, customers can anticipate a truncated inventory without ever being informed - unless they insist on knowing - why.

We'll shop elsewhere until the opening at the new location - in October.

One evening last week, the table set for dinner, and food ready to be served and placed on the table, I turned around to look again at my place setting which had mysteriously acquired an elegant black bag with silver lettering of a local jewellery store. I turned to look at my husband, wearing a large grin and waiting for my next move. Which was to remove from the bag an equally elegant, and certainly promising black-and-silver box.

As I stood there, holding the box, feeling both puzzled and elated with anticipation, he urged me "open it!" And I of course, did, to extract a gold bracelet. Yellow-and-white gold, to be precise, a hinged bangle of a fairly modern design with two notional arrows intersecting on its topside, as it were.

A message in the design? The white and the yellow representing the genders? The arrows intersecting representing two hearts meeting and becoming irrevocably intertwined? Possible, but unlikely, simply my interpretation. The design was not one I would have chosen, but he was so clearly pleased with being able to present me with his gift. True, we hadn't exchanged gifts on the occasion of our 57th wedding anniversary but that was on the understanding that neither of us needed nor pined for anything.

When The Bay downtown had a special display of gold jewellery from Italy 35 years ago, he had taken me there, and selected at that time a heavy gold, swirl-design bangle bracelet to celebrate my 40th birthday. On select occasions he has since added to my collection, so I now have quite a number of such bracelets adorning my wrists. All quite lovely, all very much liked, because I have always enjoyed and liked jewellery, and haven't enough fingers on both hands to accommodate all the rings he has bought for me over the years.

This latest bracelet, whose sentiment meant worlds to me, even if the bracelet itself did not appeal to my aesthetic, joined the others. And promptly displayed its stubborn emphasis on opening, unexpectedly, despite the safety lock and additional catch. Obviously it didn't love me, either.

It's the kind of heart-palpitating excitement we really do not need. Button, our elderly black miniature poodle with her failing eyesight and flagging awareness and memory, becoming increasingly less aware of her spatial limitations. Bad enough she seems to forget where she is so often, and finds herself 'trapped' when she's in a corner and suddenly cannot figure out she could turn around and just remove herself from the dilemma.

Worse, when she's in her preferred resting places, always elevated from the floor, and forgets that if she scrubs around too vigorously to settle down and comes too close to the edge of the sofa seat she will slide off. Sliding off isn't too bad, since it's not a deep fall, but sliding off awkwardly and hitting her head on the sharp corners of a large, carved-edge coffee table could induce some harm which we'd far prefer to avoid.

For all of her 18-1/2 years she has been able to gracefully, effortlessly, leap up on a sofa in the living room, or on the loveseat in our bedroom, and there comfortably settle herself down for an afternoon nap or a night's restful sleep. For the past year or so her eyesight has become increasingly compromised, to match her hearing loss which began much earlier. And in the past few months she no longer makes that leap, depending upon us to lift her onto her preferred sleeping surface.

We've become accustomed to her becoming engrossed in scrubbing about her 'nest', making it just so before she settles in for her nap. We've become accustomed to her occasionally slipping off the edge of the sofa as she forgets the width available to her. Occasionally we hear her head clunk slightly. This morning it was more like a concussion, and bleeding ensued. We thought the bleeding emanated from a cyst that grows and ebbs above her left eye but couldn't be certain, though we washed it with a cool wet washcloth.

She was taken for an emergency visit with our veterinarian, who cleaned her up further, as she was bleeding fairly profusely, assured us it was indeed that recurring cyst that had broken, and that she was fine, nothing amiss. On return back home we hauled that heavy, carved coffee table much further out from the sofa, and lifted the rug beside the sofa to line it more heavily with impact-softening layers of foam.

"Joshua Gad-Erianko is Israel's only hope as its enemies stand ready to attack."

"As the grateful members of the Knesset regard the man they have now named Israel's king, a few faces among them show grave concern - they have glimpsed Gad-Erianko's true nature. They know that he possesses a rare, unnatural power. And they know that they are afraid.

"King Joshua himself fears no one, for no one has ever dared interfere with his plan for world domination. No one, that is, except the followers of Aryeh.

Rejecting the wide-spread belief that Joshua can cure the world of all its ills, these courageous men and women defy the king by refusing to join the ranks of his elite society, the Triple S, and continuing to practice their outlawed religion."

"How can these faithful few survive the anger of the one they call Therion, the beast?"

Thus reads the back cover of the book I had picked up at my local thrift shop, the Sally Ann, where I am wont to shop for second-hand reading material. The book title, "Man of Peace, a Novel of the Anti-Christ", was itself intriguing.

When packing for vacation I usually take along a few books. This time I took only this single book, trusting it would be sufficiently entertaining. I always had back-up reading material, since my husband usually takes along a selection of three or four of his own books; not my taste, but as alternates, acceptable.

As it was, I stuck to reading the one I had chosen to take along. The wonder of it is why I bothered. The book's thesis was constructed on a thin scaffolding of structure to begin with; there should be some credibility behind every plot, and this one presented as thin gruel indeed. The language tended to be awkward, the sketches of the protagonists amateurish, and the events portrayed defied both logic and practical application.

In fact, the novel, with its presumptions, assumptions and trajectory and demonstrably decidedly inferior writing skills offended my literary sensibilities entirely. How on Earth do such incredibly miserable manuscripts get accepted to begin with to see the light of publication day? Who buys them.

Trusting idiots like myself.

Immediately on return from our New Hampshire vacation we initiated a round of oral antibiotic treatment for Button. Right on time, as the schedule demands; the proactive 'pulse protocol', one week of antibiotic and one month off, to be resumed the following month.

Following hard on the heels, as it happened, with the summer-monthly administration of Heartworm medication. She'd had her every-three-year-shot for rabies a month earlier.

We pump up our little canine companions with so many chemicals, so much medication of one kind or another, it's amazing they survive the ongoing onslaught. In Button's case, closing in on 19 years of age, it's a matter of retaining her life. A reasonable prospect, since she still manages to get pleasure from her life with us.

A lot of confusion has entered her life with the loss of her hearing and her eyesight, but contentment and pleasure remains.

Not, however, when she suffers those bouts of illness as a result of gum infections. We'd been so careful and meticulous about brushing her teeth regularly when she was younger. In the last few years she has gradually lost some of her teeth, and those that remain are not in perfect shape.

Which the veterinarian tells us is common enough, particularly among small dogs. She is too old for surgery; though we do have the option of having them all removed.

The next-best course is less invasive than surgery, administering these once-monthly, week-long courses of oral anti-biotics. The thing of it is, we'd given her the week's therapy, and then witnessed unmistakable symptoms that despite having done so, her mouth had become infected again, causing her discomfort.

We felt we had little choice, despite less than a week having passed, than to once again administer a week's course of antibiotics.

Failing its success, we'll return with her to the veterinarian. There are other types of antibiotics that can be used, we know, in case her system no longer responds to this one, which may have lost its efficacy for her.

We always pack up as much as we can the night before leaving for our return trip back home from vacation, and this time was no exception. Packing up for the return journey doesn't take quite as long as the reverse, but given the amount of things we take with us, it remains a considerable effort. In the process of which we take additional care to ensure that we don't inadvertently leave anything behind.

Although our hosts are very good about that kind of thing, when feasible, mailing left-behind items back to their owners.

On one occasion, about five years ago we somehow overlooked a small backpack stuffed with things we valued, but nothing that we couldn't live without until the next time we drove down that way to resume another vacation. So they kept the backpack for our return, and we were re-united the following June, after having left it the previous September.

On this occasion, returning home from our week's stay in the Waterville Valley, we discovered, once unpacking back home again, that we did indeed manage to overlook one item, since it was missing from our belongings. We had taken with us two digital cameras; one we'd had for years that I generally used, and another, new one with a larger screen that I had begun to favour.

I took photos with the new camera, and my husband used the older one to take photographs. We've been doing this kind of thing for a few years and it's interesting to see how his artist's eye frames photographs as opposed to my more spontaneous, casual eye for balance and aesthetics. It was the camera containing his photos that was missing.

I tried to email our hosts but the email address contained on the website must be warped, since my mail was simply returned to me. We thought about telephoning, then decided not to on the theory that we had looked very carefully around the cottage, all three of us, before we left, to make certain we left had nothing behind. We theorized that we had somehow lost the camera elsewhere.

And then, several days later, an email enquiring whether we were missing a camera. Evidently the next family who had stayed at the same cottage had discovered a camera in its case under one of the beds (!).

Like us, our two little dogs have had plenty of experience climbing in the White Mountain range. Our black female miniature poodle has had ample opportunity over the years, of mounting vigorous, time-consuming ascents. Her last big ones were Little Haystack, Moosilauke, and Eisenhower back when she was about tw0 to ten years old. And up until the age of sixteen she climbed the twins, Welch-Dickey with us and our apricot male toy poodle who was then ten. We, and they, are now more interested in modest climbs, finding the ascent to the Rattlesnakes challenge enough for us.

They're accustomed to staying, for the last eight or so years, in the same cottage as a jump-off point for our daily mountain trail forays. They know the place well enough; most years we would stay for a week in both June and September. But Button is now almost nineteen, her memory is failing, she has lost much of her hearing and eyesight, and is readily confused. Although she is still capable of going along on relatively modest walks, she requires carrying a good deal, when she becomes tired.

The pace little Riley takes seems excruciatingly slow at times, but it almost matches the kind of pace I can comfortably sustain with my own failing endurance at 74, so things work out well enough. I don't have quite the strength and capacity of my husband, capable of carrying Button and carrying on himself. And there are times, like a gradual descent, when Riley is tired enough that I will pick him up and carry him the balance of the way down to the trailhead.

This year the weather was dreadfully hot and humid, and the heat took its toll on Button. She was also more disoriented than usual. She will not sleep on a dog bed at floor level, having become accustomed over the years to leaping up on a bed or a sofa to sleep. Now that she no longer leaps she still wants to sleep where she is most comfortable and we lift her to a bed or sofa. And, because her eyesight is so compromised she forgets spacial limits and sometimes falls off. Which she did, on a number of occasions while we were away.

She also suffered from occasional bouts of feeling quite unwell, once having diarrhoea and since she no longer "asks" to go outside when she needs to evacuate, and we're put in the position of trying to guess when it's time, and this further complicated matters. In the wee hours of the night on several occasions she had to be partially bathed, as a result.

She's an excellent traveler, always has been, and it was a relief, finally, to get her back home where her normal routine, and her familiarity with her surroundings helped her immensely, and us as well.

A hiking trip to New Hampshire's White Mountain range just wouldn't be complete without dropping in at the spectacular Franconia Notch to at least visit the Basins. That location aptly demonstrates the capacity and power of water to wear away, over time, tough granite that had already been affected by the retreat of glaciers in an ice age long past.

The initial introduction to the geological site is impressive enough, striding through a forest of trees, great hemlocks and yellow birches, among spruce, oak, pine and underbrush comprised of dogwood and various other shrubs and wildflowers in season.

In the tourist season, usually once school is out for the summer, the area is suffused with people attracted to the guidebook promise of splendidly geological formations of ancient rock, and the accompanying clear mountain stream sliding down from above, over rockfalls and gently sloping, large-area shoulders of sheer granite, gradually rising on the side of mountains. It is the Pemigawasset river that begins its life from being fed in this way, at this site.

A gentle stroll on paved pathways and over rustic bridges brings the curious to the main basin with its carved bowl
of grey granite, pock-marked here and there with resolute green-black lichens, as the clear water swirls around on its voyage, descending and finding its way to the main river, itself snaking through the forested landscape beyond.

Go a little further and you see other, less dramatically-carved, but most beautiful cavities hosting the descending waters, creating their own landscapes over which those who appreciate nature's beauty linger and take photographs to aid their memories of this exceptional experience.

And those who have the endurance and the additional curiosity to climb, can take a trail that will lead them on a steady rising ascent alongside the descending waterfalls, over to the left where can be seen wide grey-brown granite shelves with the water coursing, burbling, and sometimes shouting, spraying and bubbling in its descent. The shelves beckon, to step aside from the rock-strewn and tree-root-interlaced trail onto the creek bed itself, to sit awhile on the dry granite, look about, revel in the beauty that surrounds.

Clamber high enough and the view over the site is spectacular, particularly on the clear, sunny day when an unobstructed, albeit relatively narrow scene is laid out below of the mountain ranges beyond, and their forested sides, bare granite tops glinting in the sun.

When we were there, it was an extremely hot day. We were grateful for a prevailing breeze, and for the areas on either side of the ascending/descending granite slope that offered shade under the trees growing alongside the bank on either side.

The geological features of the Crawford Notch in the White Mountain Range of New Hampshire are impressive enough, but not quite as spectacular as the views of the Franconia Notch, although over the years gone past we spent ample time on an annual basis, exploring both in our ascents of the various mountains contained within that quite wonderful landscape.

Of late, we've spent far more time in and around the Franconia Notch, since where we have been wont to stay, renting a cottage from its owners, handy to the Waterville Valley and the climbing/trail opportunities there - requiring a far more modest physical effort on our elderly part - is closer to Franconia.

But since we drove that way to enjoy looking at the exquisitely beautiful Sabbaday Falls, we went on further to do a modest trail located just off a lake that boasted picnic facilities, where a bridge took us to a two-and-a-half-mile-long trail which we had never been on, previously.

It looked promising at first, veering off toward the mountains from the lake site, but it soon became evident it wasn't going off on too much of a tangent. There was no rise whatever, it seemed to almost skirt the Notch highway, the surrounding forest was juvenile in growth, the understory nothing to be enthusiastic about with the exception of a group of wildflowers I couldn't identify which were quite beautiful.

This turned out to be the least attractive by far, of the trails we took this year, although once out of the forest again, and back where we started, at the lake, under the brow of the mountains standing grandly before it, the more immediate scenery more than made up for the disappointment of the hiking trail.

Thirty-five years ago when we first introduced our children to trekking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, our youngest son was firm about his intention; which was to complete a destination once begun.

In other words if we set off to do a circuit, the circuit should be completed, for maximum satisfaction and to ensure we missed nothing. If we set off to achieve an ascent, we should continue until we did just that, regardless of the effort and time involved. And for the most part, we did just that.

This time, however, we had our granddaughter with us, and her enthusiasm for completing a trek was rather lukewarm at best. And since we are 35 years older than we were when our youngest son was her age, we aren't completely averse to halting an ascent when we're getting rather weary of the effort.

The last time we decided to do the Drakes Brook trail in the Waterville Valley was years ago. And it had been in the early spring, a very wet spring at that. We had made our way on the trail to the point where you are required to cross over the brook to get to the opposite side, where the trail rises moderately-to-steeply, until the Drakes Brook falls are reached. That last time there was no way we could conceivably cross; all the boulders in the brook we were meant to step upon to achieve the crossing were well under water, water that was moving swiftly and deeply. So we had turned back, disappointed.

This time we were there in mid-July, and the water level was markedly down; no problem crossing over the brook to the opposite side, clambering up the stones helpfully placed to form 'steps', then proceeding upward to the falls, which we knew from experience, would be dry and fairly unspectacular. We knew that we were a literal stone's throw from the falls when our granddaughter suggested, why continue?

Since we were tired, and not surprisingly so, since one of us was carrying our 19-year-old miniature poodle for whom it was simply too much of a physical struggle to continue on her own, we acquiesced, and turned back. The trail itself is quite beautiful, and we were glad we had the opportunity to take it again after so many years. There are areas where it becomes quite boggy and a few bypasses are required, but it's well worth the effort.

We didn't feel we missed much, opting to turn back before getting to the falls. We'd passed another hiker returning from the falls whose comment about the paucity of water falling over it was anything but spectacular we had taken note of.

Early settlers in the area of the White Mountains of New Hampshire had a marvellous landscape. In particular, there was one that was easily accessible, requiring no arduous, time-consuming trek to get to. All it took was a relatively short and easy walk through a woodland glade, a bit of a rise through the forest, and suddenly there it was, a wonderful, crystal-clear mountain stream.

It became a commonly-enjoyed Sunday outing, after church, to visit the site. And it was named after the Sabbath. That mountain stream that presented as the geologic terrain changed to an ascent, creating a waterfall of lovely dimension and effect, was named Sabbaday Falls.

We visited it often, over the years, with our three growing children in tow, in the Crawford Notch. And this time, with our granddaughter, we visited it after a long hiatus in our mountain-trekking experience.

It was as breath-takingly lovely as we recalled, and more. A truly wonderful place that nature has blessed with an abundance of beauty.

We devoted one afternoon to the usual drive down to Antique Alley, usually undertaken on a rainy day when we would be shut out of a daily trail ramble, but on this occasion, because of the extreme, debilitating heat and humidity. The drive was uneventful but picturesque, with scenes of heavy mist rising from mountain valleys, and peaks marching across the landscape.

Incomparably beautiful; one wonders whether the residents value their own natural surroundings that put visitors to the area in awe of nature.

Our usual forays, on the lookout for newly-opened and, unfortunately, newly shuttered antique shops gain us random treasures, and always have over the decades we have engaged in these searches. We always feel great regret to see yet another shop or group shop close, but the last few years has been very difficult for antique dealers to remain afloat, given the country's financial crisis.

We always seem to be able to rely on what has become a steadfast presence, the two Parker-French group shops. Replete with cast-off junk, among the offerings is to be found, if we're fortunate, items of true antique, artistic and creative value. All together, we managed to find no fewer than five small paintings in oil and watercolour that we were impressed with enough to purchase for our collection.

On arrival at home, they are usually taken apart, the frames refurbished, the matting replaced if needed, and signatures and dates sometimes discovered, if not present on the painting itself. This time, an exquisitely-painted portrait of a woman had a familiar signature on its back, "G. Perkins"; undated, but judged to have been produced in the closing years of the 19th Century.

Some detective work on the Internet confirmed suspicions that this was an usual watercolour by Granville Perkins whose oeuvre was generally comprised of landscapes, including many of New Hampshire's White Mountain range.

Never know when one is liable to come across yet another treasure....

We partially retraced our drive from the day before, back to the incomparably spectacular Franconia Notch. With its majestic views and craggy mountainsides and attainable mountain peaks. Familiar to us as a place where over the decades we had taken our children, when we were all younger and relatively easily ascended peaks like Lafayette. Climbs we have long since abandoned as far too strenuous, but which we recall with fond memory of a time past.

We were headed for The Basins, which we visit every year. Not to climb high above and on to trails that meander and ascend into the mountains as we were once wont to do. Merely to push ourselves to a relatively minor climbing experience, following the Pemigawasset as it tumbles down the mountainside from where it begins, to swell the river of the same name, far down below.

Our perch at various selected points on the smooth, granite raceway gave us ample and fabulous views of the valley below.

It was a breathtakingly hot day, not much relief from the searing sun, but enough to give us shelter under overhanging trees. We were grateful for a wisp of a wind. The water tumbled down over the boulders strewn on the raceway, crystal-clear and cool, an ephemerally beautiful scene, we always hope to capture in our memory yet never quite can, without the aid of photographs.