The quality of our lives is immensely enhanced by the opportunities given us to enjoy and to share with our neighbourhood the privilege of living close to a wooded ravined area of great natural beauty. We venture daily into that place of sanctuary and peace to walk quietly along trails among trees and waterways that change with the seasons.

Over the years, with the encroachment of encircling housing developments, the raccoons, grouse, quail and foxes we used to see are no longer readily to be seen. We can still depend on occasionally seeing raccoons, ample squirrels and chipmunks, the occasional passing duck in the springtime, and great blue herons as well as owls, bluejays, cardinals, pileated woodpeckers, crows, ravens, chickadees, goldfinches and nuthatches, to name but some of the birds and small creatures we're fortunate enough to come across. And, oh yes, the animal that remains our national symbol; beavers.

In the spring, we anticipate the arrival of spring flowers, a time of renewal and expectation; in summer other native shrubs and wildflowers take the place of the spring bloomers, and in fall the colours of the changing trees preparing to drop their leaves awaiting the inexorable arrival of winter presents to us the third face of the changing landscape.

Finally, the winter months arrive, where colour consists of a whitewash of snow gentling the landscape, muffling sound, startling the eyes with its brilliance and flash, lighting up the ravine at night so night-time forays are possible, with a light mist of pink colour hanging over the ravine, reflecting the lights of the nearby city, glancing up to the sky, then bouncing back into the ravine.

At the stroke of midnight last night there it occurred, the mysterious twist in time that pronounced me as having met my 75th birthday. And there was my constant helpmeet, my partner in life's adventures, presenting me with the latest creative rendition of a birthday card, water-coloured especially for me. For my birthdays require especial recognition, beside the loving smile on his face regarding me; both of us wondering at the passage of time.

Weeks ago he had given me my birthday gift. He's congenitally incapable of 'keeping a secret' - more apt in this instance - of holding back something special. If he has acquired something that is meant for me to have, he finds it impossible to set it aside, to wait patiently for the appropriate presentation time. He had handed me a beautiful glossy wood box, urging me to open it, and within was that which he had chosen for me on this occasion.

For my last five birthdays he has given me similar items, various types of gold bracelets so that I now have encircling my left wrist a lovely collection of softly shining bracelets that tinkle with the movement of my arm. This was yet another, the difference being that it had tiny diamonds inset on the face of the hoop.

A few seconds after presenting me with the birthday card, he drew from behind his back a small box, and gave it also to me. He couldn't bear the thought of not, beside the card, giving me something else special to mark the occasion. Within the box nestled a pair of small, neat engraved gold hoop earrings.

Surprise, oh surprise and many more to come....

Yesterday was my sister's birthday, tomorrow will be mine. I am the elder by four years. We rarely see one another now. We live a mere six hours' drive distance from one another, but the occasions when we travel from my city to hers have become remote; the last time she travelled from her city to mine was thirty years ago, never repeated.

We do not even speak on the telephone with one another with anything remotely resembling regularity. Usually I call her, and on the rare occasion she will initiate that call. Even so, those times are incredibly infrequent. The four years' distance between us when we were growing up as young girls in our parents' home guaranteed few similar interests. And I was out of my parents' home by the time I was eighteen, married.

I was so relieved to leave the family home. Having experienced the misery of living with a mother whose volatile temper could and would erupt with amazing regularity and often without any discernible warning. Besides which, I could see nothing I wanted more in my future than to live with the boy who became my husband. Whom my parents had found wanting, his fault being who his own parents were.

My sister and I have far more in common with one another now; despite the age differential, for growing older, considerably older, diminishes the slight distance in age. When we do speak with one another, the conversation tends to be long and sometimes involved, replete with reminiscences as we grow older.

Once we exhaust the topic of family, and how our children are getting on with their lives, and the news of our grandchildren, we tend to move on to world affairs and also to animal welfare, a topic she is intimately involved with. The topic of our mutual health concerns ranks fairly high, since she has always had some health issues - and now I've joined her in that category.

This last conversation had its highlights and its low points. The distance between us is diminishing as far as our interests and conclusions are concerned, just as the physical, geographical distance appears to be expanding.

We set Saturday evenings aside for our mutual entertainment. It's when we put down the newspapers, any magazines or books we're interested in reading, and prepare the small television set which we've kept, although we no longer receive television signals since Canada switched over from digital to analog and our sturdy old television sets were no longer of any use. Other than for use as a receptive screen for DVDs that we feel are worthwhile watching.

Anything reflecting Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre falls into that category. The late, great Japanese master of cinema who transformed old folk allegories into modern-day masterpieces of theatre, and who took ordinary everyday lives of Japanese living in sometimes extenuating circumstances and brought both the mundane and the unusual to the screen.

And this Saturday evening, after enjoying our usual pizza, baked this second time in the pizza drawer of our new, all-purpose microwave oven, we settled down together on the loveseat in our family room, little Riley stuffed in beside my husband, to view the three-disk set of The Seven Samurai, which we had seen years earlier on more than one occasion. This was the original, uncut version, and it took about three hours to view, with quaint intermissions separating the half-way mark and familiar Japanese Hiragana syllabus lettering explaining the progress of the story telling the tale of a village farming community looted time and again by local robbers enlisting the strategic and quasi-military strength of seven Ronin, Samurai troopers who had been let go when they were dismissed from the ranks of the imperial lord who kept a standing army, who roamed about, footloose and destitute.

The drama of the interaction between the desperate but cunning farm community and the sturdy, stalwart, honourable Ronin, and the palpable, distrustful tensions between the two, pays tribute to the history of Japan at that juncture in its broad journey to modernization, Japanese-style, with the Emperor considered an immortal, serving both country and the gods above.

Wonderful, albeit sometimes campy acting, with the tale unfolding in all its pathos and bloodcurdling gore to a uneasy but acceptable conclusion.

There are those people whose aesthetic seems truly gifted, and it is, generally speaking. They seem to be born with a gene which exhibits a fine aesthetic, an appreciation for the genuinely creative, excellent workmanship, artistic sensibilities, the use of colour and light, and often are themselves fully capable of producing art works. My husband is one of these.

He tends, not toward the zen spectrum of embellishment, however, but toward the lavish. And sometimes he gets carried away with the enthusiasm of replicating the masterful balance that craftsmen of the past achieved when detailing their expertise in the execution of fine woodwork. Which he appears to have done when he decided to redecorate the powder room on the first floor of our house. Which had been decorated formerly by him, a decade earlier, much to my satisfaction.

Out went the old; in, over time, came the new. With plenty of attention to detail. And a seeming unawareness that complications beget their own complexities. The result of which, painting all those little niches and turnings has turned out a bit of a nightmare. That nightmare was exacerbated by a truly unfortunate choice of paint colour, quite unlike my husband's usual grace in recognizing what is suitable and what is, definitely not. The horrendous bubble-gum pink he painted on the far wall made the stained glass window look wretchedly miserable.

We both regarded the results and persuaded ourselves it wasn't all that awful, we'd become accustomed to it and begin to enjoy it. That state of uncertainty lasted all of ten minutes, when he hied himself off to bring home a new paint selection which will cover the raucous pink quite handsomely.

Regardless of one's religion - or lack of one - it behooves us all to recognize the symbolic pleasures and beauty inherent in a majority-religion's celebratory season that brings inclusion through its public displays of colour, light and exquisite music. Any who fail to be moved by the quality of the music written in recognition of this day, sacred to so many throughout the world can possibly not be moved by anything.

To listen, time and again, to Handel's unmatched Messiah, a work of transcendent musical mastery, is to be transported with the timeless beauty of the sound. The holiday of Christmas itself, in remembrance of a mortal imbued with immortal attributes by legend and divine belief, is one that asks of its celebrants that they be kind to one another, admonishing them to work toward the reign of peace upon this Earth. Who could quarrel with that?

Better to be one with society on this occasion, recognizing the cultural-religious-social vitality that lies behind the Christian belief in an almighty, and respecting it. From the perspective of another religion; Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion, or as an agnostic/atheist, we should bow to the humble universal wish to be just and kind.

The mellowness of this season, imbuing all who care to join in the festivities, becoming increasingly secular in nature largely through its commercial aspects, is one that draws everyone into a jovial, festive season of light, colour, good humour, sweet expectations, and Peace on Earth. And so be it.

And look how Nature herself has finally agreed to co-operate! We've transited from the unusual weather condition of no snow at all up to now this winter, to gently mild snowfalls in the two days running up to December 25.

And when December 25 dawned, it was light and white with falling snow.

But then, with the Donjek not yet in sight, they heard the ominous roar of its flooding current. Over the next two days, there followed one setback after another: the futile attempt to build a driftwood raft; the crossing without crampons of the snout of the Donjek Glacier; the wretched bivouac on the ice under the tent with no pole; the shock of the discovery that the true source of the Donjek was not that glacier, but another one twenty-two impossible miles farther south; the dicey rappel off the carved bollard just to get off the glacial snout.

And then, the nearly hopeless effort to ford the river where it braided into some fifty channels, the last one proving the deepest and most treacherous. With their rope improvised from pack cordage, Bob had staggered into that last channel and lost his footing, only to be held by Brad's stationary belay. But then, as Bob forged on, he had lost his footing again, and the taut rope pulled Brad loose. Both men careened out of control, the muddy flood carrying them around one bend after another. Both men had time to think This is it....

Then, with a genius born of desperation, Bob improvised a technique; he would let the current carry him twenty or thirty yards, then touch bottom with his feet, only to spring upward in a mad leap. Brad caught on and imitated his friend.

At last Bob eddied out on the far shore. Brad, too, crawled up into the bushes. Shivering uncontrollably, the two stripped off all their clothes and pulled their single sleeping bag around them.

Two days later, among the willows and alders, Brad and Bob ran by chance into some Indian horsepackers from the Burwash Landing trading post, out rounding up stray steeds. The men were utterly dumbfounded to discover the climbers - no one in the Yukon suspecting that any human being was abroad in the vast wilderness between Kluane Lake and the Saint Elias Range.

The crossing of the Donjek River was the closest Brad would come to dying in the mountains. For Bob, it was one of the two close calls of his life - the other coming on K2 in 1953. From: The Last of His Kind, by David Roberts

For those who are, like me, fascinated by detailed stories of Arctic survival, Antarctic weather and humankind's stubborn persistence in maintaining research stations at both, along with the indomitable will of strong minds geared to adventure and exploration, this book was yet another treat in armchair adventure.

The writer, an intrepidly successful mountaineer in his own right, has documented in this biography the life of his mentor in the climbing world, the former director of the Boston Science Museum.

Before Bradford Washburn became involved with the Boston museum he was involved with the National Geographic Society, which sponsored several of his mountaineering expeditions and published his descriptions of those expeditions, along with breath-taking mountain photography, another area the man pioneered.

Bradford Washburn, who began his climbing career as a teen in the Alps on family vacations in the 1930s, went on to become the premier mountaineer of his era. He was a true polymath, among other attributes; a geologist, author, photographer, cartographer and mountaineer extraordinaire. He excelled in leading expeditions in the Yukon and Alaska's Saint Elias Range; up to then areas of North America, remote and weather-bound that were largely unexplored territory.

As a surveyor and cartographer he produced maps of then-unknown areas of the Grand Canyon, Mt. McKinley and Mt. Everest; his maps and aerial photographs are still in use today, never having been surpassed.

Exploration of Earth's isolated and forbidding surfaces has become fairly routine now, with wealthy amateurs paying hefty sums for expert mountaineers leading commercial expeditions enabling them to view for themselves stupendous heights of nature. The original explorers, whose exploits this book describes, faced the unknown.

They did it with determination, perseverance and dignity. And many lost their lives in the process.At last we got a spell of six consecutive days of perfect weather.

Pushing as hard as we could, we arrived all four together on the summit at 3:30 a.m. on July 30, 1965. A few hours later, we collapsed in our highest camp, all four crammed into a two-man tent pitched narrow on an ice ledge. We fished out our bottle of "victory brandy" - a pint of blackberry-flavored Hiram Walker. Our first and heartiest toast was to Brad Washburn.

The west face of Huntington remains the finest climb of my life. It would have been a perfect expedition, except that it ended in tragedy. In the middle of the night of July 31, as the youngest member of our team. Ed Bernd, and I descended in semidarkness, we paused to set up a rappel. Suddenly, as soon as he leaned back on the rope, Ed was flying through the air away from me. He never uttered a word.

Somehow the anchor had failed - and to this day, I do not know why. It was obvious, however, that Ed had fallen 4,500 feet to his death. The "perfect expedition" turned into a survival ordeal, as I had to climb without a rope down to the next camp, then wait two days for my other two partners to join me.

Ed had fallen to a glacial basin so inaccessible that we never had a chance to search for his body.

The chemistry of cooking and baking eludes many but over time and continual exposure to the results when mingling, mixing and pairing ingredients, one becomes accustomed to the outcome. Not that an anticipated, successful outcome is always guaranteed, but the tried-and-true does, over time, tend to prove itself. To the point where the seasoned cook can fairly well be reliant on his/her background experience to predict how a dish will turn out.

I love some dishes which my husband does not particularly appreciate. And the reverse is also true. I tend, for the most part, to cook those dishes which find favour with him, and far less often those that he will plunge his fork into and valiantly attempt to devour, but the spirit just isn't in him, on these occasions. Pasta-type dishes that rely on macaroni and cheese, rather than the more traditional linguini and tomato-based, meat-filled dishes he prefers, are attractive to me, not to him.

And although he's a lover of eggs and eats them as often as he can for breakfast, he is not particularly fond of quiche, though I most certainly am. And this week, for a change, I decided to make a quiche, a crab quiche; even worse, since he doesn't care for crab. I used two types of cheese and finely chopped green onions for additional flavour. I began salivating at dinnertime, smelling the quiche in the oven. And surprisingly, he really enjoyed it, this time. Complimented me as usual, on the quality of the flaky crust. For some odd reason I did not enjoy that quiche; is there some psychology involved in this?

This morning, I baked carrot cupcakes. Put in two large, grated carrots, some raisins, quite a bit of shredded coconut, and cut up tiny strips of hot-candied ginger into the mixture. Beside the egg for moisture content, I added some sour cream. I used whole-wheat flour and brown sugar. With the spices, the flavour will be interesting, to say the least.

I trust, you see, they will be moist, light, flavourful. Having used my memory and the impulse to improvise, on this occasion.

We've officially turned the calendar from late fall into winter. Although, truth to tell, it's felt sporadically like winter, for quite a long while; just seems that way.

Ottawa is one of the world's coldest, snowiest capitals, so the legend goes, second only to Ulan Bator, Mongolia. When you're a resident of Canada, living in Ottawa, in our northern climate, accustomed as we are to the changing of the seasons, the very thought of Ulan Bator, Mongolia, brings shivers of imagined inclement weather immediately to mind.

Ottawa has its share of inclement weather and dangerous conditions, from ice fogs to freezing rain pelting the environment. Howling winds and extreme snowfalls, we get them all. And although we claim to be tough and prepared to deal with all that nature brings our way, we need all the strength of mind we can muster to get through a long, cold winter. Which is one very good reason why living with the environment and the season helps, to get out there with a recreational frame of mind and let your eyes absorb the beauty that is revealed when a forest is freshly covered with snow. To challenge the weather, and the terrain with snowshoes, skis, skates, sleds, and encourage children to make the most of those opportunities. A positive frame of mind helps, considerably.

Canada's far north, the Yukon territory, for example, with its great geological massifs, a mountain range in huge sweeps of cold, human-uninhabited territory, with its massive glaciers that carry on into equally weather-forbidding Alaska, can challenge the peaks of the Himalaya for miserable, stormy, icy and snowy weather.

Yesterday's ravine walk was in weather that was, to say the least, 'different' for this time of year, where traditionally we've had accumulated a considerable snowpack to remain for the duration of the winter by now, prepared to welcome the Christmas celebrations in snowy-style as a backdrop to the festivities, the colour and sparkle of ubiquitously-hung decorations. It was mild enough for the precipitation that fell, to come down as freezing rain.

Later in the day the freezing rain, after it had turned area highways to sheer sheets of ice, turned once again - to pouring, ordinary rain. And during the cooler night-time temperature drop, that turned into thicker sheets of ice, to welcome dawn and workplace-directed traffic on its way - slowly, carefully, to minimize the hazards inherent in driving in those conditions.

But sunny, as well; partially blue skies presenting, in the wake of yesterday's aluminum-foil top-of-the-world.

When she was young it was difficult, as it is with most young children, to entice her to try new and different foods. And we had ample opportunity to witness how difficult it was. After raising our own three children, we thought it would be a simple task to give ourselves over to becoming daytime caregivers for our first and only grandchild. At age 60, we soon discovered, that task is far more difficult than it is at age 23.

Moreover, she was born, like her mother, a contrarian. Making most things more complicated than they actually were, balking at suggestions or recommendations, and stamping her little feet in absolute rejection of anything resembling an order. To say she had a mind of her own is the classic understatement.

Now, she is in firm control of her own mind, fully deserving of all the respect we have no hesitation whatever in rendering its full due. Our daily care of her as an infant and young child is long in the past, and we wonder sometimes how much of that experience she can recall and how it will add to the various exposures and experiences that will shape her life as she continues to mature and face her future.

We admire her perseverance, her bright intelligence, her curiosity about the world around her, and her faithfulness to books, valuing them somewhat higher on her scale of necessities, than she does her computer and her BlackBerry, and her iPod, all constant companions. And we wonder also that she tends to telephone us on a daily basis, on her return home from her high school classes.

We're re-living, in a sense, what we ourselves experienced when we were children, then again throughout our children's growing years; seen from a somewhat different perspective.

We live our orderly, sheltered secure lives beset with our own often-relatively minor yet significant-appearing problems in getting on with our lives, while elsewhere in the world - in so much of the world - people live under repressive regimes which care less for the basic welfare and necessities of life for their populations than the acquisition of advanced military technology.

NPyongyang residents react as they mourn the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il

Not to say that the ordinary concerns of life, meaningful and intimately successful relationships, the welfare of one's family, concerns about the direction of society and requisite economic advancement, secure employment, a reliable education- and health-care system, assurances of security and equality under the law, one's personal health concerns, do not cause us anxiety.

But it's difficult to imagine people having all these concerns and much more, living in societies where their rulers are tyrants imposing their will upon the populace, ensuring that with the support of the military, the courts and the police that they control, that compliance will be complete. We see these scenarios from the Middle East to Asia, Russia, the Balkans and South America.

North Korea stands as an outpost of reclusive tyranny, whose ruler-by-inheritance has brought the country to financial ruin, incapable of feeding its population, heavily reliant on international humanitarian aid to provide basic sustenance. Yet the regime spared none of its scarce treasury in funding research into nuclear technology, succeeding in becoming a nuclear-armed nation.

Its threats to its near-neighbours from South Korea to Japan and its bellicose threats beyond Asia have marked it as a potent and potential threat to world stability. A country of little over twenty-four million people, with a standing army of well over a million military, which is the demographic that is fed and cared for, all others fend for themselves.

And in a mass outpouring of public grief, of what can only be thought of as the Stockholm syndrome on a grand scale, there is the spectacle of North Koreans beset by unassuageable grief at the sudden, albeit not totally unexpected, death of their "Dear Leader", Kim Jung-il.

Toward the end of last winter my husband, the interior designer/decorator/workman/artist decided that he was no longer enamoured of the original work he had done on the powder room adjacent our kitchen and laundry room, nor in the short hallway leading from kitchen to laundry room. I remained fond of the decor, and demurred, when he proposed changing it all over to another decorating scheme. As usual, he listened to me, then proceeded to do as he felt the situation required.

First to be disposed of was the wallpaper we had both chosen years ago and which so complemented the other decorative aspects of both little rooms. It pained me, but my husband set about with resolve to completely transform both areas. He installed new lighting arrangements, and designed and executed millwork with which to give character, as he put it, to the walls, above the ceramic wall tiles he had originally installed ten years earlier.

And when all the millwork was completed and installed, suddenly it was early spring, and other work called him away from the interior of the house, to focus on work that needed to be done on the exterior. And which work kept him busy throughout the spring and summer and fall. And with late fall came the moment when he had completed those other chores, some self-imposed, some requiring urgent attention.

Now, he has returned to the completion of the work he had begun last winter. He has been applying base-coat paint to the millwork that he had painstakingly put in place almost a year earlier. It is finicky, time-consuming work, something he hadn't quite anticipated when he designed the millwork with the thought that that type of embellishment was just what was needed to lift those areas out of the ordinary.

It is amazing how technology evolves to introduce to households electronic and mechanical assists that really do have the impact of improving on the manner in which we traditionally prepare foods. Yesterday morning, something went surprisingly awry in my kitchen. It is a kitchen designed for the average height of the average housewife, without doubt. I stand 5' fall, and the microwave oven shelf that was installed when the kitchen was completed as the interior of the house was outfitted before our purchase two decades earlier obviously had a taller person in mind.

It has always been a stretch for me to insert anything into the microwave oven, and to extract it when cooking was complete. To view whatever was in the interior was likewise a stretch, but it never occurred to us to discard the shelf-use for the microwave. Yesterday morning, heaven knows how, but the revolving heavy glass insert of the oven slipped as I was extracting a pie dish. As anyone faced with such an unanticipated dilemma can testify, attempts to rescue the large, heavy disk before it met up with our ceramic floor were futile. It shattered immediately upon contact, the impact sending a spray of small glass pieces halfway across the kitchen, while larger pieces rested in implacably morose blame closer to the scene of the crime.

I thought I'd use the microwave regardless, perhaps try to acquire a replacement glass. My husband thought otherwise and hied himself off a few hours later, and when he returned had a quite large microwave with him with something I'd never before seen; a pizza drawer-oven. Moreover, the revolving glass insert was not placed on the surface of the bottom, but was fitted neatly into a hollow formed to hold it securely in place.

Although I had my doubts, my husband was eager to try out the pizza oven, and that evening's pizza came out, incredibly, tasting even better than usual; all the competing flavours of the two cheeses, the red, green, orange and yellow bell peppers, the tomato and the herbs were integrated and flavourful beyond anything we'd achieved before in our conventional oven. And the crust was perfect; firm on the bottom and softly chewy on the interior.

I'm sold.

It's beginning to look as though this will not be a visual Christmas in Ottawa, this year. Unusual, but not rare. I can recall, about twelve years ago, something similar happening. From a recent Environment Canada update, it seems we've had a number of these snowless Christmases in the past fifty years.

For a geography that is renowned for its cold temperatures and immense snowfalls creating an overwintering snowpack of truly sizeable proportions, this is a real departure from our natural atmospheric conditions. And for those who will be disappointed, it's a shame. Those who enjoy gambolling in thick, new snow, skiing, snowshoeing, sledding, will most certainly miss its celebratory-seasonal appearance.

But it's merely temporary; cold weather will inevitably set in, and with it snow aplenty, satisfying the needs of all the winter enthusiasts. It's just the Christmas season will remain bereft of its pristine white blanket covering the landscape, adding to the beauty of the sparkle and colour, music and gaiety associated with Christmas.

This is not, of course, the Christmas of the celebration of Christ's birth for Christian stalwarts, but another one culturally overlaid with a more open, inclusive celebration, replete with its commercial overtones. And non-Christians like us, though we are self-excluded from the religious-exultation aspects of the season, enjoy nonetheless the public, celebratory side of it; much of the music, the music both sacred and popular, the bustle-about, the anticipation, the spectacle of lovely ornamentation that appears in the public and the private arena.

And in the homes of those who enjoy the appearance of small ornamental pieces cheekily and fantastically playing their little part in cheering us in these emerging dark winter days.

After a series of heavily overcast days capped off with a copious, persistent rainfall, we're more than glad to welcome the sun back, to warm up our house, the outside atmosphere, and to lift our spirits.

We can now, with confidence, anticipate resuming our daily wooded ravine walks, although to be sure, without snow and frozen ground due to the unusual continuation of what can only be described as relatively balmy weather, the ravine trails will be muddy and slippery.

This morning, I chose an easy-to-prepare baked dessert: date squares. Which require only that the dates be cooked briefly until soft in water, then vanilla and butter added to make the filling. And the oatmeal-cinnamon-butter-walnut bottom and topping is prepared with ease, the whole baked until crisply-brown in our little countertop convection oven. Once I put the chicken soup on to cook, and finished with the bread dough for tomorrow night's pizza I was done for the time being.

And that's when my husband took over the baking island in the kitchen, loading it up with what he required to bake a rye-pumpernickel bread, in his new breadmaker, for breakfast delectation.

All is well with Button and Riley, comfortable and dozing after their breakfast and stroll-about, content with the sun brightening up the house and falling gently through the windows upon them.

I have the long-time, intimate acquaintance of a woman whose extensive experience with dogs, and whose understanding of the manner in which best to communicate with them has gained her the knowledge required to expertly understand them. This woman advertises her services to assist other people to understand how best to communicate with their dogs, to instruct the dogs and to anticipate that they will respond in a manner that ensures mutual respect between the species.

She accepts contracts whereby she goes out to peoples' homes, assesses their situation after extensive interviews upon meeting them and their companion animals (for occasionally there exists more than one dog, sometimes two, three and more) before she launches into a full explanation to edify them on what has been occurring and what its remedy will be. And then, for a period of several hours she takes those people through a series of exercises with their dogs to have them understand how they, as owners, can best make contact with the dogs' intelligence, fulfilling both their needs. In the process also taking to the public arena to demonstrate to the owners how well their dogs respond when they are given adequate instructions in the proper manner.

She informed me this week that she had received two communications from clients. One, from a couple with three rescue dogs to which personal menagerie they had added a fourth and were faced with an addition, with the fourth, that was confused, fearful and apprehensive about how it should fit into their family life. They wanted advice as to how the dog might be assured, how to treat its fears, and assure it that it is welcome to share their lives. Their after-service message was to thank this woman who had solved their problem, to their great relief.

The second missive was from a couple who had evidenced little patience with the detailed explanations given them about their dog's needs and how best to fulfill their obligations to this dependent creature, informing it in the process how it was expected to behave, and ensuring it fully understood its obligations to its owners. Their message to this woman who had completed her agreed-upon contract with them, leaving them with the assurance that if they followed her instructions their problem would be solved, but it would take time and patience and determined routine, was that they had, after all, decided to euthanize the dog. Unless she would herself agree to adopting it.

This came as an excruciating shock to the woman. Who rejects euthanization entirely as a solution to peoples' inability to be responsible with their companion animals. And who has herself, over a period of years, assembled her own coterie of rescued dogs, dogs that had been abandoned, mistreated, and left to their own helpless devices to survive.

It is this woman's contention that whatever goes wrong with companion pets can be generally attributed to the lack of understanding on the part of the pet owner respecting communication and assurance. Or outright deliberate mismanagement and a propensity of some people to be cruelly controlling to animals. She believes implicitly that dogs look to their owners for direction, responding with alacrity when it is given properly, resorting to ill behaviour when that direction is absent. Her theories, when they are put into practise, appear to work well.

But, as she emphasizes, it takes commitment, a willingness to give it time, and a determination to be a responsible pet owner, taking the initiative and exercising an informed will. Obviously, not everyone is willing to take the trouble, the time and the responsibility required.

About forty years ago, a then-young man who published a literary magazine put me in touch with three other then-young women whose poetry and creative fiction he also published. We four women found much in common with one another, and a fervent and enthusiastic letter-friendship developed between us. They lived in various places in the United States; Massachusetts and California, and I in Canada.

We shared, through our long-term and voluminous writing career informing one another of our successes and hopes, information about our respective families. As our children grew and matured we discussed that, just as we discussed what we were each engrossed in writing about, and the publishing successes each of us met with.

Since that long-ago time, one of the women dropped out of our mutual correspondence, another died ten years ago of natural causes due to poor health, and there remains two; myself and another, still living in California. Now, we are able to correspond through the Internet via email, sending one another laconic messages.

But she still maintains a list of friends to whom she annually sends a Christmas message tucked into a jolly Christmas greeting card, where she updates others in more detail on what has been occurring in her life. I received one of those annual communications this week and in it she informs that her grandchildren, a young woman and young man are preparing to launch themselves into university studies for law and medicine, respectively.

And that she has just completed preparing a manuscript to be published, the second in as many years; last year's was a historical novel, this year it is a collection of short stories and a novella. She is self-publishing, but publishing. I too have been self-publishing, but not in hard-copy form; rather, in a series of blogs, one of which is devoted to my creative literary muse.

She writes of a difficult year, with many health problems erupting, "but nothing life-threatening", for herself, while her husband "has been at death's door a number of times...He is in real bad shape now". But while it sounds dire, it is typical of her; any letters received over the years have been replete with hard-luck health-and-accident stories that have occurred either to herself or family members - or distant acquaintances. Vintage.

The final sentence in her missive was an enquiry about how everything is proceeding in my family.
Prompting me to respond. By mail. With a reciprocal jolly Christmas card. And chirping message of advanced-age-related health problems.

Fortunately for us, as it happened, yesterday dawned a perfect winter day. It was well below freezing, and supremely sunny, with little wind. A perfect day as far as weather was concerned, to install the new stained glass windows.

Although we have stained glass windows installed throughout our home, this was the first pair to be installed on the exterior. Work proceeded without incident. Until, after having completed the job, my husband realized he had installed one of the windows backwards. Who would notice; certainly not I. But out it came and it was re-installed right way around.

And then, scrutinizing it from the interior of the house, the dining room, he noticed a crack in one of the frosted glass portions. It hardly looked like a crack to me; more like a straight, shallow crackle in the glass itself, but out came that window once again, and down it went into my husband's workshop for remediation.

Now, whenever I pass by the dining room, I'm struck with admiration for the appearance of the two new windows. They will take some time to become accustomed to. They're not as colourful as the others; meant to be muted so as not to clash with the inserts of the shutters beside them; to complement rather than to confuse, yet they present with their own mystique, as light transforms them reflecting exterior light influences.

Altogether, they present an ever-changing play of light on transparent and opaque coloured glass as though colour itself has a life of its own.

We two are not reclusive by temperament or inclination. We do enjoy, on our own terms, mingling with people, speaking with them, sharing moments. We are not, however, given to being part of a crowd, a group, a clique. We are of our neighbourhood, and with it to a degree. We very much like most of our neighbours, and have known them for quite a long time, for the most part.

There are certainly those people who live on the street our home is on who go out of their way never to acknowledge the presence of their neighbours. These are unfriendly people who simply prefer to be left alone. If they have a preference at all it is certainly not for congenial relations with their neighbours.

We, on the other hand, like those whom we mostly live amongst, find quality of life in cheerfully acknowledging the presence of those whom we've become familiar with. And we remain open to the casual inclusion of others who may become homeowners on the street. We take pleasure in stopping to talk through lengthy conversations with them when the occasion presents itself. We know sketchy details of their family lives, their concerns, their interests.

And that is about as far as we prefer to take it. When in public we are semi-public people, approachable and warm to others. When in the privacy of our homes we prefer not to be disturbed by outside influences. Ours is not an open-door home, nor do we prefer that our neighbours' doors be open to us.

When the need is there to help someone and we are asked to contribute in some way, we respond. We have always found, however, in ourselves a reluctance to ask others to help us, so this has become a one-way street that is not reciprocal; we will go out of our way to be of assistance, but rarely call upon others to assist us.

When, as occurred this week, an invitation was extended to take part in a neighbour's seasonal cocktail party, we demurred. Behind our resistance is the feeling that such an event is not reflective of a place where we find ourselves comfortable. We're old enough to discriminate between what is suitable for us and what is not.

At risk of offending.

A casual friend yesterday afternoon regaled us with humorous stories about how he and his wife plotted to go out shopping for their Christmas gift-giving at times when they hardly anticipated there would be the usual crowds flocking to the various shopping arenas. Those shopping arenas have become zones of consumer hysteria, with hordes of people desperately searching out bargains with which to finally complete what they obviously view as their obligations to friends and family members at this time of gift-giving.

They arise, our friend confided, early in the morning, so they reach those big box stores at half-past seven in the morning. And at that time of the morning there's hardly anyone but the sales staff around, so they can move about in comfort, make their leisurely selections long before the crowds show up. But they have been surprised, he said, to see on occasion very young children accompanying their parents on these early-morning shopping expeditions. Don't they know, he said puckishly, that children aren't allowed in at that time of day?
It's a special time for children, and in fact it should be viewed mostly as an enchanting, magical time for children. As it was for us when we were young, even though Christmas was not a holiday festival that Jews celebrated. Even as a child coming from a secular background I felt alienated from the holiday itself with its emphasis on a kind Jewish sage whose dreadful and untimely death we Jews were constantly reminded we were responsible for. I was hounded as a child by cries of "Christ killer" from some of my unforgiving peers in the school grounds.

But we also remember with immense fondness and appreciation the heady excitement we felt coursing through us, just as it must have for children whose parents clung to their faith, that this was indeed a magical time. We longed to be taken to those great old department stores that existed in Toronto away back in the 1940s, Eaton's and Simpson's, at Yonge and Queen streets, with their colourful, light-filled mechanized Christmas window displays of fashionable ladies, Santa's workshop complete with busy elves, and any number of enchanted scenes to transport a child with joy.

Inside the stores, we'd be taken up to the floor dedicated to Santa's Christmas, with beautiful winged fairies, clever little dwarfs, unicorns, miniature railways, and songs being played over and over, like "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer", which set the child's mood, enraptured by the mechanical movement, the blazing light and colour, tiny lights strung everywhere, absolutely mesmerizing children. And Santa, he was there, in huge living colour, awaiting brave children who would sit on his lap and divulge what they would really, really, like for Christmas.

Neither my husband nor I ever sat in Santa's lap. But our children did. I'm not certain they loved it, but they did experience it. Now, it seems to us from a social remove and many years long gone and past, that Christmas is no longer a public spectacle for children, to enchant and teasingly bewilder them. The old Eaton's and Simpson's stores are gone. There is now the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, and displays there can be dazzling, like a crystal-laden tree, but the magic playground of automated fairies and elves and Santa is history.

It takes just a few minutes' time and a scarcely three-quarter-cup scoop of flour to bake a half-dozen mid-sized chocolate cupcakes. Of course, it helps immeasurably if you add a quarter-cup cocoa, use cake and pastry flour, a dash of salt, a teaspoon of baking powder, and process these dry ingredients through a sifter to ensure there are no lumps of flour.

And while you're at it, prepare an egg and about a third cup of milk, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Oops, a third cup of Becel margarine fluffed into a half-cup of granulated sugar. There you are, the constituents of a half-dozen chocolate cupcakes. Good thing it comes automatically to me now: the ingredients, the measurements, the procedure, dredged out of years of experience and baking, to enable me to put them together without much thought.

Of course it helps that I've got a lovely little counter-top convection oven, which accomplishes the baking task in record time, producing a light, moist and exceedingly good-tasting end-product. And then the icing, comprised of Becel margarine, icing sugar, vanilla, smoothed over the cooled cupcakes, sprinkled lightly with chocolate bits; voila! complete.

And it's always pleasurable to hear my husband's comments about how good the house smells, redolent of chocolate being baked, and his enthusiasm for capping off a Friday night dinner with a baked dessert. Different from the rest of the week when dessert comes in the form of fresh fruit.

He is excused on these occasions for having consumed two and a half of the cupcakes.

We haven't suffered one iota from no longer having a television set. Our old television set which we acquired twenty years ago, when we moved into this house wasn't able to capture the new signals, and was thus rendered useless, so we discarded it. And we have not yet replaced it. Nor do we have any idea when we will replace it, or even whether we will.

We're radio listeners, we're newspapers readers, we're book lovers. Neither of us could imagine our lives without reading material, books in particular, and of course daily newspapers. There is not a room in our house that isn't heaped with its share of books or magazines.

We had used cable only for a few years for our television reception, before deciding it was a waste of money, and cancelling it. At that time we decided to invest that monthly fee instead in health insurance for our-then single companion dog - before extending the insurance to a second policy when we introduced our second dog into the household. That insurance too has now been cancelled, because we paid far more into it than what we received in the sole instance when we made a claim and scandalized the insurance provider by so doing.

We've also got our computers, which suffice to introduce us electronically to the wider world of entertainment, education and communications. There's value there for our enquiring minds...

From time to time, on our daily jaunts through our neighbourhood wooded ravine we come across a neighbour who lives at the bottom of our street, and his pitbull, a muscularly large, white-with-brown traces dog that his step-daughter had given him as a gift. This is a friendly and quietly respectful animal that is accustomed to instantly obeying her human's voice. She is polite and unobtrusive in her approach, a really beautiful animal.

Another person whom we meet often is a woman who has two very small tan-coated pugs, surprisingly energetic little beasts, one of whom follows me faithfully when we come across them, having long ago ascertained that I am the fount of the riches of peanuts which she adores and comes across on occasion, in various parts of the trail - most of which she can only smell, not reach, although she is heroic in her efforts to retrieve them from their slightly out-of-reach perches.

This woman told us that she had been disappointed when she'd attended the event at ScotiaBank Place in early November to see Cesar Millan perform his dog-whisperer miracles communicating with dogs. He had with him not one of his own beloved companions, a pit bull that accompanies him often and with which he is accustomed to working, but a Canada Border Services dog on loan, not a pit bull. He was denied entry to Ontario with a pit bull because this province has a law that will not permit their presence, as a protective measure for the public against aggressive dogs.

Clearly, a law outlawing irresponsible pet ownership and the encouragement of violent aggression by dog owners of their malleable pets is more in order, but it would be a law that could hardly be enforced. She had been disappointed because the dog-on-loan had obviously been trained as a service dog using a methodology quite unlike Millan's own celebrated type of communication. Using a dog he hadn't himself had previous contact with just didn't seem to work.

Of course he might have done due diligence before embarking on his much-advertised visit to Ottawa. He, or his handlers, should have been aware that they would be unable lawfully to bring a pit bull - even Cesar Millan's well-trained and critical-to-his-display of mastery in human-canine communication - into the province.

It was a fascinating book to read, capturing my attention as I read late into the night, inspired to keep going, finishing it in record time over the course of a week's bedtime reading. Much to take in, to ponder, to wonder at, and to admire, in this woman who so relentlessly and at great personal cost, followed her rational intelligence to bring her to a place in her mind that recognized truth and reality, to spurn medieval cruelties and inhumane misconceptions.

Is Ayaan Hirsi Ali a racist? She was born in Somalia, from which she escaped to avoid an arranged marriage, and she eventually became a member of Parliament in the Netherlands.

She helped produce a film with Theo Van Gogh which criticized Islam's treatment of women. Van Gogh was shot to death by a Muslim in retaliation, and a note was pinned to his chest with a knife — a note that threatened Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

(From the website Citizen Warrior)



Her journey from childhood in Somalia, on to Kenya with her mother and siblings, then Saudi Arabia, back to Kenya, eventually to Holland and from there to the world stage is a mesmerizing journey of enlightenment and empowerment. Her keen intelligence and unstoppable determination, abetted by her voyage of discovery catapulted her to world attention when she disowned Islam and its barbarities hidden behind a public veil of "peace" and "tolerance" that was in fact, anything but peaceful and tolerant in intent and practise.

Taught as a child that "Suspicion is good, especially if you are a girl. For girls can be taken, or they may yield. And if a girl's virginity is despoiled, she not only obliterates her own honor, she also damages the honor of her father, uncles, brothers, male cousins. There is nothing worse than to be the agent of such catastrophe." As she observed what was happening around her to Muslim women, particularly when contrasted with the lives of women outside Islam, she understood what her mission in life was to be: a champion of Muslim women's basic human rights.

Her journey to spiritual and rational enlightenment took her from her early years as recounted in her book "Infidel", from a point where her mother cursed: "May the Almighty Allah take you away from me! May you rot in a hole. May you die in the fire! What can I ever expect of you? You communist! You Jew!" to the point where she understood finally that the accursed Jews, the very depths of depraved humanity, were anything but and that equality, respect and interaction between peoples is what leads to generosity of spirit and understanding, and finally peace, both spiritual and practical.

Her parents, her extended family, her clan and her tribe disowned her, for her outright and very public rejection of Islamic values. And there was a fatwa issued for her death. She had been forced by her eventual insights to make a choice between family/clan/religion and her release from darkness into acknowledgement of truth and justice. It was her choice to make, and the journey she made in search of the truth was fraught with many instances of uncertainty and fear. But it was a journey she completed and took pride in.

In the acknowledgements of her book "Infidel", she made grateful mention of the assistance and companionship of many people in the wider Western world outside Islam. One of those she mentions is "Susanna, my agent, my friend, my sister - and even sometimes my Jewish mother!"

Her journey was a long, painful, troubled and frightening one. Her strength of character and inborn sense of right and wrong, absolute justice and compassion, led her to her own very personal liberation.

With the onset of winter weather and the few snowfalls we've experienced thus far, some of our acquaintances from our neighbourhood wooded, trailed ravine have been telling us of their woes respecting their dogs' misfortunes in accidentally losing some toenails. The cause is evident; their nails have grown far too long and are therefore susceptible to accidents.

Normal routine hygiene maintenance of dogs is inclusive of regular, as-required nail trimming. No dogs, it seems, really take to having their paws, and more specifically, their nails handled - for the purpose of trimming those nails. Our two are no exception; they are hyper-sensitive about their nails, particularly those of their front paws for reasons we don't understand.

We keep telling ourselves we've got to get around to trimming those nails. And we keep forgetting, so many other little things intervene to take our attention away from this simple, routine task. This morning, finally, we managed to get around to trimming Riley's nails. He was not very appreciative of the attention given him, snarling, growling, generally being extremely unpleasant. Typical Riley behaviour.

Our daughter, who knows more intimately all manner of vital things about the responsibilities of dog owners to their pets, has written a helpful article about just that; trimming dogs' nails, so here is a small portion of that article:

A dog's nails consist of an outer shell which is comprised of dead cells (like our fingernails). The outer shell (a hard material) protects the soft tissue - the blood supply, called the kwick. If your dog has light coloured nails you can usually see the quick through the nail shell. This makes it easy to see where you need to cut the dog's nail…just below the kwick.

If your dog has dark-colour nails and you are uncertain as to where to clip the nail…look underneath the nail. You will see that the nail looks solid (completely filled in) from underneath - up to a point. After that the nail appears hollow - all you see is the nail shell - no fill (no kwick). By taking a look at the nail from underneath, you can see where to cut. Until you have more confidence cutting your dog's nails, just clip a little off the end. Once you gain confidence you can clip a little more of the shell.

What tools do you need to clip your dog's nails?

For very small dogs you can use a pair of dog nail scissors. For larger dogs you need to use a dog nail clipper. Some people also file or use a hand or motorized file to grind their dog's nails down.
Karen the Ottawa Valley Dog Whisperer Links to this post

I have not navigated the mysteries of life, its passages, corridors and byways alone. I have much to be grateful for. That my destiny has been linked to that of another. Although he is hardly 'another' in a deep sense of our communion as life's shared partnership. We have spent most of our lives with one another, comforting and guiding, searching and enjoying, mutually ministering and celebrating and mourning together.

I am, to this day, amazed at the breadth of his interest in all manner of concerns, and his ability to master so many of the creative arts that make life so pleasurable and beautiful. We both have a deep appreciation of the arts, although it is he who is capable of producing his very own beauty, and it is left to me to admire his aesthetic creations.

We have, together, for over 60 years, shared a delight in the artistic and creative work left by their originators for others following them in time and orientation to treasure. I'm not certain, however whether it would enhance our lives or create another kind of inherited misery for us to know the details of the lives of those who have passed before us, leaving us the legacy of their art.

There is that air of mystique, where one cannot but wonder - at the passage of time, at the messages, oblique and imagined, that others have left for us to ponder.

A brilliant Gothic fantasy, one reviewer rhapsodized about Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf". And, it appears, it has staying power as a classic, one of those films one would wish to re-visit, time and again, to find ever-more-revealed hidden features, messages, revelations of critical importance to understanding one's own inner insecurities and phantasmal nightmares.

Max von Sydow, Ingrid Thulin

Last night, we decided we would view the film. We generally set aside Saturday night for this kind of entertainment. "Hour of the Wolf" could not be characterized, however, quite as 'entertainment'. It looked vaguely promising, even setting aside the bleakness of the description of the film's trajectory. And, after all, Max von Sydow and Liv Ullman are themselves living legends of the serious film industry.

Of course, there is also the mystique of genius surrounding Ingmar Bergman, whose many films which mine his own inner sanctum of memory and familial dysfunction have made him famous. There is something truly bleak about the Scandinavian vision of normalcy and hapless human behaviour (?!) and the manner in which it portrays human interactions; similar to the human misery in East European films.

This one put my husband to sleep in short order, but I didn't mind, because we were cuddled together on the sofa, ostensibly to share a viewing experience of great merit. What it was, actually, despite that The Hollywood Reporter had gushed of it as "A manifestation of unique genius", was, to me, a lugubrious, self-indulgent bleakness of enormous proportions.

Just my opinion, of course. It unveiled itself to me as an unfortunate cross between a film about Vincent Van Gogh's dreadfully sad life driven by both his inner demons and his great art, and the film about "The Return of Martin Guerre".

The snow that fell yesterday morning was fast disappearing, joining previous snowfalls in melting into the creek to raise its levels, helped considerably more by the heavy rainfall we experienced a few days earlier. Which event, had it been as cold as usual for this time of year, would have resulted in a considerable snowfall.

The beaver dam, just a few hundred yards on from where we cross the first bridge in the ravine, seems more than adequate to task of holding back the water level in the newly-created beaver pond. Critical to the beavers' over-winter survival, since it must be of a sufficient depth to ensure that the creatures can live there comfortably, underneath that portion of their pond which will freeze over throughout the colder of the winter months.

It's obvious how busy they have been in storing up supplies for winter. We've noted for the last month or so the growing absence of young poplars along the near banks of the creek, where their sharp teeth have cut down trees, during the night-time hours. Some which they started to produce their wedge-cut in, appear to have been abandoned at least temporarily, because of their girth, with more attention given to the immature trees. Some of which have been hung up in the tangled branches of adjacent trees, but which the enterprising beavers have somehow managed to pull free.

Yesterday, for the first time, we saw that they had ventured further up the bank of the creek, above the trails, to begin selecting other potential food sources, having appeared to exhaust the inventory of young poplars closer to the creek itself. Until they clear away those later selections by dragging them into the water and cutting them into useful storage sections, we shall have to clamber over the now-recumbent trees splayed across the trail.

Usually he waits until the last minute. Then he scrambles about frantically trying to think of something special for my birthday. For me, that something special is him. I really need nothing else, and I tell him that. When we were really young and had little money for anything but necessities, while we were raising a family of three infants, I had once berated him for not remembering my birthday with even a tube of lipstick, anything to have me know he cared.

Of course he cared. That was the problem; we had far too much cares. Since then he has never, ever forgotten how much I looked forward to a gesture. The gestures that mean the most are those he takes care with, like the various birthday cards he has designed and thought about over the years. And there have been plenty of those passing years. It has been over 57 years since we were married, well over 60 years of our lives that we've been together as constant companions.

I know he's been absenting himself for periods of time ascribed to the necessity of finding little bits and pieces of tools for his workshop, any explanation that appears to sound reasonable. Hoping to find some item that he feels I would enjoy having. He has dropped hints about a new computer, jewellery, and my response has been that I have everything I want in my possession already.

Yesterday he stated baldly he was setting out for a nearby shopping center. I told him again, what I felt about it. But he rarely listens to anything I say when he's already made up his mind. From his expression on his return, I could readily determine that he was satisfied with this shopping expedition. Obviously, he has satisfied his need to present me with something special on my birthday.