It is a new modern, purpose-built building located in an industrial park, of all places, a short drive from where we live. The reception area is large, and there are offices and examination rooms and labs radiating out from that large introductory area, going well back into the building's capacious volume. Just as well it was a relatively benign day, since my husband elected to wait for me in our car in the parking lot, with our little dog. And wait he did.

I filled out the requisite forms handed to me by a courteous member of the staff, and there were many chirpy, courteous young women on staff, all wearing signature black uniforms, an odd choice for a surgical dentistry practise, employing a roster of some eight dental surgeons, I thought.

I also thought it was quite annoying that I sat there, among other people, on chairs lined up against the walls in that long, broad area, with its large executive-style conference table in the middle, the reception offices off at the end with its many glassed dockets and smiling faces behind each one, for forty minutes before finally being summoned into the inner offices.

The nurse who ushered me into the vacant examination room, expressed admiration for the unusual design of my skirt, and we talked about modern dentistry. She confessed she still felt vestigial fear and apprehension left over from childhood experiences at the prospect of committing to dental surgery of any kind, even at her age, likely her late 50s, and expressed her gratefulness at modern dental advances.

After she left, assuring me that the dental specialist would be along directly I withdrew the novel I was reading from my purse, and waited, reading it. Finally, after about 15 minutes, a burly man appeared, holding out his hand toward me and introducing himself to me by name. His manner, like that of the others within the establishment, was cordial and personable. But it was also more, a warmth emanated from him that extended his courtesy toward the personal.

He examined my mouth after questioning me at some length about my general health, and confirmed that it was a still-embedded wisdom tooth that he was tasked by my general dental practitioner to extract, not the molar that stands next to it, as I had assumed from the explanation and conversation I'd had a month earlier at my family dentist's office. And he guided me with a mirror to point out precisely where the area is located, pointing it out to me on an X-ray of my mouth that my dentist had forwarded. Strange that I could have garbled the message so badly.

This man is an oral and maxillofacial surgery specialist. He answered all my question in a gentle and unassuming manner, with a touch of humour that I appreciated. He appeared to be in his mid-60s, and, as he told me, a child of Holocaust survivors. He spoke of how moved he had been when he read a book about the psychological make-up of children of Holocaust survivors, saying that it reflected accurately his own childhood and younger years' experience, and how it had all affected him his entire life.

He also said how miraculous it seems to him, and it would to his parents as well if they were still alive, that he is able to visit relatives living in Jerusalem, in Israel, a Jewish state.  His parents came from Poland and that is where, during the war years from 1941 to liberation in 1945, they were imprisoned in concentration camps that were death camps, yet they managed to survive. To live another life, to raise children. And his utter amazement at what these traumatized people, like his parents, managed to make of their lives, reaching out to the wider community to aid in the building of hospitals, schools.

The miserable deprivation, fear and calamity that befell them was of such a magnitude, he said, we can never fully comprehend. He has visited Yad Veshem on a number of occasions, felt profoundly moved by the experience, yet understands that despite having grown to adulthood with parents who survived the Holocaust he himself cannot fully plumb the depths of what people like his parents experienced, and survived.

Finally, we shook hands, remarked to one another how much we had enjoyed and appreciated speaking to each other, and he ushered me over to an interior appointment desk where, again, perky young women were serenely dispatching their duties with cheerful quiet confidence. A bit of a comedy ensued as I attempted to determine where I should stand before the desk as there were others there also awaiting the opportunity to book further appointments, as I was doing, for the extraction of the offending wisdom tooth.

An elderly man whom I took to be about my age, insisted that I precede him and I in turn did the equivalent of 'after you'. This little exchange repeated itself until I finally agreed to take my turn before he did, though I felt his was properly the next turn.

During our exchange, I had noticed hanging on the wall a watercolour painting of a fishing dory with the form of a porpoise rising high out of the water beside the dory. He turned around to see what I was looking at, smiled, turned back to me and said he had been on the sea with the Canadian Navy during the Second World War. I must have expressed doubt, and he clarified how it was possible by telling me he was 92 years old. Impossible to ever come to that conclusion on one's own; he was sturdy, confident on his feet, very self-assured and articulate. His father, he smiled at me, lived to 104. His wife had died twelve years earlier, and his daughter now looks to his care; she, he said, is just like her mother.

One never knows what interaction with other people will reveal about the world around us.

Ice, from last night's freezing rain, coated the outdoors this morning, once the ice fog had burned itself off, leaving just a light veil of mist in its wake. But the footing in the ravine this morning was much superior to what it had been on yesterday's morning walk.

Yesterday, while we were walking in a single-file narrow track that had been forged through the snowpack that now included the ten centimeters that had collected the day before, I asked my husband what he would prefer among three choices for that evening's dinner menu that I know full well he is not enthusiastically fond of, but which I revisit from time to time.

The choices were to select either a macaroni-and-cheese dish to which I always add tinned salmon, a cheese quiche or a vegetable-cheese-fish strata. He was silent, then said he was thinking about it. A few minutes later his suggestion was voiced: how about an onion-tomato-cheese tart? Which took me by surprise, since this too isn't one of his favourites. He is not enamoured of most non-meat dishes unless they're cheese blintzes, potato latkes, or omelettes.

So I set about preparing that tart. First slicing and chopping two garlic cloves and four medium sized onions, and stir-frying them until they were just beginning to brown. Then I prepared the pie crust; cup and a half of flour, two-thirds cup Crisco shortening, tsp. of salt, two tablespoons of lemon juice and enough cold water to result in a almost-dry but firm and flexible dough. I rolled out the bottom layer and fit it into one of the pottery pie dishes that our son had made for us. Then spread the onions over the bottom, followed by a generous cup of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, sprinkled a chopped half orange bell pepper over, and then placed a half-dozen small sliced cocktail tomatoes over the cheese, sprinkling them with freshly grated pepper and dried sweet basil leaves. Sprinkling finally with a thin layer of cheese I had reserved for that purpose.

The top crust was rolled out, fitted over the pie and baked in a 350-degree F. oven until it was sizzling in the interior, with the crust nicely browned. It went very nicely with a fresh vegetable salad and sliced strawberries over Greek yogurt for dessert.

We're getting a few days of (temporary) relief from the cold snap that has tumbled us headlong into the icy dead of winter this past week. With temperatures set to rise to a balmy -6-degrees C. and freezing rain forecast for this afternoon we made our way a little earlier than usual into the ravine. Yesterday's snowfall of ten centimetres was in full evidence on the trees surrounding us like frozen steeples of crystalline white. We haven't seen crows for quite awhile, but there they were, flying high and roosting low.

We were well swaddled for the cold. I've been finding it now, at my age when I can no longer proceed in the brisk fashion still available to me twenty, ten years ago - even five years ago - resulting in an incapacity to build up a head of steam as it were, burning energy and helping in this way to keep warm. Lately, going out in -12-degrees feels more like -25, inclusive of the toll that wind takes in lowering core body temperature; the body diverting its attention from the extremities to the trunk.

My habit of doling out peanuts throughout the length of our walk further incapacitates my ability to retain body heat, when I wear a single mitten, discarding for the purpose of distributing peanuts, my outer, fleece-lined leather mitten, making me even more vulnerable. Yesterday I kept both mittens on and just shook peanuts out of the bag.

We came across Max halfway through our peregrination, with his usual light red jacket open at the throat, wielding two ski poles and zipping his way through his circuit, his thin body looking as frail as ever. Today his forehead, nose and upper cheeks looked as though they'd been painted bright pink. Looks to me as though he has come very close to frost-bite, perhaps yesterday in the cold and snow whipped by the wind. He seems oblivious to the need to protect vulnerable bare patches of skin.

Lilly romped by, her lovely white pelt melding into the landscape, and her jovial human following. Soon after the two fuzzy little terriers that have become best friends came along, happy to see us. Struggling up the penultimate hill to our final destination after them was their human companion. And he was struggling. He is not yet out of his late 20s, a robust, well-built quite tall young man whose profession is that of a fire fighter.

So if someone like that, in the full flush of energetic youth with a professional mandate to stay vigorous and strong was having difficulties traversing the snow-laden landscape that prompted me to stop and rest far more often than my husband required for himself, I suppose it's a kind of vindication; tough is tough.

It took us a full two hours to complete our usual circuit. During which we relished the sight of the snow-coated ravine. The creek, completely frozen over and heaped with snow. Familiar landmarks sometimes disappear in the anonymity of a full-flushed snow blanket.

The wind created a wonderfully ephemeral scene, urging snow off high-steepled firs and pines. The result, an exquisitely fragile and arcane-appearing mist of snow as the abundance high above submitted to the wind's imperative. Chickadees flitted about in the dense security of the snow-stippled spruces.

And by the time we emerged finally at the top of our street, we were fairly bushed.

Did you know?

Jews won fame gazing at the stars. Sir William Herschel, the first to measure the distances of stars from the sun, formulated a theory for the behavior of double stars, in addition to discovering the planet Uranus.

Karl Schwarzschild mde contributions to the study of the internal composition of stars.

To confound that school of anti-Semitism which holds Jews responsible for communism because of Karl Marx and to comfort that school of of anti-Semitism which holds the Jews responsible for capitalism without knowing why, let us point out that David Ricardo is regarded as the father of capitalism with his development of a theory of rent, property and wages, and of a quantity theory of money.

We urge caution, however, for the anti-capitalist anti-Semites; Ricardo's father held a symbolic Jewish funeral service for his son when he was converted and married into English gentry.

From: Max I. Dimont - Jews, God and History

The food stuffs that find their place in my weekly grocery shopping cart emphasize basics. Basic ingredients that I can forge into a nutritious and good-tasting meal. I do not ordinarily place into that shopping cart convenience foods, foods that have been processed, pre-prepared, foods that have been so altered from their original state that they barely resemble their origins and purpose.

Fresh rates high on my shopping list. Fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, fish, poultry and grain products. We bake our own bread for the most part, although my husband is partial at times to commercial soft-baked goods that I avoid personally. I have always felt it to be a pleasurable challenge to put edible ingredients together in combinations that taste good and have high-impact nutritional value.

But I deviate completely in one small corner of my shopping cart. In that corner I place a plastic shopping bag and I fill it deliberately with food which still has a nutritional whack, but which has been modified by being put together in combinations prior to sale by food-product manufacturers. Into that bag goes non-perishable food of a type that needs little-to-no home preparation. For in this kind of shopping I am invested in selecting items that are healthy yet require little manipulation before they're presented at a table.

Those food items include crackers, tinned soups, dehydrated soups, canned bean-and-sauce preparations, tins of salmon or tuna, and tins of chicken and ham. Sometimes I include tea, and occasionally boxed bakery products, and always there are boxes of macaroni-and-cheese combinations. At the cashier out-flow they have become accustomed to my asking them to put everything through with my normal shopping, but to keep these items separate for deposit back into the shopping bag they were gathered in.

On my way out of the supermarket, I am then able to expeditiously place the full-and-paid-for bag of non-perishables into the receptacle placed there for eventual collection by this city's Food Bank. It is a small recognition of our personal good fortune with no wish to avoid the realization that so many others are so much less fortunate.

In Thursday's food section of our local newspaper there was a recipe that caught my eye, and I pointed it out to my husband. It was for something really scrumptious, claimed the food writer. A recipe for brownies, those delicious squares of moist chocolate cake. This one was different because the recipe went on to embellish the brownies with bacon bits crackled in maple syrup, then scattered over the baked brownies. My husband grimaced, and I chuckled.

Obviously, this was one recipe that didn't appeal to us. As it is, I rarely use recipes taken from newspapers, although I do on occasion value the ideas of ingredients-pairing that those recipes inspire in me, and then go on to create something that may resemble the recipe for our own dinner table; my own interpretation if you will. I don't usually measure ingredients when I'm baking. I more or less have a 'feel', a visual inspection of correct amounts in relation to other ingredients. Which isn't surprising, given my experience in handling such ingredients over a half-century and more.

Yesterday I chose to bake carrot muffins for dinner dessert. I use muffin tins and papers twice the ordinary size. In an approximation, I vigorously mixed 2/3 c. of dark brown sugar and a half-cup of Becel margarine, then added two eggs, one-by-one, mixing well between each addition. I measured out a cup of unbleached white all-purpose flour, added a bit of salt, and about a half-teaspoon each of cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves (a little less of the cloves, a little more of the cinnamon), and a teaspoon of baking powder, mixing all the dry ingredients together. Then I alternated adding the dry ingredients to the sugar/fat/egg mixture, with a quarter-cup of sour cream.

I had previous grated two very large carrots. I added the carrots, a half-cup raisins, third cup grated coconut, third cup chopped walnuts to the muffin batter, mixing only until well incorporated. And then dolloped it out into the waiting baking cups to bake for about 30 minutes in a 320-degree Fahrenheit convection oven.

When they cooled I mixed a quarter-cup cream cheese with a half-cup Becel, added a teaspoon vanilla, and beat in icing sugar for a loose icing. Which topped the baked, cooled muffins, over which was sprinkled desiccated coconut. They looked great, and tasted even better. Made all the more so by bright explosions of piquancy due to the bits of candied ginger I had snipped into the batter pre-baking.

It is a puzzle for ordinary people to try to understand what motivates those rare others whose curiosity and intrepid sense of adventure compel them to risk their lives exploring parts of the world whose human-hostile environment presents as a clear and present danger to all living things other than those equally rare biological specimens which nature has equipped to sustain themselves despite the crippling cold and destructive winds that are to be found at either the top or the bottom of this globe we call home.


There are now those whose professional choices have made them select to live in danger for part of their lives, in the interests of science and further exploration. They spend their days performing scientific research in the Arctic and the Antarctic, north and south. Now, tour ships can take the curious whose pedestrian lives are absent of risk, to temporarily visit the Arctic. No such tours have yet been touted for the Antarctic, a far riskier endeavour.

And now, international news media have picked up a story of three men working for a Calgary-based airline, en route to the South Pole to visit a research station on Terra Nova Bay, lost in those vast frozen stretches, when their plane appears to have gone down. The pilot, Bob Heath, was said to have been one of Kenn Borek Air's most experienced, but he and two other Canadians in the Twin Otter are now missing.

New Zealand air rescue appears to have located the position where the small plane descended in the Queen Alexander Range roughly four hours by helicopter from the U.S. McMurdo Station. It was the small plane's emergency beacon that alerted authorities to the plane's likely whereabouts. But search and rescue operations have been placed in abeyance, with an intemperate weather system blanketing the area; heavy snow falling, minus-30-degrees Centigrade and winds raging up to 17- km/h.

"Soon after breakfast the ice closed again. We were standing by, with our preparations as complete as they could be made, when at 11 a.m. our floe suddenly split right across under the boats. We rushed our gear on to the larger of the two pieces and watched with strained attention for the next development. The crack had cut through the site of my tent. I stood on the edge of the new fracture, and, looking across the widening channel of water, could see the spot where for many months my head and shoulders had rested when I was in my sleeping-bag. The depression formed by my body and legs was on our side of the crack. The ice had sunk under my weight during the months of waiting in the tent, and I had many times put snow under the bag to fill the hollow. The lines of stratification showed clearly the different layers of snow. How fragile and precarious had been our resting place! Yet usage had dulled our sense of danger. The floe had become our home, and during the early months of the drift we had almost ceased to realize that it was but a sheet of ice floating on unfathomed seas. Now our home was being shattered under our feet, and we had a sense of loss and incompleteness hard to describe."
Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922), attempting in 1912 to cross the southern continent of Antarctica, but ice crushed his ship the Endurance; he and his men were struggling to find their way across the melting ice pack in search of land.

2 December 1910 - Terra Nova, heading south from New Zealand
"White-out. Compared to the Great Ice Barrier, Ross Island is only a volcanic bobble. Across the sea-ice twenty miles south from Cape Evans, where the carpenters are still fitting out winter quarters, the Barrier seals the end of McMurdo Sound. Beyond, a huge plated wedge of ice larger than France fills the whole indentation in this side of the continent; a cracked white tabletop stretching poleward all the way to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. Blown snow freezes into rippled ridges or sets to a crust that hisses sharply when your foot goes through, or gathers into powdered, floundery drifts. Moving fast to seize the remainder of the summer sledging season Scott and ten others leading ponies or driving dog-teams have laid a curved line of supply dumps out here for next spring. 'Let's leg it', he likes to say. Now, about 150 miles south of Cape Evans, Scott has decided that the ponies can go no further. They have built the bulk of their food and fuel into a neat heap called One Ton Depot, and turned for base, split into separate parties. They travel by night so that the ponies may rest during the warmer day-time hours. Northward in a thick whiteness, then, step Bowers, Oates and Tryggve Gran - a young skier who is finding it quite hard being Norwegian in this company just now, but promised Oates a few days ago he would fight for England in a war, and won a handshake. Each guides an exhausted horse by the head. The horses are roped together in series; their breath whiffles beside the walking men."
from I May Be Some Time, by Francis Spufford

Icy Traverse   Photograph by Herbert G. Ponting, National Geographic

History of Wheat in Canada - The Canadian Encyclopedia

In Canada, wheat probably was first grown at PORT-ROYAL in about 1605; the first exports were made in 1654. Although personnel at some HUDSON'S BAY COMPANY posts experimented with wheat, and the settlers at the RED RIVER COLONY had some success in 1815, the early years in western Canada were precarious ones for wheat farmers. Many cultivars from Europe were tried: some were winter wheats that could not survive Canada's severe winters; others were spring wheats that matured too late for the short growing season.
The cultivar Red Fife, developed in Ontario, became very popular because of its good yield and excellent milling and baking qualities. By about 1870 Red Fife was very popular on the prairies but it, too, froze in the fields in years with early frosts. Later investigations have revealed that Red Fife is actually the central European cultivar Galician.
William SAUNDERS, first director of the Dominion Experimental Farms, was interested in plant breeding. His son, Sir Charles SAUNDERS, took over the wheat-breeding work in 1903 and developed the cultivar Marquis (see MARQUIS WHEAT) from a cross, made some years earlier, between Hard Red Calcutta and Red Fife. He had a small increase plot (12 plants) of Marquis in 1904, but it took several years to verify that it matured earlier than Red Fife and had excellent yield and superior milling and baking qualities. It was distributed in the spring of 1909 and quickly became very popular throughout Canada. Western wheat production was increasing rapidly at this time: 2 million t, 1904; 3.7 million t, 1906; 7.7 million t, 1913. Red Fife and Marquis made Canada famous for its high-quality hard red spring wheat. Marquis was later adopted as the statutory standard of quality for this class of wheat, a position it held until 1987.

Years ago when we lived temporarily in Japan and the United States I missed the excellent quality of  Canadian-grown wheat, most particularly for yeast baking. The quality of the flours available in both Japan and the United States simply did not match that of Canadian-grown wheat, and the baking products that came out of my oven was inferior in comparison to what I regularly baked in Canada. On our return to Canada after years abroad, my impression was validated once I resumed baking in my own kitchen.

And now, wheat and wheat products with their high-gluten properties have been accused of compromising the health of humans. The theory being, according to the increasingly popular Wheat Belly, written by Dr. William Davis - a cardiologist who has focused on high gluten content contained in wheat products as the major culprit in swift rises in blood sugar and the human body's reaction - is deleterious to those with diabetes, and to others in the general population as well.

It is precisely the high gluten properties of Canadian-grown wheat that make it so suitable for yeast-raised bread products. Home-baked yeast goods are far superior in quality and content to commercially produced breads with their cotton-batten texture and questionable preservative qualities that the consuming public has become so accustomed to. But it is all uses, domestic and commercial, of gluten-full wheats that have been placed in Dr. Davis's condemnatory cross-hairs.

Who contends that the wheat currently grown, milled and placed in the marketplace of human consumption bears little resemblance to the types of wheat that our forbears were accustomed to, more 'natural' types of wheat, not contaminated with agricultural scientists' interfering research. Research that resulted from the need to give wheat a longer shelf life, and to produce a type of wheat that bore greater yields to feed a hungry planet with its growing population base.

Wheat was transformed from its traditional natural guise to a Franken-grain, Dr. Davis contends, injurious to human health, and responsible for the growth of celiac disease within the general population, and other consumers' discomfort and weight-gain as the body attempts to process and draw nutrition from products that are less nutritious and challenge the human body to adjust to the differences in the newer product with the wheat germ and bran removed.

Evidence is mounting, he claims, that new strains of wheat are straining the human metabolism; hybridized/genetically modified what protein - gluten - represents a completely new challenge for the human body to properly digest. "Celiac disease is the canary in the coal mine", Dr. Davis warns, concerning wheat consumption. Bread containing gluten has a whopping big glycemic index; table sugar has a GI of 59; a slice of whole grain bread, a GI of 72.

Spikes in blood sugar wear out the body. Resulting, eventually, in glucose-protein combinations that are glycation end-products; end-wastes that may lead to cataracts, dementia, wrinkles, coronary artery disease, cancer, arthritis. These developments may occur as a result of blood glucose-increasing effects eventually leading to this overload on the human body and destruction of normal body tissues and function. According to Dr. Davis.

A lot of people are convinced by his arguments; his theory intersects with scientific research that seems to corroborate to some degree his thesis. Using non-gluten products to replace ordinary wheat to produce baked goods that we have become accustomed to and rely upon to form the basis of much of our human diet, is not particularly rewarding. Finding those replacements has become easier than ever, but the end-product of their use is disappointing; texture and taste are dismal.

Perhaps the solution to the dilemma now being posed by more people than ever becoming alert to their nutritional health and the possible consequences of consuming wheat products is the moderating influence of awareness of over-consumption. Which is to say over-consumption of any food stuffs. Which brings us to the Golden Mean and the understanding that moderation is the key to all of life's successes.

I'll stay with ordinary wheat products. I've seen and tried and tasted the 'best' recipes for wheat replacements and have not been impressed one little bit. Food should be appealing, it should taste good and challenge our sensory appetites. Eating gluten-free food is a necessity for those unfortunates among us diagnosed with celiac disease, it is not an imperative for those with normal digestive systems.

Eating modestly and appreciating the food eaten may be the key to remaining healthy; a disciplined modicum of awareness required.

It's hard to believe our current passports are due for renewal; where did that five years fly to? We went along to have our photos taken for passport renewal, and it was dispatched in no time at all. The young woman looking after the photo establishment was pleasant and efficient, the process completed expeditiously. I was even holding Riley in his carrying case over my shoulder at the time she took my headshot.

He was tired and asleep. I looked fairly dishevelled, with my grey mop of hair in dismal head-clutching disarray resulting from having clamped and tied a warm, lined wool hat over my hair when we hazarded a ravine walk earlier, despite the wind and the cold. And despite having, we felt, more than adequately shielded ourselves against the icy minus-16-degree temperature with wind, I could feel the cold clamping over me, penetrating even my mid-body layers. Progress on the trails was necessarily slow, since Riley's gait was hampered by his boots. In any event, I haven't the energy level of a decade earlier when our speed traversing the trails kept us warm through our level of energy expenditure. Though not much of my face was bared to the cold and the wind, it felt frozen, my nose painful.

The photos completed, we took them, along with the forms we had earlier filled out to the Service Canada offices closest to us. Which just happens to be where the Beacon Hill Salvation Army Thrift Shop also sits. Last month my husband had plowed through his clothing and accumulated a hefty bagful, and I had done the same thing several weeks later, clearing my cupboard of items extraneous to my needs and which hadn't seen action for quite a while. So we hauled those bags along to the Sally Ann, and went to Service Canada for passport renewal.

Last night the temperature plunged to minus-30-degrees Centigrade, was minus-27, (with an expected high of -22) when we came downstairs for breakfast. I think we'll give our daily ravine tramp a pass this day.

On the lookout for greens that were different and could perhaps be an alternate say, to spinach and broccoli, I thought, when last shopping, that the Swiss chard looked interesting. It was robust looking, fresh and attractive, so I bought a bunch, thinking to replace it on the next pizza I prepared, for the spinach that I've been sprinkling, chopped over the other ingredients. It was plain awful. There is an underlying taste to Swiss chard that I find utterly repulsive.

If it is an acquired taste, it is one I have no wish to further explore. Although I did make another attempt. I thought I would try a method that I saw recommended, to saute it gently in a small amount of olive oil in which chopped garlic and onion had already been gently stirred, sprinkle lightly with dried hot peppers and then braise it all for a few finishing minutes.

My husband ate it gamely, and I ate it grimly. It was still awful. While my husband thought it to be a credible alternative to spinach (which we both like enormously), I thought there was little taste-resemblance to the fabled spinach. This is an experiment with a particular vegetable that will not be repeated in this house.

This evening, we will have cheese blintzes prefaced by a large fresh garden salad (as fresh as the ingredients can be, at this time of year, which, given modern delivery and storage methods is fairly respectable). For desert, those wonderful 'cuties', tiny, sweet and tasty clementines hailing from the United States.

By dinnertime last night the temperature had dipped to minus-14-degrees Centigrade, and the icy wind was as fierce as ever. Without doubt this would bring down trees in rural areas, and there would be a lot of people left without power as electricity lines would come down with the trees. One of a number of fairly good reasons to think twice about living in hard-to-service areas of the province.

We were comfortable, however, and grateful for it. The gas fireplace was burning brightly, and though we keep our house warmed to below 68-degrees F. (can't change a lifetime of familiarity with Fahrenheit in favour of the more recent Centigrade) it seemed fitting to sit down to a dinner of hot soup and freshly-baked bread. I had last night set aside a half-cup of pulses to soak overnight. Those varied beans/peas had bubbled for hours along with minced garlic, chopped onion and celery and tomato, with chopped zucchini and sweet potato added later in a chicken broth to provide us with the soup portion of the meal.

After breakfast I had put together a yeast dough for evening dinner rolls. Incorporating about two-thirds of a cup of grated fresh cheddar cheese with the rising yeast liquid to which I added a tablespoon of olive oil, beaten egg and half-cup milk, along with salt and flour, kneading until it was soft and pliable, I set it aside covered in the refrigerator. And then shaped it into rolls, brushed with butter and sprinkled with sesame seeds around four in the afternoon, to bake prior to dinnertime.

I had two bowls of soup to my husband's one, but he ate four rolls to my two, and with them slices of gravelux, which I declined. Finishing it all up with dollops of Greek yoghurt sprinkled liberally with sliced strawberries.

We've been experiencing of late whatever nature felt like tossing our way. Snow, freezing rain, icy temperatures, milder atmospheric conditions, overcast skies making it difficult to distinguish the overhead colour from that which had blanketed the landscape; white and more white. The only colour interrupting the monochromatic white, was the stark, dark colours of tree trunks - and the occasional bright-jacketed colours of people wending their way through the forested ravine close to our street.

Yesterday we started out with billowy, cushioned, light snow covering everything, the result of all-night snow that had brightened the otherwise-dark sky the night before - that lasted until noon the following day, which just happened to be yesterday. Then followed a rise in temperature to zero, with nary a hint of wind, making for a beautiful ravine walk but a challenge to legs walking through the puffed snow on the trails, throughout our usual round-trip.

Soon after we returned home in the mid-afternoon, rain began; not freezing rain, but ordinary garden-variety rain that began to depress the lightness of the newfallen snow into moist-packed snow. That followed freezing rain and finally more snow. By this morning the wind had picked up enormously, even though the temperature remained hovering around the freezing mark.

We were encouraged by weather predictions of a fast-freeze with temperatures dropping to minus-13 by late afternoon, to get out early this morning for our ravine walk. And, it seems, plenty of others living nearby had the very same idea; we came across quite a few people walking their dogs, just as we were doing.

Despite the relatively mild temperature, once we were out of the protective confines of the ravined woods, the wind whipped an icy chill into our faces. The very same wind that has taken down some of the dead trees that have been standing for quite some time, in the ravine. A slightly elevated chance of danger...

My weekly food shopping expeditions at my favoured local supermarket has now been extended marginally to include a weekly deposit into the large cage that now sits in the foyer of the store for food bank collection. I have welcomed its arrival, since I have long agitated for the store to have one placed there, as many other supermarkets do, and this one seemed reluctant to do so.

Just before the Christmas season I was surprised to see that one had finally been put in place. Certainly not because I had asked that this be done, but because, perhaps, someone had thought it might represent a good public relations position.

In any event, it's there. And since its arrival I have been able to take along an extra plastic shopping bag for the sole purpose of filling it up with items that I will deposit in that welcoming cage for non-perishable food product collection. Many years ago when I shopped at a different supermarket I made it a priority to do this on a weekly basis, and I missed that opportunity when I changed over to the current place where I now shop, to take advantage of their really excellent prices.

The choices for inclusion are many and varied, from Kraft dinner packages to packages of teabags, boxes of crackers, tins of salmon, tuna, ham or chicken, and cans of baked beans or spaghetti or soups, and many other items that appear to present themselves as useful selections. Everywhere there are people who must use the anonymous help of strangers to allow themselves to put food on the table because of strained financial circumstances.

And everyone who lives in society should give a thought occasionally to the plight of those less fortunate than themselves. A slight effort, a reasonable expenditure, and aid is given.

It's interesting what we inherit both by direct exposure when we are young and through observation when we ourselves take to trying out various types of solutions to ordinary tasks. I am 76 years old, and my mother taught me that the simple lemon has many uses, both as an astringent and as an antiseptic. In fact, it shares many similar properties in that way with vinegar.

So there is nothing new about the use of lemon juice as a cleaning agent. My mother used to use diluted lemon juice as a very effective rinse after shampooing hair. I find it works in a far superior way to the chemical-laden commercial products. It leaves the hair silky-smooth and shining.

With lemon juice or vinegar and a small amount of a gentle-action liquid detergent and water a good shampoo results. Equal parts liquid detergent and water, and a much smaller amount of vinegar/lemon juice does the trick. And no rinse is required, hair turns out sparkling clean, and there is, in fact, a shining sparkle evident afterward, the hair strands squeaky clean.

I use an old spray-bottle left over from emptying a commercial spray product for cleaning bathrooms to fill it when required with a good-quality liquid dishwater detergent to one-eighth-full, add vinegar to the half-way mark of the bottle, then fill the remainder with plain water. This results in an effective cleaning solution for kitchen and bathroom.

When I am preparing a piecrust dough, after mixing the flour/salt with butter/margarine, I use a tablespoon of lemon juice sprinkled over, before adding a scant amount of cold water to produce a kneadable, rolling-pin dough. Alternately, vinegar can be used in place of the lemon, to produce an excellent end product.

It's difficult for ordinary mortals to understand the passion that motivates some rare souls to enterprises that require extraordinary will to survive, while surrendering themselves to dangerous situations willingly. Take, for example, women who knowingly place themselves in danger because they are driven to pursue a challenge. For someone like Lara Logan, a news correspondent who has found herself in dangerous situations, and who knows how to protect herself, sometimes there is no adequate protection against danger.

When I thought I am going to die here, my next thought was I can't believe I just let them kill me, that that was as much fight as I had. That I just gave in and I gave up on my children so easily, how could you do that? ...I had to fight for them. And that's when I said, "Okay, it's about staying alive now. I have to just surrender to the sexual assault. What more can they do now? They're inside you everywhere." So the only thing to fight for, left to fight for, was my life. 
Lara Logan, 60 Minutes interview

 

Her ordeal was horrific. She thought she would not survive. The seasoned armed bodyguard she relied upon was himself surrounded by hostile men in Tahrir Square after the abdication of President Hosni Mubarak, and was incapable of protecting her. It was, finally, a group of elderly Egyptian women who led to the scattering of the 200 Egyptian men who preyed upon her, while the Egyptian military standing nearby watching, as bystanders took photos of her plight, made no move to rescue her. She considers her survival a miracle.

And then there are ambitious women whose physical, superbly athletic prowess as high-altitude alpinists and pioneer summitteers present as fascinating accounts of women who made their own kind of history as celebrated mountaineers, conquering the ascents of the world's highest, most dangerous peaks, and the climatic and atmospheric conditions that contribute to their danger, whose exploits stand out as a lesson in courage and aspirational surmounting of all obstacles before them.

Nowhere is hindsight more 20-20 than in mountaineering. The concept of a rest day at 8,000 meters is absurd. At that altitude the body is dying so fast that every minute is measured like precious gold against the loss of brain cells and body fluids. The thought that they would be more motivated and feel better after another day in its death rattle is unfathomable. And yet a handful of the world's strongest climbers reasoned that a day of leisure in the thin air was better than trying for the summit sleep-deprived. 

These are seasoned climbers, well experienced in the pursuit of their single-minded passions, in a state of hypoxic confusion, the brain starved of blood and oxygen, and in danger of succumbing to altitude sickness so dire it could take their lives. In the end, conditions beyond which no human, however experienced to altitude and weather conditions, regardless of their superb physical condition, is capable of surmounting such difficulties, do succumb.

People who envision themselves equal to any situation, struggle with their fear of the mountain on the one hand, and their self-assurance that the dreadful deaths - due to avalanches, slipping off the icy mountain slopes in whiteout conditions or due to faulty equipment, or simply through sheer exhaustion - happens to others, not themselves. People who have convinced themselves of their personal invincibility often act impulsively, heedlessly, against better judgement - not necessarily their own, but the intelligent, powerfully observant advice of experienced others whose cautionary advice in neutrally assessing situations they prefer to decline.

An accounting, titled The True Stories of The First Five Women Who Climbed K2, The World's Most feared Mountain, in Savage Summit by Jennifer Jordan is one of countless books relating the spirited adventurous souls that have set out to summit the world's tallest, most formidable peaks, at the ceiling of the world.

They went, they saw, were awestruck, and they conquered. And many did not survive their triumphs.

My quest has concluded, finally, with a good measure of success. Simple enough; I was looking for a good-quality dry floor mop. Certainly not a mop head made of micro-fibre; utterly useless. They don't slide easily along a tile or wood floor; they don't pick up dust the way a cotton, wool or mixed-fibre mop head will. They have critical parts made of plastic, which don't last; obviously deliberately, built-in obsolescence to force the user to continue buying replacements.

As a result of a costly, ubiquitous public relations/advertising campaign the Swiffer brand appears to have swept the market. It has certainly swept retail shelves clean of the old-fashioned, well-made and useful types of floor mops, which are no longer available at hardware stores, big-box retailers, even cleaning supply outlets. In favour of the microfibre types which, coasting on the success of Swiffer, are now made by a large number of other brands.

Searching online gained me little satisfaction. Online inventory of various cleaning supply outlets also largely featured the microfibre mops. I did manage to buy a really inferior product at a nearby hardware shop made by Tormax with a well-designed mop head, a long-strand-fibre mop head that performed well, but many of its vital constituent parts were of plastic and they rarely lasted longer than a month. I kept buying them until the store's stock was depleted, and that was it. Evidently the company no longer makes the product.

I found just what I was looking for in design, quality construction, size and material on an pop-up advertising site that has lately become ubiquitous. Among those products that really fit the bill for my requirements (size being of absolute importance; anything up to 18" but preferably smaller, for domestic, not industrial use: those large dry mops used by industry, sized 24", 36", 48", are enormous and too heavy), but shipment was a problem. I would try to order them but would be informed that shipment is not available outside the U.S.

Finally, my husband, telephoning around various industry cleaning supply outlets found one in the distant far west of the city that claimed to have what we were looking for. We had previously gone along to others and weren't too hopeful this time. We made the long, confusing drive out yesterday afternoon, and sure enough, they had a mop called Histat by Marino, manufactured in Concord, Ontario. The handle is universal to all their sizes, but specific to the mop head, made of solid wood, and heavy, but the mop head is a reasonable 12", (the smallest in a wide array of sizes) its strings made of polyester and it works extremely well. All its other parts are of metal, and meant to last.

I also was able to buy there stick-handled furniture dusters made of lambswool, in two sizes; one type with expandable handles, the other a short handle, and availed myself of five of them to replace the annoying thin polyester-fibre ones that continually drop fibres when they're being used. This product is made in Winnipeg, Manitoba, called Furgale. And they were priced at a fraction of the cost, purchasing these types of lambwool dusters from regular retail outlets.

As ridiculous as it seemed, I felt like a kid in a candy shop. Oh, and when we got home with our treasures, my husband obligingly sawed a foot off the top of the dry mop handle, making it more useful for my five-foot frame to handle.

Sigh, life is full of irritating little events that pose as concerns until they are solved, and we hobble along until the next one erupts. For us it was the surprise that one of the electronic/automatic garage door openers had decided to default on the contract of dependency we had with it. Suddenly it uncourteously refused to respond to the hand-held device that instructs it to open and close. It had been balky over the period of a week or so, back when we were experiencing some really icy-cold weather. And we were now in a period of January thaw, with milder temperatures prevailing.

Last time my husband attempted to close the garage door, he looked up to see smoke rising from the site of the device itself located on the garage ceiling; always an ominous sign. He gathered a few tools from his workshop and managed to get the cover off, and then gazed in amazement at the board within with its intricate computerized system completely covered in moisture. Somehow, he reasoned, water had gotten into the works and fouled things up.

He attributed it to the fact that we now had tightly-fitting garage doors. So that when the car was driven into the garage and the hot engine sent its warmth up to the ceiling of the garage it impacted on the opener, and then froze as the heat dissipated and the cold air once again dominated. Causing, in the milder temperature, the ice to invade the opener and fill it with moisture.

He tried fiddling with the device, tried to dry everything, to determine whether that would help. And then he called the manufacturer's help line. Moisture, the other end quizzed; don't think so. And then something about a capacitor that probably exploded, sending the light oil everywhere. The light still didn't quite dawn, and it was decided by my do-it-yourself-husband to finally seek the help of the experts.

He called a professional garage door specialist whom we had on previous occasions perform some work for us; replacing that taut, heavy, giant garage-door spring, for example. Calibrating a newly-installed garage door opener that refused to work, until it finally did. Over he came, with an assistant, recommending the opener be replaced for a new one rather than simply replacing the capacitor. It took them working in tandem an hour to do the work. Work that would have taken my husband a full day or more to complete, in huge discomfort working in a freezing garage.

What's more, they installed a opener that was of a higher calibre quality than the one being replaced. And charged the very same that it would have cost to buy another one retail, plus all their labour. The added bonus; adjustment to the garage door so it wouldn't thump down as heavily as it did. The expert theorized that this was the fount of the problem; the garage door coming down too heavily, sealing too tightly, so that in inclement weather (freezing rain; frigid overnight temperatures), the bottom froze, meaning that the automatic door opener had to struggle too hard to fee and to lift it.

That struggle ended in the capacitor exploding, sending light oil everywhere appearing as though it was water, which it wasn't. The new opener that had just been installed was designed to stop if it encountered such strong resistance.

Human nature is unpredictable and strange. It is also remarkable how an entire geographic demographic like a nation shares a number of cultural traditions in common, a living demonstration of how groups, large and small, adapt themselves to life, values and other aspects of herd instinctual adaptation to build a heritage. The Japanese, for example, fancy themselves as one with nature, honouring all things natural and expressing joy and contentment at being part of Nature.

Japanese flock in huge numbers to their national zoo in Tokyo, to view the giant Panda at those times when viewing is available. Their covenant with nature can be seen in what and how they worship at Buddhist shrines. Their veneration for the wholesomeness of nature in its purest forms is expressed in how they view ancient trees. And how they masterfully and respectfully create Zen Buddhist gardens, simple and peaceful. As horticulturalists the Japanese are world masters.

Signage in forested mountains warn alpinists to be aware of the presence of native macaque monkeys, and to take care not to bother them. The agile, muscular grace and beauty of giant carp swimming in countless pools in gardens surrounding temples, where ancient, treasured bonsai are set out in neat rows speak to the worship of nature.

Yet this society is also practical enough, as a nation of three isolated islands surrounded by the Earth's eastern seas to also value the bounty that surrounds them, voraciously harvesting aquatic creatures to dine upon, even those species that can be harmful to human health and inclusive of those great creatures we admire as the largest living species on the planet. And whose present and future existence is imperilled by over-hunting/fishing/netting/spearing/consumption. Japan is not alone in threatening the existence of other species through human desire; China too stands out as a major offender, whose palate and pharmacopoeia threatens to mercilessly enlarge the endangered species list.

Japan stands accused of deliberately misappropriating funding meant for the rebuilding and rescue of portions of its population from the dire effects of the massive earthquake it suffered in 2011, along with the tsunami that created a nuclear meltdown disaster. Some of the $187-billion set aside for massive tsunami-rescue projects were shown by a government audit to have funded an unconnected array of works, including an increase in security for the country's whale hunt.

The Japanese fishing fleet's hunt for sharks and endangered whale species, which Japanese authorities claim is undertaken for the furtherance of 'scientific research', has come to violent confrontations with the environmentalist Sea Shepherd Society. Set to confront the Japanese whale-hunting fleet once again as they prepare to undertake that controversial hunt.
The Nisshin Maru
Photo: Sea Shepherd

Dreams, many believe, I feel, have something of the occult behind them. They puzzle us with their often-strange messages. Perhaps they aren't at all messages presaging anything, but rather reflections of our subconscious dreads and apprehensions, and sometimes merely somewhat pleasant interpretations, however opaque they seem, of our preoccupations and experiences.

Sometimes we are haunted by dreams that appear at undefined intervals, repeating a theme that may reflect our vulnerabilities and fears. It seems we can do nothing to dispel them. They seem to have their origins in the dim past when we were young and impressionable. We would prefer the pleasant ones to those which trouble us and from which we awake with the lingering feeling of dread they inspired.

Sometimes they seem irrelevant to any kind of accounting; we cannot imagine why our minds would dredge up some of the scenarios we become subject to in our deep sleep when our mind wanders and probes and selects and rewinds.

Last night I dreamed of dry-mopping a house far larger than the home we have, with a series of different dry mops, fretting I would never get the job done. (Dry dust mops with cotton heads are almost impossible to come by; I've searched exhaustively through all the hardware stores and big-box emporiums with hardware/cleaning sections to no avail. Looking on the Internet I have discovered some sites but they don't ship to Canada. The new types of mops are disposable and useless; micro-fibre simply isn't effective, yet those models are ubiquitous; I've tried them all and they crowd my cleaning cupboard; futile, all of them.)

But then there was an interruption; an old friend of mine recently mourning the death of her husband, suddenly appeared in my home, this vast estate, surrounded by a group of her friends who coddled and cuddled her. I call her my friend, but have never met her in the flesh; we have corresponded over a period of about 40 years; she from California, I from Ontario. I proffered my condolences yet again; we all told her how good she looked; not like 80, but 60 years of age. Yet I wondered why she had grown a brush-moustache. How peculiar dreams are.

If I am to dream, why does my unconscious evade my more troubling concerns, I wonder. For always at the back of my mind, there is the anguish I live with at the complete and utter disconnection between ourselves and an intimate family member, a painful reality with which we live and can find no solutions for. We remain deprived and hopeless.

He likes cookies; who doesn't?  But there's a limited repertoire of the types of cookies my husband likes to eat. I bake chocolate chip and gingerbread types for other members of the family, when they come to visit. Those, he will tentatively taste one or two of, when they're fresh out of the oven, but otherwise they could languish forgotten, rejected by him.  He likes shortbread types, but most of all he prefers old-fashioned rolled sugar cookies, crisp and mildly sweet.

The cookie jar was empty of the last batch I'd baked, finger-length shortbread cookies dipped in melted chocolate, so I set about preparing a new batch. It's simple enough; I rarely use a cookbook any longer, much less scrupulously measure out ingredients. I am familiar enough with the process after almost sixty years of cooking and baking to know by feel and by sight on a more casual basis the amounts required to produce a successful product.

The sugar cookies are simple enough; about 2/3 cup butter/margarine, 1 cup granulated sugar, two eggs, tsp.vanilla, 1-1/2 to 2 cups of all-purpose flour sifted with 1 tsp.baking powder and 1/2 tsp. salt. The dough can be covered and placed in the refrigerator for an hour preparatory to rolling it out. The consistency should be light but firm enough to handle. Rolled to about 1/2" or less, depending on how crisp and light one wants them, sprinkled lightly with coarse-grain sugar, cut into shape, baked until light brown in a 325-degree F. oven.

Inevitably, the fragrance of baking cookies will cling to my hair. And although it's a pleasant enough fragrance I don't appreciate it, particularly when the fragrance becomes acute, usually when we're out walking in the ravine. Which happened yesterday; instead of having the wonderful clean scent of the winter outdoors invading my nostrils I was acutely aware of the fragrance of baked cookies.

I mentioned this laughingly to an acquaintance we came across during our perambulation. She was curious, wanted to know the type of cookie, where the recipe originally came from. And from that enquiry came a bit of a story unto itself. The cookbook was one my husband, then only 18, bought for me in self-defence for I had no cooking skills whatever, and nor did he. We lived in a tiny rented flat, with a very small but functional kitchen we had equipped with stove, refrigerator, table and chairs.

The cookbook he brought home was The American-Jewish Cookbook, a veritable compendium of recipes from just about everywhere in the world with a peculiar Yiddish twist, and I loved it. I learned to bake through the auspices of that cookbook, and to cook palatable meals; it became my go-to mainstay. I still have it, battered and bruised, with most pages somewhat intact. Early in its life, I had propped it up on the stove while I was following a recipe and somehow it caught fire, the evidence of which is clearly visible in the still-charred bottom of the book.

It is all to the good for our own well-being and self-respect that we remain concerned about and empathetic to the plight of other creatures that we inhabit this world we call home with.  The interest evinced and the response on a wider scale than merely the indigenous peoples living in the far frozen reaches of Northern Quebec was heartening to see. What brought world attention to the small Inuit community of Inukjuak was the plight of a small pod of killer whales trapped in a sea of ice.

Marina Lacasse/The Canadian Press

They had only a very small area of open water where they were able to surface -- and then only enough space to accommodate several of the pod of an assumed dozen to emerge to the surface to breathe at any one time.  Theirs was a parlous situation, appearing as though they would not survive their ordeal and it was clear to the people who had travelled the hour from Inukjuak where they live, to the area on Hudson Bay where the whales were trapped, that the giant mammals were in panic mode.

Marina Lacasse/ The Canadian Press

It is cold enough in the area that the small patch of open sea could easily close up, dooming the pod to certain death; killer whales are not accustomed to ice; the orcas were 1,000 kilometres from where they normally would be, at this time of year, according to Pete Ewins of World Wildlife Fund Canada. "They got stuck (in Hudson Bay) and they're unlikely to get out."

In this Tuesday, Jan. 8, 2013 photo provided by Marina Lacasse, people watch as a killer whale surfaces through a small hole in the ice near Inukjuak, in Northern Quebec. 

 

Marine Lacasse/ The Canadian Press

"These guys are on the edge and they might not make it through", he remarked. For two days they were trapped around their sole breathing hole in the sea ice.  But on Thursday when two Inukjuak hunters approached the area they saw that the waters had opened and the orcas were no longer there.

"So as far as I could tell, the emergency for sure, is averted" said Mark O'Connor of the regional marine wildlife board.

People of the area believe a vast expanse of ice had developed due to a sudden drop in temperature, trapping the orcas. According to experts sea ice is recognized as a natural cause of death for marine mammals.

I was incredulous and quite horrified when I looked up to the 18-foot ceiling in our living room on hearing a steady drip-drip to see winter snow melt-water falling to the floor, coming through from the roof, one winter about dozen years ago. There was nothing wrong with the roof, we were soon to learn. It was an ice dam that had built up that winter due to a plentiful snow coverage and a January freeze-and-thaw cycle. We called in a roofer and had the roof cleared of snow and the problem stopped.

Once again, in Ottawa, environmental and weather conditions have conspired to re-create that nightmare for many people. Roofing companies cannot keep up with the demand for snow clearance off the roofs of their houses.  We had our roof re-shingled a few years ago and there was a good rubber membrane laid down under the shingles to keep this type of thing from happening; older houses and houses with less costly and careful roof replacements are susceptible to this phenomenon.

"Once you get a large volume of snow and you get a thaw, then you get ice-damming. A dam of ice forms at the ease of a shingled roof and prevents the melting snow from running off the roof. It ponds at the edge of the roof and tends to force its way back up under the shingles. And that's what causes the leaks", is the explanation proffered by a roofing company representative.

This area has received over 76 centimetres of snow.  Environment Canada did advise that we could expect a traditional Ottawa Valley winter this year; plentiful snow, cold temperatures and we have.  It is yet early in the season, yet area roofs are three-feet deep in snow. High winds have failed to sweep roofs clean because of the prevailing conditions where freezing rain then snow conspired to ensure that snow packs would adhere to surfaces.  As they have done in the encircling forests, causing no end of damage to tree limbs, and bringing down power lines.

I remember one year quite a long time ago when my husband laddered himself up on the roof of our house, which has a very high roof. He anchored himself with a stout rope to the chimney then set about clearing the snow off the roof, a laborious, difficult job with a high, partly-steeped roof.  I have no wish to see that repeated. 

The cost of health care in Ontario is huge and rising steadily.  Along with rising costs of prescription drugs.  And advancing steadily is the demographic of the aged, elderly people who become high-need patients, taking up space in hospitals, consuming scarce health dollars, and eventually clogging up full-care, long-term health facilities.  It is all inevitable, and there are administrative recognitions that if people can be kept healthy longer into their advanced age, able to remain at home, sometimes with a little outside assistance, everyone benefits.

An acquaintance we came across yesterday informed us that she had just returned from installing her mother in a beautiful long-term care facility.  Her mother has her own unit, complete with scaled-down bedroom, bathroom, utilitarian kitchen, living area.  The facility houses one hundred, sixty elderly people.  There is medical care available 24 hours a day.  There is a very large dining area where meals are served, and residents have lounges where they are able to socialize.  There is a salt-water swimming pool, hot tubs, and much else.  This is a for-profit enterprise, not a provincially-operated or -underwritten facility.

Her mother, at age 90, finally decided she no longer wanted to look after her one-bedroom apartment, and was anxious for company besides, and this facility suited her needs perfectly.  No, neither she nor her two siblings, she laughed, thought of accommodating their mother in their own homes.  Though they could easily, she mused, have spent money banked from the sale of their mother's previous large family home, to buy a house with a nanny suite.  No, that wouldn't have suited her mother at all, who is independent-minded.  Besides which, living with them would not ease her loneliness; no one would be around at home during the day to give her company.

Her mother was excited, happy and content with her new living arrangements.  Which, with all its superior and glitzy trappings, didn't come cheap.  But her mother had plenty of retirement income and could afford the $4,500 monthly fee.  In any event, at 90 years of age now, how much longer would she live?  She might as well live comfortably, with luxuries she would appreciate, in the company of others like herself.

That's one large whack of money, $4,500 monthly.  Services are costly, particularly when those providing the services expect to prosper handsomely from doing so.  And obviously, it is a slight proportion of the population, elderly or not, that can afford such steeply-expensive accommodation to servicing the geriatric crowd.

A new report was presented to the Ontario government titled Living Longer, Living Well, prepared by Dr. Samir Sinha, director of geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network Hospitals in Toronto, on how the province may better assist seniors remain healthier longer, enabling them to live at home longer.

Among some initiatives to come out of the report is one where the provincial government announced it is prepared to match every older Ontarian who wants one with a primary care provider, and introduce new physician incentives for the care of high-needs patients - including making health-worker/physician house calls.  And recognition of the need to have greater numbers of geriatric specialists.

The province's 1.9-million seniors represent 14.6% of the population, accounting for almost half of present-day health care spending, and set to increase as the population inevitably does.  The number of Ontarians aged 65 and older expected to double within the next 20 years.  "If left unaddressed, our demographic challenge could bankrupt the province" wrote Dr. Sinha.  It is only 10% of the elderly who represent 60% of health care expenditure.

"If you can target the 10% of the most complex and do a better job in helping them navigate the system, through primary care hubs you could provide better care and at the same time reduce cost ... often older adults fall between the cracks", with the four sectors of health care -- primary care, community care, long-term care and acute care -- failing to co-operate.

"The big problem is that people don't have access to their family physician, so they end up in the emergency room" leading to unnecessary hospitalization and admission to long-term care, pointed out Dr. Frank Molnar, medical director of the regional geriatric program of Eastern Ontario. Who also pointed out that one of the recommendations, expecting the elderly to pay up front for their home care wouldn't fly: "That's something that many people will not agree with because people feel they have already paid for health care with their taxes, and should have equal access."

And then, of course, there's the whole other, more complex, somewhat intractable issue of physical health problems exacerbated by Alzheimer's disease patients, who during the average eight years of intensive need, will be under the care of approximately twenty-five different health professionals.

Ahmed Sati, M.D. was our family physician from 1971 until a few years ago when he deservedly retired from a busy practise comprised of a patient roster who regarded him as a treasure, as we did.  His personable, caring and sweet personality, aligned with a deep professional knowledge gave assurances to us all that we and our families were in capable, caring hands. 

Not that we visited that often, but when we did, his care of and for us was palpable, reassuring and successful in his ability to discern the origins of a health problem; his diagnostic skills and remedial action were impeccable.

The type of medical professional that this man of Syrian origin and Canadian citizenship exemplified is rarely seen in the new field of the practise of medicine.  General practitioners are far less likely to become as deeply involved in the care of their patients as Dr. Sati was; his was a full dedication, and his office staff reflected his deep commitment to patient care.

Individuals now who enter the medical profession appear to be focused far more on acquiring wealth commensurate with their professional education and practise, even though a busy general practitioner easily out-earns any other high-end profession.  Now, a greater proportion of medical school entrants set their sights on specialization.  General practise is too mundane, too time-demanding, and too relatively unprofitable.

Canada has suffered, in the last few decades, from a lack of general practitioners.  One reason is that insufficient numbers of medical students were accepted into university medical training centres because of a perceived glut in physicians in the country.  Another reason became apparent, when it was understood that many young medical students preferred going into more arcane sections of medical practise requiring specialized knowledge and guaranteeing to earn practitioners handsome payback.

Now, though the deficit in general practitioners opening family practices has eased, partially with an easing of the restrictions imposed on foreign-trained medical immigrants, streamlined into upgrading knowledge and skills to reflect Canadian standards, there still remains a lack of sufficient generalists, particularly in rural areas of the country.

And a study recently released points to the fact that across the nation medical schools are training too many doctors for pediatric specialties while not producing enough medics in other areas of child health care. What pertains to pediatric practise can be interpreted as being reflected in other areas of the medical profession. A clear disconnect, according to the revelations, between physician education and the demands of on-the-ground, real-world requirements.

Comparing numbers of medical graduates in various pediatric sub-specialities with demand in those areas, a close match was revealed in only one of 16 sub-specialties.  Pediatric neurologists were being trained in twice the numbers needed, for example.  The journal Pediatrics and Child Health has stated that University administrators "have a social and moral responsibility to guide the future deployment of pediatricians based on the precise health care needs of this vulnerable population. It is neither ethically or fiscally responsible to train individuals without knowledge of workforce requirements."

The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons' surveys reveal that one in six doctors completing their residencies find themselves in a situation where they are unable to find a position commensurate with their qualifications.  Some physicians - family doctors and psychiatrists - can simply open their own independent offices and begin their medical practise, then bill Medicare appropriately, thus launching their careers.

Specialists must hope to find a position with a hospital or health region, equipped with expensive, state-of-the-art equipment and support staff.  Unemployment or underemployment has been identified in thirteen specialties: cardiac surgery,neurosurgery, plastic surgery, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, urology, gastroenterology, adult neurology, dermatology, general surgery, opthalmology, pediatric infectious diseases and radiation oncology.

For a situation as vital to national public health and service as this situation represents, this is an astonishingly revelation of unforgivably inept planning.

It's a veritable behemoth of a piece of furniture.  And fully as weighty as the bulk-space it occupies.  We ordered it many years ago from Office Depot and it came disassembled. It had piqued our interest, as an elegant design for a computer station. Just as well that my husband is skilled at all manner of things, including solving the puzzle of impossible-to-follow assembly instructions.  This one took days to put together.  And it was meant for an upstairs bedroom, spare bedrooms, since there are only two of us in this house.  That is where I became accustomed to using my computer from.

Last week we broke down  and my husband brought home from one of his shopping expeditions, two flat-screen television sets. (We've been without a television for well over a year and a half and haven't missed not having one, but there's also a convenience to being able to put on television news, even though we can do something similar on our computers.) Both on sale, at inconsiderable prices, the small one meant for the library, the other quite a bit larger, and it will go in the family room. 

And now, because yesterday my husband took apart the armoire that had housed my computer for so many years, so we could carry it downstairs to the family room for re-assembly there, the television set is installed within it.  The new television set has gone into its heighty top half and the computer and screen and everything else I need occupy the bottom half.

It fits in every nicely, styled after an 18th-Century French armoire; doors closed everything is hidden.  It stands next to our large, bright windows and since I've already been using my new desk top, placed on a smaller computer desk for months now, I'm accustomed to working downstairs; the smaller desk is now destined to be moved upstairs, to take the place of the armoire upstairs.

And we're more than a little pleased with how everything has worked out, except for the displacement of a few paintings that hung on the wall where the upper half of the armoire now backs onto that wall. 

That wry old saying that the only things in life that are unavoidable are death and taxes seems quite true.  We live, we die.  We work to earn a living and we pay taxes to the state which provides us with security and services.  A fair enough trade, most reasonable people feel.  And then there are times when a tax rate can be viewed as utterly confiscatory.  And this is precisely how the new tax rate that France's new Socialist president, Francoise Hollande seeks to impose on France is widely viewed by the moneyed in his country.

There is a long tradition of high earners seeking escape from high taxes on their hard-won income.  Famously the scholar, poet, novelist and expert on antiquity, Robert Graves, exiled himself from England to take up residence in Majorca, unwilling to pay the tax rates imposed upon him by British residency.

And then there is the inglorious instance of Bono, of U2 fame, who became a spur in the neck of world leaders, continually righteously abrading them for not doing more to alleviate world poverty.  It's hard to recall any instance where it might have been recorded that Bono and others of his ilk released much of their personal income to the poverty-alleviation cause they championed.  He, in fact, became infamous for moving his band's considerable financial holdings from Ireland to avoid paying taxes altogether, placing them offshore, and earning public condemnation for his hypocrisy.

Protest group: Art Uncut will hoist a massive inflatable sign with the message 'Bono Pay Up' across the crowd during their set on the Pyramid

 Which brings us back to France, where the great French actor Gerald Depardieu has protested the not-yet-brought-into-law tax rate of 75% by taking up residence elsewhere.  Russian President Vladimir Putin is clearly delighted at Depardieu's choice of Russia, and fast-tracked a passport for the actor, while speaking glowingly of his country's 13% flat tax rate. 

Alexei Nikolsky/The Associated Press File Photo Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, right, and French actor Gérard Depardieu attend the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg last month. Depardieu has been granted honorary Russian citizenship.

As for Gerard Depardieu, the affair is rather tawdry.  He is in the exalted 0.1% rank of sky-high earners.  It is, admittedly, wealth he has earned through his formidable thespian talents, but it seems to ill become him to spurn his country and its needs in this manner.  We first saw his acting prowess displayed in The Return of Martin Guerre and were moved by the dramatic story, and by his skillful portrayal.

The man has become increasingly gross in physical appearance, detracting hugely in an anaesthetic manner from his acting skills.  He leads a dissipated lifestyle that holds no credit for him, nor anyone else whose such lifestyle choice cannot be commended.  Yet, who are we to judge a man who has entertained countless people throughout his acting career?

Sad, though, that it has come to this; his manner of entertaining himself is deplorable, far more than his decision to abandon France; on the other hand, perhaps it should be viewed as a full summation of intrinsic character.

That hoary old axiom that the older we become the more resistant we become to change is quite correct.  It is, in any case, correct in my case.  I find security and comfort in the familiar, and most people do.  I've set things up in a practical manner in this household that works best for me.  In, for example, collecting a number of useful tools that help me clean house, and the same for the everyday use of the kitchen.

I have been hampered of late by the increasing and puzzling unavailability of old-style floor dust mops.  There was a time when one could enter any hardware store, even the big box stores like Canadian Tire and find an assortment of suitable dust mops.  There was a time when I could keep a dust mop for years, simply removing the top, washing it and re-using it on a daily basis.  They were made to last.

They likely went out of use at a time when floors were covered with wall-to-wall carpeting and hardwood flooring was less popular. But hardwood flooring of all types have made a tremendous come-back and most people take pride in their wood floors, eschewing total carpeting for smaller area rugs.  To properly dust floors on a regular basis nothing beats the simplicity and functionality of a floor dust mop. 

Looking for one has become a source of absolute frustration; no outlet seems to carry them any more.  Oh yes, there are microfibre-type floor mops and they are utterly useless, there is no comparison whatever to the old ones in ease of use and outcome.  The Swiffer brand appears to have captured the market and it represents an advertising success for a useless product.

Does no one use a bucket of hot soapy water and a sponge to wash their kitchen floors and other floors with hard surfaces any longer?  For me, at age 76, that is the quickest and most thorough way to adequately wash floors be they porcelain tile, marble or linoleum-covered.

I did find one suitable dust mop, really well designed, by Tormax which met all my expectations.  The fly in that ointment was that it was produced with inferior products, made fragile by this very fact, and lasted at best a month before it broke apart and had to be replaced.  I was so desperate for a usable product that I was willing to keep buying new ones, but they too are no longer available.

Yesterday my shopaholic husband went to Lowes and brought back a Rubbermaid dust mop, clearly in its 24" dimension and heavy wood handle, meant for commercial use, but the best designed with sturdy construction and material, available.  Other types I'd bought there languish in my cupboard, utterly useless.  And this one was so large, heavy and awkward I could barely move it around.  Back it went.

And I am left looking still for a useful product to satisfy my fairly simple criteria.  Ease of use and able to pick up dust; resistant to breakage when it is shaken outdoors to release what it has collected.  Looking online has been no help whatever; I see there the very same models and products that have proven useless.  Rubbermaid had one dust mop that seemed a reasonable size for domestic use but politely advised it was no longer available.

Understated frustration reigns supreme.