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.

They were the original settlers of the land, the indigenous peoples who migrated to North America from their origins in Asia, and who occupied North America for presumably thousands of years before the entrance of the "white man", European explorers in search of fabled India with its spice trade promising culinary and preserving-curing resources at a time when food was vulnerable to decay and people were ill-nourished.  Finding North America in the belief that India had been reached, the native inhabitants were named "Indians".



Now, they are known as First Nations Peoples, as aboriginals, as native peoples.

They hunted and foraged, became agrarian, some tribes were nomadic moving every season to take advantage of natural resources.  They lived off the land as best they could.  They were primitive to a degree.  Some tribes were warlike and others were not.  Tribal raids were common and some were dreaded by other tribes as fiercely aggressive and acquisitive of territory and resources.

When European explorers and then European settlers came to the land some wrote of their experiences with the native peoples.  There are many accounts of how desperately vulnerable native peoples were to stark winters in Canada when food availability became scarce and hunting compromised with the result that people starved to death.

Treaties were signed as nation-to-nation recognition of land ownership, between the British Crown and various native tribes which still have not been resolved to the present day between Canada, which remains an integral part of the British Commonwealth and those tribes' descendants.  And those treaties still unresolved remain a thorn in the side of Canadians, their government and First Nations peoples of Canada.

The reserve system which originated as a way to convince aboriginals that they could preserve their heritage and their traditional way of life without interference from governments at any level, and with the federal government paying out yearly compensation to the reserves has never been a successful solution to aboriginals' refusal to join mainstream society, preferring to live as their ancestors did.  They do not, and cannot live as their ancestors did; a constant struggle against nature and the elements.

But living separately and apart from mainstream society also means that they cannot fully take advantage of health, education and employment opportunities present in urban aggregations.  The funding handed to tribal-reserve councils meant to sustain and maintain the traditional way of life where native communities live in government-subsidized housing with no individual ownership, no pride, no wish to help themselves, no employment to keep themselves busy and fulfilled has led to generations of alcoholism and drug dependency where the needs of children are neglected, and aggression and sexual abuse is rampant.

People are fixated on watching television, on driving snowmobiles, neglecting the nutritional and nurturing needs of the young.  Glue-sniffing is rampant among young aboriginal children, and the suicide rate among children is appalling.  Their educational opportunities are constrained, and their family lives are miserable; children taken into the hands of child welfare are disproportionate by a wide margin between the aboriginal community and other Canadians.

Solutions are seemingly impossible to find.  The Department of Aboriginal Affairs and the First Nations leadership are continually at odds; the Assembly of First Nations has been incapable of producing positive solutions let alone working recommendations beyond the status quo and more funding,  and an adversarial situation has long been the norm between a puzzled government and an inept Assembly.  On reserves many chiefs and their band councils are corrupt mis-managers.

Which is precisely what Theresa Spence, Chief of the northern Ontario reserve of Attawapiskat represents; a failed leader incapable of meeting the needs of her people despite the geological treasures present on lands the tribe owns and for which they have garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in service contracts and millions in payment for allowing an international diamond mining company to operate there.

Each time gross mismanagement has led to a crisis on her reserve Chief Spence has declared an emergency and called upon the federal government to solve it.  No amount of money appears to be able to solve her reserve's problem of dysfunction.  She has latterly set herself up as a major figure in the long simmering battle between the federal government (the people of Canada) and the aboriginal community, threatening to die from a self-imposed hunger strike if the Prime Minister of Canada does not come to heel at her behest.

She, and the "Idle No More" social protest movement refuse to engage in serious introspection to determine what they can and should do to help themselves.  It is simply that much easier to blame government than to judge themselves and make an effort to improve themselves through the effort it would take to become responsible for themselves. 

Instead, threats and intimidation, illegal blockades, violent confrontations become the order of the day in confronting not their own limited sense of responsibility but their ever present grievance against history and fortune.

Perhaps not all mothers regret profoundly their children leaving home - even while appreciating that their children, when of age, must make their own way in the world, aided by the nurturing they received in a loving home, imbued with the values that they inherit witnessing their father and their mother making decisions, interacting with each other - but this one most certainly did.

All parents wish for the best for their children's futures.  And that best really means they hope their children will find satisfaction in their lives, and if they're fortunate enough, a lifetime partner with whom they may share the experiences of life.

We have been fortunate in having children whose intelligence and curiosity, determination and strength of character have resulted in individuals whose life- and career-paths have surprised and gratified us. 

We were saddened that only one of our children found a lifetime partner. They two share a marriage bond and a much deeper and more profound bond of mutual respect and care for one another.  Each of them is accomplished in their own areas of interest and professionalism, some of which intersects.

For the remaining two, lasting interpersonal bonds have simply not occurred.  And because their father and I know how important it is for people to have love and the comfort of care, both given and received in their lives on an ongoing, intimate basis, we are saddened.

All three of our children appear to have inherited - or imbibed through intimate exposure - their father's penchant and aesthetic capabilities in design and drawing.  We are both omnivorous readers and passed that inestimable value on to our children.  And through her exposure to our habits and priorities throughout her formative years from infancy to the pre-teen years when we were her day-time caregivers, our granddaughter too became a lover of literature.

She however, like me, has no artistic capabilities whatever, let alone pretensions to any; we both shy away from attempting to cultivate an ability to draw even the crudest of objects whereas the others in the family do so with confidence and ease.  The boys (now both in their fifties) call upon their ability to produce drawings to embellish their scholarly papers, and our daughter expresses her artistic ability in a multitude of ways.

It was, one supposes, a natural that we would end up playing a board game that uses quick drawings as clues to correct answers compelled to proceed on a board toward a finishing line.  When the children were young we introduced them to board games as well as old standbys like checkers and chess, and often played family games of Monopoly together.  When our granddaughter was ready we played Monopoly along with other board games with her as well.

And now that we're beyond the stage of introducing anyone to board games our youngest son, looking for something a little different, struck upon the relatively newer game of Pictionary which, as it turned out, our granddaughter detested.  We, however, just he and I, since his father also declined to participate, play it as regularly as his visits allow us to of an evening's entertainment and distraction.

His precise and clear drawings allow me to make accurate guessing decisions often enough and my own distinctly awkward drawings seem sufficient to draw from him fairly accurate guesses for the game to proceed with much hilarity.
 

Although it has been piercingly cold the last week and the ravine has been heavily coated with snow as a result of the 60 centimeteres we've had over the past several weeks, yesterday's wind was modest-to-absent, depending upon where we were throughout our hour-and-a-half ramble through the woods.  We were dressed for the weather and meant to make the most of our outdoor time.

A few days earlier my husband had gone out to a local pet shop that stocks quality products, unlike the products crowding the shelves of the larger box-type stores with cheap junk at inflated prices,  and brought back a set of Muttlucks, Canadian-designed and manufactured.

Our little dogs always wore in the iciest weather little boots I had designed and made myself, with fleecy, sock-like legs and leather bottoms which kept them warm and stayed on for the most part thanks to a succession of designs some with drawstrings, others with velcro tabs, but we were never completely satisfied with them. 

The Muttlucks used suede bottoms instead of leather, making them less likely to slide, allowing traction.  And their stretchy tops ensured they stayed on.  There is nothing more discomfitting than seeing the boots work their way off those little legs and having to be restored, bare hands and fingers freezing in the process.

And he also brought home for our little toy poodle a new winter coat, this one sewn with high-tech fabric resistant to moisture and lined with a layer of fleece, warmer than the other little coats in his winter wardrobe.  For a change little Riley was able to trudge through the snow and ice on his own rather than having to be picked up whenever his pads became too encrusted with snow, too frozen from the prevailing icy conditions on really cold days.