Now they've done it. You all must know by now that Canada Post has announced an increase in the price of a domestic stamp, up to one dollar for one stamp, effective in March, with no allowances for stamp hoarders. If you want to buy a packet of ten, the price per stamp will be only 85 cents. The question is, do you have ten friends you want to mail a letter to? I dealt with this eventuality earlier this fall when I considered ten things experts are predicting will disappear in our lifetime or sooner. Mail was one of them. It was already dying. Only now at the Christmas season are we receiving any personal greetings, perhaps even letters, from our once-a-year friends. Their reasons are much the same as ours: to reassure them and us that we are well and living somewhere within a stamp's reach. As it is now, the pitches and pleas for donations far out-number the glad tidings of the season. As for e-mail, our go-to-courier, the pitches out-number the pleas: on-line flyers and bargains and sales and coupons all instantly available at the pressure of a finger. Thank heaven I keep forgetting my passwords! What's going to happen to birthday cards (also graduation, wedding, new home, retirement, and first divorce)? I really dislike those online schmaltzy greetings (animated and accompanied by computerized music) that we are suffering now, not too many yet but wait for it. I'm old enough that I can afford to stop sending cards, because I can't afford to send them. So I'll stop. If I die before next Christmas, you're sure to find out somehow. People still talk. Let me take this unpaid, unsolicited opportunity to wish you a happy holiday season and a merry whatever, as long as it doesn't cost too much.

Some days it's had to choose what to write about, to stop or pause the inner dialogue long enough to settle on one topic. And some days, as during this week, it's hard to be, if not cheerful, at least - oh dear, this is difficult - non-committal? Don't dwell on depression. Difficult when you had the dinner guest I had last night. I'm still getting over him. You know the glass half-empty, half-full image. Well, he sees dirty water in a cracked glass and complains about it. He was really vicious about it last night. vicious and profane and vituperative and bitter. Well, he's unhappy. Perhaps we all are, most of us. The American writer Russell Baker said that there is as much happiness in a bottle of wine as most of us can bear. He also said you should never drink a martini more than fifty feet from your own bed. Something like that. I'm not checking right now. My point is, and I do have one, is that most people are not basically happy. Contentment is the most you can hope for, except on special (martini) occasions. I said in my book BEGINNINGS: A BOOK FOR WIDOWS, dealing with my and others' grief, that happiness is a by-product, not often achieved and not for long. However, I believed, and still do, that it is our obligation to dispense joy. That's why we send birthday cards and take soup to neighbours, and talk to strangers. My grocery delivery person this week, for example, works out regularly and gave me some physical training tips. How would I know that if I didn't talk to him? Oh, and remember Thumper's mother (in Disney's Bambi)? "If you can't say anything nice, don't say nothin at all." I can't believe I'm referring to Disney! The world according to Disney is not a good one for women. Move on. Oh dear. Have a nice day, and if it isn't, I don't want to hear about it.