March 20, 2004 That this fortnight would end with spring's arrival was brought forcefully home to me late on March 10 when just after I began my dead-of-night stroll in the Pecan Park I came across a skunk foraging on a lawn just below the windows of the rehab facility where my mother gets her bi-weekly physiotherapy. I stood watching at a safe distance until the creature, alerted perhaps by my human stink, looked me squarely in the eye before turning its business end in my direction - an action that was sufficient to move me along the path toward a less potentially odiferous future.

The days thereafter that my mother & I spent visiting with my sister in Houston flew along as we (as usual) focused on entertainments, including the Chocolate Exhibition at the Museum of Natural History, where we learned the details of just how cacao is transformed into the world's favorite treat, and visits to the cinema, notably for "The Triplets of Belleville," a strikingly original French animated feature, and "Touching the Void, a frighteningly accurate and nearly unbelievable re-enactment of a mountain climb in Peru gone terribly wrong. We can recommend both.

The sudden appearance of wildflowers all about testified to spring's return to Texas, driving new vigorous new leaf growth before it, reawaking creation from its winter somnolence. As if impelled under the influence of some similar impulse, this fortnight also marked the official reappearance of my book Ayurveda: Life, Health & Longevity, commissioned and first published by Penguin UK a decade back, out of print (except in India, where it is a Penguin bestseller) since eighteen months, now resurrected by Albuquerque's The Ayurvedic Press. It's great to see it available again, back in action, in its new and handsomer form!

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