Things in Ohio are fine but a bit nippy now. It's around 20 degrees right now and a light snow blankets the grass. Classes are out at OSU and all the grading and stuff is dispensed with. The big thing in our lives now is to just calm down.

One big sort of decision we've made recently is to get a tree this year. As some of you know, my wife Kathy was raised in a Catholic family who had big, warm cuddily Christmases with big tall Christmas trees in their living room. I, on the other had, was brought up in a Jewish family with nary a pothos to dot our living room landscape, much less a hanukkah bush or any other indulgence or nod to the gentile world at large. Not having a tree and the attendant spirit that goes along with it is I think the thing that Kathy misses most about her life before our marriage.

In addition, I never dreamed that I would one day live in a house that came out of a Currier and Ives painting. So this year we got a tree. Not a Christmas Tree or a Hannukah Bush, but what we call a "Spirit Tree," a druidic flowering of sorts, a vestige of our ancient, preliterate past when a green thing in the midst of winter would reassure us that life would indeed continue. In this cold Ohio landscape, such reassurance is comforting. And it is a real live tree, too! When we are done with the season festivities, we will plant it in our yard.

So, season's greeting everybody, and a happy new year!