Dear William,

Something that I found a while ago that I always come back to this time of year. Peace on Earth The days when Christmas was a feast seized from the leanness of winter, the last echo of a receding harvest, are long gone for most of us. The year-round abundance of modern America has done a lot to extinguish the very idea of seasonality, except as a matter of decoration. There's a freedom in that view of life - the feeling that any one day is as good as the next - but there's a constraint, too. In all the old legends of Christmas, all the old visions, Christmas contains a sense of release, of surrendering to the day, as well as a sense of hallowedness. The best Noel tales are always those about giving in to Christmas after long resistance. Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch may be lost sheep, in the New Testament sense, but they also embody the spirit of release after years and years of vigilant self-defense. To call what this day offers "redemption" is to call it somethin...

We all have things that get us to feeling weathered from time to time. It's not like being tired or defeated, sad or mad for me it feels more like restlessness. It's honest to say that so I don't mind to but how to get through. Finally finished the FDR painting and was feeling that way again so I picked up the most weathered book I have and well here's a bit I really like and thought you might like too. Fortunately its from the first page of the first chapter so it was easy enough to find and I am sure anyone who has read it will gleam that easily enough and well I'm not saying to catch a boat just pick up the book, a book or write a book. Otherwise, there is always music to which I might suggest a little ditty by Phil Collins it goes something like this---"When I'm feeling blue all I have to do is take a look at you, then I'm not sooo blue." Sorry for that but for some reason that popped in my head and well hopefully my not funny at all sense of...