Tis the time of year when everybody is busy. No time for blogs, only traffic clogs, snowy slogs and occasional fireplace logs. So I will just go ahead and wish everyone a Happy Holi - Oh, what the heck. I'll go out on a limb: Merry Christmas!! There, I said it. And I will leave you with a philosophical drumstick to gnaw on over the holidays. When Judy and I built this place, we used a variation on a method called cordwood masonry, a combination of logs and mortar where the logs are placed so that when you look at the wall you see the end of the log. Some of the logs were perfectly round with an even grain and uniform color. They were beautiful. But the ones that caught our attention were the ones that were misshapened, the grain warped and discolored. These became faces, bird's heads or anything the imagination could think up. We discovered that these logs were diseased or suffered from some other stress. From that followed the realization that people are the same. It is our afflictions that make us interesting. Happy Holidays.