Today we wend our way to southern New England for Christmas. I have baked the sourdough bread and assembled the vegetarian entree and soaked Emily Dickinson's black cake in cognac. Paul has stayed up late making cookies and doing laundry. Tom has constructed the soundtrack. All we need now is a pet sitter and gas in the car.

The forecast hints at ridiculously warm weather--dripping inflatable Santas, holiday joggers in shorts, fat dogs splashing in ponds. I will try to find time to describe the view. In the meantime, imagine us in a traffic jam on Route 495, in a small silver hatchback named Tina, perhaps listening to the Wu-Tang Clan's greatest hits, or a podcast featuring two depressed British guys musing about soccer, or the mysterious thrills of a local Spanish-language talk radio host.

In the meantime, I give you this remark by Buster Keaton as a Christmas present:

Railroads are a great prop. You can do some awful wild things with railroads.