Thanksgiving greetings from chilly Massachusetts! Here I sit on my guest bed, drinking black coffee and staring out the big windows into a grove of oaks and spruce, but shortly I will step into my traditional role as my mother-in-law's eager sous-chef. I managed to forget my winter boots in Maine, so this looks to be a housebound holiday. But there's a son asleep upstairs, and lots of chat and food chopping and card playing on the horizon, so housebound will be fine.

I hope you are warm and cheerful and not too overwhelmed by carbohydrates. I hope your loved ones aren't grouchy, and that nobody eats any tainted romaine lettuce, and that your car battery doesn't die (I've got some small worries about this last). I hope that your own search for contentment spreads like a pebble dropped into a pond, and that your neighbors are also soothed, and your village, and your forest, and your island. Of course that's a silly thing to say, but vain hope is hope nonetheless.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told that I am loved. I am not sure that you are of the same mind. But the realm of silence is large enough beyond the grave. This is the world of light and speech, and I shall take leave to tell you that you are very dear. 

― George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor, May 14, 1875