Dear Lou,

Though this is a personal letter to Lou Michaels, a dear relative of ours, Lenore and I are not reluctant to share it with this blog's readers. During this season, most us are writing letters conveying love to our families and friends. We close this one with a genuinely sincere plea to all the Gods, to deal more compassionately with humanity.

Dear Lou,

I wouldn’t blame you one bit if you are terribly upset with me because I have been so dilatory about getting this letter written and sent.

You know that Lenore and I count you as one of our dearest relatives. We go back very many years and we have shared many happy and some very sad moments together. And even now, those techno-interrupted, non-working hearing aid, phone conversations that we struggle through every week are like precious pearls strung on a string. Needless to say, Lou, we still mourn and sorely miss your dear wife Evelyn whose death left a particularly large space in your life, an emptiness that will forever remain unfilled.

Although it has not yet come to pass, a visit by you with us here in Somers and/or a visit by Lenore and me with you in Richmond, are occasions we eagerly look forward to. But because we know you are not quite up to it, hopefully the eventual visit will be by us with you in Richmond. Regrettably, however, with our current health problems and our many holiday commitments, we will need to keep things temporarily on hold. But as sure as God created Adam and then Eve, we will be at your home soon, to spend some intimate, un-telephone-wired time together.

In the meantime, for your amusement, I have enclosed a few of the postings I wrote for my blog. You will glean from them that my sclerotic mind, like yours, is disposed to wander and visit unusual places. But my computer is a great joy to me. How I wish yours were not residing in an unreachable place in an inaccessible closet.

In some ways, my little laptop computer is like that "Magic Carpet" in Arabian nights. With it, I can float over the entire world, (not just Baghdad). Incidentally, I have a program that tells me who visits my blogsite and among many other things it checks, it tells me exactly where these folks are located and the language they speak. To date, it has amazed me to discover that I’m being read by people in nearly every country of the world. Up to now, however, there are no signs that The Hornblower is being circulated on Mars, Venus or Jupiter. But as Tonto used to say to the Lone Ranger, "Quien sabe?"

May this season relieve each of us of some of our discomfort and bring us all a bit of joy. But above all, may it induce Allah, and his fellow divinities, to bring this planet some much needed respite from war and destruction. And may these deities also strive to hold off with their hurricanes, fires, tsunamis and earthquakes.

With remembrance of things past, we drink to a happier future,

Dom and Lenore