I can't believe that all y'all have the nerve to demand hockey teams! Everybody knows that the best hockey players start young -- at 4, skating in their back yards on a lumpy ice rink from the garden hose, or on the nearby pond frozen half-solid. From November to April.

I remember a foot of snow on Election Day. When we lived in Vermont, there was still snow laying in the woods behind our house in early May. Excavating snow huts, tobagganing, blowing "smoke" with candy cigarettes, trick-or-treating with parkas over our costumes and tromping through the snow to Easter Mass... that was my childhood. Truthfully, folks, I could no more abandon the cold than a penguin can fly. Whenever I think about vacation, my face turns northward.

You boys can keep your heat. And right now, I wish you could.

Best--
Mary Anne