It’s a rainy, foggy holiday week in St. Louis. The streets are quiet, students gone. This morning driving through the park with the windows down I heard the birds singing as if it were springtime, which it feels like, at 50 degrees. Our Christmas will be quiet, perhaps a walk in the woods and a roast chicken. On Sunday I went to hear the St. Louis Chamber Chorus sing music composed by Giovanni Palestrina, Italian, of the 16^th century and Herbert Howells, English, of the 20^th. Beautiful music, all of it, performed in a church with good acoustics- the music made my scalp tingle! First time I ever noticed that, and I noted the contrast to music that I feel in my gut that makes me want to dance, like the Cuban music Ry Cooder made popular with the Buena Vista Social Club. Also on Sunday, our wonderful Neighborhood Poetess Who Bakes (a lot) hanged a Holiday bag filled with cookies and fruit bread on our door handle and, by the time I saw it, the squirrels had gnawed through the bag and through the cellophane of a cookie bag inside the gift bag and made off with one Christmas cookie. Darn squirrels- but I won’t begrudge them a single cookie. Merry Christmas squirrel brothers and sisters.