Happy New Year to all my readers, from New York.  I'll be watching the Times Square ball drop, as I hope you will as well, in whatever time zone you're in (and no, I haven't been foolish or drunken enough to watch it in person for many years).  Of course, times have changed since this early 1950's version.

This is to wish each and every one of you the true, warm, and loving companionship of the one important person in your life, that 2005 will enable you to find that person if they're not here right now; the miraculous taste of strong dark coffee or old vines Zin; the astonishing and utterly irrational blessing that is the gaze of a child or the greeting of a dog; and the soul-clearing moments before dawn and after midnight when you think, if ever so briefly, you have figured out it all.