Up at 4:10 AM to make a 6:35 AM flight. Oi! Then a 4-hour layover in Charlotte, North Carolina (that's in the United States of America). Home at 2:00 PM, with enough time to sort the mail (very important). Then on to Newport for New Year's Eve. Adam and Michal were in town for a short vacation, so they came by for some fabulous hors d'oeuvres by Carol (new potatoes with sour cream and caviar, Willy Krauch Danish smoked salmon, trout paté, yummy chocolate cake squares, champagne, and coffee. We closed the evening and the year with fireworks just off island, mercifully at 9:15 PM in Newport, which is not a swinging town like New York (no sharpshooters on the rooftops, no F-15s standing guard on high).

Note the pin!.

Who thought when we were children that we would live so long, that we would see such awful events, and such moments of incredible joy?