Like rubber rainbows, last month’s Christmas lights stretched around my picturesque little town, hugging rooflines and dotting the shrubbery as if they were nonconformist snowflakes gone rogue with color. Twinkling red, green and blue heralded a season too rare in a world of grim shadows. And a week later those same Christmas lights seemed to rise above the housetops and burst into fireworks to celebrate a new year and a new chance for all of us to get it right…

Hope the calendar is keeping up with your New Year’s resolutions and that your heart is still wearing the optimism of a fresh start. It’s not just a fashion, you know. We always have optimism as a choice. Me, I like the energy that comes with a positive outlook. It’s my mind charger and I keep it plugged in. So, hello, January…hello, 2016! How bright you are with the pure white light of winter as autumn’s rainbows fall asleep.

Of course, I’m getting the diamond blaze of winter’s sun full in the face for hours on end each day in my favorite haunts. Three Rivers nature preserves have just enough snow to put me on the back trails where Bambi, Thumper and Yogi Bear hang out. Balancing those invigorating escapes are serene reveries spent before one cozy hearth or another. There’s nothing like the glow of a warm room while the crystal silence of a white feather snow silently embalms the earth just outside your window.

A few of the photos below try to capture that sense of sanctuary, but you need more than a picture to register the feeling bone deep. Here are December’s delightful dozen: #1-3 frequent trailmate Mickey Magic putting together a jigsaw puzzle before a holiday hearth just after a hike we took; #4 nature’s own jigsaw puzzle from a window in my Creatorium (no “m” in the middle, please); #5 enhanced phantom blue snow around a pool of sunlight in Elm Creek; #6 yours truly concocting secret recipe; #7 nightfall in the EC marshes; #8 Bjorn Daehli Nordic ski hat sent me from Norway’s literary and cultural luminary Jan Lockert; #9 the diaphanous beauty of winter in EC; #10 moi and Mickey soaking up heat from the fireplace; #11-12 love to bring out the enchanting hues of a vibrant forest.

With the exception of the 2012 Sullygram about my inamorata and another I wrote that same year defining marriage, my most popular column has been the Christmas memory of an old men’s hotel I lived in when I was 19. I’ve adapted it here in this latest archived column as per many requests to run it again. May it open your soul as it did mine: http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/2015/12/19/thomas-sullivan-christmas-19/#respond

And 2016’s itinerary is bursting with promise and pleasures as of this writing. On the book front, I’ve licensed a print edition of CASE WHITE, my occult historical novel of how a nation went insane for 12 years. If that rolls out successfully and builds momentum, I may release a new multi-format edition of the celebrated literary satire that launched my career. THE PHASES OF HARRY MOON (EP Dutton hardcover, 1988) still pulls in mail after 28 years. I like to call it life in a fun-house mirror, but whatever it’s called it has universal appeal, so I want to see it available again in all formats that exist today. 

Assuming wildcards don’t reshape my winter, I’ll probably chase snow west one more time to Heidi-ho (Idaho) to visit my lifelong friend Bruce Norvell. When Bruce isn’t skiing Sun Valley with his dog Ziggy or biking Moab or ballroom dancing, he’s busy turning himself into a lawyer representing himself with an extremely complicated case against Blue Cross (and other insurance entities as appeals escalate) that has now reached the 9^th Circuit Court. If you understood Bruce and his passion for justice, you would not be surprised. David vs. Goliath are odds he likes. But Charles Dickens’ description of a convoluted court system in the novel BLEAK HOUSE could apply to Bruce’s pursuit through this judicial maze. Makes you think there are more crimes committed in prosecuting the law than in violating it.

And speaking of malfeasance, I feel it only fair to warn the public that the Gang of Three is planning another round of fiascoes just about 12 months from now. YES…the Wizard of Oz hisself and his immediate Superior, the Fabulous Fiona, are planning a return visit from the Land Downunder to your humble scribe here in the hinterlands of culture for Round 2 of the debacles we perpetrated a couple years ago!!! Mini-snowda, you are warned. You can’t put that much eccentricity on the same side of the Earth without courting serious disruptions in the ether.

Oh, this is gonna hurt…from laughing.