I finally finished my copybook last weekend, after six years and eight months of sporadic work that turned to almost daily transcribing in the last four months. I transcribed the final tune, an Irish reel called “Dublin Porter,” on Dec. 20, the eve of the Winter Solstice, and before beginning the tune, I poured a Samuel Adams Winter Lager in honor of the solstice and the completion of the book. But even with the completion of the “Porter” and the Lager I had yet to finish the book — the final step was the index, the listing of 365 tunes. I had kept a rough draft index as I worked on the book, and that index had gotten quite cluttered as I was forced to write tune titles to the right and in the left margin. Some letters, especially “M,” got quite crowded, with all those Scottish “Miss” and “Mrs.” tunes competing for space. I needed to rewrite the index to place all tunes in order, and that took almost three hours between listing titles and page numbers and checking every page of the book to verify page numbers and check for tunes that were missing from the index. I found two missing tunes, three instances of incorrect alphabetization, and one case of a wrong page number. Finally, on Dec. 26, I wrote the index in the book, and that required about 2 1/2 hours. I knew it would be a big job, but I was still surprised. Some of the tunes are of my own composition, but most were written by others and are tunes I play or want to learn. It’s good to be done, and now I can focus more on practicing, and eventually I’ll start on book number two.

A pain I love to inflict

I’m neither sadist nor masochist, but I like to inflict pain on myself, and I encourage others to do the same. The pain in this case comes from capsaicin, the powerful chemical that makes chiles hot.
I need the flavorful gusto of chiles just as I need a certain level of hops in beer. I crave the full-bodied flavor of chile-enhanced foods, “la comida picante” in Spanish, but why is the pain so satisfying?
Dave DeWitt in his impressive “Chile Pepper Encyclopedia” quotes Dr. Andrew Weil on the mind-altering properties of chiles: “The chile lover knows that pain can be transformed into a friendly sensation whose strength can go into making him high.” A theory in 1990 by Dr. Frank Etscorn, then experimental psychologist at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro, said that the “warm afterglow and constant craving for chile are due to capsaicin triggering the release of endorphins, the body’s natural painkillers.” Etscorn invented the nicotine patch, notes DeWitt.
Paul Rozin, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania when DeWitt published his book, said chile does not meet the criteria for true physical addiction: it doesn’t become a physical necessity, you experience no loss of control or withdrawal sickness, and you can adjust to higher heat levels but don’t need increasing amounts to feel normal.
DeWitt describes capsaicin as a crystalline alkaloid, the active principle that causes heat in chile peppers. Unaffected by cold or heat, it retains potency despite time, cooking or freezing. It is so powerful in its pure state that chemists who handle the crystalline powder must work in a filtered “tox” room in full body protection with closed hood to prevent inhalation. The pharmaceutical chemist Lloyd Matheson, who once inhaled some capsaicin accidentally, said, “It’s not toxic, but you wish you were dead if you inhale it.” “One milligram of pure capsaicin placed on your hand would feel like a red-hot poker and would surely blister the skin,” said capsaicin expert Marlin Bensinger.
DeWitt’s articles on antidotes and tolerance confirmed some things I learned through experience: 1. You can build tolerance to chile-fired food. This can happen to me in one sitting. Once I ate a homemade burrito that I had oversauced and had to stop eating until the pain subsided. Once the pain passed, the other burritos were deliciously tolerable. My wife’s Asian-Indian friend says the heat level in foods that Americans consider hot is comparable to what Indians put in their babies’ bottles. 2. To quote DeWitt, “… with abstention, desensitization wears off, and when you attempt to return to your heat plateau, the chiles on the way there will seem to be hotter.” 3. Few foods or drinks act as antidotes. Some people think alcohol works, and I tried drinking beer while the pain was firing my mouth, but the pain returned when I swallowed. I learned long ago in Boy Scouts that the pain of burns can be lessened by covering the burn, and that’s all the beer did. Some say bread helps, and it does a little, but the best antidote is a milk product, which is why you wimps who really can’t tolerate hot food douse your so-called Mexican food with sour cream, an adulteration that robs the food of its Mexican heritage.
So go ahead. Start with mild “hot” sauce and progress to medium. Medium is a good plateau for occasional chile eaters; the bottles marked “hot” require regular indulgence. And leave the sour cream behind. After all, it’s just spoiled milk that spoils the true flavor of la comida picante.

When I met him, my friend Tom Perkins joked that he wanted his ashes to be entombed in his mandolin. He loved that mandolin and infected me with that love, and I wasn’t happy until I had bought one of my own. He was an amazingly multitalented man and one of my greatest influences. Now he’s crossed over to Fiddler’s Green, the sailor’s heaven, where his glass is always full and the music never ends.
Tom claimed in a letter written from New Mexico after his retirement that years of technical reports had beaten all expressiveness out of his writing, but his correspondence repeatedly disproved that claim. He illustrated points with such diverse subjects as psychology, philosophy, history, mythology and physics. He was a retired geologist and in one letter drew a cross-section of Rio Grande valley faulting to explain the region’s topography. Mainly, though, he wrote about music, encouraging my studies, sending tunes he had written and reporting on his music studies.
I met Tom in 1989 at a traditional music session at Quail Hollow State Park. I had attended the sessions for a year as a listener, reluctant to take my violin because everyone at the sessions played without music. But I took my violin that night, and when Tom, discussing Celtic music with a hammer dulcimer player, pulled out a page of music, I asked if I could join. On that page were three Welsh tunes Tom had transcribed from a record. We played that music and followed it with tunes written by an Irish harper named O’Carolan, Tom playing flute, the woman on dulcimer and a man playing 12-string guitar.
I discovered that night that some traditional music can be played from the printed page and some can be arranged in the more complex styles that I enjoy. I attended more sessions that winter, and the next year Tom began mentoring me in Celtic music. He recorded LPs, provided more sheet music and introduced me to Celtic mandolins. He formed a Celtic band in 1990 and asked me to join that fall, two weeks after I married the woman who was playing hammer dulcimer that first night. We named our group The Bog Carrot after an Irish reel. The other members of the band were Mark Roliff, the 12-string guitarist from the Quail Hollow session, and Jody Byers, whom we also met at Quail Hollow. Tom played flute, Irish whistle, guitar, mandolin, octave mandolin, recorder and bodhran; Mark played guitar, recorder, octave mandolin, bodhran and hurdy gurdy; Jody played hammer dulcimer, mountain dulcimer, concertina and melodeon; and I played violin, mandolin and mandola. Jody dropped out after a couple years. We played together for 10 years, more often for our own enjoyment than in public, and disbanded in 2000 when Tom began studying flamenco guitar and I began studying colonial music. In the photo above are John Whitacre, Mark Roliff, and Tom Perkins.
We reunited for a farewell music session in September 2005 just before Tom and his wife, Eileen, moved to New Mexico, and that session relit our Celtic fire. It was ironic that Tom and I found new joy in Celtic music just when geography made sessions impossible. But we enjoyed corresponding, Tom’s letters bursting with encouragement and advice on my struggles with Celtic violin, and we knew that some day we would play and record again.
But in late 2007 Tom went to the doctor after he began “crabwalking,” as Mark described it, and the doctors found an aggressive brain tumor. Surgery and treatment gave temporary relief earlier this year, but by September the tumor was back, worse than before, and the doctor gave Tom three months.
I called Tom after hearing the news, and I told him that he was one of my greatest musical influences, that he introduced me to the world of Celtic music. I am forever grateful for the wealth of material he steered my way and for his often intimidating and always inspiring scholarship and enthusiasm. I can still hear his classically influenced fingerpicked guitar on O’Carolan tunes and his strong, driving guitar strums as I practice Celtic rhythm. He said in one of his letters that he could hear my fiddle while he practiced his flute, and I can hear the opposite, his clean, crisp pennywhistle and his rich wooden flute on Irish, Scottish and Welsh melodies.
Tom said in that final conversation that we will some day play together, and I believe him. And I hope he knows that everybody I touch with my music is touched by Tom Perkins. His drive to excel drove me to greater heights than I would have reached on my own. With violin and mandolin in hand, I shall encounter him again on Fiddler’s Green.
Mark Roliff’s biography of Tom, including photos, can be read at http://mysite.verizon.net/vzevo6lo/id4.html. Below are John Whitacre, Tom Perkins, and Mark Roliff.

The following ideas are excerpted from the Ortega foods website, www.ortega.com. To read these articles in full and articles about Mexican cooking and traditions, on the Ortega site place the cursor over “Help From Mama,” click on “Articles,” and click on “Click Here.”

How to Celebrate El Dia de Los Reyes

In Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries, children receive Christmas gifts not from Santa, but from Los Reyes Magos — The Three Wise Men. This trio drops off treasures during the night of January 5 to be discovered on El Dia de Los Reyes, known in English as the Feast of the Epiphany.
1. Have a family “undecorating” party on January 6. Spend the day taking down the tree and other holiday trimmings at a leisurely pace.
2. Have a quiet dinner of Mexican food afterward, if you want to lend a South-of-the-Border flavor to the evening.
3. Read the story of the Nativity and the Three Wise Men who journeyed toward Bethlehem. Read “The Story of the Other Wise Man” by Henry Van Dyke; it casts a slightly different perspective on the whole idea of Christmas.
4. Serve a rosca de rey (king’s crown), a crown-shaped sweet bread with small figures of babies baked inside. In Mexico, anyone who gets a piece with a baby inside has to give another party on or before Candlemas, on February 2, when the country’s holiday season officially ends.
5. Make this the day you exchange gifts with friends. You’ll avoid another must-do event on December’s calendar, and you’ll be able to put off some of your shopping until after the holidays, when you can take advantage of post-Christmas sales.

How to decorate a Mexican home for Christmas
The Nativity scene (El Nacimiento in Spanish) is the most important part of the Christmas decorations displayed in most Mexican homes.
On Christmas Eve, place Baby Jesus in the crib to complete the Nativity scene.
1. Set up a Nativity scene in your living room or another prominent place in the front of your home.
2. Arrange the scene on a tabletop covered with paper painted in earth tones (papel roca).
3. Use boxes to create a landscape with hills and mountains.
4. Select clay or plaster figurines to represent the holy family.
5. Add an angel, animals, and shepherds and their flocks.
6. Include a serpent and Lucifer to represent evil forces.
7. Scatter plastic toy houses to establish a village.
8. Use Spanish moss to hold all of the figures in place.
9. Decorate a small Christmas tree (arbolito), which can either be set up as part of the Nativity scene or can be displayed in a separate room.
10. Display flor de Noche Buena (Christmas Eve Flower), known in English-speaking countries as poinsettia.

How to stage Las Posadas
Don’t let the Spanish name fool you: this charming celebration is just as much fun in the snowy north as it is in Mexico and the southwestern U.S., where it’s a highlight of many a family’s Christmas season. Las Posadas is a procession that re-enacts Mary and Joseph’s search for a place to bed down in Bethlehem (“posada” is Spanish for lodging or inn). After the procession, participants are welcomed to a lively fiesta.
In traditional versions of Las Posadas, Mary rides on a donkey led by Joseph, but the duo can just as easily walk side by side or ride bicycles.
1. Plan a celebration between December 16 and Christmas Eve. The traditional form takes place over these nine evenings, but you can easily condense the festivities into one evening.
4. Assign roles. You’ll need a small boy and girl to play Joseph and Mary and other children to dress as shepherds, angels and the Three Wise Men. For extra fun, enlist willing dogs to play the parts of camels, sheep, donkeys and the other animals that gathered around the manger.
5. Pass out candles to the kids and to their parents, who will act as a traveling audience.
6. Go en masse to the first house on your predetermined route and greet the residents with a Christmas carol. Then have Joseph ask for shelter for his wife. When the residents turn him away, saying there’s “no room at the inn,” invite them to join you as you proceed to the next house.
7. Repeat the process at each house on your route.
8. Finish at your place, where you inform Mary and Joseph that, although your inn is all booked up for the night, they are welcome to sleep in the stable.
9. Usher them and their entourage inside and start the fiesta.

Hogmanay in the Scottish Highlands is the culminating celebration of the year, the final bacchanal before the return to work. Hogmanay, or in Gaelic Oidhche Challuinn in Scotland, is the term for New Year’s Eve. It is also the term for a repast or a present given on that day. Hogmanay in the Highlands and Islands to the west of Scotland was marked by ceremony and gaiety that hinted at its roots in pagan ritual and sacrifice.
Hogmanay was the primary winter solstice festival in the Highlands because Christmas was banned in Scotland from the late 1600s to the 1950s by the Protestant church, which considered it a papish holiday. It is a time of wiping clean the slate, manifested by traditions such as cleaning the house, taking out ashes and clearing all debts before midnight. The new year must begin on a happy note, making a clean break.
On New Year’s Eve in the Highlands, first-footers made their rounds. Men and boys went house to house in the township carrying dried cowhides and chanting rhymes, beating skins with sticks and striking walls of houses with clubs, which was believed to avert evil and keep at bay fairies and evil spirits.
In Galloway in the southwest of Scotland, people went door-to-door asking in rough rhymes for cakes or money. The occupants gave drink to the first person who entered the house after midnight, called the first-footer. Preferably the first-footer should be male and dark, a possible holdover from the days of Viking invasions when blond strangers were nothing but trouble. First-footers carried coal, shortbread, salt, black bun (a spiced cake) and whiskey.
An example of the Duan Challuinn, the Hogmanay poem, quoted in Anne Ross’ “Folklore of the Scottish Highlands,” was chanted by the first-footers:
Great good luck to the house,
Good luck to the family,
Good luck to every rafter of it,
And to every worldly thing in it.
Good luck to horses and cattle,
Good luck to the sheep,
Good luck to everything,
And good luck to all of your means.
Luck to the good-wife,
Good luck to the children,
Good luck to every friend,
Great fortune and health to all.

Ross describes two types of visitation. In one, the duan was spoken outside the house and described the ritual of approaching and entering the house. Another was sung after the house had been entered, when the caisean Calluig, the Hogmanay hide, was beaten. The boys who took part were called gillean Callaig, the Hogmanay Lads. One was covered with a bull hide to which horns and hooves were still attached and climbed to the flat edge of a house’s thatched roof and ran round it sunwise. Others would strike him with sticks.
The rhyme while the hide was being struck was spoken in Gaelic:
Hogmanay of the sack, Hogmanay of the sack,
Strike the hide, strike the hide,
Hogmanay of the sack, Hogmanay of the sack,
Beat the skin, beat the skin,
Hogmanay of the sack, Hogmanay of the sack,
Down with it! Up with it!
Strike the hide.
Hogmanay of the sack, Hogmanay of the sack,
Down with it! Up with it!
Beat the skin.
Hogmanay of the sack, Hogmanay of the sack.

Another carol or chant was sung at door of the house praising in anticipation the occupants’ generosity. Afterwards, the Hogmanay Lads were given hospitality in the house, and they walked sunwise around the fire and were given a bannock, a fruit bun or oatcake, and other traditional refreshments: oatmeal, bread and cheese, meat and a dram of whiskey.
Cheese was believed to have magical properties. A slice of the Caise Calluinn, or Christmas Cheese, called the laomacha, was preserved. A slice with a hole was best. New Year’s games involved predicting the future, avoiding behavior that would lead to a death, and determining the name of one’s future spouse.
After a day of rest on La Challiunn, or New Year’s Day, people return to the chores of everyday living. But in Scotland, they have Burns celebrations to anticipate, the dinners and parties at the end of January honoring Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, composer of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Electricity has replaced fire, but the lights it powers symbolize the ancient need to disperse the darkness. The Christmas lights we place on trees and in our yards reach back millennia to the practices of our illiterate pagan ancestors, having their origin in rituals meant to revive the sun and keep dark forces at bay. Those rituals revolve around the winter solstice.
“Solstice” derives from the Latin “solstitium,” which means “sun standing.” The sun reaches its point farthest south in the Northern Hemisphere on the winter solstice, and we have the shortest day and longest night. The winter solstice occurs at 7:04 a.m. Dec. 21 in the United States and at 12:04 p.m. Dec. 21 in Greenwich, England, the home of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time, which is 1204 Coordinated Universal Time, the basis for the seasons as set by the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
Knowing astronomy as we do, we don’t doubt the return of the sun, but it hasn’t always been so. Before Christianity, pagans worshipped the sun, the provider of light and life, and didn’t take its return for granted. They believed sun and light were truly endangered and believed their role was necessary to the sun’s return. They wore horse masks, antlers, deerskins and goatskins and danced in the firelight; and they adorned themselves and their houses with holly, ivy and mistletoe, evergreens charged with enchantment. Because longer nights held greater threat from evil creatures, people chanted protective spells, posted magic symbols on doors and clothes and avoided dark by making fire.
Fire, the brother of the sun, was the center of all winter festivals. Great bonfires burned on the hills of Ireland and Scotland, the mountains of France and Germany and in the halls of Norse kings, to give the winter sun god strength and to bring him back to life. Candles were lit in Rome at Saturnalia, which was dedicated to the Titan Saturn, lord of the harvest. Held the week ending Dec. 24, Saturnalia was a time of reversals, when masters served slaves and Romans held banquets, decorated houses with green boughs that signified life and bestowed presents. In northern Europe, men circled deasil ‚ sunwise, or clockwise — in village sword dances, forming patterns in the air with swords. The climax of the dance was the six-pointed star formed by the swords, representing the sun.
Because the winter solstice was firmly fixed in the minds of the people and was their most important festival, the Catholic church eventually chose the solstice as the day of Christ’s birth. Pope Gregory I, in 601, wrote to missionaries, “Let the shrines of idols by no means be destroyed but let the idols which are in them be destroyed … so that the people, not seeing their temples destroyed, may displace error, and recognize and adore the true God … And because they were wont to sacrifice oxen to devils, some celebration should be given in exchange for this … they should celebrate a religious feast and worship God by their feasting, so that still keeping outward pleasures, they more readily receive spiritual joys.”
Along with the date of the solstice, Christmas acquired lights, fires and the Yule log from pagan sun rituals; Christmas decorations from Saturnalia; mistletoe, holly, ivy and bay from British Isles peoples; and the Christmas tree, which probably arose in eighth-century Germany. Boniface, an English missionary to Germany, is said to have replaced sacrifices to Odin’s sacred oak with a fir tree adorned in tribute to the Christ child.
In the British Isles on Christmas Eve, gillean Nollaig, or the Christmas lads, went house-to-house chanting old traditional songs. Dressed in white, they entered a house, lifted up the youngest child, placed it on the skin of a male lamb, a creature without blemish, and carried it three times around the fire sunwise. People of the house gave the Christmas lads food and drink, and a feast followed.
The Yule log in England was cut and dragged home by oxen, people singing as they walked beside it. It was often decorated with evergreens and sometimes sprinkled with grain or cider before it was lit and was kept burning for 12 hours or 12 days. Its burning protected the household against witchcraft, and the ashes were scattered over fields to make them fertile, cast into wells to purify water or used in charms to free cattle from vermin or ward off hailstorms. When it was extinguished, a fragment was kept to start next year’s log. The Yule log symbolized the light that will return after the long dark winter.

In a move that sounds like a scene from a Buster Keaton film, several Northern scouts during the Civil War tied boxes of howitzer shells to the backs of two elderly mules and led the animals across the Rio Grande in central New Mexico. Captain James Graydon, in charge of scouts, and his helpers lit the fuses, intending to stampede the Southerners’ beef herd east of the river, but the mules turned around and began to follow the men back to the river. Graydon and his men dashed back to their lines, and the mules’ load exploded far from the Southern herd, eliminating only the poor old mules, who were deprived of their dotage.
That incident would be funny were it not for the mules. It was part of the Confederacy’s campaign north from El Paso, Texas, along the Rio Grande through the heart of New Mexico Territory. The grand plan was to capture the Southwest and its gold and silver mines for the South and to gain access to the ports of southern California, far from the Northern blockades.
The morning after the mules met their maker, Feb. 21, 1862, North met South at Valverde, about halfway between El Paso and Albuquerque. Col. Edward R.S. Canby commanded Northern troops, and Brigadier General Henry Hopkins Sibley the Southern. Losses were about even, but the Confederates took the field, and the way north lay open.
The Confederates reached Albuquerque, 100 miles to the north, within a week seized the federal stores, and moved to Santa Fe, the territorial capital, entering that city on March 10. Only Fort Union, northeast of Santa Fe, lay between the Confederates and Colorado, when Union commanders finally awoke to the situation.
Col. John P. Slough, leading the 1st Colorado Volunteer Infantry Regiment, set out in late February and early March, walking more than 400 miles in 13 days through snow and over Raton Pass between Colorado and New Mexico, reaching Fort Union on March 11.
On March 26, Slough’s advance guard under Major John M. Chivington encountered Sibley’s vanguard, the 2nd Texas Mounted Rifles and four companies of the 5th Texas, in Apache Canyon at the western end of Glorieta Pass, just southeast of Santa Fe, in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Union won the small battle, their first in New Mexico, but the main forces had not been involved.
On March 28, while Slough’s volunteers battled Confederates under Col. William Scurry, Chivington led 430 men, guided by a New Mexican who knew the terrain, 16 miles through the mountains to a wooded precipice overlooking Johnson’s ranch, where Scurry had left his supply train, descended the cliff using ropes and leather straps, drove away the guards, and destroyed the entire train of 73 wagons, burning all the ammunition, food, baggage, saddles, tents, clothing and medical supplies, and killing 500 horses and mules with bayonets. That act turned Glorieta Pass into a Union victory and ended the Confederates’ plan to take the Southwest.
To drive the Confederates south, Canby feinted toward Albuquerque, where Sibley had left his remaining supplies, forcing Sibley southward toward that city, and the Colorado troops retook Santa Fe. Sibley abandoned New Mexico after his plea for reinforcements went unanswered, evacuating Albuquerque on April 12 and starting south down the Rio Grande in a long withdrawal marked by sporadic fighting. The Confederate army disintegrated on the last leg of the march across deserts and mountains. Sibley passed Mesilla, south of Las Cruces, and Fort Bliss in early May, learning at the latter that a new Union force was heading east from California. The miserable remnants of the Southern army crossed the West Texas desert in midsummer, heading to San Antonio.
New Mexico remained in Union control for the rest of the war, and Trans-Mississippi campaigns involved Indian uprisings, fighting in East Texas and Minnesota, and Chivington’s infamous Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado. The mule incident, typical of 19th-century cruelty, may not have been in a movie, but the New Mexican campaign served as the setting for “The Good, the Bad & the Ugly.” Filmed in Europe, the movie was fiction, but it used an authentic but little-known Civil War campaign to motivate the action.

A play in one act

The players:
Angus, a large male cat bearing a large load of fur that falls off at the least movement.
Tristan, a small tortoiseshell female cat who is painfully shy, perhaps the result of a kittenhood trauma during her stray months in Akron before she came to live at her present home.
Chesapeake, a yellow and white male cat, the youngest of the pride, who follows the other cats about, patterns his actions after theirs, and often bears scars gained from tormenting other cats.
Eutzly, an angel food cake-colored Nigerian dwarf goat who lives in a small house on the hill at the back of the yard.
Man, provider of food and water.
Scene 1
At the rise of the sun, we see birds busy at feeders in a yard behind a split-level house. A cat sleeps under a garden shed, another in the garage, and a third on the ottoman in the house. A Nigerian dwarf goat sleeps in his stall. Other than the ticking of a wall clock, all is quiet in the house. The animals long ago adapted their sleep patterns to the humans in the house, source of sustenance and companionship. A recent unseasonable cold snap has sent animals and humans into winter behavior patterns.
Scene 2
About 9 a.m., Man descends the steps. Angus sees Man and rolls on his side, releasing clouds of hair that settle on the furniture and floor.
Angus: Meow.
Man (Rubbing Angus’ fur): Hi Angus.
Angus (Running to kitchen door that leads to the garage): Meow.
Man: Do you want out?
Angus runs into the garage, where Chesapeake greets him and waits for Man to open the back door. Man fills food and water dishes and opens back door, Angus and Chesapeake rush out, and Tristan, waiting outside, hurries in to eat.
Tristan (Plaintively): Mee-oww.
Eutzly (Hears the sound of the back door, leaves his house and steps onto his wooden spool for a better view.) (Beseechingly): Baaaa, baaaa, baaaa.
Man carries water to Eutzly’s house, removes a bucket of ice, and replaces it with the fresh water. Eutzly eagerly noses about the bales of hay and waits for Man to give him grain. Man takes Eutzly on leash to the garage and feeds him, and they walk about the yard a bit while Eutzly, shivering in the cold, browses for the few remaining leaves and settles for pine needles, something he eats only in winter when all other green is gone. The cold wind soon sends Man inside after returning Eutzly to his stall, where new hay awaits.
Scene 3
About 11:30 a.m., Angus runs back to the garage. He stays out until 11 p.m. on warm days but in this weather makes only short forays.
Angus (Imploringly): Meow!
When Man opens the door, Angus dashes in and retreats to the warmth of the Hudson’s Bay Blanket on the master bed. Man enters his vehicle and drives off, looking back at the goat house on the hill to be sure all is secure.
Scene 4
Man returns after dark, which arrives early near the time of the Winter Solstice. Chesapeake runs into the garage when the car stops and spends the rest of the evening basking on the warm hood. Man takes things inside and soon returns to the garage. Chesapeake stands up and arches his back.
Chesapeake (Contentedly): Purrrrrrrrr.
Man: Hi Chesapeake.
Man scoops grain into mug and adds goat nutrients, braces himself, and opens the back door, where the bleak wind of late autumn assaults his uncovered face. He takes the grain to Eutzly, who hears him ascending the hill and stands at his stall door, scraping the door with his front hooves. Man enters the goat house.
Man (In a tone showing he is glad to be home with his animals): Eutzly!
Eutzly wags his tail and wiggles back and forth in anticipation of his grain, which he gobbles after Man puts it in his tub and sets the tub on the floor. A scratching sound is heard at the door, which Man opens.
Tristan: Meow.
Man: Come in, Tristan.
Man sits in his folding chair to read, Tristan hovers nearby for petting, and Eutzly stands on a bale of hay while eating hay from another bale. Man reads until he can no longer stand the cold, lets Tristan out, puts Eutzly in his stall, and returns to the warm house, on the way petting Chesapeake, who still rests on the hood of the car, inviting Tristan to enter the garage, and entering the house, where Angus sleeps on the wool blanket.

“Late Fall Cold Snap” runs through early April. Start times are approximate. Seating in the goat house is limited.

1: George Washington
2: Thomas Jefferson
5: Abraham Lincoln
10: Alexander Hamilton * (first Secretary of the Treasury)
20: Andrew Jackson
50: Ulysses S. Grant
100: Benjamin Franklin *
500: William McKinley
1,000: Grover Cleveland
5,000: James Madison
10,000: Salmon P. Chase * (initiated the national banking system and issued the first greenbacks in 1863 while Secretary of the Treasury)
100,000: Woodrow Wilson (used only for Federal Reserve and
Treasury transactions)
* not a president