Mrs. Huntington and my copy of the first issue of the Journal of The Corresponding Society with the mailing envelope it came in, and what (in the old days, in certain circles, pre-Facebook, pre-iPhone, pre-Blackberry) was considered an essential research tool and a handy substitute phone book for looking up friends. 

Part of me wants to talk about the politics of the moment, but that is the part of me that talks to my fellow drivers in traffic from the safety of my vehicle's interior, with the windows rolled up.  It is the part of me that has heated exchanges with the commentators on cable news after they've gone to commercial break. 

It is the part of me that has sat here trying to figure out how to get that famous still of Vivien Leigh running down the driveway of Tara in a hoop skirt into a post that also includes the phrase "NeoSouthern Fantasy" and references to slavers and what really happens when slaves rise up against their masters, when workers really revolt, when the people really stand up, and the fat cats turn into fat rats, when Baby Doc Duvalier flees with Haiti's treasury, and Battista flies out of Havana with Cuba's gold, and Nazis move to Argentina. 

Right before I decided to just crop a picture of my coffee table and be done, I had this whole story in which Bertie Wooster talks to Jeeves about the other country house guests, and how he heard Dick saying to Lynn, "For godssake, there's an indoor ski slope and an island in the shape of a palm tree waiting for us in Dubai, quit your complaining and pack those shoes."  And Jeeves says, "Remember Nancy's friend Imelda?" 

But I decided I wasn't going to ruin my holiday thinking about the bad things that happen right before the fall of a regime.  If we're lucky.

Run away, look away, run away, Dixieland.