The family get-together, as it actually transpired, featured ham, smoked cocktail sausages, two tossed green salads (each with multiple varieties of lettuce/greens; one with red onions and balsamic vinegar, the other with red peppers and paper-thin carrot slices), black olives, snowman-shaped rolls with currants for eyes, butterflake rolls, and at least six or seven other things I can't recall. Not counting dessert. The one thing usually present but missing this year was the pickled herring. The jar was there but didn't get opened. Not sure why not. I didn't even think of it at the time, but I've been missing it ever since. My own contribution was just the coffee (Bargreen's French Roast with a dash of Espresso Dark).

The crowd was smaller than usual (my brother in Portland didn't come up; father-in-law in hospital - that's four people missing - and then my hypertraditional quasimennonitic cousin* with eleven kids didn't make it, that's a minimum of 13 more missing). But still we had at least 23 or 24 people there. And I knew all their names. ;-)

Haruo

*one of her daughters just married an Amish guy, and is in Kentucky being checked out for acceptability by his folks