EDITORIAL: All we want for Christmas is…

Dear Santa:

Hope you and the missus are getting enough sleep and eating lots of organic vegetables. For what we’re about to ask, you’ll need plenty of energy. 

Because we know you have hundreds of millions of wish lists to review, we’re going to help you out. This list will be short — just 10 items. Lists, don’t you know, are quite the thing in this internet-shaped world (alas).

1. Just once, a 40-yard field goal right down the middle by Charlie Brown with Lucy holding, coupled with a profitable visit next Oct. 31 by the Great Pumpkin to Linus’s most sincere patch.

2. Crowds filling The Well-Read Moose and its cash registers ringing like Christmas bells. Independent bookstores are a good barometer for the state of our nation’s intellectual health.

3. Chunks of wisdom, not coal, in the stockings of certain elected officials who are routinely and justifiably ripped on these Opinion pages. 

4. A hefty chunk of wisdom for the editorial writer, too. As the famous detective Poirot might note, the little gray cells do not always function as they should.

5. More George Bailey and less Mr. Potter in us all. (Speaking of Baileys, a bit of that in the evening coffee might not go amiss.)

6. An extra something under the tree for every two-legged traveler who had to bid farewell to a beloved four-legged companion this year.

7. The kind of blindness that improves relationships. (See Israel/Hamas, Russia/Ukraine, Rep/Dem, etc.)

8. A stake of holly through inflation’s heart.

9. Affordable, effective health care — a basic human right — for all.

10. An epidemic of laughter without cure.

Bon voyage!

Mikey