From the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library here in the wilds of Connecticut, this is obscure, season four in American tragedy.

I am your host, your friend, your ear lover, and literary mansplainer in chief,

Michael Ian Black. Having just concluded the Thanksgiving holiday, our first at our mid-century

masterpiece here in the wilds of Connecticut, that is how I have been referring to our home,

although it is hardly a masterpiece by any architectural definition.

It is, however, mid-century, built in 1960, as I may have mentioned, and it feels like a mid-century home,

which was, of course, part of its appeal to aesthetic snobs like my wife

and myself. We had just a lovely gathering of the family. Our happy foursome, the first time all

four of us were gathered in the mid-century masterpiece. We had too much food. We had the correct amount of booze.

We had a fire in the fireplace. Now, our Savannah Mance had something like six fireplaces,

maybe even more. I don't know. None of them operable as far as we knew. We never had them

inspected because, you know, Savannah, it's like the number of times you would actually use a fireplace in Savannah is somewhat limited. Although when it gets into the winter season, let's say December, January, February, although the temperature never drops much below 50 or maybe gets into the

low 40s at worst, the house itself was remarkably cold, much colder than the current house

in which I'm living, where the temperatures have already dipped into the 20s. But this house is just better insulated.

You know, it's more recent.

It's got new windows.

And the fireplace works.

There's also an outdoor fireplace with this home.

The indoor fireplace is backed on the other side by an outdoor space, which contains another fireplace. We haven't used it yet.

I'm looking forward to that. Looking forward to getting out there in the cold and rubbing my

hands together and putting a marshmallow on a stick and then complaining that I'm cold and then

complaining that the fire burned my marshmallow, rendering it inedible, and then wondering aloud

...