They Call It Stormy Sunday...

I was kind of hoping to have the Kansas City Chiefs coming to town for a playoff game in an old-fashioned New England gale, but no dice. Maybe we'll get worse weather net week!

Remember, if all of this rain were falling in colder weather, we'd be looking at Top 20 All Time snowfall.

The fun should start early today, before you wake up if you're one of our more hard-living readers.

It will be very windy today, especially on the South Shore, South Coast and Cape Cod. You could lose your trees or your power. To bring it back to football, I had the power blow during an ocean storm for the Tennessee/St. Louis version of the Super Bowl one year, and I had to drive around Duxbury in my Jeep to "get" the end of the game.

We're not expecting major coastal fooding, even with a New Moon in play today. The SE wind could pile up some water in isolated areas, but I wouldn't wager any money on it.

Opening Day Blues: The Peril Of Driving In The First Snow Of The Season

We have had a couple of minor winter weather events recently, officially kicking off the Snow season. With this snowfall came a slew of fender-bending fun. Monday's evening commute was a doozy on the South Shore, as ocean-effect snow came down hard.

This snow was the catalyst behind dozens of car crashes. If you surfed Facebook on Monday afternoon, you saw the horror stories coming in.

"Kingston to Green Harbor, 60 minutes."

"Tried getting off the highway onto Route 53.... bad idea. Parking lot."

"Four concurrent accidents between Exit 11 and Exit 10 in Duxbury."

"Route 44: 10 Miles, 45 Minutes."

We wrote yesterday about how Southerners have difficulties driving in snow. A warm city like Atlanta can be shoved into zombie-apocalypse chaos by 2 inches of snow. For one day every year, so can Massachusetts.

While it snowed for a good, long time yesterday, in the end, we only got 2-4". That's nothing. Last year, we were getting 2-4 inches an hour for about 6 weeks. While I don't have the numbers for Massachusetts handy, I'd bet that it took 20 inches of February snow to get the highway anarchy that we had Monday night with our 2 inches.

I did poke around those Internets to see if I could find anything official-looking to validate my suspicions. An article from a 2004 Pennsylvania newspaper cites a study of 1.4 million fatal accidents showed that a substantially larger percentage of fatal accidents went down on the first day of snowfall in a season.

First snowfalls are especially deadly for elderly drivers, who seem to be mixing "difficulties adjusting to winter conditions" with "this was the event where Grammy really began to show her age" and adding a touch of "Grandpa needs to upgrade from his 1976 Coupe De Ville."

A more recent article concerning an Iowa State Patrol study showed that in 2014, there were 700 accidents in November. Most of these were attributed to snowfall. In December, which in theory is deeper in the winter and subsequently snowier, the number of accidents drops to 359.

Wisconsin, which is snowier than Massachusetts, agrees with my theory enough that at least one newspaper there titled an article "People Need To Re-Learn How To Drive."

Its the same set of mistakes in any snowy community. People drive too fast, they ride the other car's bumper, and they respond poorly to snow-related hazards. In non-wintry communities, you can add "lack of snow-removal equipment" to the mix.

People who get year-after-year snow have a tendency to adjust as the winter sets in, which the Iowa study shows. They ease up on the gas pedal, they avoid dangerous or busy roads, they remember to leave earlier, they get snow tires, and they perform a zillion other calibrations to their driving style.

We are actually at a high point in snow-driving proficiency among people in Southeastern Massachusetts. Last winter was one of our worst ever. Many towns shattered their winter snowfall record totals. You may live a long time before you see a winter like that one.

This means that almost every driver on the local roads, with the exception of snowbirds and kids who just got their license this year, has some experience driving in the worst winter conditions that Massachusetts can dish out. Teenagers right now have the same Worst Winter Ever perspective as a 70 year old man. That should make for a lengthy period of slightly better local driving.

Except during the first snowfall, of course. We all fall to pieces then.

Why Can't Southerners Drive In Snow?

Is It Really That Difficult?

(Editor's Note: This is from a 2014 article at a site we used to write for...)

Bourne had a bit of snow falling this morning, and it snowed through 10 AM or so. It was good for about 2-3", at least where I am in Sagamore. The schools in Bourne almost but didn't delay or cancel. The roads will be a bit slick, especially if they don't plow them. They may even not plow them, as towns sometimes choose to save Snow Removal funding for more serious events. This is no big deal. 3" or so, maybe 6" on the Islands. We golf in snow like that.

This same storm- granted, with a touch more intensity- just went through the South. Normally warm places like Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are getting snow, ice, or both. These are regions of the country that generally don't get snow. Being able to build a snowman in Savannah, Georgia is almost as rare as being attacked by an alligator while swimming in Cape Cod Bay.

You can say that the Confederacy had a philosophical mindset about the snowfall only if you remember that Anarchy is a philosophy. Cars are frozen in place on the highways. Children are stranded in schools, or even- in Hotlanta- in a school bus by the roadside. The Governor is urging citizens to remain in their homes. The term "zombie movie" is used in a descriptive manner by CNN. The storm is being called "the Atlanta Snow Jam" by one newspaper, who have "unspeakably horrible commute" in their headlines. Atlanta had about 1000 motor vehicle accidents, and triple digit casualties.

Atlanta had 2.7" of snow.

There is a State Of Emergency in just about any state that once produced cotton in large quantities. It is a justified condition. In both southern/national headlines and my Facebook, I hear tales of 18 hour commutes, highway parking lots, shelters being opened, people missing or unaccounted for, airport delays, scared kids in buses, and general all-around chaos. The last time this region was so worried about getting someone out of a bus, it was Rosa Parks.

People with even a moderate interest in Weather History, or people who were living in Massachusetts in the 1970s, immediately think "Blizzard of '78" when they read the stories coming out of Alabama (the link leads to an article with "Aaaaughh!" in the headline). You hear the same tales of frozen highways, car-camping, old people freezing to death, pregnant women stranded in their homes, and what have you.

Now, the difference between the two regions in this case is that Atlanta has about 2 inches of snow, and Massachusetts got 2 feet of snow in the Blizzard of '78. Two feet and change, actually.

Before I discuss what I think causes these differences, I want it stated early in the article that the Dirty South are no punks. Most of the Civil War was the South slapping the North around, and the North only really won through attrition. If General Armistead charged a little harder at Gettysburg, you could pretty much look at the numbers and be like "a kid from Louisiana can beat two kids from New York, even if you give the Yankees all of the railroads and food." This snow chaos we have in South Carolina and the relative calm in Massachusetts is not a case where, as General Pickett once said, "I think the Yankees may have had something to do with it."

So, why does snow that a housewife on Monument Beach might not even notice cause such chaos in Mississippi?

We're going to focus on vehicles for starters, in a manner which can be concurrently positive, negative, and a perceived positive that actually works out to be a negative once you think on it a bit. When chaos is ensuing and you need to place blame, it is not a bad idea to think of something you may have been mistakenly confident about.

That's a snow plow. You don't need me to tell you that, because- when it snows- you see them all over Bourne. Someone from Louisiana might look at that same plow sort of like how you or I would look at an armadillo. You'd know what it is, but seeing one in action would be a first.

Plows, and their good friends Salt and Sand, are essential when trying to clear snow from a road. Sand and Salt either provide traction or they melt snow/reduce the temperature at which water freezes. The plows do the bull work of removing the piles of snow that build up.

If you like numbers as much as I do.... chew on these.

- Helsinki, which is in Finland, removes about 200,000 truckloads of snow from their streets in a harsh winter.

- Montreal, which gets 5-6 feet of snow per winter, spends $158 million on snow removal for a year.

- Boston, which has 850 miles of roadway, has over 500 "pieces" of snow removal equipment, and I don't think that they count shovels.

- Miami has never had accumulating snow, and has only had flurries a few times.

- Florida and Louisiana have an average annual snowfall of 0.0". Alabama and the Carolinas, which have mountains, get roughly 1.3" of snow per year.

- Massachusetts gets 43" of snow a year, a bit more inland, a bit less near the Cape.

- New York gets 123" of snow a year, less as you near NYC.

- After the "Great Snow of 1717," much of New England was buried under 25 foot drifts.

- The record snowfall in the US from one storm is 189 inches... in California, of all places. Mount Shasta, to be precise.

- Atlanta has roughly 2.7" of snow so far. Boston, which is nowhere near holding the national record, got 27.1" of snow in 24 hours during the Blizzard of '78. The effects on the people in each city were similar.

- South Carolina, which has some mountainous territory, gets .3 days of snowfall a year. That's about 8 hours, generally spread out over a dozen or two mountain weather events.

-  If you add up the average amount of hours it is snowing in Michigan in a year, snowfall fills 44 days.

- Finally.... Bourne, which has 20,000 people in the summer, has enough town plows and subcontractors out on the road that the girl at the Highway Department wouldn't even venture a guess when I called to ask how many plows Bourne had. From what I hear on the news, Atlanta, which has 5 million people in her metropolitan area, has 10 plows. They recently (yesterday) bought 12 plow blades, which they are going to attach to municipal vehicles.

Bourne has all of those plows because they NEED all of those plows. We'd look just as silly on the snowy roads as Alabamians (?) do if we didn't have plows out clearing the streets. Why doesn't Alabama have plows? The last heavy snow in Alabama was 1993's most-likely-aptly-named Storm Of The Century. They'd be fools if they bought and maintained 500 snow plows. The environment doesn't merit it. It's why people in Kansas don't have surfboards.

A bias exists, and it gets worse as you head North. People in Massachusetts laugh at people from Georgia when snow falls. People from New Hampshire laugh at how poorly Massachusetts flat-landers drive in snow. People in Canada laugh at people in New Hampshire. Eskimos laugh at Canadians, and Santa Claus thinks everyone South of him (at last count: all of us) are wussies.

But are there other factors for the Great Atlanta Snow-In?

I spent some time searching for Southern driving apologists on the Internet. You hear a lot of talk about snow tires and chains. While Massachusetts is snowy a little bit, I don't know anyone who uses chains on their tires. I'm sure that there are people in Alberta who don't know anyone who doesn't use chains.

There was also some discussion regarding the relative predominance of dirt roads in the South, with other people pointing out that some people from places like Mobile had never driven on anything but pavement (with the only variation ever being wet pavement). People who have lived in both climates (many northerners move south, and they dilute the "southerners can't drive in snow" argument as they multiply... our own Snowbirds are guilty of this, especially in the winter) say that dirt roads are actually better for snow, but become worse when the snow melts.

You also hear a lot of pickup truck talk. If you don't have a pickup truck in the South, you're kind of like a sissy. They're everywhere in the Confederacy, sort of like grits. Most of the problems lie in relation to the pickup having almost all of her weight in the front. This leads to those spinning crashes you see on The Weather Channel so often during Southern snowfall. Weather watchers call those the "F-360."

You hear NASCAR mentioned a lot, and it is important to the discussion. It comes down to interests vs environment.... nature vs nurture, if you will.

Southerners adore NASCAR. They follow it extensively, and being a fan of NASCAR means that even a dummy is going to pick up a lot of how-a-car-works knowledge. That should lead to how-a-car-performs knowledge, which should lead to a better, more educated driver. Throw in the better intersection behavior you see in Southern Hospitality culture and the Hurricane Belt earned-wisdom sense of "let's just work together and get through this storm," and you'd think the car-loving Southerners would do all right in storms.

All that is true, but it is somewhat offset by the fact that NASCAR is essentially Tailgating and Hostile Passing at 190 mph. "Driving well" in Daytona is "being 6 inches from someone's rear bumper on a turn." A little exchange of paint is almost like a Hello, especially among the veteran NASCAR drivers.

Of course, Southerners don't generally try to drive like their NASCAR heroes when commuting home from their office jobs in Savannah. However, what a Duxbury housewife thinks is tailgating might be different than what someone who roots for Dale Junior thinks tailgating is. When a Yankee with a brain in her head backs off someone on the highway in a snowstorm, the distance might be 100 yards. A serious NASCAR fan might view a proper distance as 20 yards.

The NASCAR expertise of the Southerner is offset by the snowy experience of the Civil War victors, even when the aggressive/possibly insane Boston driving style is figured into the equation. Pocasset people know to pump their brakes, and how to turn into a skid. We develop a sense of how to drive in different rates of snowfall. We look at a balding tire in October and think that we'd better change it soon with more foreboding than someone from Ole Miss does. Crikey, we're even a much better bet to have the little bear paw ice-scraper thing than an Auburn fan would be.

To be fair and honest, I think that, if people who are deep into NASCAR lived in more wintry climates, they would evolve to be better snow drivers than Cape Codders. But they don't, and they aren't.

In fact, looking at relative impact and using my old Civil War logic.... 2.7 inches of snow in a day hits Atlanta like 27.1 inches of snow hits Boston. Therefore, we drive about 10 times better in snow than one of those Roll Tide SOBs. This is a personal guess of mine, and I'm using a rubric that State Farm probably doesn't recognize. If the Civil War were fought by my rubric, the key to beating Bobbie Lee would have been to lure him into Maine.

In closing, I want to say that I have a lot of sympathy for our Red State cousins. They are getting a snow event that they can tell their grandchildren about. It is hitting a region where no one has a puffy coat, and where fireplaces- if they exist at all- are ornamental. The ice will take down power lines, so people used to Mississippi in the middle of a heat wave will instead have Jack Frost nipping at their noses. As I publish this at noon, there are kids in Georgia who still haven't gotten home from school yesterday.

And there, but for the grace of God, Jimmie Johnson, and the snow plow, goes You.

Handling Important Business

To Hostess Cakes,

I am writing to express my desire that you bring back the Suzy Q snack cakes. I realize that you guys had those business issues a few years ago and that things may have become confusing. However, this is no excuse for not bringing back Suzy Qs. I mean, WTF? You have Sno Balls, Chocolate Twinkies, Zingers... but no Suzy Qs?

You're very lucky that I m heavily drugged most of the time, because I am constantly tempted to come down to your offices and cause difficulties. I am presently refusing to allow myself to see where your corporate offices are located, because I may be like "Oh, they're only in Pennsylvania, I can be there in 8 hours." Nothing good would come from that.

I'll be frank with you. Healthy eating means little to me, as I feel it is the realm of the weak. Ever since I was a kid, I liked to come home to some Quik, some Pub Fries, and some Suzy Qs. None of those items are available to me any more (Quik changed their formula a decade or so ago, and hasn't been good since, and ConAgra refused my less strident demands that they bring back Pub Fries), and I'll admit that some unwarranted frustration is building. I am not alone.

I've been filling the void with Devil Dogs and Cup Cakes, but this is a lot to ask of two individual snack cake brands.

Since you've had some business trouble lately, let me offer some free advice as to what you need to do to get the ship righted over there:

1) Bring back Suzy Qs.

2) Determine which executive was responsible for killing off Suzy, and literally kick him down the hallway and out of the door. I would not be above lobotomizing this individual.

3) Take out an advertisement during the next Super Bowl to apologize to America for this error. Show the beating/involuntary surgery from Item #2 if you wish.

4) If you refuse to bring back Suzy Qs, the only way to keep me safely on Cape Cod is to immediately send me one (1) carton of Devil Dogs weekly for the rest of my life. I'm 47 and do not have a healthy lifestyle, but I have terrific resiliency and stamina. I'd say that you could lay off the throttle by 2050 or so.

I thank you for the time, and urge you to do the right thing,

Cranberry Jones

Who Has The Money In Cranberry County?

Well, now that we have all that Baby Jesus and Peace On Earth stuff out of the way, let's wonder about how much money each of us has!

This site could indeed be the friggin' Warlock of your Jealous Face.

It lists the median household income for each town in Massachusetts. As you know, median household income is the amount that divides the income distribution into two equal groups, half having income above that amount, and half having income below that amount.

Yeah, I didn't know that either.

It is an effective means of determining and comparing regional wealth distribution. Massachusetts has a median household income of $67,846 and some coins. We're comfortably ahead of most other states, who combine to have a $53,482 national average. The information we'll use is ranged from 2010-2014.

Worry not if the green-eyed devil of Envy overcomes you a bit as you read this. It's natural to want what the other man has, and men as sublime as Napoleon have said that religion exists merely to keep the poor from slaughtering the rich.

We won't get into all of that just yet, but will instead break down Eastern Massachusetts in a way that you aren't used to seeing.

We're used to thinking Geographically, i.e. "Carver is west of Plymouth," and we'd all be constantly lost if we didn't. However, things are generally multi-dimensional. As Steven Wright once said to a woman who told him that his socks didn't match, "They match to me, because I go by Thickness."

Likewise, we shall go Economic.

If you look at the state through a lens of median household income, you see several interesting facts. For starters, the eastern half of the state would be far better off if we jettisoned everything west of Worcester. They sort of bog us down, and our total would be much higher if we traded Western Massachusetts for maybe the Nashua area and the more industrious parts of Rhode Island.

Let them have UMass, the Basketball Hall Of Fame and Six Flags. I'm not looking down on Western Mass, as there was once a time when ritzy Duxbury was a backwater farm town, and the western part of the state had profitable mills. Times just change, player.

However, Massachusetts is a part of the megalopolis that runs down to about coastal Virginia. After that, America itself is a sort of Western Massachusetts. There are wealthy communities all across America, but the only place you see deep blotches on a color-coded median household income map is the megalopolis.

We (Southeastern Massachusetts) are sort of a upper middle class of Massachusetts. The real money in the state seems to be in the Metrowest and Essex County. We do OK, but the bucks tend to look inland more than coastal.

In fact, once you go south of tony Duxbury, you can't find a town with a MHI of more than $96K. Cape Cod scores worse than you'd think she would. At that point, you are really too far away to reasonably commute into Boston. You'd never see the sun shining on your house.

We're not lower class- that's out west, remember- but we aren't the big earners in the state. Weston, at a MHI of $201K, is the highest in the state. Gosnold, population 75, has the lowest MHI at $31K, no mean feat in a town that the Forbes family owns land in.

So, let's carve up some communities, and sort through the Earners and the Slackers.

CAPE COD AND THE ISLANDS

You have four heavy hitters in this region: Sandwich ($84K), Oak Bluffs ($80K), Chilmark ($67K) and Nantucket ($86K). Handcuff them to some lesser-earning regions, like Gosnold, Wellfleet ($45K), Truro ($58K), D-Y ($50 and $55K, respectively) and Provincetown ($41K).

The rest of the Cape works a range of $58-69K.

Bourne, Falmouth, Mashpee, Chatham, Brewster, Harwich and Eastham are all within about $4k of each other, with Barnstable ($58K, a lot of damned good those Kennedys do!) and Orleans (also $58K) just under the $60K Mendoza Line.

You'd think that the Cape would score better. Only Sandwich and Nantucket wouldn't get snobbed straight off the South Shore, at least with the Money Talk. Big Bank takes Little Bank.


THE SOUTH COAST

The sketchy South Coast that we all know and love has a rather wide disparity of wealth. Her two major population centers (New Bedford and Fall River) range between $33K and $36K. That is what standardized test people refer to as the Bottom Percentile.

There is some paper to be found on the South Coast. Westport ($80K), Rochester ($94K) and Freetown ($82K) can spread the CREAM around. These are the people you should burglarize if you live in New Beffuh or Fall Down River.

The South Coast, depending on how you stretch it, has some other nice spots. D-R ($85K each), Dighton, Lakeville and Berkley (all between $82 nd $85K) hve some cheddar, but the expansion also nets you large population/low income ($52K) Taunton.

Dartmouth, Acushnet, Fairhaven and Wareham all clock in the 60s, while Marion, Mattapoisett, Swansea, Somerset and Seekonk are in the 70s.

THE SWAMPLANDS

Call it the interior South Shore or interior Southeastern Massachusetts if you like. It all depends on how you carve up the South Shore, as well as what you do when you go too far north physically and culturally to claim South Coast.

Again, the big population center here is the lower income area. Brockton rocks a solid $48K MHI, although it is hardly representative of the region.

The three Bridgewaters (East, West, and just plain Bridgewater) run the $80-88K range, with Westie slacking to the $81K level. Throw in their cousin Raynham at $80K, too.

The better rich/poor part of town story involves the Atlleboros, where North earns $81K, while regular Attleboro sleeps late every day and only clocks $65K.

Easton ($95K) and Mansfield ($93K) dominate the region financially. If you can chop Easton off of North Easton, you get an even more impressive number, although I may have that back asswards.


THE SOUTH SHORE

Here there be Moolah.

The South Shore is the economic anchorman of the Southeastern Massachusetts region. Your average Cohasset ($117K) resident earns three or four times what some poor Fall River SOB hauls home off the fishing boat every year, probably without ever leaving the nice, warm office.

It is not the economic engine of SE Massachusetts, as most of her wealth dribbles down from Boston. She also does not have any great effect upon how things are run in, say, Barnstable. There is not what biologists call a Symbiotic Relationship.

Duxbury rules the region to the tune of $120K. They surged past Cohasset when I moved to the Cape, a move which concurrently dropped Bourne under Falmouth.

Dat Next Level Down is comprised of Norwell ($110K), Hingham ($103K), Scituate ($102K), and Hanover ($98K). They sort of finish off the region's Top Percentile. Barely missing the top percentile are Marshfield ($89K), Pembroke ($89K) and Kingston ($86K).

Moving inland a bit, you'd also net Plympton ($94K), Hanson ($93K) and Abington ($81K). The weak links are Halifax ($69K), Rockland ($66K), Whitman ($76K, and before you get mad, know that Whitman would be a Fat Cat if she were on the other side of the Cape Cod Canal), Carver ($72K) and Middleboro ($75K).

The larger towns in the region- Weymouth and Plymouth- grade out lower than the Hinghams and Scituates of the area. They kick in $69K and $76K respectively.

Don't hate the player... hate the game.

First Snow Of The Season

So it begins...

It wasn't much, but it was a start. Cramberry County got her first snow of the year.

We're from a part of Massachusetts that may actually skip December snow sometimes. We could also get anything in a range from Blizzard to Flurries.

This is one of those Al Nino years, so maybe we're not going to have much snow. Or maybe we'll get 10 yards of it, who knows?

Weather science is sorcery, and no one really knows for sure what is going to happen more than 2 or 3 days in advance, if even that. What we can tell you is what HAS happened in the past. That's actually pretty easy since they invented Google.

NOAA keeps those kind of records. For Massachusetts, they have 6 months listed for snowfall: November, December, January, February, March and April. We've had snow in October, and we've had snow in June, but they only keep averages for the months I listed.

No joke on that June snow thing... New England got June snow in 1816 (The Year Without A Summer) and 1842. Vermont got a foot of snow from the 1842 event, which also threw June snowflakes onto Boston.

Boston's measurable snowfall record for lateness is May 10th, 1977. That's the same as Burlington, Vermont. Our average final snowfall falls on March 25th. Burlington, VT and Buffalo, NY have late April as the average last snowfall. Boston has October 10th, 1979 as her earliest snowfall. 1913 holds the Boston record for snowiest October, at .4 inches.

Bourne, MA, very early this AM...

Here are a few average winter snowfall totals (1981-2010 averages, and they do not include the snowalicious winter we went through last January through March), by town:

Chatham, 28.9 inches over 11.7 days of snow... "days of snow" means "days with more than .1 inches of snow)

Edgartown, 23.6 inches over 9.7 days

Hyannis, 15.6 inches over 6.1 days

East Wareham, 43.8 inches over 22.4 days

Hingham, 47.1 inches over 25.0 days

New Bedford, 33.2 inches over 14.7 days

Taunton, 28.0 inches over 10.3 days

Plymouth, 36.2 over 13.1 days
*************************

Let's use Wareham as a base. In November, they get 1 inch of snow on average, in 1.4 days. December kicks 6.9 inches over 2.3 days. January drops 12 inches over 4.6 days. February powders us with 8.7 inches over 3.6 days. March gives 6.1 inches over 2.3 days. April finishes the show with 1.4 inches over .3 days. That's your average Wareham Winter... 36.1 inches over 14.3 days of snowfall.

Those numbers aren't always accurate. We had singular storms which have rivaled that 36.1' figure. That was a bad winter. Those sort of average out the years where we never get a bad storm. After last night's snow, Wareham has about a 7 inch snow deficit when compared to the Average year.

Cape Cod (or at least Cape Cod if you average out the numbers for Chatham and Hyannis) has an average low temperature of 29 degrees in December, 23 in January, 24 in February, 30 in March and 39 in April. They get 25 days over 80 degrees, 20 of which are in July and August. They get 28 days at 20 degrees or below , 20 of which are from January and February.

So, we have the Winter underway, and the worst is yet to come. There is nothing huge in the pipeline. The guy on Accuweather say that our snow should kick in about mid-January.

Join Us In Hyannis As We Help The Salvation Army!

We've been a bit busy lately, hence the low publishing rate. We have a good excuse, though... we're working with a charity!

The Salvation Army has been around since 1865, when it was founded in London. The "Army" part comes from the dedication of the people working there. "I'm no volunteer, I'm a regular!" This sort of led to the naming of the charity, which is broken down somewhat militarily. I answer to a captain and a lieutenant.

I don't have a rank. This is probably for the best, as I'm sort of in the grey area between Lapsed Catholic and Agnostic. I like what they do, however, and they've never asked me about my religious beliefs.

I operate out of the Hyannis corps, and Hyannis services all of Cape Cod. They do a lot of tireless Good. They feed homeless, work with the community, host Mass (they're a church), and make sure that kids get presents on Christmas.

They fund these efforts by a variety of ways, the most familiar of which is the Red Kettle. We all know the guy (or girl, Jessica works with the charity, too) ringing the bell out in the cold, standing next to the red kettle. There is no sales pitch, other than the sign and the bell.

Jessica, Stacey, Cranberry Jones and myself will be working the kettles through Christmas Eve. Be careful with Cranberry Jones, who regards his role as that of Santa's 240 pound collection agent.

We'll be at the Hyannis Stop & Shop on Route 132, at least by noon or so. We'd be there earlier, except that Cranberry Jones has trouble working the CCRTA. Remember, he got his name by a college dare at Yale, where he ate nothing but cranberry sauce for 8 weeks in an attempt to turn his skin burgundy. He is one of the tree's dimmer bulbs.

His heart is in the right place, however... and we hope yours is as well. Hit us up with some Paper Love, and we'll make sure that you at least get Merry Christmas said to you.

Merry Christmas!!!!