Dear Bay Weekly: I pick up Bay Weekly every week, usually at Gary’s Grill, and I love the sudoku puzzle. I try the crossword, too, but I’m better at the sudoku. You haven’t run the answers to the sudoku the past couple weeks. And why don’t you have the answers to the puzzles in that week’s paper instead of the next week? A week is a long time to wait. –Pauline Koch, Severna Park  

Chesapeake Bay oysters, at the peak of their season, contribute to our seasonal well-being by starring in many of our favorite traditional recipes: oyster dressing; its succulent who-needs-the-bird cousin, oysters au gratin; oysters on the half shell; oysters Rockefeller.  To enjoy favorite dishes new and old, we need oysters. Of course we now know that oysters have even more important work to do than feeding us contentment. So important, that Maryland and Virginia have made restoring the native oyster one of the mainstays of their current efforts to restore the Bay.

  No matter what people have told you, it is not just the thought that counts. It really is the gift. It should not be so, but it is. Christmas is beloved by children and by women who get the right gift.

  The moon wanes thru week’s end, until Sunday, December 5, when the new moon passes directly between the sun and the earth, disappearing from view. Of course, the moon is still there. However, the side facing us is cast in the darkness of its own shadow, rendering it invisible to us. But the so-called dark side of the moon faces the sun full-on, reflecting all that light away from earth. Like the tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it, the dark side of the moon is only dark in as much as we see it — or don’t.