Dear Bay Weekly: Steve Carr’s article is good as always! Everyone is running around these days seeking Happiness indexes. We should have one for the Bay, and the index/measurement should be on people living today and how they can maintain or improve their level. Total Maximum Daily Loads are nice and necessary, but they are just another diversion that separates people from land and water and have no personal meaning for individuals.

Thanks had been given and the feast cooked, appreciated and eaten. On the mid-day interlude between dinner and dessert, Christmas trees had been chosen and cut at Bay Gardener Frank Gouin’s Upakrik Farm and hauled home in promise of a new season. Pie, persimmon pudding and chocolate-pecan-pumpkin cheesecake — from Rod ’n’ Reel’s recipe in Bay Weekly’s November 11 Thanksgiving feast issue — were being digested. Despite coffee, turkey drowsiness was setting in.