"...we die, my Friend, 

Nor we alone, but that which each man loved 

And prized in his peculiar nook of earth 

Dies with him or is changed, and very soon 

Even of the good is no memorial left."

- Willam Wordsworth, The Ruined Cottage

It's hard to start the new year with a loss. We all do from time to time, I suppose. I've not the words, so I'm using Wordsworth's. I'm more of a Coleridge fan usually, but there you go. This is a somber moment of reflection before revelry and the embracing of friends in a rocky little village in Cornwall. The knowledge there's one less in the world will make those embraces a little longer, and a little warmer.