Thanksgiving

All right, let's be positive.

This is a great year for grapes in California, leading some to suggest 2005 will be one of the best vintages ever. Even for someone like me whose appreciation of wine is, like my appreciation of opera, enthusiastic but entirely uneducated, this is a great thing. It was a cool summer, too -- I guess everything worked out.

San Francisco health outreach workers are teaching junkies harm reduction, leading to a reduction in fatal overdoses.

After the NYT published a ruefully humorous piece 10 days ago on the frustrations an author encounters when a book is published -- publishers' attention to the book is scattered, fewer reviewers tackle the book, and so on -- GalleyCat published several followups, including this glowing account of a publicist who far surpassed an author's expectations.