Thanksgiving letters and viewing recommendations

Friday 11/28/25

As it says. First is to an editor, second to someone who lived for a long time in Vermont.

Thought this might serve you well if you’re looking for something to watch at night on your Thanksgiving trip or during the Christmas season: It’s the full run of the A Ghost Story for Christmas series. The real gems are the early M.R. James adaptations and the 1976 treatment of the Dickens story. I’ve written about a number of these and given interviews on them and the Michael Hordern entry from 1968 features in my Scrooge book. They’re super. Use the torrent to download them, then open that folder and throw away the lower resolution versions, put said folder on an external drive and there you go: classic collection. There will be another entry this year based on an E.F. Benson story. 

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Hi there. I wanted to send you this yesterday on Thanksgiving, but it was a very difficult day. I was alone, of course. Which is one thing. I might have chosen to be alone if I wasn't in this situation and was happy. But I didn't hear from anyone. I worked on masterpieces that I despair the world will never see, having started at two in the morning, as I have today (it's coming up on 3 AM now). As the day wore on, I began to think that perhaps this day will just be my final day, because I can't keep going. But I didn't want to be rash, so I forced myself to go to a movie that had about five other people at it. Hard day. All my days are hard.

I had something to share with you, though, that I also watched yesterday, and I think you'll like it. It's a beautiful short film--about a half hour in length--from 1971 called Vermont People: Chester Grimes. This was part of a PBS series that looked at various working lives in Vermont. The episode in question is about a seventy-one-year-old still-working logger who works with two horses. I could watch it again and again. I think you'll like it.

Anyway, I hope you both had a nice Thanksgiving and that you're doing well. The Monument reopened here on November 15, and so I've been back in there each day it has been open, and will do that later today as I continue to build back up to where I was before the shutdown at the end of September. Love, Colin