The last thing we want to do is bring a bunch of families in, and they feel unwelcome, and they're out next year.

This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?

She pulled away, ... It was unwelcome. She didn't want that.

It takes fire -- they have to have that heat to pop open and grow again.

This is the first time we've burned these units. And it might be the first time they were burned since the people who used to live here did burning years ago.

Families go to the ballpark, so why not bring the dog?