How To Face Winter

Garrison Keillor writes today in Salon about his strategy for living through winter in Minnesota.

On New Year's Day, I plan to take a flight to Oslo, Norway, and then fly
north to the city of Tromso, 400 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, in hopes
of seeing the northern lights and dog-sledding across a glacier but really it's
to get some trouble into my life, which has become too placid. There is no
sunrise or sunset in Tromso in January, just darkness. When I return, I will not
ever feel bad about winter again, and in Minnesota, that means six months of
happiness. One cannot ask for more.

I guess it's true--when you are in a funk, just find somebody who is worse off than you are. It can only help.