Dear Natalie,

Celebrate the joy of Christmas, and its peace and humanity, throughout your coming year. You are a very special contributor to our community.

The homes on Mona Lisa Hill, so named because an artist used fertilizer to create the Mona Lisa for spring viewing so many years ago, has been ravaged by stucco-tacky. Now, instead of the glorious green of Leonardo, we see a collection of humorous villas that look more like casinos and houses of prostitution.

That humor does not escape our regional humorists because, like the remnants of a too-slowly dying culture, Alamo is defined by the remnants of a stucco-tacky culture. Yes, we did stand by, as culture dictated, and let various individuals do their "thing" and we now have our ridgeline, all 360 degrees, cluttered with stucco-tacky.

Welcome to the Hotel Snaysmuth as it repeats around our community. The namesake, built in the Meridan CT area in the late 1600s, never was successful in any of its uses and has become the symbol for building failure throughout North America. It has been perfected in Alamo.

Thus, reaching back to a former life, and the 1980's, I would like to bring forward The GRITS Gourmet, as a restaurant that belongs, repeated, on the Alamo ridgeline, serving GRITS as substitute for anything delectable and pleasing.

You get the picture,

"I am meaningless as HAL"