Richie, always a pleasure reading your musings on any subject. You provide enough food for thought to feed a family of ten academicians. In such a gathering, I would be relegated to the children's table.

I grew up with the raucous holiday gatherings of an extended Italian family, and dinner was a full day's work, and my eldest aunt, the matriarchal figure, would literally stay up all night cooking, and my grandfather would roast a full pig. Since the only English he spoke was a nuanced grunt, I had no way of ever ascertaining what part of the pig I was eating.

As an adult, with considerable shrinkage of family gatherings, I liked nothing better on Christmas Day than a drive in freshly fallen snow, with not a hint of commercial distraction, a very welcome relief after the mad dash on Christmas Eve to complete the shopping of a chronic procrastinator. It is eerie to once again experience that solitude, now feeling closer and closer to desolation, as we had recently moved to the heart of a mid-sized city so that we could be closer to its pulse. Now, there is barely a hint of a pulse.

Since this is a racing board, to your litany of complaints and observations about the nature of the game, of course you are right. Except for a smattering of well-intentioned scattered efforts, there are few meaningful efforts made to reach the core of the customer base. If 5-2 M/L horses (and legitimately so) can go off at 3-5, with most of the money pouring in as they near the gate, and we're talking about large pools, and the horse wins by double digit lengths, it will barely generate a "meh" from the front office if it fills the coffers. The average horse player does not move the meter in such circumstances, but bread and circuses will be offered if it helps to sell bread and circuses. As for the treatment of animals and indifference to many workers, the sport is lucky it doesn't receive more flack than it already does.

To your point about optimism, if someone in a position of authority right now offers that as the company line, I'll want to see the analytics. I won't understand them, but I want them on the table. To my uninformed mind, we are extrapolating from 4 1/2 furlong races for two year olds at Finger Lakes to how they would perform in a mile and a half turf race. Still as two year olds. If this doesn't define a fluid situation, then stop using the term. Having said all that, if some individual chooses optimism as his or her go-to emotion, I couldn't care any more about that than the color of the shirt he is wearing. It's in the wiring. However, if they insist that you be optimistic, too, then they should move on to the next house of worship. On an individual basis, it's fairly benign, and some would say, even good for you. I occasionally try it on for size if for no other reason than it's free.

I guess the question of the hour is how much will Passover resemble Christmas, this year.