Interesting letter from Ross. I do not know what to make of people who would start fires. There is arson here too, but it is almost invariably for insurance, a way of going out of business. Deplorable, but at least there is a comprehensible (if reprehensible) reason. I got a private note from Jack Duskin, saying in effect that they were just all the year's snowfall in one week, that they were digging out, used to it in any case, and things were gradually improving. He added that it was nothing like our ice storm four years ago (was it really that long ago?) And our ice storm was nothing like these fires. Although there were a few deaths (maybe five or six), a couple living two blocks away, 93 and 94 years old died from a fire that they started obviously to keep warm. A neighborhood of theirs whom I knew (he is a professor of German) told me that he had begged them to go to the town hall where emergency shelters had been set up, but they refused. Anyway, I am glad to hear there has been no loss of life in Sydney. (There were severe and totally unwonted snow storms down south in which people unused to driving in snow did die.) Michael