A Very Stroock Christmas

The publishing house waiting for our Pershing short story has asked us if we're on track for the 12/31 deadline. 

We are on track and will try to wrap it up tomorrow. After all, for us Jews Christmas means time to get Chinese and go to the movies. 

Actually in the Stroock family from 1980 till 2003 Christmas meant visiting Mom's relatives in Western Kentucky. Here's our grandfather's grave (from whom we get our middle name, Thompson, and why we went by Tom till college). This is cemetery hill, Livermore Kentucky. The first time we've laid eyes upon it since 2004. Decorated and photographed by our cousin Molly:

In 2004 began the Stroock family tradition of Christmas lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in NYC. Always we sat at the famed Algonquin Roundtable. It was a tradition beginning with our grandfather's grandfather, Jacob Loeb (b. 1869), who used to take him to lunch there after going to the George Washington Bridge construction site.

Here's four generations of Stroocks, at the Algonquin, our last Christmas there (probably ever) in 2017.