My friend and fellow artist Simo Alitalo wrote me this morning to inform me that Finland is without snow this winter. FINLAND… WITHOUT SNOW. I mean, cmon!! He writes:

Greetings from the darkness!

There is an old Finnish Christmas Carol where they sing that Christmas
is like a summer in the middle of winter.

The global warming is giving a new literal meaning to the song:
after the very warm year we are having extremely warm winter. No
snow, no ice, instead green grass and buds in bushes – and because
there is no snow the darkness is unbelievable!

The image up top was snapped from http://62.73.32.2/ , a URI Simo sent of a webcam pointed at a Finnish square. Look at how pitiful that Christmas tree near the middle looks. Just pitiful! Normally Finnish squares are a blanket of white!