Do you miss the light strings that festooned the shade trees along Water Street sidewalks at Christmastime? I sure do. There weren't a lot of them, just one long string per tree of small white lights. But they turned the streetscape into a bit of welcome fairyland on a long winter night. Now? It's just a long winter night downtown. Don't get me wrong; I like the lights that are up now, but those tree lights added more holiday spirit than all the rest of the lights combined. Because they were overhead in the thin branches of the trees, each tree looked like a constellation of stars in the early darkness of winter.
If you don't miss those little white lights, compare the photos from January 2010 to the ones I took this week. As long as your name isn't Ebenezer Scrooge, I'm certain you'll agree their return would be welcomed as much as Santa is on Christmas morning.