Chilled to the bone? We've slurped our way to a definitive list of the best takeout soups on the South Fork. Here's a full week's worth of loving spoonfuls

It may come as a bit of a surprise, but it’s true: The early Americans who arrived here on the South Fork in the 1640s, despite being of Puritan stock, got fairly rowdy each December. Have you heard of wassailing? If you’ve ever been Christmas-caroling the word might ring a bell, from the most famous wassailing tune that remains among the seasonal canon, “Here We Come a-Wassailing.” It is pretty much all that’s left of a centuries-old, possibly millennium-old Yuletime tradition:

“Regionalization,” a New York State Education Department project that asks schools to consider partnering up to achieve savings and efficiencies, has garnered considerable controversy in UpIsland communities that view the initiative as the early stages of forced consolidation. But according to school officials here, the South Fork is ahead of the game. Individual districts are already sharing services extensively, they say, and the regionalization initiative is getting far less pushback locally.

Want something nice to talk about on Thanksgiving? Allow yourself to indulge in a little schadenfreude and take joy in the struggles of the hated, the feared, the disgusting, and yes, the misunderstood tick.