Christmas Day in the Morning

Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) was a bestselling and Nobel Prize-winning author. Her classic novel The Good Earth (1931) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and William Dean Howells Medal. Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, Buck was the daughter of missionaries and spent much of the first half of her life in China, where many of her books are set. In 1934, civil unrest in China forced Buck back to the United States. Throughout her life she worked in support of civil and women's rights, and established Welcome House, the first international, interracial adoption agency. In addition to her highly acclaimed novels, Buck wrote two memoirs and biographies of both of her parents. For her body of work, Buck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938, the first American woman to have done so. She died in Vermont.

Mark Buehner is a research scientist working for Environment and Climate Change Canada, and is considered an international expert in data assimilation. He is the scientific lead in Canada for the development of data assimilation systems for both operational sea ice prediction and global deterministic weather prediction. Mark is also a member of the Data Assimilation and Observing Systems Working Group of the World Meteorological Organization.