The sun came out from behind the clouds yesterday and that was a big improvement to the day, to the week, and to my psyche. I’m not a huge fan of the early months of the year. They’re just too dark, short, and cold. When I still worked, I can remember entire days without sun. I’d go to the office in the dark and come home after dark. Depressing.  Which I suppose is why in my retirement I try to clutter up the early months with things to do and places to go. I’m chasing away the blues.

Yesterday, on my blog about Jimmy Carter, I posted a picture of a flag at half staff. The flag in question stands in the National Cemetery at Fredericksburg, Virginia, on Mayres Heights, the hill Confederates defended and Union soldiers attacked. It was one sided. The Union soldiers were climbing uphill over open ground. The Confederates with their cannons were well hidden in a sunken road. It was a slaughter.

It’s a national day of mourning for Jimmy Carter. I remember when he won the presidency in 1977. It was a breath of fresh air after the Nixon years. But it didn’t take long, however, for him to fall foul of the hell-bent-for-leather American psyche. In response to the energy crisis he lowered the speed limit on US highways to 55 and he suggested we wear sweaters rather than turn up the heat. His biggest crime, however, was failing to bomb Iran back to the stone age when they took our hostages.

On my recent trip to Virginia I visited the Civil War battlefield at Fredericksburg. It was the sight of another of those Union defeats attributed to poor union generalship and a failure to move in a timely manner. I’d read all about the battle, now was my chance to walk the ground. It was moving, and it's still hard to comprehend how they did it, how they faced the roaring guns and the bloody screams of fallen comrades to try and fight their way to the top of Maryes Heights against an entrenched foe.

I’ve been amazed at the response to the Bob Dylan biopic. Glad, actually, but I’m not sure if I want to see it, having lived it, if only at a distance. I sort of like all those characters keeping their place in my own movie, the one swimming around in my head, the movie in which they shaped my taste in music and my taste for life. Plus, I never much cared to know who was dating whom or how Dylan’s contemporaries felt about him. It was just gossip.

I’m home. And it feels good. Slept in my own bed. Walked out onto the porch this morning and looked at the pasture. Looked at the sky. Now for the rest of the day. I washed everything before I left my daughter’s home, so all I need to do is put things away, attach decals to guitar cases, and remember the good times.

In the first four Christmases after my wife’s death in 2020, I dressed myself and the house for a party in which one of the guests was gone. Children still came, friends still visited, but the missing soul was still missing. So, this year, when my daughter invited the family to her new home in Virginia, I thought it might be the perfect opportunity to start anew, do something fresh and different. I made my plans and left town and the undecorated house.

It’s day two of the new year. Yesterday, I stepped out into the great unknown of 2025. One day. Relatively uneventful. The big news was the first day hike at The Great Falls of the Potomac. I have now seen the falls on four rivers – the Niagara, the Sioux, the Pedernales, and the Potomac. And I have walked along two named river gorges. The Potomac and the Rio Grande. Not bad.

In the early morning, on a fine summer day, just as the sun is rising there can be a moment when the beach is all mine except for the tide and the shore birds. It's a sight quite literally never to be seen again, and being there to see it, to be the one to see it, fills me with quiet pleasure. It’s been that way all my life. And that's how it feels this morning as I stare off into the first day of 2025.

Here we are. The last day of 2024. The year started with me fretting about the need for surgery, A big surgery by most measures to repair an abdominal aortic aneurysm. Finally deciding on the date, then having the surgery mid-March. Seven stents fixed all the broken bits. In July, I was told everything looked good, and they’d see me next year. That’s half a year gone, while interspersed with thoughts of mortality..

I’m back. Took some time off for Christmas and healing. The latter was needed because a small bug attacked me the day after Christmas. It laid me low, and my daughter, and now my son-in-law. I feel nearly healed today. I can breathe again, and my cough is only occasional. It's weird being sick away from home but I’m finding my way.

I like public transportation. I’m staying in Virginia just outside DC. Anywhere I want to go in the town, there’s a metro line that will get me there.I like the convenience, the commonality, the collegiality of it.

The big trip is off to a good start. Our small army of a family hit DC yesterday and immediately set off in multiple directions to see multiple sites. We have lots of first time visitors to our nation's capital and they all had things they wanted to see–The Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Museum of US History, the Mall, the Capital, the monuments. We rode the Metro like veterans, bundled up against the cold, ate dinner together, and had a boys and girls night out. It was glorious.

It’s a travel day. My bags are packed, and I’m ready to go. It’s cold here, but colder there. As per usual, it feels as though there are a million more things I should be doing prior to departure. But history has shown it’s best to slow down.

The stars on a cold clear night sure seem big and bright, and closer, too. As if they were just over the treetops. And last night as I left a friend’s house in the chill of the evening, I could see Orion’s belt, clear as day, and it felt as though I could reach up and unbuckle it, and as I drove through the dark, I surprised the moon resting on a hilltop, taking a break before it continued its journey into the night of a December sky.

It never fails. Birthdays. Christmas. Something strikes my fancy. It feels perfect for the intended. I buy it. I wrap it. But inevitably, along the way, from buying through wrapping and even giving, doubt sets in. The brilliance of the gift, it’s perfectness, fades.

I’m back in the saddle so to speak. Yesterday, I finished the repairs to a fence I started several weeks ago. I got the old sections securely tied to the new poles, and now we’re right as rain.

I’ve been out and about the last several days, untethered from my computer and the urge to write. Spent time away with friends, listening to music, and socializing.

It’s a clear, cold morning. The sort of morning that makes me wish for a fire. But my fireplace doesn’t draw. A construction oversight left us with a firebox that is too small. My bad.