New year sky

Welcome to 2025. After I got my neighbor to Dulles in the pre-dawn, here’s the sky that greeted me on my walk.

I’ll take it.

 

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

 

Once more unto the breach

Well, folks, here we are; a quarter of the way into the 21^st Century. A few kinetic wars; a lot of cyber wars; various heated border disputes and humanitarian crises. Plus a new administration fixing to take over the reins of the greatest power on Earth.

Look—most of us can’t do much to directly affect the above, but we can change the world one kindness at a time. We can make someone’s day nicer or less crappy, and usually at no palpable cost to ourselves.

I’m not handing out advice to anyone else here. Just using the editorial “we” to remind myself that I—like everyone—have the superpower of empathy, and I can use it for good.

See how long I make it into 2025 with this one.

 

©2025 Bas Bleu

Burn up the old, ring in the new

NGL—I am big happy to see 2024 in my rearview mirror. If any year deserves to be yeeted into the sun, this was it. If it weren’t for highly valid misgivings about 2025, that would be the end of it, but here we are.

Still—I’ve got a couple of things I can work on, like getting better at yoga and photography. And writing more. And being more alert to opportunities to be a better friend. Political shenanigans shouldn’t interfere too much with those goals.

So I’ll do my usual end-of-year ritual tonight: burning El Año Viejo and washing it down with a glass of champagne. Then I’ll launch el Año Nuevo by taking my neighbor to the airport at 0600 and then going for a walk.

Here are a couple of the folks I met on my morning walks this month. I hope I see more of them in 2025.

And have the best 2025 you can.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: well, okay

Final Gratitude Monday of 2024. Yeahhhhhh, um…

Let me preface this by saying it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year that sucked the big one, on both macro and micro levels. I seriously do not know when there was more fuckery in a US election than the one we held this year; the outcome was generally in line with the fuckery and I am not sanguine about the next four years. I lived through (most of) the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration, Ronald Reagan as both governor of California and president, the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, the global riots of ’68, the excesses of the ‘80s, the “war on drugs” and the other one “on terror”, the COVID pandemic and the first regime of the Kleptocrat. I’m a military historian specializing in mass conflicts of the first half of the last century; I still cannot describe what I think may happen after 20 January because the only thing I know is we’re not in Kansas any more.

Moreover, my sister died this month, years before she should have done and from an absolute bastard of a disease that is apparently not as important to fight as the global scourge of erectile dysfunction. It’s all I can do to refrain from howling at the moon ever night in grief and rage.

That said, there is always gratitude.

First of all, for Penny’s life, for all the wisdom and skills with which she imbued hundreds of students over her nearly four decades teaching the hearing impaired. For her unerring ability to play whatever hand she was dealt in the moment as best she could, without overthinking or wallowing in regrets. For her curiosity and her core of steel that took her so many places and got her through so many things that would have left others moaning about victimhood. For her ability to be happy and to share that happiness with everyone around her. For just not hearing people when they told her something was beyond her ability. And for not caring what they might think of her when she tried it.

Best big sister I could ever have had.

I give thanks, too, for the campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They picked up some crappy cards really late in the game, and they played them with passion and finesse. They showed us what w might have had, if so many of us could just have got over their outrage about that first non-White president, or past their refusal to envision a woman holding that office. A competent, compassionate, experienced woman with a track record of accomplishment, teaming with the most dad-joking running mate we’ve ever had—also with experience, temperance and a good heart. Watching them campaign was a blessing; they filled so many with hope and joy. That lies, fears and grievance triumphed is not down to them. I’m sorry that it turned out that way, but am grateful we had those brief, shining moments.

I’m thankful that I was able to help several of my friends out this year. Getting laid off under any circumstances tends to make you feel useless and without value. Being able to prepare two friends for the experience of knee replacement surgery, to share my coping mechanisms and fill them in on some things the surgeons don’t think to tell you—that felt good. Looking after my neighbors’ plants while they were in Turkey was another way to be a friend. (NGL—I was not wild about Das Auto. That car hates me.) Being an accountability partner, being the first call when a friend has an opportunity or has been gut-punched with a setback—that gives me purpose.

I give heartfelt thanks for the life of Jimmy Carter, possibly the most decent man to ever hold the office of president. Following his single term, he and his wife Rosalyn showed the world what was best about the United States. We’ll need to hold on to that memory during the upcoming years. I’m also grateful that he is once again reunited with Rosalyn.

I’m grateful that—if I’m going to be “retired”—I somehow managed to save and invest enough so that my financial adviser assures me I shall not have to live my remaining years in a refrigerator carton under a freeway overpass. That’s largely due to TIAA, which managed the 403(b) retirement plan offered by the non-profit organization I joined in 2015. Their representatives patiently bit my ankles until I located all the 401(k) plans from all my previous employers, and then got them all rolled into my TIAA portfolio. They also patiently explained all the possibilities to me and worked with me to build a program that I was comfortable with. And by “patiently explained”, I mean—they got out the single-syllable words and sock puppets. Remember—I’m the one (with degrees from Scripps College and The College of William & Mary in Virginia) who only last month came across almost 200 shares of stock in a Fortune 50 company that I’d, uh, well—kinda overlooked. For 14 years. I am so lucky to be able to work with this team, and I know it.

I’m grateful that I bought my house when I did and refinanced it when I did, because I don’t see how a retired person could get a mortgage these days. I’m fully aware that millions in this country alone don’t have this kind of security; I do not take it for granted.

I give thanks to my yoga instructor, who’s been teaching me for more than four years. If it weren’t for yoga, I know my recovery from two knee replacements wouldn’t have been as smooth.

I’m grateful for friends across the country and around the world. They keep me honest and build my strength. When they make me laugh, it’s the best thing ever. And I’m thankful for friends who are no longer physically here. I’m better for having had them in my life and for carrying them with me.

I’m grateful for my younger sister, who’s always been the smartest one in the family. I have so much to learn from her.

Being healthy is always a cause for thanks. When you’ve been immobilized by pain, you don’t take simply going up and down stairs for granted. I had some issues in Spring, but have really been heartened by my recovery. Again: yoga.

I give thanks for the Fairfax County Public Library. Especially in the current climate of know-nothing campaigns to ban books and clamp down on people’s access to ideas, possibilities, knowledge and entertainment, FCPL has held the line. There was a time when I’d never even have thought about this, but not now. Yay, librarians!

I’m deeply grateful for the people who work in the food supply chain—planting and harvesting crops, staffing meat packing plants, transporting food to our markets. I fear for many of them in the coming months, and for the bedlam when those who voted for mass deportations discover what was actually on the ballot. Not at all sorry for those idiots, but I wish the workers the dignity their work should bring and the safety that all who live in this country deserve.

I am heartened by the fall of the regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria. In addition to at least some hope for the Syrian people, it totally screws up Putin’s playbook and messes with his ability to deploy forces in that part of the world. I’m not unaware that there are rough days ahead and that this could go south in some infinite number of ways. But still—like the 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a start.

I’m even grateful for those merry folks at the Social Security Administration. Because after they notified me that I had to prove once again that my income is not now currently what it was last year, when I was employed (after having done so in <checks notes> February), once I got them the documents, it only took them two weeks to correct the situation. I’m really glad that I got this taken care of before the Kleptocrat and his DOGEbro pals start taking an industrial scythe to the federal workforce next month.

You know what—there’s more, but I’m going to stop here. Turns out this year had some good spots; that ain’t nothing.

©2024 Bas Bleu