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We have used verses from this poem before, but it seems more appripriate than ever.
We also have a classic cartoon we're repeating as it seems appropriate to the year. However, this year these items have migrated to The Family and Friends Report, sort of Executive Summary.
Our family has been lucky, again, to have weathered the year with good health and sanity mostly intact.
As Jim relates in the Travels Page, we went on three trips on 2023. Jim suggested that it might be time to taper off. Linda responded with, "We'll see." We have 2 trips planned for 2024, with another being talked about. We know, "Shocking!"
Hope you have a wonderful 2025. Drop us a line if you are so inclined.
Side note: The first of these reports went our as a Christmas Letter in 1977 or something like that. So we have documented about 47 years of 20th and 21th centuries' history or a bit more than 17000 days, meaning that we have long ago eclipsed Pepys, whose diary covers only a decade. I don't know how many more of these reports I have in me. It's getting harder each year as the number of photos explodes and the software quits working in places. For example, The KDay calculator suddenly quit working, requiring several exchanges with tech support. (And you thought I was tech support.) But, we'll keep soldiering on for a at least more years. We've changed to format this year by putting more into PDF files, instead of web pages. This has fewer ways to screw up.
Once again, we have tons of photos, a tribute to the advances in photographic equipment more than any inherent talent. Each photo has a short description on the (i) panel. See A complete list of albums
Back in 2010, I wrote a novel (unpublished) about rebuilding civilization after a pandemic that wiped out most of the world's population. COVID forced a few revisions. Linda suggested that I spend my time during lockdown working on a sequel. That done, I had some further ideas and put them into a third book in the series. This past year, I finished a fourth book in the series. are available on Amazon.
I confidentally predicted we would have a female president this year. I have been wrong about it twice, both times resulting in four years of Agent Orange. Ominously, in my second novel in the series, California Dreaming, Hypatia tells Mark, her husband, that this was the start of the Last Days, which preceded the Collapse. The Plague that killed almost everyone didn't get to the USA until 2036, so we have time to plan.
Our ADU in Philo, which has been part of these reports for two years, is almost complete. I am writing this in the ADU. Photos of the ADU and the property in front are in the album Owls Roost in Philo, 2024.