Rearview Mirror

I’m not sure that many of us would want to repeat 2025. It’s been a fraught year, politically, environmentally, and in our lives as responsible citizens of a nation we thought we knew but which is being remade in ways most of us have not chosen and can’t support.

If I could, I would have joined you on the street with a sign. But 2025 has been another stay-at-home year for me, and while it’s been an active year of reading, writing, connecting with you, and behind-the-scenes political support, it hasn’t been . . . well, eventful.

Looking back over my journal, I see that 2025 was a year of family visits. Our son from Alaska and his family visited—and he was even able to return later in the year. Our daughter and her husband drove down from Colorado in September, and we enjoyed a memorable boat trip on Lake Buchanan, the uppermost lake on a string of six along the Lower Colorado River. To my mind, Buchanan is the most beautiful, with scenes like this along the banks.

The six lakes were created to manage the frequent flooding of the Lower Colorado. But not all Texas rivers are controlled. In the early hours of July 4, a devastating flash flood swept through the Hill Country. In Kerr County, south of us, the Guadalupe River rose over twenty feet in just a few hours, and more than a hundred people lost their lives and thousands of homes were destroyed. The weather service did its job and the warnings were there. But it was a holiday and . . . well, you know.

The July 4th flood brought plenty of problems here, too. The dam on our small lake was overtopped, and our normally placid creek looked like this. Bill is still clearing flood debris and repairing the fences that were washed out.

July 4th was cataclysmic in another way, too. It was our first day without Molly, who left us on July 3. She was our last dog, a blue heeler, devoted to us. We’ve had dogs here at MeadowKnoll since 1992, when the Universe sent Val, followed over the years by Zach, Lady, Toro, and Molly. She came in 2008, when she was two or three years old, so we had 17 wonderful years with her, the last seven as Only Dog.

If there were losses, we also had gains. Here’s Nancy (yes, we name our cars, in the same way my grandfather named the farm horses he worked with all his adult life). Out here in the country, all of our vehicles have a purpose and we keep them forever. So Nancy—a little Honda HR-V—joins a 2012 Toyota (Casper) and a 2002 Honda Element (Ned, soon to be retired). The dash looks like an airplane cockpit. I haven’t yet learned what all the buttons and switches are for.

So really—not an eventful year. I’ve retired from longform writing, but I’m still active here on Substack, where I sent you 96 posts this year, in eight different topic areas. There were, of course, the usual monthly posts: All About Thyme and LifeScapes. In China Bayles’ first mystery, A Bitter Taste of Garlic, we’re about to wrap up Part Two (“Intimate Territory”) and begin Part Three (“What Kind of Justice”). In the early months of the year, we read a half-dozen books together in Guerrilla Readers. And in April, in AI Working Notes, I began sharing my explorations of artificial intelligence, which continues to fascinate, and educate, me.

In fact, reading—both online and in books—kept me deeply engaged all year. Much of the political and environmental reading is bleak, yes, but I do as much as I can tolerate without being gripped by the undertow. I fed my curiosity about artificial intelligence with a sabbatical-summer of reading on cybernetics, computer tech, the growth of the internet, and Silicon Valley. Now, I’m turning my attention to the way this technology is shaping fiction, from Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 to Carl Sagan’s Contact and the shorter work of Ted Chiang. Part of the adventure has been in learning how to use AI as a resourceful partner. You can read about that in my short series, “Building a Reading Life With AI,” Part One and Part Two.

Crafting has been less a part of my life in recent months because arthritic hands don’t play well with needles. This one (from an image by Wysocki) was all but done when I had to stop working on it. I passed it on to my daughter, and gave away my craft supplies. You can see some of my projects here.

Music has been important to me this year. Usually, I enjoy the classics, especially ensembles like the Canadian Brass. But this year, this song topped my charts. Reminded me of the protest songs of the 1960s.

And that’s a wrap. 2025 wasn’t an eventful year here at MeadowKnoll—the usual sort of mix, really, of pleasure and pain, gains and losses, work done and projects unfinished. I’m grateful to my dear friends at Story Circle for providing both a writing sisterhood and a source of continued engagement with the writing community—increasingly important as I grow older.

Substack—and you, each of you, all of you—have been a huge part of my life this year. I’m looking forward to continuing our story community here on Substack in 2026. I’ll have more to say about that next month. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you.

• What was your year like?

• What stands out in your mind, your memory?

• What music comforts your soul?

• What do you appreciate most, as the calendar turns its annual corner?

China and I are taking the New Year’s holiday off. I’ll be back next Monday with the January issue of All About Thyme, and on Thursday, Jan. 8, with the next episode of China’s mystery, A Bitter Taste of Garlic, and A Reader’s Notebook. If you need to catch up or review, go here.