On Sunday afternoons I take it easy. By that I mean there is flexibility in how I use the time between lunch and dinner. No pomodoros. No new projects. No major decisions. I relax and take it easy.
The rest of the weeks have been productive. I have been in the zone, moving forward with my writing and other projects. For a few Sunday hours, it is a peaceful life.
The sound of geese chatting and flapping their wings dominates the pre-dawn hour on the state park trail. Such vocalization and display on Jan. 15, can only mean one thing: the climate crisis has come home to roost.
There is the science of weather. La Niña is present but fading into a neutral state of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. In other words, the weather is not doing much except what can be seen: ice melting, warmer ambient temperature pushing into the 50s, and lack of precipitation. So what’s up with these birds?
I know geese have strong bonds within mating pairs. They are particularly protective of their goslings. What I’m seeing now is not mating behavior, per se. It is a reaction to climate change in the form of over-wintering, early pairing displays, and vocal/aggressive behaviors. These behaviors are now normal near the lake where I take my daily walk, and in other parts of North America. The environment changed faster than their instincts evolved. What I observed in an earlier post is mostly pair-bond reinforcement and territory signaling, not actual breeding yet. I don’t need to be worrying about freezing little goslings in 3-4 weeks just yet.
Like with anything, my fellow early morning trail walkers noticed the noise and wondered what it was. I opined about it before really understanding the behavior. Geese will eventually adapt to changing climate. One might say they already are.
I rarely find people who reflect my own thinking as closely as this post by Lawrence Wittner on the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Peace and Health blog. We have the capacity to solve many of the world’s problems: poverty, hunger, human health and longevity, and fear for security. At the same time murderous rogue states led by Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Benjamin Netanyahu are at work to negate these advancements. After the paragraph below, click on the link to read Wittner’s entire post.
There is a widening gap today between global possibilities and global realities. The possibilities are enormous, for―thanks to a variety of factors, ranging from increases in knowledge to advances in economic productivity―it’s finally feasible for all of humanity to lead decent and fulfilling lives.
It could be a wonderful world
The die is cast for 2026 winter reading. Books in this photo have been recently acquired and they, along with those already read match the number of books I read in January and February last year. I shut off acquisitions for now to focus on reading.
The first three books were The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll, The Gastronomical Me by MFK Fisher, and The Marx Bros. Scrapbook by Groucho Marx and Richard J. Anobile. Currently The Ogallala Road: A Memoir of Love and Reckoning by Julene Bair is half finished by my bedside. The key to winter reading is to pick books that are both excellent and draw a person into the narrative. These four do both.
My standard is to read at least 25 pages per day. In my youth, the number was 50 yet over time I found 25 is sustainable. In winter it is easy to read more and I do. For example, Monday I was scheduled to work in the garage. When I arrived, it was too cold to work very long, so I went back to my book.
Reading takes about an hour per day, which is not a lot of time. Mostly, I read in bed in the morning before my morning regimen. However, I make sure to finish at least 25 pages whenever and wherever I read.
The Read Recently page on this blog lists books I read over the last number of years. If you are on Goodreads, find me there to follow me. Like any avid reader, I am always looking for what’s next.
These are tough times for a lot of people I know. Hang in there, folks! The weird weather is causing the ice to melt and maybe some good will come of it. If not, spring is coming.
“Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring.” —Vladimir Nabokov
This morning I consider my pancreas. Yes, the mixed-function organ that helps with digestion and regulates blood sugar levels. I am mostly interested because of its role in the latter. The pancreas is a key organ in managing diabetes, with which I was diagnosed in May 2019.
I asked my new acquaintance, for which I have not determined a name, artificial intelligence. (NB: The name HAL has been ruled out). “What are two or three dietary intakes a person can use to promote pancreas health. No more than three.” The machine was uncharacteristically brief, taking my request for brevity literally:
Here are three dietary intakes commonly associated with supporting pancreas health:
- High-fiber foods – vegetables, legumes, whole grains; help regulate blood sugar and reduce pancreatic workload.
- Healthy fats (especially omega-3s) – fatty fish, flaxseed, walnuts; may reduce inflammation.
- Adequate lean protein – fish, poultry, beans; supports tissue repair without excessive fat stress.
AI apparently did not get the word that according to our Secretary of Health and Human Services, the war on protein is over. Nary a cow or hog product on this list of dietary intakes. Perhaps there remains some science on the internet, the domain of artificial intelligence. Perhaps the secretary and his minions have just not gotten this far in their propaganda campaign. In a throwback to when these things mattered, the machine cautioned, “general wellness guidance, not medical advice.”
As a mostly ovo-lacto vegetarian, I find this a good list. I can figure out where dairy fits in, although I know I should control how much of that I eat. Four dozen chicken eggs per year does not seem like a lot. I consume about two gallons of nonfat fluid cow’s milk per week. Cheese consumption is on the radar screen. I am eating more cottage cheese and it is displacing some of the cheddar cheese. I smear some sour cream on tacos instead of cheddar or Mexican-style cheese, although I do that for the flavor and not the fat content, which is higher. I should and likely will switch sour cream for nonfat Greek yogurt on Taco Tuesdays.
Eating more fiber is always a challenge. I have been tracking that number on an app, and in the first 12 days of 2026 I hit or exceeded my goal every day but one. Fiber is also good for my colon, according to physicians.
Regarding healthy fats, I need some work. The first thing I will do is replace the peanuts and raw cashews I eat with almonds, both raw and roasted. I need, or think I need a salted snack each day. I use about one to two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil each day, and that falls into the “healthy” category, although I use water or broth as a cooking medium where it makes sense. I’m not a big seed eater, yet we have ground flax meal on hand and I could, and hopefully will, add it to more things. Chia and hemp seeds are readily available at the wholesale club, so I may get a bag of each and experiment with them. With regard to nut butters, I use Jif peanut butter, full fat-style, and that is that. Moderation is the key with Jif.
I have been able to reduce my A1C with diet since my 2019 diagnosis. The number went a little crazy when I contracted COVID-19, yet since then, my practitioner said it is managed. The thing is, unless deterioration of the pancreas is caught early and treated through diet and exercise to lose weight, the damage is often irreversible.
I have not thought a lot about my pancreas. Now that I’m living in my eighth decade, it is time. We can either get older and die, or we can get older and wiser. I prefer the latter, hence the focus today on the pancreas.
The garage will always be a special place of memory. It doesn’t matter whether it is my current garage, or some future garage should we move. I carry my garage life with me wherever we might go.
I made the sign in the 1980s. It invokes the memory of working in the garage with our child. The sign went with us to Indiana, and returned to Big Grove Township. It resonates with master carpenter Norm Abram’s Public Broadcasting Service program The New Yankee Workshop, and with Bob Vila’s This Old House. I’m reasonably sure, that during those years, there were many people like us working in the garage, learning about how household things worked, were built, and could be designed. For my generation, and for many millennials as well, this was a core memory.
The other garage memory dating from the 1980s was listening to programs on Iowa Public Radio. The organization had actual money to afford a wide variety of nationally syndicated programs. Mountain Stage was a live music program produced by West Virginia Public Radio in Charleston beginning in 1983. It was hosted by Larry Groce, its artistic director. It still exists with a new host, yet the cache was listening to it live on the radio in the garage. Those days are gone.
There was also A Prairie Home Companion which was just that for so many years. I remember recording the “last show” on June 13, 1987 while our child and I took a walk around the neighborhood. When we returned, the program had run overtime and my cassette tape ran out before recording it all. Luckily I found a rebroadcast the following day and was able to capture the rest. I was a faithful listener right down to Keillor’s actual end in July 2016. Not every weekend like a cult member, but when it was convenient while working in the garage or kitchen. Nothing quite framed my life as that time with the radio turned on.
Last week, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced they were closing the operation down after the president clawed back its funding. Better to shutter than to leave an opportunity for the president to use it for his own purposes, they thought. While local stations in Iowa persist in the wake of funding cuts, many stations in other parts of the country don’t appear to be making it in post-Trump world. That’s unfortunate.
It is curious I remember the radio but not the hundreds of projects on which I worked in our garage. The workbench I made in Indiana was a good one that I still use. I recently posted about the work table I made from wood scraps. Since finishing that project, it has been in constant use. I also made a wall of storage which is also in constant use. I guess that’s the difference. When you use something you made every day, it is just there in the present and not in memories.
These days I tune the radio to a country station in Cedar Rapids in the garage, or to BBC news simulcasts on public radio. It’s not the same as I remember from coming up as a family, using the garage to make and fix things. I can carry the memories with me. They help me know who I am.
With holiday season schedule deviations, I have a difficult time remembering what day it is. My spouse will be away at least for a week, and that makes daily life even more detached from society’s time line. I know I need to get to work and am doing so, despite the weekend. It’s Saturday, by the way. I knew that.
There are tasks and projects demanding my time on the third day of the new year. I spent this week reviewing them. Some got pitched, some moved up in priority, and others were declared finished. Importantly, I decided to continue this blog for another year. The other firm goal is to finish the rest of my autobiography in the first half of the year. What else?
I wrote about using artificial intelligence in regular life here. The projects currently in queue are related to household operations, food production in the garden and kitchen, and living better. If a computer can help me be better with any of those, I’m willing to listen. The machines don’t really know me yet they give perspectives I hadn’t previously considered. At this point, the service is free. I experimented with giving ai a writing assignment. Mother of Mercy! It doesn’t know what in Hades it is doing there. That wasn’t a poem it wrote! It was a bowl of word salad and the bowl has a hole in it.
Our home has four functional places where I work indoors: Garage, lower level storage, kitchen, and my book room with a writing table. Each has goals for 2026. I mentioned the writing goals above. Here are the rest:
If we don’t have goals, we won’t accomplish much. These are my beginnings.
Whatever you do, Katie bar the gate! Don’t let 2025 back in no matter what!
I mean, seriously! Republicans could screw up the simplest things and did, in spades. Social Security was cruising along with its usual issues and along came Trump and DOGE, then Bam!
The Social Security Administration — the sprawling federal agency that delivers retirement, disability and survivor benefits to 74 million Americans — began the second Trump administration with a hostile takeover.
It ends the year in turmoil. A diminished workforce has struggled to respond to up to 6 million pending cases in its processing centers and 12 million transactions in its field offices — record backlogs that have delayed basic services to millions of customers, according to internal agency documents and dozens of interviews.
Long-strained customer services at Social Security have become worse by many key measures since President Donald Trump began his second term, agency data and interviews show, as thousands of employees were fired or quit and hasty policy changes and reassignments left inexperienced staff to handle the aftermath. (How Social Security has gotten worse under Trump, Dec. 30, 2025, Washington Post).
So many people depend on Social Security the problems seem unlikely to continue forever. Citizens will demand better before it gets too late. At least that is the hope.
Late last year I contacted the U.S. Institute of Peace seeking a speaker for our Armistice Day event in Iowa City. They were in terrible disarray because the president wanted to eliminate the organization. We had to find someone else, but Bam!
Next thing you know the courts ruled he couldn’t close it, yet still, he plastered his name on the building.
There are other examples but you get my point. If the worm is turning on the Trump Administration, like many believe it is, we need to be ready to step up and do what we can to run Republicans out of the U.S. Capitol. For me, that means getting my physical condition back to where it needs to be, conserving resources, and then getting involved in the rapidly approaching midterm elections.
Our world is changing and all hands will be needed on deck. I have seven words for today: The day we took our country back. Fit reason to celebrate the new year.
I got restless the afternoon of New Year’s Eve. My spouse was away for the holiday so I called the shop about 1:10 p.m. and asked how late their oil change service lane would be open. I left immediately for the small city to our north. They were closing early because of the holiday yet got me in. The engine oil could have easily gone another 1,000 miles yet I needed to do something to get out of the house. Being among people was my best choice.
I arrived with time to spare, drove my vehicle into the service lane, and left them the keys. In the waiting room, I read on my mobile device and in the book I brought. Time passed quickly before the technician came out to brief me and then lead me to the cashier. I wished him a Happy New Year.
While paying my bill I suggested to the young cashier she be careful if out driving late that night. She said she was staying home, which made me think of our child in another state who was also staying in. I wished the cashier a Happy New Year and she reciprocated. When I finished at the shop, I drove to the nearby hardware store.
I didn’t really need anything, yet wood shims had been on my list for a month. About eight employees gathered around the checkout counter chatting, with myself and one other being the only customers. It was a slow business day, one of them said. One helped me find the shims and I wished her a Happy New Year. Same greeting for the cashier. Both seemed surprised I would say that, yet returned the greeting. What has happened to us as a society? These common courtesies used to be easy, natural, and quite normal.
Next stop was a nearby grocer. I don’t usually frequent this one yet I wanted to get celebratory snacks to ring in the new year. They didn’t have what I wanted so I improvised. I wished the stocker a Happy New Year. At the checkout was a man about my age, although shorter and wearing a name tag. He looked like he was carrying a heavy emotional load so I wished him Happy New Year. He didn’t smile or return the greeting. While heading toward home, I hoped I did something positive for him.
After my repast I went out for a walk around the neighborhood. The ambient temperature was above 40 degrees so I didn’t wear a coat. I don’t usually walk in the neighborhood, preferring the state park trail. Houses had outdoor colored lights for the holidays. Human activity was minimal. The moon rose over the house.
Was I lonely or simply alone. Probably a bit of both as I finished my walk and headed indoors toward the light. Of the New Year’s Eves I experienced, this one was not bad. There is hope for the future and I survived to live another year. That’s saying something.
2025 has been a crappy year in some ways and a good year in others. On the crappy side, our president is undoing much of the good that has been in place since World War II. He and his collaborators in Iowa are changing society in a way that will have long-term negative effects. On the good side, I stepped back from society to get my own house in order so I can contribute effectively to driving Republicans out of power. The latter outweighs the former in importance.
I don’t know what happened to me during the coronavirus pandemic. I was diagnosed with diabetes mid-2019 and have been treating it by controlling diet. It is working. Things went well before and during the early part of the pandemic, but as I retired from paid work and stayed home more, maintaining my health became a challenge. In 2024, I tested positive for COVID-19 and literally felt like I was going to die. In 2025, I began to turn my health around. I started logging my meals, exercise, and weight on My Fitness Pal. My weight reduced by 12.2 percent and BMI went from 36.8 to 32.3 during the year. During a recent visit to the clinic my practitioner told me to keep doing what I am doing, so I will.
I wrote already about my writing. All I have to add on the last day of the year is I feel more confident than ever as a writer. 2026 should be a good year.
Mine is a world of ideas and reading is essential. I wrote about The Great Sort, which was the first major review of books I collected beginning when I was a grader. In the last year, I donated more than a thousand to Goodwill and the local public library used book sale. There is at least another thousand to go. The important thing about this year’s project is not the downsizing. It is development of a new way to acquire and read books.
Notably, a substantial percent of the 71 books I read this year were checked out from the public library. That was huge, and according to library data, I saved $821 by doing so. How do I get ideas for which books to read? I get newsletters from several large publishers yet a main part of it is by querying the library’s new arrivals on its website. There was more related to reading happening in 2025.
I have been on social media since about 2007. One of the uses is to find new ideas and books I should read. The contribution social media makes is I get real people’s ideas about what to read in the context of their social media account. It is a more solid recommendation than if I knew little about the referrer. Part of this is I take chances on authors with limited distribution of their work. It has been a positive experience.
The best thing about acquiring books to read this year began during the pandemic. The Haunted Bookshop is one of the few remaining used bookstores in the county. Its proprietor, Nialle Sylvan, has changed how I select books and helped improve the quality of writing I have been reading. During the pandemic, the shop’s business plummeted. I felt badly about the situation and asked her to pick $50 worth of books and I’d buy them. That worked out well enough that this year I gave her more information about what I was reading. The last batch of books she picked for me has been so engaging I had to put some of them down because I didn’t want the experience of reading an author to ever end. The writing was so good! That is rare. Long story short is if you can find a bookseller like Nialle Sylvan count yourself lucky.
I want to talk about menu planning in our household in 2025. We do it now, mostly a week in advance. This takes the stress out of daily questions about what’s for dinner. It created an environment where I could focus on developing new dishes, something for which I have ample creative energy. Who knew planning meals could be such a benefit?
In the entry box I asked, “When did I make my first message on ChatGPT?” The machine, which prefers pronouns you/it, didn’t know. More precisely, it replied, “I don’t have access to the exact timestamp of your very first message, but I do have a reliable estimate.” It was in late May this year, according to the machine’s best estimates. Sounds earlier than I thought, but what do I know. That’s why I asked.
I am figuring out how to use artificial intelligence effectively. The reason I use the words “artificial intelligence” is what I am learning on ChatGPT is applicable everywhere ai is used in my world. This includes Google, my bank account, this blog, and a host of other applications. They are not all the same artificial intelligence, but the kernel of getting information I need is a similar process in any of them. It is a helper, although I don’t usually mention I use it in the Twitch chat I frequent because millennials and Gen-Z folk are skeptical of ChatGPT specifically and ai in general. As content creators, there may be concerns about ai taking over the space and putting them out of business. The energy use is a concern as well.
People ask, “What about the energy artificial intelligence uses?” Hannah Ritchie, who I think is brilliant, posted the following around the time I started using ChatGPT:
My sense is that a lot of climate-conscious people feel guilty about using ChatGPT. In fact it goes further: I think many people judge others for using it, because of the perceived environmental impact.
If I’m being honest, for a while I also felt a bit guilty about using AI. The common rule-of-thumb is that ChatGPT uses 10 times as much energy as a Google search [I think this is probably now too high, but more on that later]. How, then, do I justify the far more energy-hungry option? Maybe I should limit myself to only using LLMs when I would really benefit from the more in-depth answer.
But after looking at the data on individual use of LLMs, I have stopped worrying about it and I think you should too. (Email from Hannah Ritchie on May 6, 2025).
For the time being, I will restrain myself by not mentioning ChatGPT on Twitch. That is, unless the chat is about ai, which it was yesterday. In those cases, I drop Ritchie’s name with a quote. Bread on the water.
Things I use ai for are related to living in the real world. How should I organize my workshop tools? How should I manage a photoshoot of a political rally? How can I improve my exercise regimen? Please explain this piece of legislation so I can understand it. Here is my schedule for starting garden seedlings, how can it be improved? How do I solve the problem of binders in a casserole that lacks eggs and cheese? Why does cornstarch get such a bad rap? The machine is quick, its access to information is broad. It uses the same language to answer that I used in my queries. I am convinced the machine has read the work of Dale Carnegie.
I asked about data privacy and the machine gave me good tips about how to use not only their service, but would apply to my internet traffic generally. Things like speak in generalities, be mindful of what you put out there, and how to use controls built into the app to minimize how much of me is out there. So far so good with this tool. I plan to continue.
The good in 2025 definitely outweighed the bad. Republicans are not going to go away, so I need to be ready for the 2026 Midterms. This cycle, I will likely use my new ai helper to be a more effective canvasser.
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