2025 Christmas Letter

J A N U A R Y

If I’m not careful, the rest of my life will be this accelerating/spiraling descent into not wanting to participate… in anything.  I know everyone gets these moments in their lives when they turn to their spouses or their dogs or whatever, and ask out loud, “Do we really have to go?  Can’t we just stay at home and sit by the fire?”  For me though, these moments are happening with increasing frequency.  Especially in January when the snow is piled up outside.  I used to so look forward to each party or event as a wonderful chance to catch up with friends and meet new ones (and also to put a dent into someone else’s liquor cabinet).  I love seeing my friends.  But the older I get, the more I value cozy home time and the joys of sitting around in my flannel PJs.  So this year, since Keith was at work on the rails, I skipped Jeff & Scott’s annual new year’s day brunch and sat at home and absorbed the solitude.  There’s something heavenly about a holiday alone.  I know they’re supposed to be about family and friends and marking the occasion and all.  But really, is there anything nicer than a quiet winter afternoon walk to the barn to visit with the animals, and listening to the utter silence of the world along the way?  A day without emails or phone calls or any human interruption is a day I consider well spent.

But the outside world does come crashing back through – and it did all too quickly the next day.  Carpentry work continued on the green and blue bedrooms, and the non-stop hammering and sawing and tromping up and down stairs at all hours left little time for quiet reflection.  The heavy snow and unusually cold temperatures meant that the pond was frozen solid and the ducks were easy pickings for a whole family of eagles that decided to take up residence nearby.  I tried (mostly in vain) to catch the ducks, but they’re quicker on ice than I am.  And so I was only able to rescue about half of them.  The rest became happy meals for two half grown eaglets.  The other not fun thing was that the snow did a number on our solar array.  Our solar panels lie flat high up on our roof where no one can see them.  It snows rather infrequently in Virginia and usually melts in a day or two.  This year however, we had back-to-back heavy snows followed by two weeks of solidly below freezing weather.  It felt like Chicago.  The snow covered our solar panels under about 6-7 inches of icy stuff that didn’t melt for over two weeks!  Had I been smart, I would have switched the powerwall batteries to ‘emergency mode’ and saved that energy.  But they went merrily along discharging power each night until they were empty.  So, when the power inevitably went out, there was no battery power or solar power to pick up the slack.  Precisely the situation our system had been designed to avoid.  Luckily it only lasted a few hours, but… the very first world problem of having to re-set everything in the house was real.

Mid-month I received the sad news that my Aunt Helen had died.  It hit hard.  Most of you know my relationship with my mother was a bit fraught.  Not so with her sisters Helen and Liz.  They provided an abundance of maternal warmth and easy laughter that their elder sister doled out rather sparingly.  Now all three were gone.

At the end of the month was a long-planned trip Keith had received from Amtrak for 25 years of excellent service.  They told him he could go anywhere in the country he wanted, on any train – AND – he could take me along for the ride.  Not one to do things by halves, he chose not one, but the two most scenic routes in the country – the California Zephyr and the Coastal Starlight.  He was all excited about this, but I was less than enthused.  Going through the Donner Pass in late January?  Really?  Was he nuts??  Also, I dreaded sleeping on the train.  Cramped coffin beds and shared hallway bathrooms and shower are just not my thing.  I’d done it before.  Imagine Soviet era accommodations.  Now downgrade your expectations from that and you maybe have an idea of what awaits you in an Amtrak sleeper cabin.  We got the upgraded deluxe version, but it was still pretty grim.  But you know what wasn’t grim?  The scenery.  From Denver to Seattle we saw Rocky Mountain majesty, the Cascades, and more.  We truly do have a beautiful country.  But of course, this being America, we schlock it all up with the ugliest houses and commercial buildings just plunked down without a thought of integrating them in the landscape.  We really do need the design police to come and bulldoze half of our built infrastructure and start anew.  You’d see this in every town we’d pass.  Grim utilitarian structures thrown together without a thought in regard to the graceful neighboring buildings or the beautiful scenery beyond.  It’s like we just ‘gave up’ after the 1920s and decided crapitude was the goal of the modern era.  Such a stark contrast to the beautiful train stations in Chicago, Sacramento, and Seattle.

As much as I didn’t like the beds and the intermittently functioning toilets and showers, I did like the breakfast, lunch, and dinner services.  It also helps to travel with your own personal sommelier.  I had a nice wine selection for every dinner.  Also, while the dining car is reserved seatings, it’s also four seats per table.  If your party is less than four, you are assigned dining companions.  This was actually awkward fun, as you got to hear the stories of other passengers and find out where they were going and why.  The part I enjoyed most was watching our dining companions slowly piece together why two older gentlemen were on vacation together.  “Are you two…… brothers?” is the question that always makes Keith laugh.

We started the trip in Chicago (again, why are we going to Chicago in January??) where we met up with the Chicago Zuschlags and had a great pizza dinner, followed by a cocktail fueled night of Karaoke.  Luka, Ava, and Drake all have some impressive pipes, but none of them is as big a ham as their Uncle Keith.  Thanks to Keith’s vast sum of Hilton award points we had Gold Coast accommodations at the Waldorf Astoria.  Even better, they gave him an upgrade to a one bedroom suite with a fireplace in the living room.  It made it extremely difficult to leave the next morning knowing that we were trading in a king sized bed with Frette sheets for Amtrak’s questionable bedding.

The hotel on the other end in Seattle was equally a treat.  While not as luxurious, this massive complex of a glorious mid-1970s high rise with vaguely pacific island vibes was a master class of orange and brown and exterior elevators that all said “modern” circa 1974.  We were upgraded here as well to a penthouse suite which was enormous.  Kitchen, dining area, living room, bedroom, and the biggest king-sized bed you’ve ever seen. The bathroom had a shower tiled in a sort of puke yellow/green that could easily accommodate 12.  Plus a huge soaking/hot tub.  But the kicker was a wrap-around terrace on two sides with amazing views of Mt. Ranier on one side and Seattle on the other.  After washing off the train in the ginormous shower I wanted nothing more than to order room service and watch “Charlie’s Angels” or something equally 70’s craptastic and just absorb the vibe. But Keith told me in no uncertain terms that wasn’t going to happen.  We were going down to the hotel bar and absorb the vibes there.  I’m so glad we did. The bartenders were a real hoot and we sat next to an old fellow who told us he’d been staying in this hotel several times a year for 30 years and this was his final trip before retiring.  He wanted to come one last time to say good-bye to the staff. I could see why.  The whole thing was a trip.  As much I think the 1970s were the absolute nadir of the 20^th century, there’s something to be said about visiting a time capsule and re-living the moment. If you get a chance, do stay at the Doubletree Hotel at SeaTac before its kitschy charm gets renovated into oblivion.

 

 

F  E  B  R  U  A  R  Y

Though you wouldn’t know it from various Trumpian outrages erupting each day (Elon Musk is going to gut the Federal government, Canada will be our 51^st state, Greenland must be ours, etc), February was a rather quiet month for us.  We had a brief overnight visit from niece Meg and her new husband Ryan as a waystation on their transition from Brooklyn yuppie paradise to we’re-going-to-have-children-so-we’re-moving-to-suburban-Greenville, SC.  It was great to visit with them as they completed their geographic and cultural transition.

The main event of the month was that carpentry work quickly wound down on the upstairs guest bedrooms.  Everything was all in place and cleaned up.  Now all the mouldings, trim, and wainscoting needed to be caulked sanded, primed, and painted. Normally, I’m game to do all of this myself and save some $$.  I’m actually pretty good at it.  But…. the sheer scope of caulking and puttying miles of crown moulding and wainscoting was a bit overwhelming, and we had a self imposed drop-dead date to have these rooms done by mid-April.  So, digging under the cushions we found enough $$$ to pay the painters and, really, I’m so glad we did!  The prep work alone took a three man crew 2 weeks to accomplish.  The painting was a breeze in comparison.  The paint crew turned out to be a blessing in another way too.  The new ‘advance’ paint by Benjamin Moore is very comparable to the fancy Italian paints I had my eye on, but at 1/3 of the price, and when applied with a sprayer by an expert painter the finish is absolutely superb.  I was well pleased and quickly realized I’m going to need to hire them for the rest of the house as well.  Not cheap, but well worth it when viewing the final results.

After the painters were done it was time for wallpaper in the Green Bedroom.  Or in our case, fabric stuck to the walls.  Now, here’s the thing – my idea for this house was to basically pretend that it wasn’t a 21^st century construction, but rather a solid 18^th century manor house that had seen the accretion of two centuries worth of collecting and careful re-editing over the years.  I wanted it to look very “Virginian” (which, if you know anything about the Virginia countryside, that means ‘more English than the English’).  I wanted to do so old school that stuffy old ladies of either sex would find it ‘dated.’  Or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.  To play off the severity of the wainscotting and moulding I wanted the walls covered in a Toile du Jouy.  I remember poking around some old houses with this kind of wallpaper and matching upholstery.  The whole effect is a bit overwhelming, but also deeply charming.  However, in the intervening years  century, the whole effect fell out of favor and they no longer make wallpaper with matching fabric (well, they still do in England, but it was horribly expensive and the wrong color).  So, in one of my manic internet rabbit hole searches lasting several days, I found a fabric that was perfect for the room.  Actually I found three, and ordered samples.  When they arrived, I tacked them to the walls (over the protests of the carpenters working on the room) and stared at them for a day or two.  But there was a clear winner (even the carpenters agreed) and so I ordered enough to wallpaper the entire room, make a foofy bedspread and canopy awnings, and upholster several chairs.  When the huge bolt of the stuff arrived from Turkey it was so heavy that it sat in the entry way for a couple of weeks before I got a crew strong enough (the painters) to lift it upstairs.

The next step proved to be the hardest and, oddly the easiest.  Who was going to hang this fabric like wallpaper?  It’s not very difficult, but it’s a pretty rare skill.  Luckily it helps to live in a very tradition-bound area where craftsmen can still make a living doing esoteric trades.  A recommendation from the paint store was followed up by a completely independent referral by the carpenters, and thus I met Christophe Michaux of “French Touch Design.”  Despite being Belgian by birth, he won me over completely when he went through exactly how the fabric would be applied, and reiterated all the pros and cons and ins and out.  He took a sample home with him to wash in vinegar (a key step, it turns out.  Who knew?) to analyze color fastness and shrinkage.  When that was completed he came back and slathered it with cornstarch and stuck it on the wall.  I was a bit dubious at first, but it worked like a charm, and I really liked the feel of it on the wall.  After that test, he ordered industrial vats of cornstarch and started working.  I was (surprise), a total pain in the ass about getting the seams straight and making sure the pattern was perfectly aligned from panel to panel, but Christophe dealt with me with some practiced finesse, and he got it done to my satisfaction by the end of the month.  So at least one room in the house is (almost) complete.

Despite real estate being in the doldrums (see Trump reference at the beginning of this entry), we had some progress on other fronts as well.  We finally found a female (pen) swan for our lonely male (cob) Hans.  “Hermoine” was living a cloistered life with her sister in spinster quietude on a farm in Pennsylvania.  But when the sister swan died a month after the new owners of the farm took over, they were at a loss as to how to deal with a grieving lonely swan……

Luckily this country is replete with a vast cadre of “rescue” organizations for various critters and breeds of critters.  They’re inevitably run by maniacal women whose only soft spot is for the type of critter involved, the rest of us are viewed through a rather sour lens. This is completely the case with the Swan Rescue Service.  I’d been hooked up with Linda Sweger via the Pennsylvania Avicultural Society several months ago.  After intensive grilling and analyzing our pond set-up she declared us as fit adoptees of an adult female swan.  But that was only the first step.  As Linda warned, it might take several months or years to track down such a bird.  In the end it took her about 7 months to hook us up with a lonely female for our lonely male.   On paper it was a match made in heaven.  The owners of the farm in PA volunteered to bring her down to VA on a Friday afternoon.  Timing was perfect and we offloaded Hermoine into a pen on our new pond and watched her settle in.  Hans was away over at the old pond out of sight, and we intended to keep it that way to give her time to get adjusted before dealing with his advances (FYI, Hans can be a bit of a jerk sometimes).  But of course, best laid plans….. The next day Hans had wandered over to the new pond and discovered her.  He was making goo-goo eyes at her through the wire mesh of her pen.  And low and behold, she was doing the same to him.  I was very relieved. Since she’d grown up without exposure to male ‘attention’ and I wasn’t sure how she’d respond.  But all was good and within a day they were doing the synchronized head dipping and turning that swan pairs do and making little piggy grunts at each other.  So, it was just a question of when to let her out.  Keith was determined to be around when that happened, so we set it for the Tuesday after her arrival when he was off work. But that Monday she kinda went a bit nuts and started ramming the edges of pen trying to get out.  I was afraid she’d injure herself in the process, so I texted Keith and said it’s got to happen now.  I let her out.  When she left the pen she took off like a shot across the pond.  “Uh oh,” I thought.  But after a half hour or so of wild swimming she calmed down and actually swam back to Hans (who seemed a bit bewildered by her outburst) and then started billing and cooing, and the rest is history.  It was nice to see him calmer and with a mate after losing Greta some 7 years prior.

 

M A R C H

March is always teasing Spring, but this year I was pretty focused on indoor things so didn’t really pay attention.  Christophe finished hanging the fabric in green bedroom – he did a fantastic job but left a lot of corn starch everywhere!  It had soaked into the ram board protecting the floor and basically glued it to the hardwood.  It was a total bitch to get off the floor.  Still, the overall results were spectacular, so I forgave him.

But…..it was also clear to me that I had made a mistake.  I had the painters paint the ceiling ‘ceiling white.’   It looked pretty crappy next to the “Linen White” of the trim.  The more I looked at it, the more it bothered me.  So……I very carefully (I mean very carefully) taped plastic sheeting over the crown moulding and walls and re-painted the ceiling in flat Linen White.  It took a couple of days and a couple of coats, but it made all the difference.  Once done, I had the room I wanted.  Well, I almost had the room I wanted.  It was, of course, completely empty.

Now, there are two things that are the main worries in my life, and I’m sure 99% of you have the same two worries; namely – time and money.  There’s never enough of either.  I’m in a race against time to do a lot in my life.  One of my main goals in this regard is to translate the “house in my mind” into the ‘house on the ground’ before I die.  It’s about ¾ of the way there.  But despite my best efforts, I still don’t have enough money to finish it.  That harsh reality was staring me in the face when I contemplated the green bedroom.  I now had a really nice bedroom, but no furniture for it.  What to do?  And, more importantly, how to afford it?  Well, in this case the auction gods for once took pity on me and delivered two grand scores in quick succession.  The first was a cherry canopy bed that I got for a steal.  I mean, it was so cheap that I feared when I picked it up it would be full of scratches or something.  But it wasn’t.  It was in great shape and exactly what I wanted.  This auction win then set the direction for the rest of the ‘brown’ furnishings of the room.  Up until this point I’d been hemming and hawing about which lighter wood would go better with my green walls.  Cherry or tiger maple?  The bed decided it in favor of cherry.  So no more hemming and hawing for me.  The only catch with this was that 250 years ago, cherry was a decidedly more ‘rustic’ choice for furniture.  One could find plenty of old cherry tables and candle stands that wouldn’t look out of place in small cabin or modest farmhouse, but weren’t necessarily ‘suitable’ for my foofy, la-di-da green room in my Georgian house.  So, I kinda boxed myself into a corner with the bed choice.  Still, I scoured the auction sites for anything made of cherry.  Now it just so happened that in mid-March a Boston auction house had in its catalog a 1760s cherry secretary made by one of the best furniture makers in the colony of Connecticut.  It was stunning.  It was perfect.  It was ……waaay too expensive.  The auction estimate showed a figure that was easily my entire budget for several rooms.  But, still….  So I ‘favorited’ it and waited for the auction date.  I figured I could at least watch what it went for.  The auction day came, and as lot after lot sold for numbers well above the auction estimates, I consoled myself that it was too out of my league to even get upset about missing it.  Sure enough, when the lot number finally came up, the opening bid was pretty much what I would consider spending as my very top, top, bid.  But, as that was the case, I figured I really had nothing to lose by putting in a bid at that number and then watch it be swiftly bid up by other buyers with deeper pockets.  So I bid.  And….to this day, I’m not sure if it was some bidding software glitch, or there really were no other bidders for this particular piece, but I watched in amazement as the clock ran out on this lot and I remained the high bidder.  At first, I couldn’t believe it.  Then I thought there’s no way that my offer met the reserve price – they’ll have to withdraw it.  But, the next day, there it was in my email inbox.  An invoice asking me politely to pay now.  I paid.  Then I quickly got on the phone to find a shipping company that could get it from Boston to Virginia before the consignor got wind of what the auction house had done with this valuable piece and recalled it.  But three weeks later it showed up carefully wrapped and looking like a million bucks.

Like most of you, I love a good bargain.  I come from a long line of penny-pinching Scots, and Keith jokingly refers to me as his ‘novio descuento” every time I raid the discount bin of day old bakery goods at the supermarket.  But I’ve never scored a deal like this before.  The truth of it is though, as happy as I am about the price, I’m even more happy with how this secretaire (nearly 300 year old)  fits in the room.  Now, if I could only find a chair for it….

The rest of the month was spent painting the guest room bathrooms (would it surprise you to know I did the green bathroom several times till I got the color right?).  The pond continued to slowly fill and was now only 2 inches below the outflow pipe.  Hans and Hermoine were enjoying the pond and decided that Duck Island might be a good place to set up house-keeping and build a nest.  I also had my annual physical and was told that my now medicare-ready body was actually in tip-top shape!  Maybe I will have time to finish my goals after all.

 

 

A P R I L

April was a month.  The rest of the world always sees April as tulips, baby chicks, and cherry blossoms.  It is all that, I suppose, but I always kinda dread it, as it’s the time of year when I have to shake off the winter lethargy and gear up for seven months of non-stop mowing, weeding, weedwhacking, planting, etc.  But time marches on and all that… and so must I.

One of the fixed points in our calendar years is the ODH point-to-point races on the first Saturday of the month.  That’s kind of the ‘official’ start of the season as far as I’m concerned.  Keith was actually able to join us this year, so our tailgate guests got an upgrade with better conversation and much better wine than what I offer when he’s not around.  It was a lovely day but I stupidly didn’t wear a hat and I got horribly sunburnt.  I spent the next couple of weeks flaking all over the place.  While at my flakiest I reviewed about a thousand variations on blue striped wallpaper for the blue bedroom.  It was pretty easy though.  I knew exactly what I wanted for a Gustavian sorta room.  I just needed to find the one that came closest and darned if Laura Ashley didn’t come through for me.  Once it arrived Christophe Michaux was hired again to hang it.  Striped wallpaper is a lot less forgiving than fabric.  You really notice it if the lines are slightly crooked (or at least I do!) So poor Christophe had to redo the corners a couple of times.  To be fair, it’s hard to see the slight angle when you’re right up against it.  Still, he got it done and I was very pleased.

Meanwhile the pond slowly filled and things greened up nicely.  And now that we had functioning guest rooms, we were open for visits.  The first takers were nephew Sam and his delightful girlfriend Sarah.  We had a nice dinner with them and a great visit.  Sarah is studying to be a Harbor Master.  My thinking is that if she can manage a whole harbor full of ships, she might just be able to handle Sam.  We’ll see.

Old friend Michael Lai and Jon Rauch usually come out for a visit in April that coincides with Jon’s birthday.  This year he, like me a month earlier, turned 65.  In honor of his new Medicare status, I asked, Why don’t you spend the weekend (in our fancy new guest room) and we could have some people over to celebrate the occasion?  (I kinda love being able to say things like that now).  He hesitated just a bit.  “Oh c’mon,” I said, “You can have 12 for dinner.  Who do you want?”  Well, you ask that at your own risk when you invite one of the country’s greatest public intellectuals who he wants at his birthday dinner.   Instead of the usual suspects he gave me a list of worthies that made me blanche a little bit.  Surely we couldn’t have such august personages in our unfinished house, let alone sit down in the bare-bones dining room.  “We’re not ready for such scrutiny!”  I whined to Keith.  He just gave me one of his looks and basically told me to get over myself.  So I did, and called Chef Brian.  At least I knew the food would be good.

In between all of the mowing and wallpapering and entertaining, I took extended breaks just sitting at my bench (my favorite spot) overlooking the pond. Hermoine the swan was being a typical female and not making up her mind.  First the nest was going to be on the island, then it was going to be up by the barn.  Then back on the island.  Hans was a good sport in all of this back and forth, and I had a great time watching them figure it all out.  The ducks were also back on the open water and absorbing to watch.  One day, however, I couldn’t help noticing some turbulence churning up mud along the shoreline.  What could it be?  Well, it turns out that not only did some of my baby koi survive from last year – ALL of them did!   I had about 45 rather large koi swimming along the shore and having koi orgies.  This went on for a couple of weeks.  I went from worrying if more than two or three survived to worrying about how I was going handle a couple of thousand koi fingerlings.

April was also the month I reached “peak Alan.”  I’d been slowly losing my extra Covid era pounds over the past couple of years, but for some reason I couldn’t shake the last extra 10 lbs. I’d gained since getting married.  I figured it maybe just came with age, and perhaps I just needed to resign myself to my middle-aged spread.  Yet non-stop outdoor work to get things planted, gardens and pastures cleaned up, and woodland trails cleared, finally melted them away.  Why didn’t anyone tell me before that exercise helps?   So here I was 65 years old, finally at my fighting weight, and according to my doctor, in the best shape of any of his patients.  The thing of is, obsessively careful readers of these letters will note that it was last April that I had declared myself as finally being the age I was meant to be. I said something like “for the first time in my life I think my outward appearance really matches my inward sense of myself.”  And it was true.  I did.  And still do. Most people feel their peak was in their 20s, or maybe even their 30s.  While I don’t think anyone would turn down the chance to be 28 again, even for just a moment – truth be told, my mid-60s is really where I was meant to be.  So I’ve been trying to enjoy my peak while it lasts.  It’s bittersweet, of course, because once you’ve peaked it’s all downhill from there…

The only thing ‘harshing my vibe’ this month was the real estate market.  There wasn’t any.  Not content with destroying the rest of the country, our President seemed hellbent on destroying my business as well.  The few buyers not spooked by the stock market reactions to tariff threats, were suddenly DOGEd out their jobs and withdrew offers.  I lost two deals that way.

 

M A Y

I was so content in May.  If I could put this month on repeat play, I would.  Over and over.

It was a proper month.  It wasn’t overly long, nor did it zip by.  It filled its allotted days nicely.  It was also fairly rainy, which was great for all the dogwoods and Japanese maple trees I planted on pond edge.  I should have waited until I had proper fencing along the pond, but the time of the year and the plentiful rainfall made it a good choice anyway.  The goal is to create some visual interest when viewing the pond from the back porch and softening the hard edges of the pond dam.  Ask me in about 10 years time if I’ve achieved that goal.

We had some delightful visits in May.  The first was dear old friends for Frank Brook’s 70^th birthday.  My old housemate Anne Marie came with her husband Denis and brought with her lots of food (‘cause that’s what Anne Marie does), and Eric and Octavio joined us as well, and we had the best time having brunch, drinking Keith’s champagne, and reminiscing about ‘the old days’ and catching with our current lives.  Keith especially enjoyed this because they all confirmed his suspicion that I was just as tightly-wound back in the day as I am now.  Anne Marie, Frank, and Eric were the ones that I had dragooned into wandering the countryside when I was searching for the perfect spot to build my dream house, so it was great to come full circle some 30 years later to see the fruition of all those early plans.  After that visit we had a quick jaunt down to Staunton for Lily and Thomas’s absolutely beautiful wedding at her family home.  Just magical.

The main event, however, was the wonderful week we spent with our  ‘niece’ Stephanie and her boyfriend Sebastian.  I suppose I should qualify the “niece” quotation marks.  When I was 18 years old, I spent a summer with a wonderful family in northern Germany as an exchange student.  My host brother Volkhard Selig, and indeed his entire family, kind of adopted me since then.  Hard to believe that was almost 50 years ago.  But we’ve been part of each other’s lives on and off ever since then.  So when Volkhard’s daughter wanted her own exchange experience in 2011 we welcomed her with open arms.  Well, maybe also with a bit of trepidation too.  How could we, two middle-aged men, share our tiny one bedroom garage apartment with a 19 year old young lady looking for a ‘real’ American experience?  We needn’t have worried.  Stephanie just immediately fit right in.  We were quasi-family already, but that six week visit solidified it.  We were her uncles. Since then she came back for our wedding (along with her brother Christian and her Aunt Beate and Uncle Hans).

At any rate, despite several visits by the family state-side, I never was able to really reciprocate their generosity over the years.  My tiny dwelling just wasn’t set up for guests.  So when we were finally able to build a house, Keith and I just had an unspoken agreement that our ‘best’ guest room would be “Stephanie’s room.”  And we pretty much designed it all with her in mind (hint: it’s the one with the green wall fabric).  Thus it was with Stephanie’s impending visit in mind that we had a deadline to get it all finished.  When Stephanie saw the room, we asked her how she liked it.  Her response, “It’s just like the Biltmore!  Only you can touch everything!”  That’s our girl!

I’d like to think the visit was meant as a chance for us to approve of Sebastian, but it was clear she’d already made the decision to keep him regardless of what we thought.  Sebastian is a gentle blond giant (6’7”) and a lot of fun.  Keith and I liked him immediately, and we dropped all kinds of inappropriate hints about marriage and children (well, that was mostly me).  So, we’ll see!  While they were here we had some fun gatherings with neighbors and friends, and they even accompanied me to a poultry swap meet near Richmond, which Sebastian (a fellow duck and chicken fancier), enjoyed too.

Sebastian fit in the farm as easily as Stephanie.  Too well, perhaps.  The moment I’d turn my back, the two of them would sneak off and take up some neglected farm chore and finish it off with Germanic efficiency before I knew what was happening.  It was pretty awesome.  When they left, the house seemed rather empty.  Keith summed up my feelings when they hadn’t even been gone two hours – “I miss them already.  It feels empty without the kids here.”  With no young people of our own, it’s nice that our friends, neighbors, and relatives let us borrow theirs every so often.

The rest of the month was basically working and mowing in between the rain to keep ahead of things on the farm.  When the center pasture was mowed and the area around the pond weed-whacked, I did what most people do when they tidy things up – I sat back and enjoyed my handiwork.  I did this a little too frequently perhaps, but Memorial Day was when I was just overcome by how lucky I truly am.  It was a perfect, perfect late spring day.  Sunny and bright, but only 70 degrees and a gentle breeze.  The pastures and the pond dazzled.  There were no annoying phone calls or emails from clients.  Keith was Amtraking down the coast and I had the farm to myself.  I sat on the pond bench, I sat on the chairs I positioned up on Daffodil Hill, and I wandered around everywhere in between and marveled at the beauty of it all and the fact that it was mine.  Feeding the swans and ducks and koi that evening I just sat there with Phoebe the donkey contemplating the beauty of it all.  I turned to Phoebe and told her, “I couldn’t be happier with my life.”

May was perfect.

 

J U N E

To be honest, June was pretty uneventful.  We put in fencing around the back of the pond to protect it from the cattle pasture behind it (and also to keep the sheep and donkeys from chomping on my new Japanese maple trees). I think it will turn out rather nicely once it all grows in.  I also built a duck pen on the pond to pen up the ducks at night.  Out of the 20 ducks we started out with last year, only 5 survived.  Those 5 gave us a dozen ducklings so we’ll see how they do this year.   Since the last batch was too stupid to overnight on the water or the island we’ll see if Darwin’s theory holds up with this batch…. But to give the dumb ones a chance, the thought is to lock them up each night to make sure no predator can get them.  Of course, during the day when they’re on the pond they’re sitting ducks, so we’ll see.

Around the middle of the month our donkey Phoebe got sick.  She’d been slowing down the past couple of months and wasn’t her usual sparkly self.  But in June she clearly was off. The Vets ran all sorts of tests, but couldn’t come up with a definitive diagnosis.  It was so sad to see a creature that took such joy in life and in pestering us, suddenly lose all interest in anything.  It broke Keith’s heart.

The happy news was Joe and Van’s wedding in Bethelem, PA.  A bunch of local yokels made the trek up to honor to the two of them and rub shoulders with the country club set.  It was a great time and Keith and I behaved ourselves properly (I think).  Then there was Keith’s nephew Michael’s wedding in Stafford, VA.  He and Laura make a great young couple, and it’s so nice to see the young ‘uns see the value of marriage.  Although with this wedding, it was clear that we’ve finally passed that invisible threshold from fun wedding guests to “older relatives that sit on the sidelines and talk amongst themselves.”  I guess this happens to all of us eventually.  We’re resigned to our roles as crusty old uncles who’s job it is to keep the grandmothers entertained while the young people party.  We also had a quick overnight visit with my high school buddy Mike Damal and his husband Tony Bullard on their way one of their many houses on one continent or other.  It was our first time meeting Tony, and he and Keith were subjected to stories about the ‘olden days’ and it was a lot of fun.  It was so good to see Mike.  He came to visit when I first bought the farm nearly 30 years ago and helped me clear brush.  I hadn’t seen him in over a decade, but good friendships can weather time and distance.  After doing the ‘whatever happened to so and so…’ thing, we came to the conclusion that our group of high school friends have done quite well for themselves in this world.  And at the risk of sounding like the old boomer curmudgeon I am, they all did so by sheer grit, determination, and a strong work ethic – qualities that I think the youth of today, with their learned helplessness and anxieties, might focus on a bit more.

Other visits included brief stop-overs by my cousin Tauria (always a treat to catch up with the McMillan side of the fam).  Then sister Jen and nephew Henry stopped by to ‘visit’ before moving back to Germany.  The reason for their visit was NOT to see Henry’s favorite uncles, but rather to store tons of stuff in our basement that they didn’t want to take back to Germany!

In between all of this, real estate was surprisingly busy.  Though I got my comeupannce once the 2024 stats were released.  I’m still in the top 1.5% of agents nation-wide, but I’ve slipped considerably in the rankings.  (Also, why top 1.5%?  Why not just top 1% or 5%?  What is the deal with that?).  I used to be #55 in VA.  Then #71.  Now I’m a mere 222 out of 34,400.  So not even in the top 100!  What a loser!

But truth be told, as competitive as I am, and certainly as desperate for $$ as I am, I am also getting very burnt out when I have to constantly be at everyone’s beck and call and be the fall guy for every thing that goes wrong, and bite my tongue constantly when people are being complete idiots and screwing things up.  This kind of came to a head in early June when I finally saw the last of two of my least favorite clients.  I don’t understand people that go through life being mean and nasty to other people.  What does it get them?  Kinda like someone in the White House to whom everything is a zero-sum game where they lose if anybody, anytime, gets a break.  Why would you want to go through life constantly focused on ‘getting the better’ of everyone?  Closing out those two transactions was exhausting, but the calm afterwards of not dealing with such mean-spirited people was terrific.

Even though I’ll probably have to work for at least another 7 years or so, I cannot, truly cannot, wait until I can retire and fully withdraw from the world.  My goal is to live the rest of my life with just my gardens, my birds, and my library.  And if my husband wants to cook me dinner and make me a cocktail now and then, that would just be the icing on the cake.  But the rest of humanity can go suck lemons for all I care (of course, not you, gentle reader, but everyone else).

I had a colonoscopy on the last day of the month.  Of course, with my life being practically perfect and within reach of my final goals for happiness, the last thing I need is to die before I can complete my goals.  My physical in March confirmed that I am in ridiculous health and looking pretty darned good for a 65 year old.  But, given my family history, I can’t get too complacent when it comes to my dear old colon.  Still, I needn’t have worried.  It was piece of cake and colonoscopy team said I was the front runner for the “cleanest colon award.”  So that might mitigate my lower real estate standing a bit, I suppose.

 

 

J U L Y

July was the month ‘without.’  It started out brilliantly though.  A glorious 4^th with a margarita-fueled pool party at Joe & Ryan’s that was summer distilled to perfection.  Followed by fireworks watching from the deluxe viewing platform next door at the Gateses, and then sampling Tiffanny’s sublime apple pie.  On the 5^th it all continued with a very proper holiday luncheon at Poke that was as timeless as ever (tomato aspic, anyone?).  This was followed by the can’t-miss annual concert at Avon Hall with Col. Bourgeois.   I know I gush about this concert almost every year, but it’s one of my absolute favorite events, and it makes me so nostalgic for the America I grew up in and hope someday to see again.

But the very next day we woke up to find no AC and no interior network (sound system, TVs and internet – all gone).   I pressed buttons and flipped switches, but nothing.  Still, I thought, both should be easy fixes.  Some bit of tech failed, so replace it.  It will no doubt cost a small fortune, but….   So I called the sound/internet company that had set up the system. Company: “I see.  Well we can have some one out there to take a look on the 25th.”   Me: “Come again????  You want me to wait 3 weeks to get internet or watch TV?  “Can’t you just send someone out tomorrow to give it a quick look-see?  It’s probably something very simple.”  Company: “Sorry, no can do!”  The AC was a similar story.  The thermostat on the main floor just died.  Blank screen.  Now, if you were a normal person with a normal thermostat you could just go to Home Depot or Walmart, or whatever, and buy a new one and toss out the old one.  But, of course, we have some fancy Carrier system which requires its own proprietary thermostat to operate (read: super expensive).  And you can’t just order a new one of those on your own either – you have to have an HVAC company come out and “troubleshoot” and then they have to order you a new one.  Now we pay a monthly fee for the HVAC company to make us “VIP” customers or some such nonsense.  So when I called to have them come out and troubleshoot, they said they could be out in about a week.  “What?”  We’re supposed to be without AC in July for a week??? “ But there was nothing for it, so I waited the sweltering week for the appointed day and hour to arrive and no HVAC techs show up.  I called the company.  Me: “Where are the AC guys?”  Company: “Oh, I’m afraid they’re ‘tied up” with other repairs and we’ll have to re-schedule.”  Me (fuming): “That’s how you treat your VIP customers?  Were the other repairs for VIP customers too?  Or some higher tier of customer that meant my appointment got shoved aside?“  When did the service industry become so NOT service oriented?  Clearly, I’m in the wrong kind of work because I couldn’t get away with that sort of behavior with my customers.

So, instead of waiting around in the heat with no AC and no internet/tv/music in sight, we did what normal people do and went to stay with friends in Nantucket.  You don’t even need AC up there and they have working internet 24/7.  Of course Keith was all for this idea.  And, I have to say, as much as I was behind on farm work, the thought of just lounging around on a porch or poking around the quaint shops of Nantucket and eating lobstah and drinking plenty of wine with good friends had great appeal.  So… I hustled and got all my real estate deals in order.  Keith went on ahead of me while I stayed on the farm and mowed all the pastures and lawns so they wouldn’t be too overgrown on my return, and then packed a small bag.  But you can kinda guess what happened next.  Tuesday afternoon I was in the car heading to the airport when a text arrived saying my flight had been cancelled!  No explanation why, just that I wasn’t going to Nantucket today.  Then they sent an email saying, not to worry – we’ve booked you at a 6:20 a.m. flight the next day to JFK.  After which you can wait two hours at JFK and then take a flight to Boston.  Then an hour and half in Boston and then on to Nantucket.  How’d that be instead?  Um…. no. Luckily there was still space on the 4 p.m. direct flight the next day.  So even though I lost 24 hours of my four day trip, I’d at least get there in time for the big dinner party that evening.  The next day I got to the airport, got through the endless security line and got on the plane.  It was an uneventful trip to Nantucket.  Except that, as we were landing, the pilot pulled up the plane and retracted the landing gear.  No explanation why, and we circled for over an hour before they said we couldn’t land due to “fog,” and that we’d spent the last hour circling hoping that the fog would lift.  It hadn’t, so now we needed to divert to Providence RI before we ran out of fuel.  Sigh.  I could literally see the ground in Nantucket.  Where was this so-called “fog?” Was our pilot some amateur?  People were upset.  We’d wasted 2 hours circling by now.  As we sat in Providence after refueling a new announcement came on.  The weather had only marginally improved on Nantucket.  We would leave and try to land again.  If we could, fantastic.  But if we couldn’t land, we’d just head back to DC!  I think the pilot was all for heading back to DC right away, but grumbling from the passengers convinced him to give it one last shot and we landed.  I was able to make the dessert course at dinner before all the guests left and I was alive, so I guess I should be grateful….but still.  I hate travelling so much.

Nantucket was fun for 4 days and it’s just the right amount of time, I think.   We saw our friends and enjoyed their wonderful house, saw the antiques show, and had too much to eat and drink.  But everywhere – from beaches to restaurants, to shops – was so crowded, and the streets were clogged with more cars than should ever be allowed on one island.  Is that what people really want in a vacation?  Standing in line an hour to get a coffee?  Turned away at sandwich shops because we didn’t make a reservation a week in advance?  Did I mention how much I hate travelling?

Once home, our AC and Internet system woes were easily fixed.  Of course I found it all the more frustrating to have to wait three weeks for something that only took ten minutes to remedy!  Fun fact – our thermostat shut down because the dehumidifier line was clogged and needed to be flushed. That’s all it was!  I asked why our super deluxe system-specific touch screen thermostat couldn’t just have a little pop-up message telling me to unclog the dehumidifier line rather than just shutting down completely without warning.  The response was “Oh, we can program it to alert you to that.  It costs $495.”  What the???  “VIP Customer indeed!”  I cancelled my monthly VIP payments and now have a pop-up note in my calendar software to check this dehumidifier line once a month.

The internet line which fed all the wifi routers and other systems throughout the house was also an easy fix.  It seems that the ethernet line to the guest house wifi router was creating a ‘feedback’ loop which caused the system to shut down.  The techs only discovered this after a lot of head scratching and then simply unplugging things one by one and plugging them back in.  So they left the guest house unplugged and that was that.  Problem solved after 3 weeks without internet/security/streaming.  And it only cost me $895 to have a tech come out and unplug one ethernet cable.  No word (yet) as to how to get internet to the guest house now.

The rest of the month was pretty much non-stop mowing and weed-whacking in a desperate attempt to catch up on farm work.  I was overwhelmed by the lush-ness of Virginia and could never find time to trim the hornbeam tunnel or the yew hedges.  Still, it was a welcome relief over last year’s drought.  We had reverted to the traditional high summer weather pattern of heat and humidity building up during the day and causing an afternoon thunderstorm.  This year we were greener than England and Ireland in July, and despite the non-stop work it caused, I enjoyed the way all the newly planted dogwoods and Japanese maples were thriving.

 

A U G U S T

August brought us considerable sadness.  Toward the middle of the month we had to say good bye to our beloved donkey Phoebe.  It really knocked the wind out of our sails.  You can read her story here.

A week later, while feeding the swans and koi I noticed that Hans the swan was listless.  Normally puffed up and full of alpha male bluster, he seemed completely deflated and morose.  I googled everything I could think of.  Was it bird flu?  West Nile?  But by morning he was gone.  It was a shock.  He’d been with us since 2012 and was only 13 years old.  This year we’d finally found him a mate again and now six months later poor Hermoine was left alone again as well.  Swans mate for life and they grieve the loss of their partner deeply.  Hans had an annoying habit of leaving the pond and ducking through the fence to go trudging over to visit his old pond on what is now our neighbor’s property.  This would bewilder Hermoine, and she’s wait patiently him by the fence for him to return to ‘their pond.’  For weeks after Hans died Hermoine would wait patiently at the fence for him to return.  The vet pathology report showed that he had died of avian botulism which we think he actually got by visiting the old pond, as Hermoine was perfectly healthly.

I’m now at that age when the passing of critters (with their shorter lifespan) is something that hits harder when you realize that any replacement for them is likely to outlive you.  It’s a sobering thought.  Phoebe died relatively young at age 28.  Donkeys can live to 30-35 years.  With good care, swans can live almost as long. Keith’s the donkey whisperer and he’d been pushing for a baby donkey long before Phoebe became ill.  We’d been searching for quite a while, and Mammoth Jackstock are pretty rare to begin with, and it seems there are always waiting lists for young foals.  But at the end of the month we got notice that a young female who met our criteria was born on a farm in Tennessee.  If all goes well, and her breeder doesn’t change his mind, when she’s weaned sometime this coming Spring, she’ll come to live with us.  While I’m excited by the idea, I’m also concerned that not only will she outlive me (I’m 65 – in another 35 years I’d be 100!), but that we’ll probably have to give up the farm well before that.  Then what happens to her?  And what will happen to our farm?  It’s something to consider.

Despite the set-backs and losses, life is relentless in its forward march.  So we had to keep up.  In August we made some headway on things that had been sorely neglected for, well, years.  A new gas grill to replace our rusted out 30 year old Weber (though, as of this writing, it’s still not hooked up), and a ‘fix’ to our hot water heater that finally (after two years of operation) got our recirculating line working.  It’s a pleasure to turn on the shower and not have to wait eons for the hot water to reach the upper reaches of the house.  Now, if you want to shower at our place you have instant hot water in any spot as long as you shower between 6:30 – 9:30 a.m. or 4 – 7 pm.  Try it out!

Also, after 3 years we finally got someone to help disassemble our kitchen fountain so that we could replace the failed pumps.  I’d been begging fountain installation companies all over Virginia to come and do this for us.  But no one would (again, the lack of ‘service’ in service industries was mind-blowing).  I was bemoaning this fact to Tamas, the handyman who has done a lot of work for us.  It’s perhaps telling that Tamas is Hungarian and apparently immune to the American ‘we-don’t-want-to-do-any-actual-work-so-we’ll-charge-you-double-for-the-hassle-of-actually-working’ syndrome.  He said his friend Janos was visiting from Hungary and between the two of them they could field a crew of five to lift the heavy concrete components and put them back in place if I could guarantee that I could replace the pumps and hook up the wiring again.  I said I could (desperately hoping that was the case), and soon some strong immigrant backs had it all apart and it turned out to be fairly simple to set up the new pumps and hoses.  Within hours it was all re-assembled, and in 24 hours, once the silicone seals were dry, we had a functioning fountain.  And at a super fair price.  If only the rest of the world operated on such a ‘can do’ basis.

Now, of course, the fountain looked great but it really highlighted the stark contrast with the rest of the overgrown and neglected garden.  So the rest of the month was really all about abolishing all the many signs of neglect around here.  The farm sparkled as I patched potholes in the drive, cleaned out fencelines, and spent endless hours with the weed-whacker.

My favorite time of the day has aways been twilight, or as my Scottish ancestors called it, “the gloaming.”  My friend Brian Noyes shares this feeling and we’ve often wondered together what it is about the fading daylight that is so poignant and beautiful and peaceful.

At no time of the year is that feeling richer than in late August.  There’s something about the impending autumn that makes the golden hour more ‘golden.’   Even as a teenager I always felt something very weighted about late August afternoons and early evenings.  In part, I suppose it was because the days were getting shorter again and it signaled the advent of Autumn and back to school and responsibilities.  But there was definitely something more.  It’s the one time of the year that has always made me focus on the past.  Perhaps it’s the way the light hits eastern North America as the earth makes its annual migration.  Who knows? But for some reason, late August late afternoons and early evenings make me incredibly nostalgic – and – oddly enough – often for a time I never got to experience.  I think about 19^th century transcendentalists, and Henry Van Dyke poems, and paintings by Maxfield Parrish.

I’ve never felt this while living in the city, or abroad, but it will hit me full force on an empty New England beach, or a lake in New Hampshire, or a cottage in the woods in Wisconsin, or my farm in Virginia.  On a quiet day at the end of August, when the late afternoon light lingers a certain way, I feel the presence of an earlier America.

 

S E P T E M B E R

September was a relatively quiet month without rain.  That was super evident when you looked at our pond.  After filling for a year and half, it was finally completely filled in June.  But now it started receding and looked a bit like a draining bathtub with a ring of dirt all around.  Not very attractive. But the nice weather and mellow temperatures made the construction of our stone retaining wall move along swiftly.  This was yet another example of post-pandemic construction nonsense that has held us back from finishing our house.

We had contracted with a masonry company to do this last year at an exorbitant price.  It was ridiculous, but they had done a really nice job at our neighbors, and we wanted a similar stone wall, so, we sucked it up and agreed to their obscene price.  They never came.  Periodic pestering always got the same response. “You’re next on our list.”  Finally, they were all set to start in January.  But January came and went.  So did February, March, and April.  In May it had been a year since I had first contacted them.  I gave up. They clearly did not want the work.  So the hell with them.  I hope they go bankrupt.  But wishing ill on others didn’t solve our retaining wall problem.  I had an increasingly testy husband whose complaining about the weed infested piles of construction rubble in front of the house was getting louder and more frequent with every passing month.  What to do?  I couldn’t find anyone to do the job.  Finally in August I saw a local landscape architect’s Facebook post of a project he was doing nearby.  “Who’s doing your stone work?” I queried. “Oh that’s Augustine. He does a great job.  Want his number?” was the reply.  It was that simple.  So Facebook is apparently good for something.

I called Augustine and he promptly came out and took a look.  He measured it all out and asked what type of stone we wanted to use.  I showed him a few stones I had collected and said “I’m looking for something as close to this as possible.  Can you find a source of this?”  His response was a patient, “Well, where did you get these stones?”  The penny dropped.  “Wait, could you possibly use these?”  “Of course” was his somewhat incredulous response.  “Well, I’ve got two huge piles of this stone in the back pastures.”  Again he looked at me as though I was a bit simple, and with a bit of impatience asked, “Well, can I take a look?”   So I took him out to the stone piles that had been gathered out of my fields for decades by me, and generations of farmers before me.  “This is better than any stone I can source on the market” was his immediate response.  “You have enough here to do several walls.  If you don’t mind me driving my front loader through your fields, my crew can sort through these and we can bring them up the house.”   “That’s terrific,” I said, ‘but what is this going to cost me?”  “Well,” he paused and thought for a moment, “if you’re supplying the stone, I could do it for X,” and he named a price that was 1/3 the price of the other company.  I was stunned. “When can you start?” I croaked.  “Well, I’ve got a few small jobs to finish up, but we could probably fit you in in about two weeks.”  I gave him a deposit then and there.  Two weeks later work started on our wall.  The crew was great and spend a lot of time facing the stone ‘just right.’  Their craftsmanship made me regret that about 3 feet of this wall would be buried under gravel in the new parking court and only about 14 inches would be above ground.  I wanted to show off their workmanship.  “Can we raise this up another 4 inches or so?”  I asked hopefully.  We could and we did, and I think it makes all the difference.

We now have a wall out of native granite that looks like it has always been there.  It was exactly what I wanted, at a price I could afford, and it was finished in 3 weeks.  I couldn’t believe it and was seriously angry at myself for wasting nearly two years before I stumbled upon someone who has done so much work locally.  How could that be?  I’m already dreaming up other projects they can do in the future.  I’ve got plenty of stone.

The highlight of the month was a week we spent in one of my favorite cities.  It’s an elegant and cosmopolitan place, with comfortable sophistication, wonderful scenery, and my favorite cuisine in the world.  It’s also never overwhelmed by tourists – except, of course, for the week we visited.  Why did we do this?  Well, you can read about our adventure here (and please do read it!).

After every trip I vow I’m never going to travel again.  I know I’ll have to, but I hate crowds, airports, standing in line, and being away from my farm even for one night.  Arriving back home at 4 p.m. on a Friday, I took advantage of the jet lag to get up the very next day at 4 a.m. in order to drive north of Harrisburg, PA for the annual PA Aviculture Society swap meet.

My stated (Keith approved) goal was to find a swan companion for Hermoine.  But honestly, the absence of Hans meant that we had a rare opportunity to expand our flock to include some birds he would have otherwise bullied to death had we tried this when he was around.  I know I’m a total sucker for trying to maintain some other waterfowl on our pond.  Keith thinks it’s an exercise in futility.  Why pay $100s for birds just to feed the foxes?  He may have a point, but I came home with a pair of black swans, a pair of geese, and 7 more ducks.  No Mute Swans available unfortunately.  I released the swans and the geese on the pond.  The ducks went into a pen in the barn (as breeding stock for next season). Hermoine tried to bully the others and keep them off “her” pond.  But within hours the black swans just ignored her and made themselves at home.  The geese, however, were intimidated and due to her refusal to let them on the pond we lost 1 goose to a fox that night.  So, Keith is (sorta) right I guess.

The remaining goose and the black swans soon formed a nice group, like I had hoped.  But they pointedly excluded Hermoine.  She was still alone.

 

O C T O B E R

Each year, October is my ‘treat’ – a reward for putting up with the heat and humidity of the summer and the endless work that begins in April.  October is when everything mellows and I don’t have to spend every waking moment battling crab grass.  It goes by too quickly, of course, but for those four short weeks, life is grand.  The thing is, the older I get, the shorter this month gets. It’s supposed to be four nice solid weeks.  But this year, it felt like two at most.  So I can’t even give you a proper description of the month, it just zipped by.

It was pretty sweet though.  Nick Kingsland gave a memorable retirement brunch for his wife Nessa.  I’m so jealous of her.  I don’t need a retirement party, I just need to be retired.  In the middle of the month Guneev and Emma came for an overnight visit with Emma’s brother George.  George reminded me a lot of myself when I was 25, so naturally I sparred with him all weekend over books, politics, and life in general.  Keith was horrified that I was so relentless in picking apart his Gen-whatever beliefs (what gen are we on now anyway?).  At any rate, I enjoyed challenging his priors and enjoyed even more seeing a smart young person fearlessly giving it right back to some old out-of-touch boomer.

On the subject of out-of-touch boomers, I think we potentially may be the ones to save our country.  No lie.  Every old person I’ve ever met since I was a wee shaver, has always gone on and on about “the good old days” and bemoaned “the kids these days” and other such geezer standards.  So you could be forgiven if you roll your eyes and think “here he goes again.” (I know George in the above paragraph is thinking that exact thing).  But, hear me out.  We are undergoing a political transformation like our country hasn’t seen since the 1830s (okay, maybe the 1880s).  Our old ways of doing things are being destroyed willy-nilly by the whims of an out-of-control chaos monkey.  But what frightens me most is realizing just how fragile the whole edifice of custom, tradition, politeness, public service as a form of noblesse oblige, or any form of civility, is in our political system.  This is being ruthlessly destroyed and the ignorant mob that cheers it on, in my mind (note: opinions may vary – but I’m right), has entirely no sense of what actually made their country great in the first place.

So where is the repository of institutional knowledge for how things developed over the past 250 years?  When everything is burnt to the ground, how do we restore a system based on respect for talent and expertise and competence?   Well, we’re going to have to rely on the few remaining old ‘uns who were there decades ago to guide us back to the path of true American greatness.  It will take a long time to repair the damage done to relationships with our former friends and allies, but I’m hoping those ties can be mended and the current era can quickly retreat as an aberration in our march towards a better union.

I know I’m not the only one that hopes for this outcome. Just watch these two clips (clip 1)  (clip 2) of political rivals who were, in their own way, polarizing individuals at the time.  Then read the comment threads under each clip.

Though these thoughts were weighing heavily on my mind all year, in October they came to the fore when decidedly non-boomers Austin Weatherford and Riley Berg asked me to help them organize a tribute to a local resident who reflected those very values of public service and decency that I hold so dearly.  I jumped at the chance and was gratified to see that so many friends and neighbors (mostly of the boomer persuasion) were fully onboard with this and the event, to raise funds for the CLC, quickly sold out.

 

 

N O V E M B E R

November started with a quick trip to Rehoboth Beach, DE for Greg Albright’s weekend birthday Fest.  It was a lovely time getting reacquainted with my old summer stomping grounds from 40 or so years ago, while celebrating a great friend who I met about the same time.  Greg and I, as tight friends and next-door neighbors, basically shared a lot of new life experiences as young men finding our footing in the wider world.  It’s not always easy navigating careers, big city love lives, and other adventures.  But having someone along for the ride to share the ups and downs was something I greatly appreciated at the time, and still do to this day.  Good friendships are the foundation of a well-lived life.

Back home it was more and more evident that the dry fall weather was not the only reason for our pond’s continual shrinkage.  Clearly there must be a leak somewhere.  By the middle of the month we were back down to the level we started with in January.  But short of draining the whole thing, what could I do about it?  Why does every step forward also include a step backwards?

Pond aside, after successfully completing the parking area retaining wall, the big landscape projects are pretty much completed on this farm (well, that’s not entirely true, there’s one last project that you’ll hear about in 2026).  It was time to turn our attention inside.  The problem was, and still remains, lack of funds to complete the house.  Given the hefty price tags of finish carpentry and millwork, completing another room was still off the table.  But the thought was, well, at least we could tackle the smaller projects in finishing off the green and blue bedrooms.  Truth be told, we were almost there in the green bedroom.  We’d recovered a comfy chair and gotten some great furniture (see March entry) and had some pretty cool lamp shades thanks to the considerable talents of Karen way over in Lincoln, England.  We also had a great canopy bed (see March entry again).  But what good is a canopy bed without a proper canopy?  So why not hire someone to make it?  Well, we had tried.  Back in July a very fancy fabric shop said that they had a workshop that could tackle this project.  They sent someone out to do the measurements and charged me $250 for that privilege.  I never heard from them again.  Despite repeated phone calls.  The “you’re next on our list” responses I got were somewhat triggering.  Where had I heard that before??  So I just stopped calling them and swallowed the $250 loss.

But where to go now?  Well……. I don’t want to bore you with minutae (more than I already have) but you can click on this link to read the whole riveting canopy bed tale.  Honestly, you don’t have to read it, but do look at the photos to get a sense of the transfomation.

While waiting for canopies to be completed, we had a lot of other things going on that kept us distracted.  We’ve definitely become that childless couple that is overly invested in the lives of their animals.  Within your couple bubble, you don’t realize that no one – absolutely no one – cares about the daily waterfowl drama that unfolds on your pond.  But we care.  Obsessively.  I thought I was bad, but frankly, Keith is far worse.  He’ll be riding the rails to Boston but will be texting me throughout the day asking for updated status on the latest swan squabbles.  He’s also the one who assigns names to all the birds.  The black swans were christened “Thurgood” and “Muriel” and our goose was named ‘Buster.’

Knowing that you’re not in our bubble and you really don’t care, I’ll try to keep this as short as possible.  We got the new birds because we thought they would provide company for our lonely mute swan Hermoine.  She, however, viewed them as interlopers on “her” pond and tried to chase them away.  By mid-November the tables had turned (lots of drama I’m skipping over).  Now Thurgood, Muriel, and Buster were all best buds and would hang out together.  Thurgood would drive off Hermoine whenever she swam a little too close.  So we clearly still needed a new mate for Hermoine.  But we also thought Buster could use a species-appropriate buddy too.  He was totally fine chilling with the black swans, but any time Keith or I came to the pond there was a chorus of loud honks and a mad dash to get out of the water and greet us.  Lots of goosey conversation as he followed us around everywhere.  If I sat at my favorite bench he would be at my feet nibbling on my pants legs.   One day as I was sitting there admiring the view, he was even more talkative than usual.  Then he went silent and eyed me a bit oddly.  The next thing I knew he had flown up on the bench and was sitting in my lap.  If a goose could purr he would have been purring.  Instead he made contented little goosey sounds and we sat there for quite a while, just a boy and his goose.  It has since become a routine.  If you go to the pond you have to bend down so that Buster can snuggle up to you and get your jeans all muddy and wet.  As much as we enjoy the attention, we thought we should maybe be getting him a proper goose mate.  We went to poultry auctions, poultry shows, and while there were plenty of geese available, they weren’t the ‘right’ ones.  Finally, at the VA Poultry association show I met a fellow who said he had some young American Buff geese available and could set me up with a pair.  I drove a few hours on Thanksgiving morning to pick them up and worried myself sick all the way home that the other birds would drive them off the pond and they’d become fox food too.

At first that looked like it was going to be the case.  Turns out, these geese had never been on open water, much less outside a pen.  So they huddled against the board fence up by the barn and wouldn’t go anywhere near the water.  What to do?  Well, herding them down to the water only brought all the other birds to the water’s edge to guard ‘their’ pond against the intruders.  There was nothing for it, but to let them wander back up to the barn and then lock them in as we loaded up the car full of sweet potato puree, pumpkins for decorations, and, of course, lots and lots of wine, and headed off to Chip and John’s house for the most fabulous Thanksgiving dinner ever.

The next day proved more successful.  For whatever reason, they ‘got’ the concept of swimming, and took to water like….well, not ducks, but you get the picture.  Soon everyone was happy and settled down and living in reasonable harmony.  But Buster still demanded a daily cuddle.  And Hermoine was still the odd bird out and got picked on all the time.  So I’m not sure how much progress we made.  But we have two more birds.

In actual human news, we were finally able to lure our friends Russell and Dudley out to the farm for a quick overnight visit.  Much like Greg Albright and Tim Watkins, these two were a crucial part of my early adulthood.  I’m not sure the best way to describe them.  Great friends, to be sure, but they were more than that.  Role models?  Mentors?  At any rate, through their friendship and kindness over the last 45 years or so, they’ve been an anchorage, a port in the storm, and a great source of comfort.  Countless dinners, parties, vacations, road trips, and just hanging out.  I’d wager that fully a quarter of all the meals I ate in my 20s were at their house.  And throughout most of the decades since, I never had the wherewithal to repay their generosity.  It really bothered me.  Not just them, but all my friends honestly, but mostly them.  So now that I’m finally in a position to repay some of their kindness, we’re also at a point in our lives where you can’t just pop three doors down the street and catch up.  You have to coordinate schedules.  I think I’m pretty over-scheduled, but it’s nothing compared to R&D, who now have three houses at opposite corners of the country and have a steady stream of house guests wherever they’re in residence.  It took our social secretaries several months to coordinate a date.

But we were finally able to arrange a date with them and Tim and Todd and other dear friends.  Chef Brian pulled out all the stops.  The Farm Somm carefully selected the best wines.  It was lovely.  I know you’re tired of hearing this from me (honestly, it seems like I rehash the same themes on repeat every year), but sitting around a table with old friends that have seen you through all the triumphs and embarrassments of life is the best thing there is.  There’s a certain comfort in repeating the same stories and jokes that you’ve told each other for decades.  I love meeting new people and collecting them as friends as well, but a life shared with good friends you’ve known forever is the richest life possible.

 

D E C E M B E R

December was again the usual mad crush of Christmas parties, parades, and holiday cheer that you’ve heard me gush on about in years past.  But I just wasn’t feeling it this year.  I left halfway through the Christmas parade to head home and sit by the fire (okay, also to watch Heated Rivalry, but still).  The rest of the season played out as usual, but even with getting a Christmas tree for the first time in 17 years, it didn’t really change my mood.

The thing of it is, I was slowly realizing that the “Peak Alan” I had achieved back in the Spring was now rapidly becoming “post Peak Alan.”  My hair was thinning at an alarming rate, and I had a mysterious abdominal pain that wouldn’t go away.  I may be in the third trimester of my life, but I still need about 20 years or more to accomplish what I’ve set out to do.  And now Dr. Google was telling me that I had advanced kidney cancer or something.  It was a harsh message to absorb during Christmas festivities.  Luckily, a CT scan by my real doctors showed an oddly located kidney stone as the cause of my discomfort.  I guess that diagnosis was a nice Christmas present, but the whole episode drove home how incredibly lucky I am to have my health.  I confess I was always pretty arrogant about it.  I may have plenty of setbacks in my life to whine about, but I always took it as a given that I’d have robust health.

These reflections on health and vigor renewed my determination to ‘Get Things Done” while I could.  I’m almost at the finish line.  I’ve got to complete and furnish 12 rooms in the house, I’ve got a couple more gardens to plan out and plant, and I’ve got to get a donkey or two, and one more swan.  And then, that’s it.  The rest is just cocktail parties and sitting by the pond until I die.

Since the donkey was already ‘on order,’ I renewed my efforts in finding the swan before winter closed in on us.  Ideally we wanted a young male that wouldn’t be old enough to be too territorial and upset my hopes for multi-species harmony.  I kept coming up empty handed however, until a referral of a referral referred me to a breeder that just happened to have a few extra young male mute swans, and moreover, would sell one to us at a really good price.  The only problem was he was in Indiana, and we were in the state of perfection.

Shipping the swan would be astronomically expensive and a logistical nightmare, but the breeder had a suggestion – for an extra $100 he would drive five hours to meet me halfway in Ohio.  Still kinda ridiculous, because who in his right mind would drive 10 hours round-trip to pick up a swan??

I got up at 5 a.m. on the 2^nd to make it to Cambridge, OH by noon.  There I met a really nice old man (i.e., my age) who clearly took excellent care of his birds, and he asked all the right questions to make sure I knew what I was doing.  I gave him money, he gave me a swan.  We wished each other a “Merry Christmas” and each headed home.  I may have mentioned this before, but I REALLY like driving my Rivian.  It’s not really driving – more like sitting in a very comfy chair while watching scenery go by as you listen to music and audio books.  Pretty sweet.  But still, if you’re travelling that far you might as well stop and see things.  The trouble is, eastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and northern West Virginia don’t really have much to see.  Everything was drab and wintery, so that may have had something to do with it, but even the people were drab and wintery.  Even worse – they apparently think fleece-y pajamas are appropriate dress when out in public!  There was an area along the route outside of Pittsburgh that the google said was noted for a lot of antique shops.  Worth a stop, I thought.  But apparently the good people of Washington County, PA have a different understanding of antiques than I do.  So between disappointing antique (read: junk) shops and watching fat people in pajamas at the Sheetz while I charged the car, I didn’t get home till late that night.  I put the large dog crate in the barn and figured I’d release the swan the next day.

The next morning I carted the carrier to the pond and opened the door.  Out popped a very large, very confused, and very frightened young swan.  Only 7 months old, he was still in his juvenile plumage, but you could tell he was going to grow up to be a very big boy.  Keith immediately decided his name would be Heinrich in honor of our nephew Henry, who at 15, is clearly on the same trajectory.

Now you’d think size matters when establishing a pecking order, but youth and uncertainty matter more.  The black swans immediately chased him off the pond.  But it was Hermoine who was relentless.  She couldn’t bear having him anywhere within her sight.  I figured it would all calm down in a few days, but weeks later poor Heinrich is still constantly being bullied and chased away.  Feathers have flown and I have to feed him separately and he rarely gets enough food.  I keep telling him when he’s all grown up in 3 years he’ll rule the roost, but that’s cold comfort to a bullied and frightened young swan.  I’m hoping I won’t have any swan drama to report next year.  But time will tell.

 

E N D  N O T E

Every year upon finishing this letter, I re-read it and find so, so many typos, syntax mis-matches, non sequiturs, and unfinished sentences.  I do my best to clean it all up, but frankly I’m a bit tired after typing my stream of consciousness non-stop between Christmas and New Years.  Each year I promise myself I’ll spend some time editing it all down to a reasonable length, but then each year I kinda give up and just say “oh well, they don’t have to read it all.”

But it’s on these re-reads that I can sometimes see a theme unconsciously weaving its way through the narrative.  This year (well, like most actually) it’s clear that the highlights for me were spending time with good friends and family.  Now I know there’s a disconnect between my stated desire to just stay at my farm and garden and gaze at my critters, and my real need to connect with you.  But there it is.

In his novel Howards End, E.M. Foster admonishes us in the epigram to “only connect.”  I read that line as a young man, and it resonated deep within me.  You know, that’s what life is all about, really – connections.  Connecting one’s inner life to the outside world.  The connections we forge with one another are what give our life purpose.  We’re only truly gone from this world when the connections we had with others are dissolved. Because a little bit of me resides in each of you.  My friends and my family.  Anything that we’ve ever experienced with each other – happy times, tragic events, carefree youthful partying, and quiet and reflective times together as we age.  All of this is woven into the rich tapestry that becomes the essence of our too brief lives. We may not see each other that often.  We may even find ourselves wondering, “whatever happened to so and so?”  But we still share that connection.  That certain something that brought us together in the first place.

The Korean term “Jeong” has no proper analog in English yet is a universal concept, I think.  At least I hope it is.  At its heart, Jeong is a deep emotional bond of attachment, affection, and loyalty between people, animals, and even inanimate objects. It’s an unspoken connection that grows over time through shared experiences like meals, celebrations, and helping each other in times of need, and can even develop in rivals that share a history together.

Call it what you will, I find that this is what stays with me as I re-read my recitation of the year’s events.

It’s perhaps telling that in a world that seems to be spinning out of control, the Washington Post readers yesterday voted this as one of the ‘stories of the year’ for 2025.  I last saw Ted about a month or so before he died and his parting words were, “it’s been nice knowing you!”

Here’s to 2026!  May it bring you peace, good health, and our continued connection!

Alan