kayshapero

Not a great week. It starts with my mother's 105th birthday -- she died a little before her 100th -- and ends with my 50th wedding anniversary -- the last one Colleen was alive for was our 45th.

The New Year's Eve/Day Zoom filksing was a high point -- I sang 9 songs. It went on for almost another day after I left. R was online too, so I got to hear him sing a little; we decided that this could count as our holiday video chat if we didn't get arouond to an official one. OTOH because I don't plan well and don't multitask at all, there were undoubtedly a number of things that should have been done before year's end that weren't.

In the category of things that ought to be done soon, see this Post by @rahaeli.bsky.social — Bluesky " I strongly suspect, from all these signals, that Sberbank is preparing to either sell the outside-Russia part of LJ if they can find a buyer, or shut it down if they can't. " -- so back up everything you care about from LJ to DW, if you haven't already, or import it all into DW. I did that several years ago.

As for links... Maduro 'captured and flown out' of Venezuela, Trump says -- it's been suggested that Venezuela should return the favor. How We Came To Know Earth | Quanta Magazine's special issue on climate, including A Biography of Earth Across the Age of Animals.

( Notes & links, as usual )

Today I am thankful for...

• All of the many works coming (back, in many cases) into the public domain. See, for starters,

    @ Public Domain Day|Wikipedia
    @ European Public Domain Day – Celebrating accessible & reusable works
    @ What Will Enter the Public Domain in 2026? — The Public Domain Review
    @ 2026 in public domain
    @ Public Domain Day 2026 in Literature - Blog - Standard Ebooks: Free and liberated
      ebooks, carefully produced for the true book lover
         

• A most excellent New Year's Eve filksing. (Which started at 10am CET yesterday, and may still be going on; I left a little before 2pm.) (I did get some sleep in the middle of it.)
• It wasn't exactly a video call with R, but it sort of was.
• Not being in a war zone, despite what the fireworks sounded like last night. Also thankful that they weren't as noisy as last year.
• Unexpected email from family, friends, and some of Mom's friends. Special call-out to C'.
• My family -- whatever their location or number of feet. In particular my brother Al, my kids R and E, sister-of-choice N, her husband G and kids j and m, fosterlings c and k, and the family cats -- Ticia, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Cricket.

Welcome to New Year's Day 2026! 2025 has set a very low bar, but even so I don't have a whole lot of hope for improvement. Good luck, all. We'll need it.

Well, here it is, the last week of 2025. One of my goals for the year was to write an infodump post that I could point to, quote from, or email to people who I've been out of touch with. I never got around to it, and it's late, but maybe this will do.

If you're tuning in late, I need to mention that I moved with part of my chosen family to Den Haag, in the Netherlands, in October of 2024. Specifically myself, N, N's husband G, older kid m, and our four cats. N's younger kid, j, was already here, starting university in Leiden.

We're here taking advantage of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty, which lets Americans emigrate to the Netherlands (or vice versa) and get permanent residency or citizenship provided they start a business here (or bring one with them). We're sort of doing both, with our little indie publishing company HyperSpace Express.

Our plan for the business had been for N to get into sewing and fabric arts, and me to (at long last) record a new CD. The best-laid plans, etc. What's actually happened is that I got very discouraged about my musical ability, and N decided to turn to writing. She's already published her first book, The World As it Ought To Be -- Stories from a Protopian Future. Please buy a copy!

Back in the US, my son R turned FORTY last July. On his birthday I started trying to write a "state of the Bear" post, got nowhere, and abandoned it three days later, a few days before the fourth anniversary of Colleen's death. I have written very little since then. But here I am. The last week has been kind of bleak, and a week from tomorrow will be our fiftieth wedding anniversary. It will be the fifth that I haven't had her with me to celebrate.

Fortunately, Bronx never fails to get a laugh out of me when he jumps up onto the dresser when I'm getting the food bowls ready. And this evening I was mentioning to G how the IBM 1620 has to load its addition and multiplication tables when it boots up, and he said "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" I haven't laughed that hard in ... I don't know how long.

Um... not really enough, but I want to post this today (see music), and it's almost bedtime. And I have cats to feed.