Home Again For the Holidays
December 18, 2025
Jim and I attended the 22nd annual Home for the Holidays concert tonight. We’ve attended each year for the last 20, missing (maybe) the first one or two. It is truly a gem of a community event.
This year’s was a good one! All our faves: Webster, Walton, Edwards (Eating my Way Through the Holidays); Misner and Smith; Rita Hoskings; Boot Juice; and a couple new ones this year, both exceptional. And of course this guy:
That is the supremely talented Joe Craven and his daughter Hattie. Their set was perhaps my favorite this time around. He’s just so incredibly entertaining. I think I’ll tire of his schtick, but you know what? I don’t. He can bring me to tears with both his talent and wit.
It was a great night.
And look who we found ourselves sitting next to! This is Senorita Enriquez, Peter’s third grade teacher.
Shockingly, she recognized us! It’s been 20 years! The conversation was really fun.
The holidays have officially kicked off.
Wally and the Beav
December 17, 2025
Stumbled across this ancient family photo, taken circa 1934… (I’m guessing, based on how old Aunt Ellie looks, and extrapolating from there.)
I think Uncle Vic and Dad look like Wally and Beaver.
From L to R: Aunt Ellie (1932-2019), Grandma Mary (1898-1995), Edward Short (Grandma’s dad, 1868-1936), Uncle Vic (1922-2014), Hattie Short (Grandma’s mom, 1871-1949), dad (1927-2000), Grandpa Pete (1894-1981).
I loved Grandma and Grandpa so so much.
~~~~
Then… I started down a rabbit hole……
I dug this up on my great grandparents:
Hattie and Edward Short are buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Cedar Falls, Black Hawk County, Iowa.
- Hattie Dellavon Brinkley Scott Short (1871–1949): Buried at Greenwood Cemetery.
- Edward Short (1868–1936): Buried at Greenwood Cemetery after passing away in Cedar Falls Township.
Aunt Bonnie took Matt and me to visit the Greenwood Cemetery in 2017 when we were in Iowa for a visit. We saw Great Grandma Hattie and Great Grandpa Edward’s gravesite. It was fantastic to see this.
I dug deeper…..
This was my great grandmother Hattie…
And my great grandfather Edward…
More on him:
This is a great photo of Hattie, Edward and 7 of their 8 children. Hattie Zoe didn’t come along until 9 years after Ethel (oops!), which is why she’s not pictured here. I’m guessing this photo is taken in about 1910.
L to R: Martha, Hattie, Ethel, Leone, Romeo, Cynthia, Vera, Edward, Mary
Jim, Matty and I will be traveling to Grinnel, Iowa this coming summer to celebrate Aunt Bonnie’s 95th birthday (she’s Dad’s first cousin, and Cynthia’s daughter). Maybe we’ll get back out to Cedar Falls. There is a lot of history in that town on Dad’s mom’s side of the family!
Smileworthy
December 16, 2025
I thought this was pretty sweet.
A little boy looking up to his dad is a wonderful thing. (We have one of those.)
Amoral Leadership
December 15, 2025
Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were brutally murdered yesterday, stabbed by their son, who clearly suffers from mental health issues. They were found in their Brentwood home by their daughter. It’s a truly horrific and sad story. Rob Reiner was a beloved Hollywood legend, brilliant in his breadth of work and an icon in the film industry. He was also a deeply respected voice on the progressive left, someone who worked endlessly for human rights causes, and, unsurprisingly, was an outspoken critic the Oval Office occupant.
This story has dominated the news today… though has shared headlines with the shooting at Brown University in Providence, RI (2 dead, 9 injured) and the massacre of Jews gathered to celebrate Chanukah on a popular beach in Sydney, Australia (15 killed, dozens injured) .. which both happened on Saturday.
The dark days continue. The Reiner stabbings yesterday were a shocking pile-on to Saturday’s tragedies, and just another assault in an endless stream of foul news. Our nation, our planet are in a world of hurt.
Where do we look to for solace, guidance during dark times..
Here’s the statement that Barack Obama released this morning about the Reiners:
Michelle and I are heartbroken by the tragic passing of Rob Reiner and his beloved wife, Michele. Rob’s achievements in film and television gave us some of our most cherished stories on screen. But beneath all of the stories he produced was a deep belief in the goodness of people—and a lifelong commitment to putting that belief into action. Together, he and his wife lived lives defined by purpose. They will be remembered for the values they championed and the countless people they inspired. We send our deepest condolences to all who loved them.
It’s a kind statement and we can read that and collectively share in grief for the loss.
Our absolute psychopath of a president, however, said this:
I’ll tell you what, that is one asshole right there. Not a shred of decency, not a nanoparticle of kindness. Our nation (and world) does not deserve this POS who insults the office of the presidency daily and has NEVER offered a unifying word. I cannot bear to hear the scum that comes out of his mouth every time it moves. I could not loathe a person more and cannot wait for the day is he out of our lives.
~~
This post brought to mind that Dionne Warwick song (Burt Bacharach, actually).. What the world needs now, is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing, that there’s just too little of.
Not Making the Cut
December 14, 2025
I spent time today going through the 9,744 photos I took in 2025 looking for the best ones for our Christmas card. No small task.
I selected 23 for Jim to consider as he muscles a year’s worth of photos into an 8 1/2″ x 11″ space. He won’t be able to use all 23, of course; I give him more than he’ll need so he can choose the ones that work best in a collage and at the same time do the best job of representing our year. The collage is always an incomplete story. It would benefit from some sort of narrative, but we’ve never made that a part of our annual card, so no sense starting now! Jim and I are creatures of habit, routine and convenience. We figure most people are just fine with a wordless photo collage, anyway.
I’m fairly confident these will not make the cut, so I’m posting them here.
Something tells me Jim will opt out of this one…taken as we ate dinner this summer at an outdoor restaurant in Bayeux, France. He looks a little stern.
This was taken on a windy walk in Dillon Beach last January. I like it, but it we have a ton of other selfies with far more interesting backgrounds.
I love this shot of us, too, but it’s too similar to another we’re using of Jim and Peter on the same stoop (our tent cabin in Tuolumne Meadows).
This won’t make the cut because, to be interesting, the photo needs all of that sky, the clouds and especially the mountains. But in a tight photo collage, that becomes wasted space… but it’s a great lunch spot, no? It was a fabulous hike in Yosemite in about August.
Stay tuned for the ones that do make the cut.. coming to a Christmas card soon.
Haiku: Impaled Leaf Edition
December 13, 2025
What is the point?
Sycamore leaf on cactus.
Fall can be a bitch.
The Drop Zone
December 12, 2025
We are still falling around here.
Those leaves came from a tiny little gingko up the street in front of City Hall…
Ezra and Leah
December 11, 2025
Have I written about these guys before? They are Ezra Levin and Leah Greenberg, co-founders of Indivisible and hosts of a weekly zoom called, “What’s the Plan.” This is one hour of political inspiration I absolutely depend on and look forward to each week (Thursdays at noon, Pacific). I don’t think I’ve missed but 2 or 3 this entire year….they are that good. Smart, wonky, politically astute, strategic. They are a firehose of insight and information. I feel smarter listening to them.
Today, I’d just returned from coffee with Vicki. I’d walked to Cloud Forest (and back) in the misty, frigid fog that has become our daily reality for weeks now here in the central valley of California. Vicki and I typically sit on the patio and even today, weirdos that we are, we sat outside in the bone cold air (the owner just couldn’t believe it). By the time I got home, I was frozen to my core so decided to take a bath to thaw out and warm up. Submerged in very hot water, steam rising all around, I watched today’s “What’s the Plan.” Ezra and Leah were in fine form, 60 solid minutes of rapid fire brilliance. Always gives me such hope.
Foggy air, icy chill, political despair, political inspiration, hot water, steamy steam… there’s probably a good metaphor in there somewhere.
Our World’s Been Shook Up
December 10, 2025
This summer, while driving in France, Jim noticed his hand shook as he gripped the wheel of our rental Peugeot. Seemed odd. When we got back to Davis, Jim checked in with his primary care physician who suggested he keep an eye on it and let him know if it intensified. He did, it had, so Dr. Ho referred him to a specialist.
Three weeks ago (on November 20th), Jim and I saw Dr. Mense, a Kaiser neurologist. He did some simple in-office, observational diagnostics and concluded Jim has Parkinson’s.
Not the diagnosis we were hoping for.
So that is the bad news. The more positive news (it’s all relative) is that he’s got a subtype of Parkinson’s called tremor-dominant Parkinson Disease. The neurologist was quick to say that Jim would live a long and active life and that PD would not be what gets him in the end. His subtype is characterized by a resting tremor (as opposed to a tremor that activates when engaging one’s hand or arm, for example) which is annoying, but largely addressable with a medication called levodopa. He will not experience the other symptoms of PD.. rigidity, bradykinesia (slow movements), loss of balance, dementia. At least not anytime soon.
For the last three weeks, he’s been titrating levodopa, and is close to arriving at a dosage that will settle his jiggling right forearm. Aside from taking this medication a few times a day, and dealing with a mostly manageable tremor, it’ll be business as usual … we hope for a very long time.
Nothing in life is certain (how’s that for a platitude!), but we are feeling generally optimistic as we feel our way along this new path.
Here’s my otherwise healthy, fit, good lookin’ guy chillin’ on a Dolomite mountainside a year ago this past summer:
Little Wooden Table and Little Wooden Stool
December 9, 2025
This has become my favorite winter spot, in front of the fireplace. I sit here probably hours a day (I hate to admit) doing whatever it is I do on my laptop (this blog, for example, at this very moment). My butt can get sore sitting on that little wooden stool, as it has a hole in the seat, designed, I think, to function as a handle. It’s a very hard and irregular surface. Matt claims to have made this stool in high school wood shop, nearly half a century ago (Note: he actually made it in junior high in Mr. Riopelle’s wood shop class, I am so corrected). I scooped it up in the process of emptying mom’s house back in 2017. I’d always admired it. And I got that tiny table from Aunt Ellie’s house in 2019, same home-emptying process, this time after Aunt Ellie had died. Two of my most treasured (if funky) pieces of furniture (“furniture”).
Well.. okay. Let me take a couple close-ups..
Here’s the stool.. see.. that hole is placed right in the butt bone zone.
And here’s the table. The second shot shows the little shelves that pull out. My aunt had described this as a plant table, so maybe it was designed to display an assortment of potted plants on the four pullouts. I use it to hold my smoothie, my phone, and as a place to make notes if I need to write something on my todo list, say. Handy!
Anyway… I sit there a lot, being on my laptop, warming my back. Heavenly. That was a bowl of vanilla yogurt with raisins. I was likely doing a NYT puzzle.
Have I mentioned, it’s extremely cold and dreary outside these past weeks. The Tule fog has crept back in on its little cat feet and is socking us in but good. Excellent excuse for long stints in front of the fireplace.
Life of Wry 