December
12, 2025
Dear Friends--
Here’s wishing you a happy holiday season and a marvelous 2026!
If you still send Christmas cards, and we’re on your list, don’t take us off! Even though I’ve resorted to the lazy person’s holiday message, we very much enjoy the cards, letters, and photos.
With warm wishes. Please stay in touch.
A few Svea photos, thoughts, and a short year-in-review.
-- Gary
* * *
Not a fan of asparagus. (Unlike her father, who loved asparagus baby food—but he grew out of that fondness later.)
Once a great while, when she’s tired, the crying comes.
The vast majority of the time, however, she is a happy, vocal baby. At nine months:
She still looks at me quizzically when she first sees me, but now she will come to me with arms out, has always been content to let me hold and feed her, and will often smile at me. But that took awhile. Svea is at the top of the charts for physical development—she began walking at 8½ months—but merely within the normal range for social development. That’s fine.
Finally, here are us: Kathy and I, Elliott & Martha. Out to dinner for my birthday.
* * *
A friend of mine pointed me to a New York Times article about Rationalism and the “AI apocalypse.” It reminded me of Elliott's questions about having children. (At one point he questioned the wisdom of doing so, given the state of the world—but then he and Martha had a baby girl.) His concerns were a bit different, but similar. I was intrigued/amused by the term “strategic hypocrisy”.
To Brennan, the Rationalist writer, the healthy response to fears of an A.I. apocalypse is to embrace “strategic hypocrisy”: Save for retirement, have children if you want them. “You cannot live in the world acting like the world is going to end in five years, even if it is, in fact, going to end in five years,” they said. “You’re just going to go insane.”
I think that’s right. That doesn’t mean you have to be an optimist, I suppose, but it does suggest that fretting endlessly about the future isn’t good for your mental health.
* * *
Elliott
asked me a short while ago if the townhouse (that we moved into in October
2023) felt like home yet. I told him “yes and no.” We are certainly comfortable
here. We’ve had it decorated as we want it and it functions well for our daily
lives.
Is
it “home” like the house in south Minneapolis where I lived for 34 years and to
which I began coming as an infant when my mother brought me to see her favorite
aunt and uncle and at which I stayed during occasional weekends when growing up
and at which we celebrated a number of Christmases and Thanksgivings and in
which Pat and I, and Kathy and I, put a lot “blood, toil, tears, and sweat”
when we remodeled and expanded it and constructed the gardens? No. But I am
surely an oddball in modern American life in having such an emotional
attachment to a structure—one that I can and do continue to visit since Elliott
and Martha bought it and their daughter Svea is now growing up in.
I think of us as transients in the
townhouse: a pleasant place to live as we go through our retirement years. I
haven’t the least interest in making the interior “perfect” and even less
interest in gardening. There are minor items of décor finishing in the
townhouse that I would have tackled immediately in the house; I may or may not
get around to doing so here. I just don’t care that much.
Do any of you feel a deep bond with a building? In a way it’s kind of silly, but in another way, it played such a significant role in my life that I can’t avoid the feeling. (Minor things, it’s where I learned table manners, cribbage, and blackjack, all courtesy of my great aunt.)
* * *
I sometimes wish I could be so oblivious. (From a Facebook friend.)
* * *
For those few of you who haven’t lived in the upper Midwest or been here during winter, I will affirm that this is accurate. (Also from a Facebook friend.)
* * *
The
miscellaneous “what happened this year in our lives” notes. In short, not much worth
a great deal of comment, beyond Svea. We spent January through March in Naples,
Florida, and will do so again the first three months of 2026. We are looking
forward to leaving Minnesota more than usual because the northern Midwest
appears to be facing a brutal winter. It already is!
Kathy crochets afghans by the dozen
and donates them to organizations that give them to those in need. While doing
so, she listens to audiobooks (she’s on track to listen to 125 this year), and
is by far the most well-read person I know. She sees her 94-year-old mother at
least twice per week, for lunch and breakfast. Her son Spencer is moving into
an apartment in a few days, enabled to do so because he was finally approved
for Social Security disability. Fortunately, the apartment is close by; for the
last few years he has been living with his father in Brooklyn Center, a
half-hour drive each way for Kathy to see him.
I take care of Svea for a few hours
per week, play bridge once or twice or three times a week, do paint-by-numbers
of friends’ kids and grandkids, have lunch and dinner with friends, and read
cozy mysteries and largely depressing news. My one modest contribution to civic
life is serving a three-year term on the board of directors of the U of MN
Retirees Association. (Kathy does an enormous amount of web work for the
Association as well.)
Both
of us go to the local fitness club 3-4 times per week in a valiant attempt to
stave off some of the physical decline that comes with aging; we’re told that
such exercise also helps stave off cognitive decline. I hope so.
So both of us have lives that are leisurely—isn’t that what retirement is supposed to be about?—but also sufficiently busy. We know that the research is clear: keeping an active social life and connections with friends and family are also significant factors in forestalling cognitive decline as we get older. We do our best.
That’s enough about 2025.
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