PNewL PNewS
Volume 33 Issue 2 “All the pnews that phits.” December 2025
Surprise…I’m back! Pardon my absence…busy-ness continued and I lost focus on my own life. For a reason not totally clear to me, not too long ago, it returned and I feel like myself again. Still working on those boundaries! 2025--I don’t know a lot of people who’d say they’d like to do this year again. Looking at you 2026 for some improvement. Hopeful. Here’s a look back from my perspective.
A Downside of Aging?
Life has been feeling pretty fragile this year. In May, we lost two first cousins…from the same family—Nathan, in his early 50s, died suddenly when his heart stopped and his mother Val, in her late 70s, took a major fall and did not recover from her injuries. Shocking, both of them. Significant holes in the tapestry. This summer, cousin Larry was hit by Lyme disease and had to recover several thousand miles from home. Later in the summer, cousin Pouce died in the Arizona desert—a freaking tragedy. Meanwhile, brother David fell out of his pick-up truck while recycling (no good deed goes unpunished…who came up with that saying??). He had a shoulder replacement which then had to be replaced due to an infection. And then this fall, Patsy had an infection in her newly replaced hip and that led to a nightmarish series of days in the ICU/hospital/rehab facility. Then Natasha left us after a valiant fight against cancer. Thankfully Patsy and David are both healing and I am just going to tempt fate and say, the worst of those are behind us.
Seems the longer this sits on my desktop, the more I should add to it but…you get the picture. And I am sure many are you are feeling the same onslaught of tragedy. The human condition I know—the more people we know, the more people we lose.
“You never know what’s around the corner,” I was reminded while watching television recently. Indeed. I think this is just the beginning and it feels like a lot.
Travel Updates
On this year’s road trip to Osawa (Georgian Bay Ontario), I managed to drive a bazillion miles in a relatively short period of time. I went via Wisconsin and Minnesota and around the top of Lake Superior because I have been meaning to do that for a very long time. It was worth it and I need to go back soon—matter of fact, I’ve been threatening to move to Duluth. As I drove through, with the lake on my right, I was blown away and probably a wee bit dangerous as I kept needing to keep an eye on it. For me, large bodies of fresh water are magic. I grew up there. And this is a honking big body of fresh water. When I crossed into Canada (no waiting!), the Canadian border dude asked all the usual questions and then he said, why’d you come this way? And I said I’d always wanted to see it and he said, what do you think so far? I said it’s gorgeous and he said, yeah, it is. (Pro tip: Keep your gas tank full on this road. There are a few stretches where gas stations are not close to each other.) (Fun fact: If I moved to Duluth and drove to Osawa/Pointe au Baril over the top of Lake Superior, it would take longer than driving from Western North Carolina!) In addition to some days on Osawa and visits with David and his family, I got a visit in with Sydney in Indianapolis, Gary and Deb outside Thunder Bay and Cathy in the woods of Pennsylvania, and stayed in some pretty great campgrounds. Great trip—next time I will do it slower…with more stops. (Not something I am very good at…)
I also went to Ireland—for a good while. It was a solid Good Trip. I did not fall in love with Ireland which surprised me, and I still haven't decided why not. It was lovely, the people are super nice and friendly, some of the country is wild which I like, food was good (practically no vegetables though), lots of yarn and wool and sheep. All good, but not like I need to run right back. That’s okay—I have enough of those places.
Bill, Denis and I rented a houseboat on the River Shannon which connects two large lakes, Loughs Derg and Ree. There were some locks to go through and some bridges to go under and plenty of dockings to add a bit of excitement--Bill was a masterful captain of our vessel--but there was also some delightful bobbing along in the best weather Ireland has seen in ages. When walking through towns, people would call out hello and always…always …add something about the beautiful day. We added on some days in the wild west near Connemara National Park in weather the country is better known for. Then they dropped me in Dublin, and I connected with a group of knitters for a tour around the country. We knit and ate and shopped and learned and saw and ate and shopped. Unbeknownst to me, the trip was sponsored by a knitting shop in Duluth MN! So now, when I go to visit, I’ll have some familiar faces to meet up with!
Things I am Learning
& Miscellaneous Observations
• I have been struck recently by the difference in the ways people’s brains work. We are so different. And for me that is a wonderful thing and sometimes a wee bit confusing. I work with a group of people and it wouldn’t work as well if not for our different brains, filling in the spaces between us. But I do have moments of “Huh?” until I realize…we’re just different…in a good way.
• While I still wonder why I am reading a book, who recommended it, now I get to wonder who recommended a podcast or a substack that lands in my mailbox.
• I sometimes indulge myself when I get involved with something late in the evening and am so engaged and find it going way past midnight, knowing that Buster will get up at dawn no matter what time I go to bed. It’s not a perfect indulgence but it does have an odd feeling of decadence despite the end results.
• We had a brood of the 17-year cicadas this past summer. It was an assault on the senses. The noise, the chewed tree branches that hang brown and limp (including on the blueberry bushes…very sad.) Buster enjoyed eating them--counted 16 on one morning walk. Apparently they make some dogs sick but Buster is thriving. The bears have enjoyed them too I hear. I do not miss the sound—they worked banker’s hours it seemed…much shorter than sunrise to set, but plenty. I will not miss them—and I’m figuring it’s my last brood!
• I went to the grocery store one evening. The place was deserted. “American Pie” came on the muzak. That song is more than eight minutes and is a favorite. It took up a good chunk of my time there and was a bit of a lift. I have to take that when I can in these dark days.
• I bought a new refrigerator. When I worried that the motor in the old one sounded like a plane coming in for a landing and all of my food might be ruined, Lisa suggested my worries were storm-related. She might be right. Eighteen days without power does that to a gal. So I got a new fridge without my usual dithering (as you may have guessed, I am a ditherer) and as I was putting old things into the new fridge, I did so with a discerning eye (I am generally not discerning—you may know that about me too). I found two jars with a “sell by date” of 2013. I think that’s impressive. Most of the jars of condiments or ingredients only had a tablespoon or two which made me feel a little less bad. All in all, I removed TWENTY-TWO jars from the inventory in the new fridge. Recycling was heavy that cycle.
• Mouse in the House update: with regards to aforementioned rice that had been rehomed by a mouse: I was preparing for an event making ornaments out of felt and found a cache of rice in with the felt which BTW was not only at the other end of the house but on the top shelf of the closet. I also discovered chewing on the inside of my suitcase which also lives down the hall and on a different top shelf. And did I mention the nest in with my welding supplies? They were busy this year!
• Cathy invited me to her writing group’s Zoom. The presenter, a friend of the members, had a system that worked for her: she writes 125 words a day and at the end of the year winds up with a bunch of words strung together which, added to the words she’d already strung together, made up a book! I appreciated her optimism--a nice concept…but not one that spoke to my issue.
I have been on the never-ending quest to compile 32…now 33 years of the PNewS into something that someone (me?) might enjoy. It is my excuse for four years of the Iceland Writer’s Retreat. (Now five because I just signed up again…) It did make me think that I could start taking itty bitty bites into the 140+ issues (because I haven’t even counted how many there are) and try yet again to figure out some sort of organization to all of these bits as I have tried many times before. Now, the box of paper files related to all those years has migrated to the living room—that move was inspired by the 125-words-a-day presentation and there it has sat ever since. Over the summer, I turned on the overhead fan (it was 77 degrees in the LR and it was officially time) and a piece of paper floated off the top of the box. I read the issue—one from my first summer in WNC. I liked it. Maybe I will be inspired…(but I wasn’t as I edit this four months later. Sigh.)
• I just re-read this for typos and confusing sentences (I probably missed some of both but I’m finally ready to send this off), and Word offered that if I changed a phrase it would be “more concise and less confusing to the reader.” What fun is that???
Happy Merry Hohoho and here’s to good things and a wee bit more peace and sanity in 2026.
“Change was already happening and here was its cousin, mortality…not so much knocking on my door as kicking it down like some particularly brutal extrajudicial force.” Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
“This toxic patriarchal energy that we are experiencing right now is coming to an end. And what you’re seeing is that energy, clinging and clawing for survival ‘cause it knows it’s dying. And we’re heading for something very beautiful, but we have to go through some dark shit to get there.” Sturgill Simpson
“(Re)planting a forest, one tree at a time.” Jeff Curtis
