Welcome to 2025!

Undine: "Welcome to 2025! New year, new me! This is going to be the year when I get so much writing ---"

Covid enters the chat, with a positive test line so reddish-purple that it looks like a murder scene.

Oh, well, eventually I will feel better. 

In the meantime:

• The fires and the political scene are terrible, but you already knew that.
• Reading actual books instead of doomscrolling through the now-canceled WaPo & NYTimes is better for mental health.
• Columnists like Jennifer Rubin have quit and have now gone to our old friend Substack. While I admire that in principle, it's the whole cable & streaming services thing all over again: you pay for cable, and then you pay extra for Hulu, Apple+, Netflix, etc.
  
• Teaching is going well, and if Covid 1.0 taught us anything, it's that we can hop on Zoom for a class or two if we are not too sick to teach but too sick to risk infecting others.
• Everyone on my social media counts the number of books that they read in a year and then posts it at the end of the year. I've never done this & don't remember seeing this before. Questions: Does everyone keep track like this? Should I start doing this? 

Hope your new year is going well!