17 February 2026

Today, Tuesday, 17 February 2026, marks the beginning of Ramadan, the celebration of Mardi Gras, and the Lunar New Year of the Horse, as well as the second anniversary of my sister Jane’s passing, and the birth of our twin granddaughters, now 24 years old.  Is’t possible?  What to make of such intersections, global and personal, past and present—especially given my shaken and stirred response to my car’s being totaled at the busy intersection of Madbury Road and Route 4 in Durham, NH a week ago Sunday? Dear Reader, that is the question.  Seeing Hamnet for the second time one week post crash afforded me opportunity for a really good cry, but that has not settled the unsettled.

I’m off to a yoga class soon, to be followed by two different book club discussions later on, one on Shakespeare’s early play Two Gentlemen of Verona, exploring and exploding past comic conventions, and the other on Kiran Desai’s epic novel, The Inheritance of Loss, rendering the collision of private lives and public events arising from the effects of colonialism on those who leave India and those who remain.  I’m grateful for such salutary distractions, physical and intellectual, and for the insights art affords.  I’m grateful for the restorative company of dear friends joining over a delightful meal to speak, deeply, of all manner of things, celebrate Valentine’s Day, and toast our host’s cozy new home together.  And I’m grateful that no one was seriously hurt when my car was hit, that emergency services and insurance company have been so helpful, and that the hours of daylight grow appreciably longer with each passing day.  But what’s to come?

My friend SP, student of lunar cycles, has declared this Year of the Horse marks the beginning of a new one.  Could be worse, could be better, but it will be different.  I’m choosing to think things will get better, that perhaps the U.S. has reached a tipping point, that we’re finally waking up to take action against oppression and the psychic damage wrought by epistemic uncertainty.

I’ve certainly found myself in a new personal era of late, noticing more and more signs that I’m neither ascending nor even maintaining level flight, but am rather on the glide path down.  I’m spending a lot of time—perhaps too much—thinking about offloading stuff and attending Death Cafés.  What am I contributing?  WordPress, host of this blog, reports my site had 442 visitors in January, so Dear Reader, I’m wondering what YOU are thinking?  Have these messages in a bottle reached you?  Do you also find yourself at the intersection of hüzün, the Turkish word I’ve just learned signifying melancholy and longing/spiritual yearning, and hope?  I recently noticed that some Google bot describes this blog as “witty, entertaining, and thoroughly engaged with all manner of subjects . . . .”  What does one make of a such a snippet, a compliment manufactured by an A.I. algorithm?

I don’t know.  But I do remain curious.  And I propose reviving a 16^th century word now largely obsolete but I think useful in this new cycle:  “respair,” meaning the return of hope after a period of despair, from the Latin respirare, to breathe again.  Deep breath, Everyone!  And like Jess Jackson, who departed this dimension earlier this morning, Keep Hope Alive!

Happy new year!