2025 HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR, SO FAR

2025 highlights have come every day, with each new one besting the last.

And, like last year, 2024, it’s come to this.

The End.

Also like last year, and the years before, tomorrow is a:

New Beginning.

Let’s say it together. New. Beginning.

Could we be honest here?

Who really needs a new beginning when things are going so well?

Got a good roof, a good, well pretty good, coat, and food in the ‘fridge.

The tree doctor climbed up and cut a widow-maker hanging down that would have punched a hole in the roof.

I bought a container of REI water-proof wax spray for my Columbia parka to avoid the $900 tag on a high-end gortex jacket.

I just finished a breakfast of leftover turkey, Kelly’s potatoes, and homemade cranberry sauce for breakfast in a bowl, which reminds me when we used to get Thanksgiving in a cup from the Oregonian coffee shop when it was on SW Jefferson and Broadway.

Seventy-five cents all year long. That was a few minutes ago, like 1982, but who’s counting?

This baby boomer blogger is counting.

It not only give my brain a different kind of workout, but sometimes serves as inspiration.

 

Counting On BoomerPdx

You could say things have picked up around here.

I say it, but big time bloggers get 70K hits an hour.

Just ask them. I did.

In what amounted to a middle-aged pecker measuring contest, I talked traffic with a famous author.

The famous author was hilarious in his numbers.

It felt like talking about how much money you’ve got, you know, how much you could pull together if you decided to disappear all of a sudden.

The wife and I talk it out, but not with anyone else, not with strangers. As much as you think you know an author by their work, you don’t.

It’s the same kind of thing with famous people and their kids.

All of the parents are kind and the kids are well adjusted?

 

In my museum days I went on a collection pick-up to the widow of a famous Oregon man, one of the sweetest old ladies by consensus.

I showed up, went through the formality and niceties from another era, and gave her my list.

She had everything ready to go until her son rushed in on frantic energy telling the room the pieces leaving must not leave.

Like a pro, Miss Audrey took control, calmed the situation, and sent her forty-something son to his room.

I could count on her.

 

The Future Of History

I’m a fan of reading and writing fiction.

I’m starting my new read, The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure.

It came out in 2013, I saw it at the Powell’ kiosk in the airport.

You can buy it at Annie Bloom’s Books.

I love the idea of historical fiction, movies based on historical events, but I love history even more because new data is always being revealed.

The problem is the mix.

You can mix history and fiction and read historical fiction, but not fiction and history to read fictional history.

See what I did there?

People become historical figures based on their job, their actions, or both.

Problems occur when an historical figure in real time can’t grasp the gravitas of their words.

If you were a good liar, daydreamer, or troublemaker, you’d be a good fiction writer.

Would the same lying, daydreaming, troublemaker be a good leader?

When such a person is asked to stand before the world and explain themselves, their goals, and how they plan to achieve them, keep it between the lines.

Know your audience, showman.

 

 

Update your usual song and dance routines if you want to go before one of the toughest audiences ever assembled.

They are hard-wired not to do anything but listen and analyze.

This is their response to a rabid hype-man giving them the business.

It’s the same response they gave their boss after the hype-man finished with his warm up fluff.

My pride in the Armed Forces was never stronger than when I saw these accomplished men getting scolded for being fat and out of shape by the hype-man, only to sit while a fat, out of shape, huckster made his appeal.

Fitness starts at the top, and like honesty, it’s part of the public work out in the open.

Both my kids have presidential fitness awards from physically fit presidents, not an overflowing slop bucket of rendered fat.

I was asked why I stopped posting on Facebook recently. This is why.

If anyone accuses me of anything, it won’t be from Facebook.

 

Where Was I? Oh, Right

Like Muhammad Ali, I too am a fighter.

I fight for my wife and kids by not bringing shame to the family name in 2025.

Writers’ warning for 2026.

I fight for the Oregon Ducks in what might be a football season for the ages.

They got to the last game twice and lost in a mud patch.

This could be the cleanest year.

And by my example, I fight for the art people who never show, never perform, but keep at their craft whether it be ceramics, textile, or playing guitar.

 

 

I cheer for the underdog, the overdog, the Dodgers, and the Cowboys.

I cheer for the North Bend Bulldogs AND Marshfield Pirates. (Ouch)

For my children and their families, my wife and her friends, and especially one particular segment of society:

When you read about someone saying social media has made us all journalists, actors, and performers of all kinds, ignore it.

We are not all journalists, actors, and performers. Check social media if you need proof.

Instead, we are self-serving grandstanders spraying shit-talk at an audience captivated by pigmentation, legend, and disillusionment.

With that said, cheers, my readers. And thank-you for sticking around.

I’m secretly thrilled to pieces that you read boomerpdx, and hope you continue.

But we’ll keep that between us.

 

PS: My brightest days of 2025 came from time spent with the young and the old, from two to eighty-seven, and finding common ground in them all.

 

PSS: Goals for 2026 include productive writing, kettle bell strength, losing weight to an agreed on number; finding more common ground, more ping pong, and fewer bike crashes.

 

A special year end thanks to those caring souls who told me not to include their NIL on boomerpdx, Facebook, or twitter. You’re better than that, I’m better than that, but here we are. LFG.

Cheers