I am wishing nothing but the best for you. I am sipping a cozy Manhattan on New Year’s evening. Actually, it’s an “It May Choke Artie”, a concoction of my own made of rye, Cynar, Dolin Rouge, and walnut bitters. I have one dog under my legs and another on the floor. We have a goat in the kitchen who had a stroke of sorts and she’s recuperating. The 2 cats are around here somewhere. And my wife has her feet on my lap.

2025 presented a whole new set of problems.

I retired in February 2025. That took me a little getting used to. I wasn’t used to having all of this time to myself. I read a lot newspaper, periodical articles, mostly political and sociological stuff. Very interesting. Relatively useless.

On March 6, I was driving to Hudson. I was on route 82 (or 9H as it may have been there) and I was drinking coffee and it went down the wrong way and I started coughing. I was coughing hard and I wanted to pull over but before I could pull over, I found myself coming to in the bushes. I had driven the element off the road and wrecked the front end. A car right behind me saw the whole thing and pulled over. She was an off duty cop. She called emergency services and let me sit in her car until they came.

The ambulance took me to Columbia Memorial Hospital and I stayed there for a few hours in the emergency room while they ran a battery of tests. I called Neil after a few hours for him to give me a ride home and we got the car towed to a yard and dealt with the insurance and it was pretty much totaled so that was that.

About a week later Tami’s Mini also died, having clutch problems and that was gonna cost like $5000 to fix and we thought that was just too much so we set off on finding new cars.

I was determined to get an Element  which they haven’t made since 2011 but they are out there. I wound up with a 2007 Element which is two years newer than the one we had so hey,bonus!  Tami wanted an electric car and she found a 2021 Mustang Mach E for around 20,000 bucks.  It’s a good car and it’s all electric which presents its problems but we at least get to feel good about ourselves. It’s a really slick car so that’s cool.

Our new 2021 Mustang Mach E
Our new 2007 Honda Element

I also started playing seriously with Carolynn Murphy and we have started a band called Mursey. We have done a few gigs and have about 25 songs we are ready to play out. Carolynn and I sing well together and jam well. We are able to work up a frenzy during my leads. I get a lot of space to explore improvisation and we both have a ton of influences bringing their powers to bear. I look forward to developing this band. It’s the first time in years that I have felt fully challenged by another musician. And, she tap dances. So that’s something to look forward to.

As we step into 2026, I am dealing with a lot of COPD and a fair amount of dizziness. All my peers are experiencing old age sickness. I am hoping it blows over….