My Yearnotes, 2025
This was not a good year, but there were good things in it.
Work
- A lot of my professional year was focused on repatriation. In January, I flew out to Colorado to return human remains and a cultural object to the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. This flight, and the work to make it happen, were paid for by a federal repatriation grant, which I’m still surprised and happy we got (and didn’t get taken away from us by DOGE). I also did some complicated work with the Mohawk to help find a safe and culturally appropriate resting place for two ancestors in the Museum’s collection. I continued or initiated consultation with multiple other tribes, and tried to work to make the Museum live up to its legal and ethical obligations as best as I could.
- We had lots of great programs in the Museum, of which I’m very proud. In spite of the DEI crackdown at the beginning of the year, we had two wonderful Black History Month events, which we co-hosted with Hartwick’s Belonging Center. We also repeated our work with our friends at Hanford Mills Museum and hosted “World of Water”. We screen a number of movies including “Lake of Betrayal”, “Indian Summer”, and the “Fall of Cannonsville”, with the filmmakers present for discussion. We had our usual array of 4th grade visits, crafternoons and half-day fun, a couple receptions, and as always, the Horror in the Museum. Perhaps our biggest event of the year was our co-sponsored Mohawk Social Dance, held at the Foothills performing arts center. I’m greatful to Kanerahti:io DJ White and his troupe for working with us, and making such an informative, lively event happen.
- It was a busy year for collections. We picked up and re-installed our newly-conserved Previtali, and acquired new works by William Hogarth, Axel Haig, John O’Leary, Phil Young, Lamine Barro, and more. I also returned three large furniture pieces to the Milford Historical Society, which had been stored here for 20 years. Progress!
- We had a robust exhibit schedule, installing the student-curated “Discovering our Place”, “The Study of One Thing”, and “Memorializing the Underground Railroad”, which I designed, and co-curated with Harry Matthews.
- I taught “Exhibit Prep and Design” for the first time as a formal class this year, and the outcome was three new wonderful displays by Hartwick students (with one by me!). I also taught “North American Material Culture to 1600” again, but re-focused around contemporary issues in Native studies. In addition to discussions of the peopling of North America, Cahokia, colonial trade and more, I also had Native guest speakers from the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Taos Pueblo, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, and the St. Regis Mohawk. I wanted students to hear Native voices, not just see and think about Native-made things.
- The other big thing that I worked on was setting up the Phil Young Indigenous Artists Residency. This has been a labor of love from me, both as a way to honor Phil’s long and rich career showcasing Native art at Hartwick, and also to help the Yager Museum become a more vibrant and lively space of contemproary Native art. Phil passed away this Fall, and it will forever sadden me that he didn’t live to see this come to fruition.
Music/listening
- This year I bought or received albums by Pelican, De La Soul, Tomahawk, Open Mike Eagle, Stuffed Spider, Bonnie “Prince” Billy", Yo La Tengo, Hallelujah the Hills, Michael Hurley, the Mekons, Wild Pink, BADBADNOTGOOD, Zeal & Ardor, Camp Cope, The Messthetics, Slum Village, Swans, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, King Crimson, the Temptations, Finest Kind, Geese.
- Wild Pink’s Yolk in the Fur is the kind of album I fall in love with easily; thoughtful, heart-on-sleeve rock with chiming guitars and tuneful hooks. I haven’t stopped listening to one or more songs on it since I bought it.
- Despite their long history and rich discography, I had never really listened to Yo La Tengo, but ICHOHBAO deserves every accolade.
- I mourned the passing of Ozzy Osborne, Tom Lehrer, Brian Wilson, who made some of the first music I ever listened to, John Roberts, who, with Tony Barrand, deepened my appreciation of folk music, and D’Angelo, whose genre-blending (or defying) genius continues to fascinate and delight me, and many others.
- Podcasts that continue their prominent role in my life include Double Threat, Why is this Happening with Chris Hayes, Weird Studies, 5-4, Explorers Wanted, Know Your Enemy, Pseudopod, the Memory Palace, and Unclear and Present Danger. Rest in peace to Our Opinions are Correct and WTF w/ Marc Maron.
Screens
- This year, I watched Normal People, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Sonic 3, Confess Fletch, Severance, Slow Horses, Paddington in Peru, Ted Lasso, Ludwig, Judas and the Black Messiah, Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Northman, Ratatouille, the Ballad of Wallis Island, Sinners, the Changeling, the Heat, Force Majeure, Fleabag, Weekend at Bernie’s, Monolith, Suitable Flesh, Zootopia 2, and the Bletchley Circle.
- Sinners is a unique and brilliant film, with its interweaving of global music, southern gothic vampirism, and black culture to explore the long and sharp fingers of colonialism. I don’t think I saw a better movie this year.
- There’s almost no way that Severance will cash the checks it has written, but I’m loving seeing it try.
Books
I read 42 books this year.
- I didn’t have any books that really wowed me this year, but I read lots of very good ones. Premee Mohamed’s “The Butcher of the Forest” is a short, weird fairy-tale about the reverbertations of conquest and violence. Christian Wiman’s “Joy: 100 Poems” brought me a lot of joy as I was reading it. Nan Shepherd’s “The Living Mountain” was a delightful inquiry into how landscape presses itself upon us, and I lingered over her descriptions of the Cairngorn mountains as we were driving through them. Audra Simpson’s “Mohawk Interruptus” sharpened my thinking about the impacts of colonialism in Eastern North America, and reminded me that there are a lot of ways to be indigenous, not all of them obvious or apparent. Finally, Gene Luen Yang’s “Superman Smashes the Klan” is exactly what it says on the tin, but with an added thoughtfulness about Superman’s history as an immigrant and a refugee.
Self
- I found so much of this year completely exhausting and paralyzingly scary. I could wave my hand at any number of things from the world: the cruel and lawless politics of my country, the growth of rapacious and deluded technological entities, the continuing slow (and sometimes wild) burn of the climate crisis, global nationalist violence both large and small. We tried to help where we could, with resources and with our bodies.
- Personally (maybe selfishly?), I’ve continued to rely on the activities that keep me the most grounded, including going the gym, therapy, and playing music. I’ve felt the keen absence of phone calls and talks with friends, the liveliness of get-togethers, and the sense of interdependence and stability those things bring. One of the things I was not as good at this year was making community, and I want to change that about myself in 2026.
- In an effort to improve my handwriting, I’ve gone back to writing in cursive, and even bought a couple of fountain pens that I’ve grown to Love using.
- I’ve always been a person who reads to try and stave off anxiety (which, in the age of endless information, is basically a recipe for more anxiety). I started logging articles or essays that seemed important or rich to me with the tag “truethings”, so as not to let them pass away like so much flotsam. Some good and useful articles I read this year included:
- Dan Sinker: What Felt Impossible Became Possible
- Janus Rose: The Digital Packrat Manifesto
- Bethany Berger: No, Native American Citizenship Does Not Support Limits on Birthright Citizenship
- Mahmoud Khalil: Letter from a Palestinian Political Prisoner in Louisiana
- The Memory Palace Podcast: A Brief Note Written After Learning the National Parks Service Removed the word Transgender from Stonewall
- Cory Doctorow: Asbestos in the Walls/AI Can’t Do Your Job
- Jonathan Marks: This is What the New York Times Doesn’t Want you to See
- Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor: The Rise of End Times Fascism
- Edna St. Vincent Millay: Conscientious Objector
- John Ganz: Death to America
- Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast: Here Comes the Sun with Bill McKibben
- Jason Colavito: The Super-Weird Origins of the Right’s Hatred of the Smithsonian
- Know Your Enemy Podcast: Death, Power, and the Charlie Kirk Memorial with Pat Blanchfield
Family
- Our big family trip this year took us to Scotland and the North of England. It was a hard and tiring trip, and it was also wonderful and delightful in equal measure. I still feel in awe of the many things we saw and experienced together, and I’m eternally joyful that we could show our kids such wonders.
- We also took our annual Fall trip to coastal New England to see the ocean, eat good food, and recharge our batteries. We stayed in Hampton Beach, which was a strange experience in the off-season. While there, we visited Gloucester, but also trekked up to the Rachel Carson Wildlife Sanctuary, and spent a little time in the cities of Portsmouth, NH, Brattleboro, VT.
- We also made smaller trips to Montreal, and Toronto (and Iowa for Christmas, if all goes well). We saw the legendary Hudson River school paintings of the Albany art institute and the Calvin and Hobbes exhibit at the Fenimore. We watched the youth opera version of the Odyssey at Glimmerglass, and went fishing in Wilber Lake.
- In June, we were paid a most excellent visit by my friend the Minister of Intrigue and his family.
- I’m proud of the new things my kiddos did this year, including rec soccer for Hazel (which I coached!), Middle School soccer for Dominic, and Hazel taking part in the Nutcracker Ballet for the first time (which Alanna and I are both helping out with in ways large and small).
- I’m also proud of my parents for winding down Czech Village antiques, their Cedar Rapids-based business of multiple decades. Here’s to new adventures in the future!
I wish I could say I felt good about this year. I can see, from the above lines, that I did a lot; some things vital or important, some things kind and meaningful, some things for which I’m proud, some things for which I’m not. But the explosive growth of American fascism and authoritarianism hangs like a ghost on my brain and my whole year has been weighed down by this blossoming menace, frightening and bewildering and cruel.
I have to work hard to keep in my head that no political project is ever totalizing or complete, and, as Gandhi said (and humans have known for millenia), Tyrants always fall. And even now there are strong signs of fracture and pushback and refusal and promise, not to mention the fierce and stubborn indeterminacy that makes up all of social life. Things will change in ways we can’t predict or expect.
The best poem I read this year, and returned to, over and over, was the great Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front”. The last line says simply
Practice resurrection
May we all practice resurrection together in this year to come, taking the old, the dangerous, the unstable, the unjust, and grow from it a bountiful and beautiful new world.
