The year is ending and to most people’s manner of thinking, so is the decade. (Yes, I know that the third decade of this century begins in 2021, but all logic aside, that is not how most human beings view the calendar, and the calendar is a human construct after all, so there we are.)

We walked for nearly three hours the other day, gathering a great many tiny pieces of plastic, mostly foam this week. It takes a lot of crushed bits of plastic the size of my thumbnail to add up to twenty pounds in a month. Collecting trash is an ongoing goal. More happened and will happen in the coming year. 

Can we say anything good about 2019? Was there any positive news, a silver lining, a reason to feel hopeful about the future — to believe that we, as Americans, can recognize our common interests, overcome our differences and work together to build a better tomorrow, for ourselves, for our children and for the world?

Nah.

I could not get past January in Dave Barry’s review of 2019, but maybe you will. It is funny, but then again, not so much.

Our year?

I will not go month by month, but here are my highlights of 2019.

• For the first time in my life, the hangers in my closet are spaced neatly at least an inch or more apart. That is to say, I gave away a great deal of clothing and folded up and put away, sold back, and gifted even more.
• I completed three large batik quilts, almost entirely out of my stash (I bought backing for just one and pieced the other two). Two quilts are blue and yellow. The other is purple, orange, and green.
• I knit two children’s cardigan sweaters from my own pattern, two pairs of men’s socks (turned heels and on size #1 needles!), at least four hats, and six scarves.
• My husband and I spent five nights away from home. That’s a a record for us in the space of a year.
• We attended a 90th birthday party in Washington and I threw a 70th birthday party for Gary that he insists was his best present ever.
• “Way more than seventeen” boxes of books left the house this year. Donated, sold, some waiting in the garage. Three of the books were Gary’s. My personal answer to Can you have too many books? Yes. There are still five book stacks on the floor.
• We walked the beach on 354 days (sometimes twice) and gathered a few hundred pounds of trash from the shore, mostly plastic foam, rope, and broken containers. We also found sea glass, fifteen sixteen Bic lighters, and too many dead birds.
• We put a fresh coat of varnish on the living, dining, and kitchen floors. I used a commercial face mask to do it, and I hope that is the last time I will have to refinish the floors. Ever.
• We moved and removed a great deal of furniture from our house. Especially chairs.
• Our contractor managed to get a lot of construction chores completed for us: new roof on our little rental, new door, finally (FINALLY!) completed the baseboard in our house (which has needed doing since 1984), removed the deck, and reshingled the west side of the house that had been sand-blasted down to tar paper. Thank you, Jeremy.
• I painted the new exterior door on our rental, finished the baseboard in the house, painted walls, and painted floors that were not thriving under their previous finish of weak water base clear finish.
• I made several batches of jam from organic peppers (mild to hot), berries, apricots, and lemons.
• I read 64 books. Among the work I most loved: Sarah Knott’s Mother Is a Verb, Dreyer’s English (I thought there was no room for another grammarian, but I was wrong), Andrea Barrett’s Archangel and Servants of the Map (deeply moving historical fiction), Philip’s Impossible Owls (personal essays), Strout’s Olive, Again (perhaps even better than the first!), Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me (and her editorial selections for 2019 Best American Essays—so very timely and smart), and Molly Gloss’s long-awaited story collection Unforeseen. Also, I finally discovered Ada Limon and loved “The Carrying ” Shaun Tan’s The Bird King revealed the astounding range of the author of Arrival, an all-time favorite. And finally, we have begun book 17, The Commodore, from the Patrick O’Brian series. My third time through the series as I read it aloud to Gary. (Gary completed Don Quixote.)
• After many attempts, I got the recipe down and successfully recreated the Pearl Bakery’s gibassier, a gastronomic coup.
• Yesterday I spent almost our monthly food budget in preparation for a family visit this weekend. (And Gary insisted I buy a new packet of cotton underwear at Costco so my vow to purchase only 8 items of clothing in 2020 might be safe.)

Oh, yeah, and I fully retired and we celebrated 40 years in Arch Cape, 45 years of marriage, 50 years as a couple.

There is more to do in 2020. At the last minute I numbered this list. Fifteen goals is probably too many, but there is nothing I would shave from the list. (Looking back at my “highlights,” I counted fifteen there too!)

1. Purchase no more than eight items of clothing for myself during the year.
2. Restring my ivory necklace. (Yes, elephant ivory, from an elephant who died nearly 200 years ago, before 1830. I have to remind myself of the age of my beads, and they make me sad when I think of the elephants, but they come from before so-called “elephant guns” were in use. Maybe my ivory came from elephants who died of natural cause or were killed for food. Maybe I should stop thinking about it. Gary gave them to me and I restrung them more than forty years ago and wore them whenever I flew. They need restringing again, but I won’t be flying anywhere.)
3. Maybe take a train someplace. I admire bicyclists who see the world more slowly than automobile travel, but the train offers another sort of view. It is a meditative method of travel, less polluting by far than planes, and it offers opportunities for seeing the landscape eye-to-eye. I have not been on a train since I was a teenager, but that experience was deeply moving, as flying over Ohio and the Grand Canyon would be later. I do not need to fly again. What time I have I intend to use conscientiously.
4. Make plain strawberry and raspberry jams, raspberry-cranberry jam, apricot-lemon, hot pepper, and marmalade. I generally give most of this away. I will do that again, but this next year I will remember to label the jars. (Yeah, I know.)
5. Teach a writing class for Willamette Writers in April (so thrilled to be invited).
6. Prepare sixteen items for sale at the Hoffman Gallery show in December. (Four quilts, four pieced and quilted cushion covers, four shawls, and four pieced Christmas stockings.)
7. Piece a quilt entirely of silk. (I have been gathering the fabrics for decades and I have a silk batt too. It is a stash project.)
8. Eat within a ten-hour window and always in the dining room. (Okay, this is one of those “lose-weight”-type of resolutions, but it’s going here anyway.)
9. Knit at least two pairs of socks and three sweaters for family members. (An ambitious goal, and mostly from my stash. One sock is half-done.)
10. Weave four wool warps. (Stash but also from a one-of-a-kind skein I just ordered from Koigu. One warp is already on the loom. I will let you know once I remove this warp that has occupied my loom for over a year.)
11. Continue divesting and orgainizing possessions in the spirit of Döstädning.
12. Post here at least twice a week. (Though I think about Butterfly Fontanelle nearly daily, there is no writing goal beyond this blog. Maybe that will come later.)
13. Read at least 60 books.
14. Stay informed.
15. Vote.

In conversation with a friend the other day, Gary mentioned Greta Thonberg and the friend responded  “Greta Who?” Our shock led to several conversations about what we assume others will know and do. We believe staying informed is among our most critical obligations. I say “our” and I mean Gary’s and mine, but we also believe it is a necessary aspect of citizenship and ordinary humanity. We both read widely, avoid social media but not media entirely. The world needs us to engage. We are citizens of this planet, the only home we have. 

Pay attention. Stay alive.