Friday Flames: Balance your ledger

We already know 2025 will be a lot. And the only thing we can control is how we respond to it—with local action, Group Hugs, and the defiant pursuit of happiness.

There’s something vaguely menacing about The Year 2025, and not just because of the Project we’ve seen so much about. It feels like a milestone, the quarter-point of this dystopian 21st century, when we’re being terrorized by radioactive monsters (fictionally!) and grifting oligarchs (less so!).

Keeping our balance while we process what’s coming will be one of this year’s paramount challenges. How do you keep current with the news you should know about while fighting the urge to tune it all out and watch your The Princess Bride DVD on a loop?

Magda was thinking about that when she started the Group Hugs group, where people have been talking about whatever is making them miserable. Weirdly, though, those same people have started sharing their positive news as well, allowing the vibe to reach an emotional balance rather than sink into a doom-scrolling morass. It turns out, having a place to put your fears lets you be softer and more open to joy, and you can talk about your good stuff without feeling like you’re bragging. It's kind of magical.

That’s the same idea behind “Embers in the News” (see below), where Doug tries to find interesting and mood-enhancing stories that most of us are likely to miss. Like this motherlode of goodwill, which lists “100 heartwarming stories of 2024.” Accounts like these aren’t meant to encourage Polyannaism, but they can help us overcome our innate negativity bias and move our resting emotional state to the center, where it belongs.

So, the next time we read about some shocking affront for which this new administration will never be held accountable, we’ll balance it out with a story like this one about an Iranian refugee, an electrical engineer who volunteers at senior centers to help elderly people understand modern technology.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling good, which often results from feeling connected to a larger world full of good people. It might take a bit more work to get there, but your joy and connection puts you in a much better place and helps you support anyone who's struggling.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle:

• She was home for Christmas After she’d been missing for nine days, a four-year-old German shepherd rang her family’s doorbell on Christmas Eve.

• “With slight overtones of cherry” There are 15 trademarked smells in America, including the “sweet, slightly musky, vanilla fragrance” of Play-Doh.

• Science is so hot right now On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe flew within 3.8 million miles of the Sun (one-seventh as close as the previous record).

• Why your family drives you nuts Attachment theory offers scientific, psychological reasons why we revert to our childhood selves when we visit family.

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Recently on the podcast

On this very special Christmukkah episode, our son Robert explains why hitting a patch of black ice and rolling your pickup off of I-90 is "very double-plus ungood."

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Currently reading

Magda finished the delightful Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes by Henry Van Dyke. Published in 1965, the book is narrated by Oliver, who has no specific problems related to being a gay, Black teenager in the 1960s. That absence of environmental malice makes the whole story loopy and weird, overwrought and farcical, sunny but so full of shade. Magda is looking for a copy of its sequel, Blood of Strawberries.

Inspired by Episode 64’s chat with

Bryan McGrath

, Doug is re-reading E.B. White’s The Second Tree from the Corner and focusing as much on the oddball stories as on the brilliantly sparse way that he tells them. This edition also begins with an intro he wrote at 84, updating the intro he wrote at 54 when (he thought) he was retiring.

Currently watching

Now that the Peabody-winning HBO series Somebody Somewhere has finished its three-season run, Doug has begun bingeing it with delight. It’s about family and friction and how the most unpredictable friendships can grow from shared, fringe-y spaces of grief and vulnerability. It’s the best show not enough people are watching.

A major announcement! Magda and Mike finished all 20 seasons of Project Runway and have moved on to Top Chef. They’re still learning the rules of the show and adapting to Padma Lakshmi's … unique vocal patterns.

Currently cooking

Magda made a few recipes that didn't turn out to her liking over the Christmas break, but all the cookies she made were delightful. The hands-down winner of the season was this old faithful recipe for Swedish pepparkakor.

The world should take notice that Doug now possesses a mandoline and is not afraid to use it. On their first night home after the truck crash, Doug served a meal of Potatoes Dauphinoise with spinach/shallots vinaigrette and a crisp sauvignon blanc to Robert, who appreciated the upgrade from his normal diet of MREs.

Thanks for reading, and so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby.

Magda and Doug