1915 and 2025

I just finished Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening, likely (pretty much certainly) the last book I will finish for 2024. I read her newsletter, Letters from an American, almost every day. She makes sense of everything; or rather, she clarifies everything because so much of what is happening and about to happen makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Democracy Awakening explains what Richardson calls the “liberal consensus,” the social welfare system that pulled us out of the Depression and made America free and prosperous in the post-war years; and then the gradual dismantling of that system beginning with Ronald Reagan and continuing through the first Trump administration. This book was published just a few months ago; so recently, in fact, that Richardson mentions Joe Biden’s decision to step aside and support Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. I don’t think she expected, when she finally published the book, that Trump would be re-elected, but here we are. 

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It’s January 1, 2025. Democracy Awakening was as expected the last book that I finished in 2024, though I did start a new book right after Christmas, which will be my 2024 - 2025 overlap book. The book Martin Gilbert’s The First World War: A Complete History, which is going to take me well into the second week of January, if not the third week. I don’t know enough about WWI, and you can’t know anything about the 20th century and beyond without knowing a good bit about what used to be called the Great War. I’m going all in. I’m going to try to read several books about the first half of the 20th century this year, especially the early decades. 2025 is going to be a long year anyway. 

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My son goes back to school tomorrow and the feeling of cozy holiday contentment will go with him. He’s close by and we’ll all be fine but it’s always so lovely having him home and always so hard to see him go again. But winter swim meets will make up for this. I’m technically off from work tomorrow but I’ll probably do some work after he leaves, just so that I’m not overwhelmed on Friday. We have two more paid holidays this January, one next week (the day of mourning for President Carter) and one on January 20 (which is both MLK Day and inauguration day). 

The holiday week is like a wrinkle in time; a passageway between the old and new years. When I was young, I worked in retail and that week was very busy for me. We worked until 7 or so on Christmas Eve and then we were right back at work at 7 AM on the day after Christmas, and we worked long days every day until New Year’s Day. Luckily for us, Nordstrom closed on New Year’s Day, but not every retail worker had that good fortune - in fact, most of the other stores and restaurants were wide open. Despite the work craziness, though, the week still felt different - holiday-ish and even peaceful amid the chaos. There were other compensations, too. Any holiday party or family get-together that you dreaded could be easily avoided with work as the convenient excuse. And when everyone else was bracing for the post-holiday re-entry to daily life, we were breathing a collective sigh of relief. But I don’t miss working through the holidays, and thanks to my time working in a department store, I never take holidays for granted. 

It’s January 2 now. I was going to just work today but I’m glad I decided to take one more day. I’m lucky I can take one more day. Tomorrow, I’ll be back at work. I don’t mind. I like work, and I like ordinary life. But this was supposed to be about a book, wasn’t it? And it is, kind of, because I’m reading about history, about the extraordinary events that interrupt and alter ordinary life until what was ordinary before becomes a memory. Martin Gilbert takes us through World War I in roughly chronological order, and I’ve made my way through about 20 percent of the book, which lands me in early 1915, a consequential year. 90 years later, we’re probably about to live through another very consequential year. Stay tuned; I’m sure you’ll be reading all about it.