Time present and time past: 2025 edition

 

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.”  — TS Eliot, Burnt Norton

The winds are howling outside, gusting to 40 mph and more. Stripping off the few leaves still clinging to the pin oak and sending the last bits of 2025 tumbling down the block. Time past tangles with time future at this, the inflection point between years.

Time past? Steeped came out in paperback. I am in my last year teaching, retiring from Bryn Mawr at the end of the spring semester. (Forty years has gone very fast.) Math Guy and his beloved got married in a warm and sun-kissed garden in Philadelphia. Math Man won a golf tournament in Scotland. The apples did not fall far from the tree. Crash has a book out, which he co-edited.  Math Guy has a couple of papers out this year, including one in the Mathematical Monthly, a plum spot to publish I am given to understand.

I wrote:

• 60 blog posts (not including this one, and the most I have written for the blog since 2018
• 4 essays for Nature Chemistry (on acknowledgements, aliens (!), virtuous chemists, and being opinionated)
• 3 reflections in Give Us This Day (Holy Thursday, feasts of St. Thomas and St. Cecilia)
• 3 op-eds in the Philadelphia Inquirer (decrying the NIH cuts, on the loss of Pope Francis, on the president’s quasi-endorsement of health scams)

…and a book of Lenten reflections, coming out from Liturgical Press next fall.

I live blogged the papal conclave for the Inquirer, watching the Holy See gulls on the roof for hours on end and delighted to see an Augustinian from Chicago succeed Pope Francis.

I talked tea up and down the East Coast, and on radio programs in both hemispheres. I gave a half dozen retreats. I gave one last research talk. I gave the charge to the senior class at Convocation in September, the class that I will walk out of Bryn Mawr with. 

I solved the Wordle 500 days in a row and Math Guy and I have jointly solved the NYTimes crossword 1500 days running. I became a gym rat, clocking hours every week on the rowing machine and learning to bench press. Both serious cardio and weight lifting have been shown to slow the progression of Parkinson's, the former is in Phase III trials at the moment. 

Time future? I am working on a new book (women in chemistry). Sketching out a book proposal, or perhaps two. There are two more reflections queued up for Give Us This Day. Parkinson’s continues to be part of my daily reality. I am beyond grateful for the pair of molecules that have given me back so much of what I had lost, and for the care team (and the prayers) that help me make the most of what I have. 

Time present? My desk, I would like to see the surface of the second desk in my home office. A draft for a parish mission coming up in about a month. The laundry, which is certainly contained in time past and time future both.  And regardless, it will be 2026.

Happy New Year!