2025 in Helytimes

Posted: December 31, 2025 | Author: helytimes | Filed under: America Since 1945 |Leave a comment

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Some selections from the year:

• Jimmy Carter reconsidered
• Edge case

On the LA fires.

• Did not love this vibe
• Stuart Spencer (1927-2025)

An important Reagan advisor and California political figure.

• Living Room on the tracks
• Lincoln in New Orleans (featuring final answer on was Abraham Lincoln gay?)
• Texas Wines
• Gizmodo interview
• Carter’s, congealed electricity, AI and Needham

On Carter’s, the kids clothing brand, their history as a window into economic history.

• reviewing some news in The Wall Street Journal
• Spoonful

a catchy song.

• Finding water on the plains

some amazing lore from Charles Goodnight.

• Mystery of the 27,574 muskets collected at Gettysburg

A deep dive on a Civil War mystery

• Restaurants and Railroads: Chili’s Triple Dip Boom

why was Chili’s crushing it?

• Power by Jeffrey Pfeffer (2010)

the secret of power

• Juicy headline
• Snappy lines from Uncle Warren

If my goal were to generate the most views, I’d split this site into two: one would be advice adjacent stuff about writing, and writer lore, the other would be Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger content. That’s what gets eyeballs.

• The Fate of John Sedgwick

sad death of a beloved general. The Civil War was on my mind.

• Professor Longhair
• More Conversations with Walker Percy
• good Tom Wolfe quote
• Movie idea
• Good press

gratifying reception to Common Side Effects

• Turned Inside Out: Recollections of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac by Frank Wilkeson

The most vivid book I can remember reading

• “Buy when there’s blood in the streets”

looking into the origin of a phrase

• The House of Savoy

Savoy in history and myth was a theme this year

• Cape Grim Air Archive
• Across The River and Into The Trees, Ernest Hemingway (1950)

Did some deep cut Hemingway reading this year

• 25.5 Hours (and three hundred years) in Santa Barbara (and Santa Barbara County)

This piece probably took me the longest, but seemed to generate zero interest

• Savoy Special (and knowing and not in the age of AI)
• Jedediah Smith Lunch
• Lac d’Annecy by Paul Cezanne

investigation into a painting

• David Souter

Homage to a Yankee

• Islands In The Stream, (Hemingway, 1970) x Islands In The Stream (B. Gibb, M. Gibb, R. Gibb, 1983)

• Hang Yourself Brave Crillon
• 20th Century Man

Review of some biographies of Ernest Hemingway

• Granger seen anew

some Juneetenth trivia

• not for all the cars in China
• Lays
• Transmitter

dispatch from Greenpoint

• Tender memories of Mom
• Macadamia, macadam, tarmac, MacAdam, and McAdam

a journey in etymology

• Redondo Beach Submarine Canyon
• More McConaughey: Want to Be Here

advice from the movie star-philosopher

• Columbus Day

what was Columbus’s goal, really?

• Movieland by Jerome Charyn
• The Hunter Gracchus by Guy Davenport
• Henry Adams on Harvard in 1800
• Finish drafts

origin of Woody Allen’s famous 80% of life is showing up quote

• Hoedown

a musical transmission through time

• Nebraska: Springsteen and Starkweather
• Glimpses of Abraham Lincoln: awaiting election results with Charles Dana
• The Notebooks of F. Scott Fitzgerald
• An Alphabetical Index to Helytimes
• Five o’clock somewhere, Truman era edition
• Early California Reconsidered by Sandos and Sandos

on the invasive cow of early California

• Mary’s Rest, and the first known Indian immigrant in Ireland (?)

one investigation leads to another

• KC Masterpiece

Kansas City in story, song, and reality

• Todd Graves / Raising Cane’s, and staying craveable

dive into a rising fast food chain

• The Hely-Hutchinsons​
• NFL

football: why is it so great? This one generated a lot of positive feedback

• Correction​
• Coventry Carol​
• Garry Wills on Henry Adams​
• Steinbeck on the two Christmases​
• Do You Hear What I Hear​
• Paul Revere, Silversmith

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