The 2025 Rear View Review
The following 2025 review was done by excerpting the first few lines or paragraph in one post from each month last year. You can click on the name of the month for a full accounting.
January – The “Nest of Singing Birds” ballad singers lost their town and their monthly Appalachian Ballad Swap venue when the historic town of Marshall in Madison County, NC, floated away with the flood of Hurricane Helene, and the Old Marshall Jail Hotel & Restaurant filled with 10 ½ feet of muddy water. So, they took their show on the road.
February – “These are strange days,” I said to my son Josh. He answered, “Most peculiar, Mama. Now “Most peculiar, Mama” is my new answer for most everything.
March – I’m fascinated with finches, especially when they’re red. The forsythia cast their buttercup glow when their 100-watt sun-loving gold light is turned on.
April – Poetry in my seventh decade: It all started with the idea of writing my memoir, leaving behind my story in verse. Over time, it developed as a healing art for soul work. I wrote as if digging for a natural resource. I wrote until I hit a nerve, a vein of emotion that showed me I was about to mine a truth. The process brought me to the depths of my psyche and the heights of the stars and quantum physics theories.
May – I don’t talk about my age. But the birthday celebrations were epic this year. They involved so many of my favorite things like dancing to Dead tunes with Dead Reckoning and The Band’s Last Waltz with Josh Daniels at the yearly Camp Reckoning Music Fest and strawberry shortcake made by my friend and Outer Space owner, Barb Gillespie
June – It’s good to see yourself represented in a story. I felt represented when I first read the children’s book Fredrick by Leo Lionni to a group of preschoolers many years ago. Fredrick is a laid-back field mouse who seems to get out of his duties of preparing food for winter. While the others work, Frederick stares out at the meadow feeling the sunlight, taking in the colors, and when the food runs out Fredrick shares his talent: poetry. His words feed his fellow mice in a different way and helps them survive.
July – Of course, there was blueberry pie, Josh’s favorite birthday desert, and another pie baked from an old time recipe by Josh’s 5th grade teacher that I won as a runner-up at an Old Church Gallery Musical Chairs contest.
August – If you really knew me, you’d know that I’d never have a red car. And that I only have a land line so I can call my cell phone when I can’t find it.
September – We spent 2 ½ days driving and 2 days in Massachusetts for my brother John’s life celebration. I knew we were getting close when I saw a big Red Sox sign .The ride home from Massachusetts: Mark Knopfler, crossword puzzles, podcasts, Starbucks stops and an opium den of clouds floating weightless like white whales.
October – My Husband is a Handsome Devil That was the name of my “Halloween Party at the historic Epperly Mill” Facebook album. We looked oddly coordinated. He as a devil and me as Minnie Mouse but both in red and black.
November – The latest Building Community Brick Project at my son Josh Copus’s Old Marshall Jail Hotel began in late September and ran until Saturday of this weekend when the project’s 4,000 goal was met. For this latest project, a public folk art monument will be created next spring using the stamped bricks to build a place to sit for contemplation on the OMJ patio. It will be something between a ruin and cathedral, and in my mind a representation of resiliency and resurgence shaped by time and trials, such as the Helene flood that decimated the town last year and ultimately brought the community together to rebuild.
December – “I got a new nephew for Christmas. I got a new niece too!,” I heard my son Josh say to someone on the phone driving home from The Hotel Roanoke where we just had an epic lunch and a heart-filled family reunion. Seeing a blockbuster movie at Christmastime is a tradition started by Josh, Star Wars, Avatar etc. This year’s blockbuster was a meet-up with Josh and Dylan’s brother Skye (who most of us hadn’t seen in more than 5 years) and his family, which included his wife Jessica (who we hadn’t met yet), her sweet daughter and their new baby! Colleen Redman