2026 Arrives, Bringing an End to Stranger Things

Well, that's a wrap. 

The wild and weird year of 2025 exited last night, and with came an apropos ending to a strange stretch -- the series finale and end to Netflix's Stranger Things.  Millions of people tuned in on New Year's Eve to watch the final two-hour movie-length episode of a surprisingly popular sci-fi thriller that snuck onto the streaming television scene and into a nation's consciousness almost ten years ago. It's actually hard to believe that show arrived a decade ago, though the summer of 2016 could certainly be considered the beginning of "stranger things."

To watch the final episode with flashbacks to the young actors -- some of whom were barely out of elementary school when it started -- was kind of wild. And it was actually a bit of a head scratcher that Netflix managed to draw five seasons of a limited series over ten years. That said, it "strangely" made sense to see the characters age through high school and beyond as they battled to save themselves and the world from the Upside Down. 

If you're looking for a quick summation of everything you saw -- or maybe missed -- during the show's abnormally long run, NY Times writer Noel Murray has a piece explaining "What Happened in the Series Finale?" 

Worlds collide. Heroes die. The day is saved … but not without a little heartbreak. So ends “Stranger Things.”

After five seasons — spread across nearly 10 years — the “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer concluded their enormously popular Netflix show on Wednesday much the way they began it. Although the brothers’ budgets have gotten bigger, their aims have remained mostly the same: to tap into their core influences (Stephen King, Steven Spielberg, teen comedies and “Dungeons & Dragons”) and tell the story of a handful of brave young people in the 1980s, protecting their small town of Hawkins, Ind., from monsters.

In the two-hour series finale, titled “The Rightside Up,” the heroes are helped as always by their secret weapon: Jane (Millie Bobby Brown), a.k.a. Eleven, a teenager whose innate psychic abilities became supercharged when she was imprisoned in a secret government lab as a child. Thanks to Eleven, a group of Hawkins middle schoolers and high schoolers discovered the Upside Down, a shadow version of their town in another dimension, populated by dangerous beasts. 

As a fifty-something Gen Xer -- roughly the same as age as Stranger Things mom Winona Ryder -- I was drawn into the first season with its references to a 70s childhood era hooks like Dungeons & Dragons, and I enjoyed that first season. The interesting thing to me was how much the story reflected themes and structures of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And if you want to dive into critical analysis, you can certainly start connecting the story arcs to other archetypal stories -- Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter -- all rooted in Campbell's monomyth.  

While I did not tune in committedly for the entire run of the show, I did enjoy the wrap up last night, and hanging with my wife and two twenty-something kids, it was a rather low-key and satisfying way to ring out a strange year -- and strange ten years or so -- before we switched over to playing games, eating tiramisu, and enjoying some much-deserved and appreciated family time. 

So, here's to 2026, a fresh start and perhaps fewer strange things.

My FoCo Fellowship

Roughly a year and a half ago, I moved to Fort Collins, Colorado, to write.

It was a circuitous route to that moment in a rather topsy-turvy couple of years. In the summer of 2022 I went to Santa Fe for a week to do a weeklong conference at St. John's College (the Summer Classics program -- highly recommended, by the way.), and I hoped to begin working on a book idea I had, The Punk on Walden Pond, that I've been mentioning over the past year. It started with a short magazine piece for PopMatters and then became a conference paper delivered at the MPCA conference. Well, I did a fair bit of writing, but also just soaked up the arts scene in Santa Fe, ... and at the end of the summer I began looking for another writing opportunity, specifically a fellowship year.

So, the year of 2022-23 became kind of interesting when I discovered a couple fellowships and actually made it rather far in the process. Ultimately, while on Spring Break in Boston in March of '23, I learned the fellowship wasn't going to happen -- an opportunity that would have required an "early-ish" retirement from teaching. So, I rescinded my retirement plans, but the bug of an idea had been planted. And, then, on a little beach on the southern tip of Paros in the Mediterranean at a small cafe watching the sunset and sipping a fair amount of wine, I told my wife I wanted to wrap up my teaching career and pursue my book idea at an MFA program in Creative Writing. 

Needless to say, the 2023-24 school year was an interesting one that ultimately did not end with my admission to an MFA program, but did conclude with my retirement from teaching after thirty-two years in the classroom and school administration. Interestingly, about that time, I had begun a rather unexpected but engaging freelance music writing gig for Westword Magazine, Denver's alt-weekly. With no firm plans for our next step, my wife and I made a fortuitous trip to Fort Collins, CO, for FoCoMX, the "biggest little music festival in America," and that pretty much set our course. 

In FoCo, home to a thriving music scene and also the location of Colorado State University, I embarked on what I've been calling "my FoCo Fellowship," a year or so to immerse myself in my writing and my art and hopefully produce something worthwhile as part of what I deemed "The Walden Punk Project." The fall of '24 was actually a bit precarious and discombobulated for a variety of reasons, and I didn't really get a handle on what I was doing here. But after a warm and rejuvenating winter break with my family, I returned to CSU's Morgan library in early January (January 6 to be exact), and I pursued my writing and art project in earnest. 

Now, I am happy to announce that I have produced a decent first draft of a book about Henry Thoreau and the punk rock ethos, "viewing Thoreau through a punk lens while exploring punk's Thoreauvian roots." I am hoping to spend the spring putting a few chapters out there as journal or magazine articles and then begin pitching publishers on a book proposal. And, I will begin looking for my next gig on the East Coast where my wife and I will be moving in the summer of 2026. 

It's been a kind of wild and ultimately wonderful year during my "fellowship" in the cool, quirky, and quaint town of Fort Collins, and I'll be looking forward to whatever comes next.

Happy New Year. 

Todd Siler -- a Polymath Artist's new Denver Exhibit

Art knows no bounds, the saying goes. And apparently neither does an American multimedia artist, author, educator, and inventor Todd Siler. The artist and creative mind extraordinaire who was the first person to ever earn a PhD in visual arts from MIT had not been on my radar until recently when Denver freelance arts writer Ray Rinaldi profiled his new exhibit at southeast Denver's Museum of the Outdoor Arts:

On a purely visual level — looking at color, form, texture, materials — Todd Siler’s paintings, currently on display at the Museum of Outdoor Arts, are an astonishing array of eye-pleasing artworks. That is a good way to start talking about them — before you begin thinking more deeply about what they mean.

They are hyper-colorful, rendered in expressive reds, golds, greens and pinks. Siler lets these exaggerated hues crash into, over and around each other. Sometimes they appear like murky clouds caught in a brilliant sunset. At other times, they look like fire that has been captured mid-flame.

At their boldest, they take on an explosive aura, as if they are documenting the scene of two planets colliding in some mythical stratosphere and releasing all of the light and force that come with major celestial events. Yes, they have that much energy.

Siler's creativity and contributions to the arts, sciences, and of course, education truly know no bounds, and we are all the better for it.

Pop-Punk is not Dead -- Long Live Pop-Punk

So, Green Day is obviously punk. But what about Blink-182?

The issue and the discussion about punk vs pop-punk often has to do with the sound, the commercial accessibility, and the overall ethos of the musicians and scene in which the band operates. It all gets a bit pissy at times. I love the punk music and punk ethos of Husker Du and Bad Religion, and I have also always been a big fan of Blink-182. So, I really enjoyed a piece I read the other day from an excellent Substack newsletter Punk N' Coffee:

"Pop Punk Not Dead: the problem of fitting into the history of punk rock" 

Pop punk always seemed to enter the history of punk through a side door, when the discussion was already underway and someone had set the rules of the debate. It was never a genre that arrived with a solemn proclamation or an aesthetic designed to command respect. For years it was read as a lesser version, a commercial shortcut, an unnecessary deviation, as if accessibility were incompatible with any form of depth. That reading, however, says less about pop punk than about punk’s recurring need to define itself through opposition. Because if this subgenre made anything clear, it was that the youthful experience is not always expressed as organized confrontation or frontal collision. Sometimes it manifests as persistent confusion, as poorly articulated frustration, as the feeling of failing at something that isn’t even fully understood. 

Pop Culture is Culture, ... Isn't It?

Have we reached peak culture? Or did that ship sail long ago?

I've always been a pop culture hound, from consuming 1970s cartoons and sitcoms, amidst the rise of the blockbuster film, ie. Star Wars, to my career as an English teacher where I taught Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice as the original rom-com and introduced Henry Thoreau through the music and ethos of punk rock. So, to be alive in 2025, you might think I'd be as happy as a pig in slop amidst the constant saturation of popular culture. But I do wonder whether it's all just too much these days.

What is popular? And what is culture? And what is pop culture in a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century?

Jocelyn Novek, writing for the Associate Press takes a look back at the year 2025 and ponders "a ring for Taylor, an ill-timed kiss-cam, and something called 6-7":

Dictionaries define things. It’s their job. So when dictionary.com pronounced “6-7” as their 2025 word of the year, you’d think they would have, well, defined it. But no. “We’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means,” they told us of this year’s “linguistic time capsule.”

But that’s just how pop culture works, isn’t it? Who’s to explain why parents alone in their cars were suddenly singing “up up up” from that “KPop Demon Hunters?” song? Or why, in the Venn diagram of pop culture and zoology, it was the capybara that emerged victorious and beloved? Goodbye, Moo Deng. You’re adorable, but so 2024.

Despite our new obsessions, though, some things remained constant — by which we mean Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, of course. It seems like every year gets bigger for Swift. But in 2025, she put a bow — or ring — on it with Travis Kelce, announcing “your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” As for Beyoncé, the musical goddess finally won that best album Grammy she long deserved — and, on tour, introduced a new force: her daughter, Blue Ivy.

So from the inexplicable to the familiar, here’s our annual, highly selective journey down pop culture memory lane:

Dave Berry & "The Year in Review"

Ah, yes ... the post holiday lull of late December. 

The days between Christmas Eve and New Years Day occupy a strange landscape of time in the middle of nowhere. And, it's these times that bring about reflection and contemplation. How are things? How've we been? Where are we going? I was struck by the blunt honesty of Nicholas Kristoff's annual "Best Year Yet Column," which he puts on hold for a year while he writes a column "In Which I Try to Cheer You Up." 

And he doesn't do a great job, ... which is sort of his point.

Which brings us to Dave Berry. Sometimes to the best thing to do is simply shake our heads and chuckle at the absurdity of it all. Berry, the humorist and whimsical social critic, has been rolling out his "Year in Review" for as long as I can recall reading the paper, and it is one of the most satisfying of traditions. Long writing for the Miami Herald and syndicated in the Washington Post, Berry's work was occasionally challenging to track down. At one time, his column appeared in most papers I read from the St. Louis Post Dispatch to the Chicago Tribune to the Denver Post. 

Now, in another sign of the times that I've written about before, he is making the column available on his Substack Newsletter. And it appears it's available for all readers, not just subscribers. So, if you're sitting around the living room with a cinnamon roll and a hot cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy:

Dave Barry's Year in Review 2025. 

The biggest story of 2025, to judge from the number of people who sent it to me, was this raccoon:

In case you somehow missed this story: In late November, this raccoon got into a state liquor store in Ashland, Va., by falling though the ceiling. Once inside, the raccoon ransacked the store, leaving a trail of broken bottles...

...and apparently consuming a large quantity of booze before passing out in the bathroom next to the toilet. That’s where the raccoon was found by a store employee, who called an animal-control officer, who took it to an animal shelter. When the raccoon finally sobered up, it was hired as director of security by the Louvre Museum.

No, seriously, it was released into the wild. But the photo went majorly viral, and the raccoon became a huge celebrity. We, the American people, LOVE this raccoon. And I think I know why: After the year we’ve been through, we can relate to it. We have had way too much of 2025; it has left us, as a nation, lying face-down on the floor of despair, between the wastebasket of stupidity and the commode of broken dreams.

How did we get here? Perhaps it will help (although I doubt it) if we look back on the events of this insane year, starting with...

JANUARY:

Sidney Awards -- Reading the world in Long Form Magazine Writing

I have always been a sucker for a good magazine piece, and I still can't get on a plane without a physical copy of a magazine. My traditional choices include Vanity Fair, GQ, Esquire, and other culture and lifestyle publications. However, I also appreciate the true long form ideas pieces in online magazines that have managed to survive the retraction of the industry. This morning's annual New York Times column from David Brooks that he titles "The Sidney Awards" got me thinking and tracking down some of these articles. Brooks invented the award to honor long form magazine writing:

Every year, I give out extremely nonlucrative prizes, in honor of the philosopher Sidney Hook, celebrating some of the best nonfiction essays of the year, especially the ones published in medium-size and small magazines. I figure this is a good time to take a step back from the Trump circus and read some broader reflections on life. The Sidneys are here to help.

Brooks is a humanities geek and classical liberal who voraciously consumes ideas-based writing and cultural journalism. Thus he regularly checks in with all sorts of journals and news magazines -- everything from Texas Monthly to Aeon Magazine. And that got me thinking about the more esoteric and less mainstream commercial magazine sites I check in with occasionally. Sites like Quillette which fashions itself as the place where "Free Thought Lives." 

Thinking about long form magazine writing reminded me of a quote from Generation X writer Douglas Coupland who started his writing career doing pieces for magazines like Wired. Coupland is an artist fascinated with contemporary pop culture, and he once reflected that he secretly wished to fall into a coma for a year, so that when he woke up, he would have a year's worth of pop culture writing to immerse himself in. It was such a quirky view, but honestly it was one I could relate to in some ways. 

However, Coupland realized in the mid-90s that his wish had actually come to fruition, as there was an almost daily deluge of new writing, more than anyone could read in a lifetime. These days, as I've noted in a couple other posts, the world of long form writing is more accessible than ever with the advent of Substack newsletters. And there are numerous online magazines that are finding ways to survive and even thrive in the saturated world of media. 

I enjoy checking in with sites such as:

The Drift: a Magazine of Culture, Politics, & Literature.

A Quiet Christmas Morning ...

"The closest thing to Heaven on this planet anywhere is a quiet Christmas morning in the Colorado snow."

No compelling links or intriguing stories or big thoughts or deep opinions on societal issues this morning. Just a quiet Christmas morning, our last in Colorado after twenty-three years. The kids aren't home this year for Christmas morning, though our daughter flies in tomorrow, and our son will be here next week for several days together over New Year's and the end of 2025.

Last night, we spent a warm, wonderful Christmas Eve out, enjoying the vibrant scene of Old Town in Fort Collins. A stroll around the shops open for some last minute shopping, a cozy visit to the local speakeasy -- Social -- with exquisite cocktails, fun banter about bourbon, and a simple festive spirit, and then a nostalgic trip to the local arcade, playing Skee-Ball, Ms. Pac-Man, and plenty of pinball.

And, this morning, though there's no Colorado snow down here on the Front Range this year, we are enjoying our "quiet Christmas morning," sipping coffee with eggnog and chilling by the fireplace.

Millennials hit Middle Age ... kind of ... and Boomers get old

 I am a believer in generations and generational tendencies. And, so I found it rather amusing that when I opened the Denver Post this morning, I found an article on the oldest Baby Boomers turning 80 this year. And that article followed a piece in the New York Times yesterday from a thirtysomething writer lamenting how she and her fellow Millennials "are officially old now." --  Opinion | Millennials Are Officially Old Now - The New York Times. 

And, the Gen Xers just sit in the middle watching the two groups gripe.

Being part of a generation means at its most basic the idea of shared experience from a similar or common point on life's spectrum. Experiencing something defining like, say the Challenger Disaster in 1986, is a different when it hits at age 16, as opposed to 46, or even 86. And Gen X writer Douglas Coupland was always insistent that the "Generation X" designation wasn't about a specific age group, as much as it was about a "class of people" who by choice live outside of the norm. This concept -- which was rooted in a sort of contemporary bohemia -- came from the book Class by Paul Fussell.

So, the Millennials are getting older:

The moment crystallized a sentiment many millennials have been feeling recently: that 2025 is the year we officially got old. This reality has been creeping up for a while now, but it’s become impossible to deny it any longer. The youngest of our cohort are about to turn 30, and the oldest are pushing 45, meaning that we’re all now inhabitants of the life phase that the psychologist Clare Mehta has called “established adulthood,” a demanding period that can involve juggling careers while caring for kids and aging parents.

Our generational avatars are doing corny, middle-aged things: Lena Dunham wrote a “Why I Broke Up With New York” essay; Taylor Swift got engaged and wrote a song about her fiancé’s reliable penis; Ryan from “The O.C.” made a documentary about the dangers of crypto. If one of our generation’s athletes is still dominant, he’s considered a medical marvel. We are old enough to experience a type of millennial entropy in which our icons collapse in on themselves. (See: Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry’s relationship.) We were the generation that first embraced mining every aspect of our inner lives for content, but we don’t even enjoy posting on social media anymore. Thanks to medical miracles like Botox and Mounjaro (and Solidcore reformers), millennials are still physically hot, but culturally, our goings-on provoke less fascination, less hand-wringing, less societal anxiety. When they talk about young people, they aren’t talking about us anymore.

And the Boomers are just flat out old:

The oldest baby boomers — once the vanguard of an American youth that revolutionized U.S. culture and politics — turn 80 in 2026. The generation that twirled the first plastic hula hoops and dressed up the first Barbie dolls, embraced the TV age, blissed out at Woodstock and protested the Vietnam War — the cohort that didn’t trust anyone over age 30 — now is contributing to the overall aging of America.
Boomers becoming octogenarians in 2026 include actor Henry Winkler and baseball Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, singers Cher and Dolly Parton and presidents Donald Trump, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

And, there are, of course, many economic and sociological considerations related to the generations and their individual needs. For example, the latest projections on Social Security are that it won't be able to meet its payouts in 2036. And that is suddenly seeming pretty close. All the while, the economy appears to be just rolling along with all its perplexing contradictions. 

American Girls are Turning 40

My college-age daughter caught the American Girl wave somewhere around its peak or shortly thereafter, and it was more of accident, as she inherited a couple dolls from the older sister of her older brother's best friend (that's not as convoluted as it sounds). And while we never signed on to the type of hysteria that led to elaborate tea parties with the dolls and friends at the local "American Girl Boutique" -- yes, we had one in suburban Denver -- we certainly had a bit of a run with the biggest doll craze since Barbie and, of course, "Cabbage Patch" dolls in the 80s. 

And, I must admit, I was a bit intrigued, even impressed with the "story behind the craze," especially because there was always a story. Behind a doll with a theme written on the box, each doll came with a fully developed narrative in a book. And, amusingly, my son being the voracious reader he was actually read all the American Girl doll books. Truly, the stories weren't mere fluff, and at least for a time, for some, the stories and themes of the dolls were intended to impart decent lessons, history, even culture.

So, I was quite intrigued to read that American Girl is turning forty this year. A couple of culture writers for the WashPost recently delved into the history with the story:  "American Girls are Turning 40: Just like the Millennials Who Loved Them":

Our foreheads aren’t as smooth as theirs, and our eyes crinkle at the edges, but here, in this raspberry-hued temple to girlhood that is the American Girl flagship in New York, we feel 10 years old, too. All of the beautiful dresses, the miniature accessories, the luscious hair to brush and braid: American Girlhood is middle-aged, but it is also eternal.

When we were 10, American Girl and its dolls taught us about loyalty, bravery and moxie. Samantha. Felicity. Molly. Addy. Kirsten. Josefina. If you are of a certain age, just those names will conjure their stories of Colonial Williamsburg, the Underground Railroad and the Minnesota frontier.

“When American Girl was founded, it was really to put girls in the center of the story with characters their own age,” says Jamie Cygielman, global head of dolls at Mattel, which acquired the company in 1998. At the time, the brand was a revelation. Baby dolls made girls into mothers. Barbies were aspirational, fashionable adults. But American Girls were exactly our age, living out their lives in some of the most pivotal moments in history — and doing so with courage, conviction and adorable, collectible accessories.

We’ve been thinking about those girls recently, as a few generational factors have coalesced. Millennial mothers on the cusp of 40 now have children old enough to age into the brand, and those who preserved their dolls are handing them down to their children. Meanwhile, their own childhood nostalgia is being sold as tiny artifacts, thanks to the addition of “historical” dolls from 1999 — the late 1900s, if you wish.

Jim Beam Bourbon/Whiskey Shuttering Production for 2026

Ok, now it's getting personal ... and a matter of American pride.

The trade war and the imposition of new tariffs have come for one of the most distinctly American of products -- as homegrown as the blues, jazz, and rock-n-roll -- bourbon. Bourbon is a uniquely American spirit in that it can only be made within the boundaries of the United States, much like sparkling white wine can only be called champagne if it comes from that specific wine growing region of France. And the world thirsts for American bourbon, most specifically the country of Canada. However, in a shocking news Jim Beam Distillery has announced it will cease new production of bourbon and whiskey for the entirety of 2026:

The maker of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey will halt production at its main site in Kentucky for all of 2026. The company said in a statement it would close its distillery in Clermont until it took the “opportunity to invest in site enhancements”.

“We are always assessing production levels to best meet consumer demand and recently met with our team to discuss our volumes for 2026,” it said.

It comes as whiskey distillers in the US face uncertainty around Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, as well as declining rates of alcohol consumption. In October, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association (KDA) trade body said there was a record amount of bourbon in warehouses across the state – more than 16m barrels.

One of the primary reasons for the halt in production is the Canadian market. Granted, other factors are contributing as well, mainly an overall decrease in alcohol consumption nationally and worldwide. 

"After celebrating a record year for U.S. spirits exports in 2024, this new data is very troubling for U.S. distillers,” DISCUS CEO Chris Swonge said in a press release. “Persistent trade tensions are having an immediate and adverse effect on U.S. spirits exports. There’s a growing concern that our international consumers are increasingly opting for domestically produced spirits or imports from countries other than the U.S., signaling a shift away from our great American spirits brands.” Sales are down, and that’s very bad news for one of the most iconic American bourbon brands, Jim Beam. The 230-year-old brand has decided to close down its distillery, which has been in regular operation since prohibition

• Trump’s trade war has particularly angered Canada, which has led to many Canadians boycotting American products.Swonger said nowhere is this shift more pronounced than in Canada, where U.S. spirits exports plummeted 85%, falling below $10 million in the second quarter of 2025.
• U.S. spirits sales in Canada declined 68% in April 2025, whereas sales of Canadian and other imported spirits rose around 3.6% each.
• Canada removed its retaliatory tariff on U.S. spirits on Sept. 1, but the majority of Provinces continue to ban American spirits from their shelves.
• Canada remains the only key trading partner to retaliate against U.S. spirits.

Hanukkah -- Eight Crazy Nights

This evening is the final night of Hannukah. 

So, in the words of Adam Sandler, "If you're the only kid in town without a Christmas tree, here's [two lists] of people who are Jewish just like you and me."