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How can this century be one-quarter over? In some ways, this year has been like other years. And yet also unprecedented. There has been enjoyment of books, music, friends, morning walks, art talks, some traveling, and the continuing silent peace vigil on Wednesdays. I'll leave the distress and disappointments of a war-torn world and domestic disruptions for another time and venue.

I will eventually do a blog post of the books I read this year. The year started with Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I've read many of her books and this is high up on that appreciation chart. The highest may still be The poisonwood bible but that was the first Kingsolver book I read and had the most resonance with my own experiences. I also especially enjoyed The dawn of everything (Graeber and Wengrow) and The Mars Room (Rachel Kushner) during 2025.

The ARLIS/NA conference was virtual this year after Mexico City and Pittsburgh the last two years and Montreal next year. I do enjoy the programs and interacting with people though it is definitely not the sane on a screen in your home. I didn't go to any other big conferences but did go to an ARLIS Upstate Chapter meeting in Saratoga Springs. We had a craft "workshop" in the makerspace. I happened on the Mostly Modern Festival in Saratoga Springs and got in a couple concerts of contemporary music. Really special, as was the 2025 edition of the MostArts piano competition and festival in July. My favorite part of MostArts continues to be the noontime chamber series.

I joined Bill during his July 4th week in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. We have done it often and still enjoy it. I also went out to Massachusetts to join Bill, Suzi, and Martha for a weekend in Ogunquit, Maine. The Playhouse show this year was "Titanic: the Musical" and we did an evening of a screamingly loud drag show. I went on up to central Maine to see Christie after the Ogunquit weekend.

The fall exhibition at the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum was a celebration of the 125th anniversary of the founding of the New York State College of Ceramics. It was great to see works by many of the pottery professors over the years. About a dozen of the living professors participated in conversations with pairs of artists. Those are or will be available on the museum's website. There was also a nice installation at the Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell in celebration of the history of the College of Human Ecology. I am looking forward to a week in NYC for New Year's with Daniel and Gary.

There are also a couple weekly lecture series that I go to pretty regularly. Thursday midday (with coffee and tea) is the Bergren Forum, named after Rick Bergren who was a pastoral colleague of my father. Friday midday (with a snack table) is the Environmental Science series. Both provide a significant variety of topics.

My part-time job at the ceramics library has shifted to being just cataloging, mostly advice and authority work. I don't sit at the reference desk on Sundays anymore. My indexing has thinned out as publications have gone online (without remote access) or become less frequently published but I still enjoy doing the indexing. It's architecture, after all. The system we use (based at Columbia) has shifted from Voyager to FOLIO so there has been a new platform to get used to. OCLC shifted from Connexion to WorldShare Record Manager so that is a new system as well. The ceramics library and the main Alfred University library are part of the State University of New York system; the cataloging has become more centralized.

My middle sister Cathy moved to Alfred, with her daughter, in March 2025. My younger sister Carol has been living in Alfred for two or three years now. After years spread around New York State and earlier from East to West coast, all four of us surviving Clarke kids are now in greater Alfred. Doug had been the closest to the family homestead for many years and now he's the furthest, without having moved from his retreat at the end of a gravel road.

I do hope that you find some joy in the new year. A guiding light for me is something that Martin Luther King said, that peace is not merely the absence of violence, true peace is the presence of justice.

Sherman Clarke
33 South Main Street
Alfred, NY 14802
sherman.clarke@gmail.com

https://shermaniablog.blogspot.com

... go to more miscellany at Sherman's page