Twenty Twenty-five
All Grown Up, Santa Barbara Chinese, Peter Paul and Mary, Jahmyr Gibbs, Moving Mansion
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This issue includes ten songs called “New Year’s Day,” a lively novel about a young woman, two Chinese restaurants in Santa Barbara, a beloved folk music trio, one half of the Detroit Lions’ rushing tandem of Sonic and Knuckles, and a house on a hill. I hope you like the picks and pics.
With apologies to Larry David, Happy New Year! We are now in the year 2025 — exactly half a millennium from the year 2525, as immortalized by Zager & Evans in 1969:
We welcomed the new year with Tracy, Matt, Noah, and Julian by watching football, having dinner, and playing with trains.
Today would have been the 107th birthday of my dad, Sol Garfield (1918-2004). He shares a birthday with José Ferrer (1912-1992), Elvis Presley (1935-1977), Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), and David Bowie (1947-2016).
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Fave Five 118: Twenty Twenty-five
Artistic Andrea (All Grown Up), Chinese Chicken (Meet Up Restaurant, Madam Lu Chinese Restaurant), Troubadour Trio (Peter, Paul and Mary), Speedy Sonic (Jahmyr Gibbs), and a Moving Mansion.
Fave Five List: Ten Songs Called “New Year’s Day”
In honor of the new year, here are songs for the occasion.
Mary Chapin Carpenter
Rob Thomas
Taylor Swift
4, U2
Hootie & The Blowfish
Bon Jovi
Carolyn Arends
Haroula Rose
Pentatonix
Switchfoot
Related Songs
Happy New Year – ABBA
New Year – The Shires
This is the New Year – A Great Big World
The New Year – Death Cab for Cutie
New Year – Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors
Happy, Happy New Year
Book Best Bet
All Grown Up by Jami Attenberg
This novel does not follow a predictable path nor wrap up its story with a tidy ending. It bounces back and forth in time and gradually reveals details about the main character, Andrea Bern and her family, friends, and lovers.
Andrea abandons her career as an artist, and I thought she might return to it. But the ending leaves her future as a 40-year-old single woman up to the reader to imagine. The book is short and fast-moving, and I was able to read it in a week. It is creative and engaging.
From Amazon: A national bestseller from the New York Times best-selling author of The Middlesteins, All Grown Up is a wickedly funny novel about a thirty-nine-year-old single, childfree woman who defies convention as she seeks connection.
Who is Andrea Bern? When her therapist asks the question, Andrea knows the right things to say: she’s a designer, a friend, a daughter, a sister. But it’s what she leaves unsaid—she’s alone, a drinker, a former artist, a shrieker in bed, captain of the sinking ship that is her flesh—that feels the most true. Everyone around her seems to have an entirely different idea of what it means to be an adult: her best friend, Indigo, is getting married; her brother—who miraculously seems unscathed by their shared tumultuous childhood—and sister-in-law are having a hoped-for baby; and her friend Matthew continues to wholly devote himself to making dark paintings at the cost of being flat broke.
But when Andrea’s niece finally arrives, born with a heartbreaking ailment, the Bern family is forced to reexamine what really matters. Will this drive them together or tear them apart? Told in gut-wrenchingly honest, mordantly comic vignettes, All Grown Up is a breathtaking display of Jami Attenberg’s power as a storyteller, a whip-smart examination of one woman’s life, lived entirely on her own terms.
Jami Attenberg
From Wikipedia: Jami Attenberg (born 1971) is an American fiction writer and essayist. She is the author of a short story collection, six novels, including the best-seller The Middlesteins (2012), and a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You (2022).
Restaurant Recommendations
Santa Barbara Chinese
One robot, one soup, three chicken dishes, and two friends were the highlights of two recent visits to Chinese restaurants in Santa Barbara.
Meet Up Restaurant 2251 Las Positas Rd, Santa Barbara, CA 93105
We went here with Kathy, Tracy, and Tracy’s family. Noah and Julian liked watching the robot deliver our food. The hot and sour soup and sweet and sour chicken were both excellent.
Hot and Sour Soup
Sweet and Sour Chicken
Madam Lu Chinese Restaurant 3524 State St, Santa Barbara, CA 93105
In Santa Barbara we have become friends with Barbara and Ben Eisley, who were introduced to us by our Michigan friends, Barbara and David Osher. We dined out with them on Monday at a restaurant that I walked by many times last year but had not yet tried. We all liked the three items we shared, especially the two chicken dishes.
Kung Pao Chicken: Chicken with water chestnuts, red peppers, and peanuts
Golden Sesame Chicken: Chunks of chicken battered, deep fried, wok tossed in a light sweet sauce topped with sesame
Marvelous Musicians
Peter Yarrow died yesterday. I loved the trio’s covers and originals. Their voices were beautiful, both individually and blended together to produce wonderful harmonies.
Peter was convicted of molesting a girl, served three months in prison, and was later pardoned by Jimmy Carter. This presents another example of separating artists from the work they create. I can condemn one while appreciating the other.
Peter Yarrow, of the Folk Group Peter, Paul and Mary, Dies at 86 by Jim Farber of The New York Times
Peter Yarrow, whose caring and righteous vocals for the trio Peter, Paul and Mary helped establish them as one of the most popular folk acts of the 1960s, died on Tuesday at his home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He was 86.
On many of the trio’s recordings they split the vocal parts equally, braiding Yarrow’s precise tenor around Noel Paul Stookey’s gentle baritone and Mary Travers’s warm contralto. But Yarrow also had some prominent lead vocals as well, fronting such well-known group recordings as “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Day Is Done” and “The Great Mandala,” all of which he either wrote or co-wrote. “Puff” became a No. 2 Billboard hit, while “Day Is Done” grazed the Top 20.
Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary Bridged Folk-Pop Eras by Jon Pareles of The New York Times
Peter, Paul and Mary’s music was far removed from the rawness and spontaneity (and often the songwriting credits) of their traditional sources. In hindsight, the trio sounds close to the chamber-pop of the late 1960s, a precursor to the Mamas and the Papas, the Association and Simon and Garfunkel. But in their day, they were a bridge from a sometimes scruffy folk scene to nationwide pop accessibility. They made Top 10 radio hits of Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” — crucial for Dylan’s career, though his own versions proved equally enduring.
Folk-rock and psychedelia would make Peter, Paul and Mary sound pallid and precious, although nostalgia sustained them through a later reunion career. But in the early 1960s, they were the right group for the moment: refined, genteel training wheels on the motorcycle roar that lay just ahead.
From Wikipedia: Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk group formed in New York City in 1961 during the American folk music revival phenomenon. The trio consisted of Peter Yarrow (guitar, tenor vocals), Paul Stookey (guitar, baritone vocals), and Mary Travers (contralto vocals). The group's repertoire included songs written by Yarrow and Stookey, early songs by Bob Dylan, and covers of other folk musicians. They were enormously successful in the early- and mid-1960s, with their debut album topping the charts for weeks, and helped popularize the folk music revival. After the death of Travers in 2009, Yarrow and Stookey continued to perform as a duo under their individual names. Yarrow died in 2025, leaving Stookey as the only surviving member of the trio.
Mary Travers said she was influenced by Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers. In the 2004 documentary Peter, Paul & Mary: Carry It On - A Musical Legacy, members of the Weavers discuss how Peter, Paul and Mary took over the torch of the social commentary of folk music in the 1960s.
The group was inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1999. Peter, Paul and Mary received the Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006.
Blowin’ in the Wind
If I Had A Hammer
Puff The Magic Dragon
Where Have All the Flowers Gone
Leaving On A Jet Plane
My Playlist
Sports Star
Jahmyr Gibbs led the Lions to a huge 31-9 win over the Vikings on Sunday. Nicknamed after the 1990s video game characters, the 22-year-old Gibbs, aka "Sonic" because of his speed, and 27-year-old backfield mate David Montgomery, tabbed as "Knuckles" for his strength, have made a name for themselves as part of coach Dan Campbell's "two-headed monster" backfield.
Jahmyr Gibbs, Lions take down Vikings to clinch NFC's No. 1 seed
Before Jahmyr Gibbs ran onto the field for the biggest regular-season game of his young career, his idol, Lions great Barry Sanders, dropped a gem in his ear. "Go get it," Sanders told Gibbs while dapping him up.
By the end of regulation, the 22-year-old Gibbs had etched his name in the record books. During Detroit's 31-9 win over the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday night, the second-year Lions running back exploded for a career-high four touchdowns to help Detroit clinch the NFC's No. 1 seed for the first time while winning a second straight NFC North title and earning a first-round bye for the playoffs.
"We're obviously having a better season this year, and I think everybody is still counting us out a little bit, so being able to shut them up a little bit feels good," Gibbs told ESPN. Gibbs became the first Lions player to lead the NFL in scrimmage touchdowns (20) since Sanders in 1991 (17) while setting a single-season franchise record for TDs.
No other Lions running back had produced a four-touchdown game since Sanders in 1991, also against the Vikings. "Just being able to have a record close to his, or I broke it, but being in the same talk with him is just crazy," Gibbs told ESPN.
From Wikipedia: Jahmyr Gibbs (born March 20, 2002 in Dalton, Georgia) is an American professional football running back for the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and Alabama Crimson Tide, earning All-American honors twice with Alabama. Gibbs was selected by the Detroit Lions in the first round of the 2023 NFL draft, where in his first NFL season he was an All-Rookie Team selection and voted to the Pro Bowl. In 2024, Gibbs was again selected to the Pro Bowl and set a Detroit franchise-record for the most touchdowns scored in a single-season, leading the NFL with 20 total touchdowns scored.
After missing the Yellow Jackets' season opener, Gibbs made his collegiate debut the following week against UCF and returned the opening kickoff 75 yards. He finished the game with 219 all-purpose yards and two touchdowns and was named the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Freshman of the Week.
Gibbs transferred to the University of Alabama to play for the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2022. On October 1, in a victory over #20 Arkansas, he had 18 carries for 206 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns. In the following game, a victory over Texas A&M, Gibbs had 21 carries for 154 rushing yards. In the next game, a 52–49 loss to #6 Tennessee, he had 24 carries for 103 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns.
Jahmyr Gibbs Dominates for the Lions with 4 TDs
Picture Pun
I feel the Earth move under my feet
I feel the sky tumblin' down
