We recently had the privilege of seeing the only lighthouse in the landlocked state of West Virginia. It was our 62nd lighthouse overall.

It’s made from a wind turbine tower that rolled down a hill during construction, rendering it unusable. The owners of a nearby campground and RV park got ahold of it and converted it into this “lighthouse.”

I recently finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis for the first time. Over the years I’ve heard about the series being some kind of Christian allegory. Christian overtones and occasionally outright references were pretty obvious from the outset, but I felt it really kick into gear in the fourth book, “The Silver Chair.”

The preceding books had splashes of detectable Christianity here and there: Aslan is like Jesus, the main kids are referred to as Daughters of Eve and Sons of Adam, etc. It was enough enrich the story with another layer of potential meaning and get me thinking, but not so much that it felt like it was the whole point. In “The Silver Chair,” and really only in “The Silver Chair,” the balance teetered.

I live right next to a big mall that closed a couple years ago: Lakeside Mall in Sterling Heights, Michigan. They have flashy plans to demolish it and erect a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-used utopia off one of the busiest highways in suburban Detroit. It could be a cool thing, or it could be another embarrassing attempt to inject “Main Street” into the car-centric sprawl. It’s hard to tell. After two years of hearing about it, nothing seems to be happening. I went over on my lunch break to monitor the situation.

In 2025, I kept a daily log of snippets from the news. Below is the result: more than 500 total entries, a mixture of U.S. news, global events and a few items of local or personal interest.

It’s not a comprehensive list of everything that happened. It’s more like a personal log of events that I thought were important enough to write down. Here’s what I saw happening in the news, in the order that it happened.

01-01 AP: A U.S. Army veteran driving a pickup truck that bore the flag of the Islamic State group wrought carnage on New Orleans’ raucous New Year’s celebration, killing 15 people as he steered around a police blockade and slammed into revelers before being shot dead by police.

01-06 BBC: Under growing pressure from his own party, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has announced he will step down and end his nine-year stretch as leader.

01-07 AP: President-elect Donald Trump told residents of Greenland that “we’re going to treat you well” as his oldest son visited the mineral-rich Danish territory that’s home to a large U.S. military base, heightening speculation that the incoming U.S. administration could seek to acquire it. The president-elect later told a news conference he wouldn’t rule out using military force or economic coercion to take control of Greenland, saying that “we need it for national security.”

01-15 NPR: Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on a multiphase ceasefire that commits them to end the war in Gaza, President Biden and Qatar’s prime minister announced separately on Wednesday.

01-15 NBC: Nicotine levels in cigarettes sold in the U.S. would have to be drastically lowered under a proposal released Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration. If finalized, the change would mean that cigarettes would lose their ability to hook most people into addiction.

01-15 AP: U.S. regulators on Wednesday banned the dye called Red 3 from the nation’s food supply, nearly 35 years after it was barred from cosmetics because of potential cancer risk.

I recently finished reading “The Russian Revolution: A New History” by Sean McMeekin (2017). This was my first time reading a full book on the Russian Revolution; until now I’d been relying on a working knowledge gleaned from Twitter threads, YouTube videos, and things that were mainly about other topics. But when a friend mentioned they were reading this book and learning a lot, I took it as my signal to finally go in depth. I listened to the audiobook over the course of 11 days in November, mostly while going on walks and doing chores.

I recently paid my second visit to Grand Traverse Lighthouse on a chilly, overcast day in November. Unlike our first time here over the summer, the tower was climbable and the gift shop was open for business, so I was able to see much more of what the property has to offer. Here’s a rundown of the experience.