I don’t know why I ask that question. There is no such thing as a lucky number. We may think that a number is lucky, but, at the same time, we know that it isn’t.

But if “eleven” isn’t lucky, what is it? I know. Eleven is the number of days that have passed since the beginning of the year 2025 and, so far, for so many people, it hasn’t proven itself to be a lucky number.

But for me, so far, the eleven days of January have not been bad. I don’t live in Israel or Gaza or Sudan or Syria or Lebanon or Yemen or Ukraine or Kursk or California, or any of those places where conditions have been subprime. And while I have followed the tragedies that have hit in those places, they haven’t hit me directly.

So what have I, or in most cases, we, been doing this year so far?

1. We have finished our first TV serial of the year. Okay, maybe we could have chosen better, but we watched “The Twelve”, a ten part Netflix series in Flemish, set in Ghent. A woman is accused of two murders and is on trial. The jury hears the case and must reach a verdict, but individual jurors have their own issues. The series focuses on both, weaving between them successfully. Most interesting were the differences between American and Belgian criminal trials. In Belgium, you apparently only need 8 of 12 guilty votes to convict and if you have 7 votes, the judge (the “court”) gets a vote, to see if it can come up to the required 8. This is one of many differences.
2. I have watched several YouTube videos (each about 45 minutes long) about life in northern Russia (not Siberia, but in European Russia), including videos about the cities of Murmansk and Archangelsk, as well as small, remote villages (whose residents at this point are all quite old). Created by a Moscow activist named Ilya Varlamov, I found them eye opening as to the current conditions in those places. Be glad you don’t live there. I have also watched videos about Krasnodar and Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad doesn’t seem that bad. At least when compared to the others.
3. I’ve listened to a few podcasts on the Russo-Ukraine War and, like most of the podcasts on the war I have heard, they make it sounds like Ukraine is the odds-on favorite, and that Russia is falling apart at the seams. But that is what I have been hearing for over two years now. I have also listened, as previously reported, to Aaron David Miller talking about the state of the world. He believes it to be pretty awful and – guess what – he doesn’t really know how to go about fixing. it.
4. We watched three PBS specials. One a documentary on Jimmy Carter’s relationship to music, another a concert featuring the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the third a biopic about Josephine Baker. All three shows get A’s from me. You can probably find them on PBS Passport.
5. We took our day trip to Centerville and Chestertown MD, and had a superb lunch at Watershed Alley in Chestertown, and I had almost equally good lunches at &Shwarma in Rockville and Grigorios in Potomac. A good restaurant start to 2025. But then the snow came.
6. We saw “Jack and the Beanstalk”, the British Players annual panto, co-produced by daughter Michelle and enjoyed our grandchildren’s responses to the ritual corny characters and scenes.
7. I watched Oliver Stone’s 2016 film Snowden, which I thought excellent, although I can’t talk to its accuracy, and I actually read two books: Stuart Hampshire’s book about the philosophy of Spinoza, and an absolutely delightful biography of a salmon, called Salar the Salmon, by a British naturalist, Henry Williamson.
8. I heard a terrific presentation by a professor at USC about various Jewish languages, beyond Yiddish and Ladino (you can watch it on the Haberman website, http://www.habermaninstitute.org), participated in a discussion about how people with different political philosophies can find common ground, and attended a breakfast discussion with a 25 year veteran of the DC Metropolitan Police Force.
9. I followed the nightmare in California, the frightening antics of our next president, and the funeral of President Carter, I accompanied Edie to an eye doctor appointment, and we went to the Avalon and saw the new Pedro Almodovar film, The Room Next Door (neither of us liked it very much)
10. That, along with seeing our grandchildren, watching two hockey games, and shoveling some snow, pretty much filled my activity book (along with talking to some friends and email or texting with others, reading newspapers and on-line news, a little grocery shopping, and carrying the laundry from the basement to the second floor) about does it.
11. Oh, yeah. 11 blog posts. But you know that.