2025, One Month at a Time

January highlights: a pie safe! Jazz Age Illustration! An Indian temple! Chester Alan Arthur, Martin Van Buren, and Frank Black, oh my!

Author

Rich Wilhelm
December 31, 2025

I see many people encapsulating their 2025 experiences and I thought I’d do the same. Rather than try to fit the whole year into one enormous entry, I thought I’d break the year into quarters.

To be clear, the return of Donald Trump to the White House guaranteed that on many levels, 2025 was going to be an awful year, and that has turned out to be true. I won’t sugarcoat it: Donald Trump and his enablers are an absolute pox on this country and the world. I have been clear in my feelings toward him and will continue to be.

At the same time, I also believe strongly that joy is a form of resistance and I am grateful for the joy that I have experienced in my life this year. As 2026 begins, I will continue to look for ways to express my feelings about the Trump administration, but I am also going to continue to pursue happiness, and I hope you will as well.

Here we go. January 2025, in photos and words.

On New Year’s Day 2025, I took a walk and contemplated the road ahead.

On January 11, Donna and I bought a pie safe. But we don’t keep pies in it.

On January 16, director David Lynch died. I drank a milk shake in his honor.

Donna, Chris, and I visited a fantastic exhibit on Jazz Age Illustration at the Delaware Art Museum on January 18. Art figured prominently in our lives this year.

The current U.S. presidential administration began on January 20. Chris and I opted for art therapy at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that afternoon. This is a detail from a reconstructed temple hall from South India.

Another detail from the South Indian temple hall. It’s important to pay attention to details.

On January 31, I hit the highway about 5:00 a.m. My ultimate destination was Boston, but not before I visited Chester Alan Arthur’s gravesite in Albany Rural Cemetery, on the fringes of Albany, New York. It’s good to know that tie-dyed Chester Alan Arthur t-shirts can be found on the Internet. Visiting Arthur ended an 11-year dry spell in my quest to visit U.S. presidential gravesites, taking my total from 14 to 15.

Less than one hour later, I notched my 16th presidential grave, when I visited the Notorious MVB, Martin Van Buren, in Kinderhook, New York.

My ultimate designation on January 31 was Boston, Massachusetts, where my friend Chris Ingalls and I met in person for the first time. We ate at a bar in Fenway Park and then crossed the street to see Frank Black play his epic ‘Teenager of the Year’ album, beginning-to-end. It was a fantastic show and a great way for Chris and I to level up our heretofore virtual friendship to “IRL” status.

In addition to these activities, I began writing for the I Have That on Vinyl website, which was just a few months old at the time. My first essay was The Mystical Dice of Random Musical Destiny.

Coming soon…February and beyond!