January 2025

Peeking around the corner to see if it’s safe to step out into the new year.

Naw. Think I’ll wait in my corner for another little while. 2024 might have been the worst year of my life, and so far 2025 doesn’t look much better. I want my dogs, dang it! Alas, they remain in Chehalis, Washington, with a fabulous friend, Kira Steinberg. Kira runs a boarding kennel in Chehalis. She also, however, has her own herd of dogs, and she’s managed to integrate Bam-Bam and Cookie into her family. Don’t know what I’d have done without Kira. The past three months have been really awful.

Oh, never mind.

 Anyway, I’m sitting here watching the 2025 Tournament of Roses Parade and wondering when it became so sophisticated. They actually put on a song-and-dance show before the parade starts these days. They perform mini-shows throughout the parade as well. And then there’s that stealth bomber, which is pretty darned impressive.

 When I was a kid back in the early Middle Ages, things were simpler. The bands wore blah uniforms, and the pom-poms didn’t glitter. Evidently there wasn’t as much glitzy metallic thread and fiber back then. The flags were smaller too. And I could have sworn it always rained! Imagine my surprise when I looked up weather in Pasadena, CA, on January 1, only to discover it’s only rained ten times. Guess I just happened to be there one of those years. It was probably 1955, when I was a whopping nine years old. And cold? Yikes! Only spent the night on the parade route once, and I can’t remember ever being so cold and uncomfortable. I must have been a bitter disappointment to my mom, who was a rugged outdoorswoman. She was also the leader of our Blue Bird and Campfire Girl troupes. I didn’t enjoy Blue Birds or Campfire Girls, not being a joiner by nature. Think it's because we lived on a farm in Maine for my first three years, and I never quite adjusted to being around people when we returned to California. People can be scary, y’know?

At any rate, back to parades. When I played the flute in the Eliot Junior High School band along with two women who are still dear friends (Phyllis McKown and Janet Levine Goldberg), we wore white pants, white buck shoes (anybody else remember buck bags?) and boring green jackets and green-and-white caps. We were the mighty Huskies, and our colors were green and white. Eliot is now an arts magnate school, whatever that is.

Oh, and when I was in the band, we got to march in the Junior Rose Parade, which I don’t think is a thing any longer. We didn’t have to march for five miles. I think we were required to march maybe three miles. We also marched in the Rose Bowl. The poor guy who played the Sousaphone clanked his bell against a goal post. It hurt. But we persevered.

After graduating from Eliot Janet, Phyllis, the rest of our class and I all went to John Muir High School, by golly! When we went to Muir, we were a multi-cultural, multi-racial high school with a stellar reputation for scholarship. We were the Mighty Mustangs, and our colors were blue and gold. My class graduated in 1963.

Muir remained a pretty good school until around 1965, but after that it slid downhill. White parents began to notice their children were going to school with non-white kids, and white-flight began. PBS even created a documentary about our high school called Can We All Get Along? The Segregation of John Muir High School. You can watch it if you click the link below:

Can We All Get Along?

Back to reality, on November 21, I flew from Albuquerque, NM, where my wonderful friend Tabitha Hall was housing, feeding and clothing me, to Bakersfield, CA, where my older daughter Anni Avanesian picked me up along with the walker I’d ordered to be sent to her. For the record, I’m healthy; I’m just crippled, what with my right leg being considerably shorter than my left. 

Anni and her hubby, Razmik, have been caring for me since then. It’s nice of them to do it, but I can’t say I’m overjoyed to be so entirely dependent on other people. I’ve always been (probably too) independent, and this isn’t a whole lot of fun. However, as with the poor guy with the Sousaphone, guess I’ll just persist, as I can think of no other option.

Anni’s also taken me to get my new California driver’s license, the photo on which depicts a wrinkled old woman. Can’t possibly be me. Can it? Oh, dawg, I fear it is. Also got a physical checkup, including blood work. The doctor is the one who told me I’m healthy. Whoopee.

Oh! I almost forgot! My Intel NUC, the little box-like computer that replaced the old tower I used to use, fried itself. According to my techie grandson, Riki, the fan died. Therefore, the poor old NUC became overheated and I couldn’t use it without risking the loss of everything stored on it.

Fortunately, another great friend, Andie Paysinger, decided to give me her HP All-In-One Computer. This was even before my NUC got fried. So that’s something actually lucky that happened in 2024. It might possibly have been the only lucky thing to happen, by golly.

Andie was sent this HP computer (for free) to review, but she didn’t use it otherwise, being a Mac person (which I think is a great idea). So she removed all of her stuff from it. Then, when Riki drove up to beautiful downtown Weldon for Christmas, he stopped in Lancaster, CA, picked up the HP, and brought it here! That means that Riki has actually met Andie in person, which is more than I’ve ever done. Andie and I have been friends on Facebook for several years, however. Then Riki set up the HP for me. It’s kind of cool, being computer and monitor all in one. And I can almost use it properly too, by crikey!

Honestly and truly, I don’t know how I’d survive without my friends and family. Andie saved my very life with this computer! And Riki retrieved stuff from my old NUC (which he had sitting on a block of ice with a table fan blowing on it) and sent me the book I have to finish writing. That book is Dancing Angels. I hadn’t written anything except my last newsletter since October 19, and the words aren’t coming trippingly from my brain to my fingertips, perhaps because my life still feels so disrupted and confusing. That’s because it is, but I’m hoping hard things will smooth out eventually.

But wait! There’s actually some good book news to report! Denice Stradling, who has been the voice of Daisy since the very first book, has finished recording Shaken Spirits, and it’s now available on Audible.com! Not only that, but I have coupons to give to people so they can get the book for free (you have to navigate Audible’s download system, but it’s not too hard to do). So, if you’d like a free copy of Shaken Spirits, just send me an email (alice@aliceduncan.net) and I’ll send you a coupon code. Might possibly be able to find instructions to send along with the code, but don’t hold your breath.

 If you want to purchase an audio copy of Shaken Spirits—and why would you, if you can get it for free?—click on the cover to get to the Audible link:

In other book news Spirits Adopted, Daisy Gumm Majesty Rotondo’s twentieth (!) adventure, will be published in February according to Amazon. No cover yet, but feel free to pre-order it. Here’s the Amazon link. I actually liked writing this book, and I like it still, even though I neglected to mention why a person got murdered in it. But the murderer got caught, so I guess his motive doesn’t matter a whole lot. I’m probably wrong about that. Oh well. An author can’t think of everything. Click on the place-holding cover in order to get to the Kindle link:

So that’s the news from here. Weldon isn’t precisely a garden spot, but I can see the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and Lake Isabella from the window of my one-room granny cottage. Also, I love watching the ravens. Ravens are big birds, and they positively gleam in the sunlight. A particular type of hummingbird that hangs around here all year long as well. The hummers sound like huge bumblebees. Ravens kind of whomp-whomp when they fly. So I’ve learned some new stuff about nature since moving back to California!

If you’re on Facebook, please join Daisy Daze! Anyone who has an interest in the 1920s will probably find Daisy Daze interesting, at least sometimes. Daisy Dazers give me plotting advice all the time. They’ve been going at it like gangbusters lately and I’m extremely grateful for their ideas. Daisy Daze was founded by Iris Evans and Leon Fundenberger, both of whom like Daisy and Mercy. Daisy Daze is a great place for Daisy Gumm Majesty Rotondo and Mercedes Louise Allcutt (soon to be Templeton) fans to hang out, as well as anyone who is interested in the “Roaring Twenties.” We concentrate pretty closely on the Pasadena and Los Angeles areas, because the books are set there. We also cover a lot of stuff relating to early motion pictures, because both Daisy and Mercy have friends in the biz. Daisy Daze is entertaining, it’s educational and if you’d like to be a member, check it out here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/905100189878318/

If you’d like to visit my web page, here’s the link, thanks to Lyndele von Schill, who seems to be capable of doing anything and everything. Amazing woman, Lyndele. So glad she befriended me on Facebook! Home | Alice Duncan . If you’d like to be Facebook friends, please go here: (20+) Alice Duncan | Facebook .

 Here’s a link to my author page at ePublishingWorks: Alice Duncan Author Page (ebookdiscovery.com)

Thank you!