Season's Greetings to you!

In a couple of days, the winter solstice comes on and in 10 days, so does the new year. No need to say that but time surely flys away so fast. It is the time for me to summarize how I have spent this year and extend the season's greetings to all of you visiting this blog.

The mountains in Nikko north west of here taken from the riverside here in this season several years ago. It is still so dry and chilly now as the time this photo was taken.  

First of all, both of us were blessed with decent health even though we both have had minor health issues commensurate to our ages. Both of us are around or over the healthy life expectancy for now. It was a surprise Chiaki suffered from subacute thyroiditis this summer. A doctor friend has given her accurate diagnosis at pretty early stage, which helped her to have appropriate treatment. We have learned we should be ready for any health issues developing on us from now. Now Chiaki has started attending to a gym a few days a week while I sometimes sweep fallen leaves and care for vegetables even though not so often as in summer. I am trying to walk the moderate range of steps, at least, 5000 steps a day, which is told to avoid Alzheimer's disease to some extent.

Growing the vegetables without pesticides or herbicides, I have been pretty successful at it. The main fertilizer is compost made from weeds. Too much fertilizer could disturb the natural exchange of nutrients between plants' roots and mycorrhizal fungi around them. Of course, not much use of fertilizer spares expense. I am still learning that way of farming, which is quite interesting and productive. Lately, certain kinds of pesticides are reported to be involved with Parkinson's disease, which is increasing significantly these days. Growing natural and pesticides free vegetables is quite important. Anyway, working with farm and vegetables is beneficial to my health itself and is always uplifting my mind. I would carry it on as long as possible.  

As for politics and economy within our country as well as in the world, the situation is disappointing. There are a large number of politicians in populism. They often lie a lot. As quoted Hannah Arendt's discourse in a previous post in this blog, when people are cheated with lies frequently, they could not discern truth and wrong. It may lead to fascism. Convinced lies often appear as conspiracy. It is in a shambles in medical science especially in the US.  I wonder if the science lead by the labs and scientists in the US for decades could recover after the present aministration is gone. 

Military expansion, especially in nuclear weapon is making drastic progress. The expenditure for arms race in the world hit the largest ever in 2024. Of course, it reflects the invasion by Russia to Ukraine, the holocaust of Palestinians in Gaza and  so forth. Development of missile defence system including that in the universe is surely one of the biggest factors. Missile defence system would escalate to further armament expansion. I am very afraid it will cause pre-emptive attack. Nuclear weapon war, however small in size it might be, could provoke world wide level of nuclear contamination and of nuclear winter. Countdown to nuclear war is shortest at present.

Hobby-wise, it has been quite fertile in experience of listening music. Recalling the new year's resolution, I have purchased a complete set of Beethoven's piano sonata by Backhaus after having not been able to make up my mind on the pianist. Backhaus was the most popular pianist in my young days. He plays them in great architecture. Conquerring St. Matthew's Passion has been delayed. Still going it on in slow pace appreciating its profound expression. 

Whenever I realize the good old days in ham radio is going away, with good old friends passing away one after another, I feel less motivated to come back on the air. I may apply for my call sign at least before it's allotted to someone else. Either in Japanese or English, I have written about good old ham friends in blogs. I would go on keeping records of them. Too sad they are forgotten in ham radio community. It is for myself in a sense. Reading back those posts on the friends, I could renew my memories. If any friends access to this blog, just leave a word or two to me. I appreciate it so much. Don't forget put you call and/or name in it.

So very best wishes for the season to you and yours all. May you be blessed with good health and pleasant holiday season with your family.

Shin ex JA1NUT