Buh-bye 2025, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out

I ran into several protesters at the No Kings rallies who had turns a line from my column into a sign. 

     Old man 2025 goes out one door, with his long white beard, scythe and hourglass. A brand new baby in a diaper, with a sash proclaiming "2026," is supposed to come toddling in another.
     Doesn't feel that way, does it? Whatever your expectations of 2026, "shiny and happy and new" doesn't describe them.
     Old Joe Biden goes out one door. Donald Trump comes toddling in another. Well, a baby of a sort ...
     But not what tradition led us to expect. That was 2025. The solid foundation of America felt like the floor of a bouncy castle. 

     My mother departs without a word — so uncharacteristic of her — and my granddaughter enters with a cry. I always heard codgers crow about how great their grandkids are but never understood what they were talking about until now. It's like taking a bath in liquid happiness.
     That's 2025. Very wrong and grim, interrupted with flashes of hope and joy. The return to the White House of a man who, in my view, ought to be in prison. Then the country pushes back, with Chicago and Illinois at the forefront. Two No Kings protests. A new pope, from Chicago, trying to put the kindness back into Christianity.
     Donald Trump's war on immigrants was the biggest story of the year. Soldiers patrolling Downtown. Masked government thugs seizing people off the street based on the color of their skin. Routinized self-dealing. The Swiss handed the president a gold bar. Caring about stuff like that felt as dated as Jimmy Carter's cardigan. The normalization of an administration of infamy that we should never feel comfortable with, not until it is gone and history. Not even then.
     What was Harriet Beecher Stowe's line? "This horror, this nightmare abomination! Can it be in my country! It lies like lead on my heart, it shadows my life with sorrow."
     Sorrow mixed with pride. The Sun-Times was on the front lines, covering ICE rampages, and I've never been prouder to be associated with the newspaper, its fearless reporters and photographers. I wish I could say I led the way. But I didn't. I tried to provide perspective, to put up some covering fire where I could. When Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza urged Chicagoans to patronize Little Village businesses to make up for locals afraid to leave their homes, we sat down to dinner to discuss the situation. More recently, I reported on landscapers — easy pickings for ICE, standing in people's yards, working — as if you'd find "the worst of the worst" raking leaves in Evanston. The worker we focused on, Rey, is set to be let out of custody at any moment.
     Otherwise, I saw my job as to not dwell in one place too long — I had 141 bylines in the paper in 2025 — offering a variety of snapshots of the roller coaster that was 2025.
     Entering my 39th year on staff, I tried to shake it up a bit. In August, architecture critic Lee Bey and I hosted an architectural boat tour on the Chicago River that was so popular — tickets sold out in a couple of hours — that we held a second one, raising thousands of dollars for Chicago Public Media, meeting supporters and readers. That was fun.

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The boat cruise was a lot of fun (Tyler LaRiviere for the Sun-Times)