Not really. More like Jumpy disturbs the geese. Officially named Vegas, Jumpy Jump Jump is what my granddog is called when Cara visits us from Kentucky. Rousting the geese in Ryder Park is one of her favorite activities. That, and jumping.

As a toy soldier collector, I was charmed by an article Mark Wallace wrote in the Times about H.G. Wells. His book Little Wars, published in 1913, after Wells “created a set of rules that the `recumbent strategist’ could use in his parlor or garden.” As Wallace tells us, “Wells entertained a number of notable literary and political figures with his diversion. According to Padre Paul Wright of the British Royal Army Chaplains’ Department, who is perhaps the world’s leading authority on Little Wars, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were among Wells’s guests while he was developing the game. “I think it is reasonable to suggest that Chesterton had some war gaming inspiration from Wells when writing The Napoleon of Notting Hill, ” Wright told me in an e-mail, referring to a novel in which toy soldiers play a decisive part. Winston Churchill and Wells maintained a correspondence too, though many of their letters have been lost. Wright wonders whether the two men ever faced off: “We are left with the fascinating prospect of an historical, toy soldier what-if between the two great toy soldier enthusiasts of the period.” Says Wallace “And his own interest in fighting little wars declined sharply with the start of World War I, along with his pacifism; as the violent century wore on, Wells became an advocate of an “armed peace,” with England holding the gun.” Wrote Wells: “You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but — the available heads we have for it, are too small.” In the wonderful drawing from The Illustrated Sunday News, above, Wells is at left.

My cousin Walt King, gifted artist and member of the faculty of the Columbus College of Art and Design, has turned me into art. I’m thrilled. Thanks, Walt!

Ed Koch died last Friday at the age of 88. In retirement, he became a beloved figure, a loud, opinionated uncle, unhip in his easy gracelessness, comfortable in his blotchy skin. But in his prime, he was a large figure, with a great intellect and enormous confidence, vain, nasty, ebullient, fun. One of his greatest moments was during the transit strike of 1979, when Koch, who had no responsibility for making the deal, stood with quasi-Churchillian courage and roared encouragement to straphangers-turned-pedestrians (like me) who had walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. But he relished the spotlight too much, and took too much pleasure in ladeling like schmaltz his jokes and his insults and his self-regard on the tough, grind-it-out management of a broke city, at which he also excelled. When the Donnie Manes scandals broke, and Koch was revealed to have to have been goofballing around while the thieves connived, Koch was embarrassed, and never quite the force. Still, he was a remarkable figure and to have been a lowly aide to a City Councilman during the Koch reign was a rich and memorable and highly educational experience. At his memorial yesterday, Michael Bloomberg eulogized him: “No mayor, I think, has ever embodied the spirit of New York City like he did, and I don’t think anyone ever will. Tough and loud, brash and irreverent, full of humor and chutzpah — he was our city’s quintessential mayor.” That sounds about right. (Above: my moment with Ed, in February 1981, when he appoints me Executive Director of the Citizens Committee for Water Conservation. When days later a massive nor’easter ended the drought that occasioned the appointment, my career in government came to an end.)

This year that is fast disappearing will not be remembered in these quarters with very much warmth. It was a fairly hideous, sickening year, the year that I felt I got old. But like all good things, the bad ones come to an end as well, and thanks to some much appreciated end of the year action by Richard Plepler, Steve Koepp, David McCormick and others, we begin 2013 on an upswing, and with hopes for better times to come. In the meanwhile, here are some jewels, personally chosen and wholly idiosyncratic, recovered from 2012:
1.) Love for Levon. Without a doubt, everything about the tribute concert to Levon Helm–reporting the story, meeting the people involved, attending the event, the reception to the article, what may happen yet–turned this into the best thing that I was involved with this year.
2.) Searching for Sugarman. This modest documentary about a real-life Cinderella made my heart leap with joy. A very inspirational story.
3.) Call Me Maybe. Carly Rae Jepson‘s unassuming, sweet, girlish, flirty hit was attractive enough, but the way it went viral and enveloped everyone from the US Olympic Swim Team to Colin Powell was delightful. The song never failed to bring a smile to my lips, especially in Jepson’s collaboration with Jimmy Fallon and the Roots.
4.) The dauntless, rain-drenched performance of the young people of Royal College of Music Chamber Choir during the flotilla of the Queen’s Jubilee was simply stirring, especially when they sang “Land of Hope and Glory.”
5.) The presidential campaign as a whole this year was a fairly tedious affair, but the rousing Democratic convention, driven by one splendid speech after another culminating in Bill Clinton‘s masterful dissection/deconstruction/destruction of the GOP position was fairly brilliant, just as the Republicans’ ceaseless rhetorical self-destruction–“Oops”, “Nine, nine, nine”, “I like to fire people”, “legitimate rape”, “the 47 percent”–was the best long-running comedy series on TV.
6.) The Giants Win the Super Bowl. Just as in 2009, the inconsistent Giants managed to win four–or in this case, six–games that they could win but were not likely to, and managed, one play at a time, to walk off with the hardware.
7.) The Hour. A splendid, sophisticated, intelligent BBC series about a ground-breaking TV news magazine being produced in the early fifties. I love the way they can combine news judgment, inside baseball, and messy personal situations. Dominic West, Ben Whislaw and Romola Garai are just terrific. We also liked the posh Downton Abbey and the relentlessly vulgar The In-Betweeners. (I must say, I haven’t seen Homeland yet.
8.) Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. Having loved Wolf Hall, I feared its sequel would suffer by comparison. I shouldn’t have worried. Other enjoyable books this year: Watergate, by Thomas Mallon; Passage of Power, by Robert Caro; The Long Road to Antietam, by Richard Slotkin.
9.) I went to Lincoln fearing a Spielbergian historical romance, full of longing gazes and quivering lips and swirling strings. But while there was some of that, it wasn’t enough to sicken the whole deal. I give total credit to screenwriter Tony Kushner for his decision to hang this pageant on a moment that has been largely overlooked by historians, the passage by the House of Representatives of a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery. Historians undercut the importance of that moment because there were other ways to accomplish Lincoln’s end, but that’s not the point: whether or not the vote had significant is irrelevant, it is a perfectly splendid motor for an historical drama.
10. Superstorm Sandy. “There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at with no result,” Winston Churchill once said. I have no reason to dispute him, but I can tell you this: it’s a humbling thing to realize that the killer hurricane has come and gone and that you’ve been missed.

Our annual get-together was held this year at the home of Paul and Marcia Buckhout. At Paul’s suggestion, this year’s entertainment was given over to story-telling. After a little bit of reluctance to talk about oneselves, many of us donned the green story-teller’s cap and plunged in. As usual, fun was held by all.

. . .and a big meal! Here I am enjoying a celebratory dinner at McCormick & Schmick’s last Wednesday with Hugh Cook, the editor of Illinois Alumni magazine. We’re bodyguarding the coveted Eddie Award for Editorial Excellence, presented by Folio, which the magazine won for a profile I wrote last summer of the sportswriter Will Leitch. Thank you. Thank you. First, I’d like to extend my gratitude to all the little people who made this possible. . .

We hosted Sandy, the Storm of the Century here this past week, and frankly, we pretty much missed it. Oh, we had impressively high winds that we could see thrashing the trees across the street all day. And yes, we lost phone/cable/internet service for three whole days. But in terms of personal impact, we’ve had worse.

Not that I’m complaining. We did the rising flood thing in 1998 (Floyd, theoretically a hundred year storm) and in 2011 (the widely disrespected Alice, which did us upwards of $20,000 worth of damage), and the no power thing during the 2010 Olympics. I don’t need to get clobbered every time. I’m sorry anybody gets hurt by these things anywhere, at any time. But I’m glad that this time, it wasn’t us.

But it could have been. Trees were down all over–four giants right in Law Park, a mere two blocks from us–and many friends and neighbors are still without power.Things might not be restored for a week. Good luck to them.

I was terribly sad to learn that my friend John Stacks died last week, finally succumbing to the cancer that he had been fighting for the last four years. I got to know John Stacks when I was running the Notebook section at Time in 1997 and 1998, and he was the Executive Editor to whom I reported. Walter Issacson was running the magazine back then and it was very much his magazine, but John and Chris Porterfield were like cardinals in the Vatican, keepers of faith and tradition, and I admired and valued the steadiness and calm and attention that they brought to helping this big, sprawling weekly magazine succeed. I remember one of the first times Ken Smith and I met with him to talk about our line-up, he said “Oh, you’re a communicator,” and I took a great deal of confidence from that. He had a sense of fun and sociability, but he was fundamentally a serious man, serious about his responsibilities as a journalist and as a leader. I felt I could always turn to him with my problems and doubts and anxieties, of which I had plenty, and he graciously shepherded me through them. He taught me to trust my own judgement, to be alert for problems but not to force them, to be patient. He taught me not to let my own fears or anxieties or vanity get in the way of doing what had to be done, because what had to be done would always be done, and if you were letting your own ego prevent you from doing what had to be done, somebody else would do it, and you would be the loser. John conducted himself at work with a sense of service. He helped other people succeed at their jobs, but in a way that taught them that in the end, it was doing the job well that mattered. The byline on the article mattered a great deal, but the success of the magazine as a whole mattered more.

So long, John. I’ve tried to pass your lessons along. Thanks again.