Dave Barry made 2025 a year worth remembering
The purpose of this post is to provide free marketing services for Dave Barry, even though he did not authorize or ask. My dream is to someday write like Dave Barry, so it seems appropriate to share his work on my Substack.
The best moment of every year for me is reading Dave’s year in review on Substack. Well, it used to be reading his annual review in the Miami Herald, prior to the paper having a paywall with terms and conditions requiring you to commit to an annual subscription until the end of the universe.
Dave’s review this year starts with 2025’s most important event- A larcenous racoon who vandalizes a liquor store in my old stomping ground of Ashland, Va and ends with the Mona Lisa being replaced by a portrait of Bernie Sanders and the onesies he used in questioning Secretary Kennedy about vaccine policy. In between, Dave shows a true mastery of systems thinking connecting the above stories, with the Epstein files and other stories that made 2025 feel like the most chaotic year in geological history. In connecting them, he left me in a good mood starting 2026. Thus, miracles can happen.
I urge you to stop here, read Dave’s piece. And then, while you are still in a good mood, return back here to read my postscript to his piece.
I worry that many people these days don’t read much more beyond text messages, social media posts, or subtitles on Tik-Tok videos, because if they did, Dave Barry would be celebrated as a true NATIONAL TREASURE. No one else can turn a miserable 2025 into something that had me rolling on the floor laughing
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Here is my postscript that will not make any sense if you have not read Dave’s piece. It may not make any sense even if you have.
One of my students wrote this about me in their anonymous course evaluations for the class I teach in Introductory Ecology- “Dr. Coleman is a national treasure.” The rest of the comment led me to believe this wasn’t facetious. (The class had 149 students- 129 of them returned course evaluations. The other 128 did not use those words in their comments, but I delude myself into thinking that is what they were all saying in between the lines, even the few that were critical. You can see for yourself here.)
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My postscript starts with me being described as a national treasure.
President Trump upon learning that a 20-year-old college student in Dr. Coleman’s Ecology class did not mention him as a national treasure, considers shutting down every accredited university in the world. But, on learning that the student did not mention the Epstein Files, he offers the student a cabinet position.
Trump then issues an executive order that there will a large bonfire on the Mall on New Year’s Eve to burn all of the Epstein files. The bonfire causes the earth’s atmospheric CO2 to double. That, in turn, leads to a massive hurricane in Florida, which when combined with sea level rise, wipes out the Barry household. This, in turn, transforms Dave from a National Treasure into a buried treasure.
The ecological cycle will be complete when Dave is dug up by a drunk raccoon in what used to be Ashland, VA in the next geological era.
In the meantime, the world tires of Bernie Sanders and onesies. So, the Louvre replaces Bernie’s painting with a floor to ceiling photo of Dave and the 12-foot Halloween skeleton (Dave published this picture in his Halloween column).
With that, all will seem right in the world in 2026.