it’s dark when dogga’s cold nose wakes us; it stays dark while we sip coffee. we watch out the window and talk quietly, waiting for the sky to lighten and the sun to rise. we have happy lights on the windows over our headboard and those are lit as we wait for natural light to fill our room.
but now – in the middle of all the chaos happening, the middle of this dark period of time, the middle of sadness and disappointment and fear, the middle of divisiveness and rifts and anger, the middle of uncertainty and insecurity – now, we light this lodgepole pine. every morning. it is directly in front of us – through the single french door and across the sitting room. its light is a beacon for us, not even an exaggeration to say this mustard seed is like a lighthouse.
we’ve – of course – taken down all the holiday decorations. everything looks a bit drab in comparison to the sparkle we all add to the season. but we’ve added some more happy lights, cause, dayummm, we truly need them. on the ficus tree. on the old door that stands against the wall in the living room. in the sunroom. and candles at night – wherever we are.
you may tire of hearing of our happy lights – and i understand if you’re already there. we all have to do what helps keep us centered, keep us grounded, keep us vigilant, keep us hopeful. happy lights are what do it for us.
i remember, years ago, visiting mammoth cave. we purchased tickets for the tour that takes you down, down, down underground, where you walk the walkways of the cave, where they take a moment to turn off all the lights so that you might experience the darkness of that place. it’s bracing. i have decided i am not a cave person. i cannot imagine the intense difficulty of working in the mines; i cannot imagine exploring caves for research. some people have way more moxie than i do.
the things happening in this country are beginning to feel as dark as that immense cave system. no, that’s generous. they do feel as dark as that cave, as dark as any cave beneath any towering mountain, deep into the earth, without light.
it seems obvious we need to choose a luminary. we need to gather and stoke this light. we need to bring everything we’ve got. if we wish this sea-to-shining-sea to remain a democracy, we need to stand in the light, light up all the dark dank corners of vitriol and authoritarianism, shine light on that which is hidden, on twisted lies and untruths that protect the most powerful. we – bravely – need to speak up and speak out. we need to expose the shadows for what they are.
and if it takes happy lights to get there, then so be it.
i used to wear hats. not baseball caps – i don’t have the right face shape for those. millinery hats. it was the 90s and i had straight-across bangs, which works best for hats – particularly when you have a high forehead – which i do as i inherited this from somewhere deep into and repeated on related faces time and again in my ancestry. nevertheless, i didn’t have a lot of these fancy hats – actually, only two: this green wool felt bowler-type hat and a black flat rim wool felt hat. i had a suede cowboy hat, and a couple of straw cowboy hats, but i wore the felt hats pretty consistently. i don’t wear them anymore and have decided to move them on. but not before telling d some stories about them, not before modeling them, grimacing at how they now look on me. sigh.
the black hat – a wide brim boater/gaucho – was my favorite. i told him about when i took part in the american cancer society jail ‘n bail fundraiser – a faux ‘arrest’ when you are taken to a place i now can’t remember and – in order to ‘get out of jail’ – you must raise enough donations to equal your ‘bail’. it was a fun event and i was really happy to help this cause having lost my big brother to cancer. i wore my hat that day. and, because i knew about the ‘arrest’ ahead of time, chose a chic outfit to go with it. i wasn’t going to be photographed in just anything.
i’m holding back the black hat, but, as i write this, think i might be able to move it on as well. i’m not a hat-person anymore and someone else needs to sport these stylin’ hats. i’m pretty sure that the outfit – a suit maybe? or something else a tad bit fancy – has moved on long ago. most fancy stuff has moved on long ago. we aren’t fancy-stuff-wearing people these days.
in an effort to not talk about current events, we talked about that on the trail one day. we have simplified our wardrobes. i still have some work to do on that – more ruthless culling – but our first mutual impulse is not to keep things that suggest fancy gatherings or anything highfalutin (as my sweet poppo would say).
i confessed to d – as we slogged through the mud on the hiking path – that i am way more interested in the gear one needs for a thru-hike on the PCT than what i might wear to a derby party or a sophisticated tea. we avoid gold-gilded places and steer away from people who find identity with all that. ick. that all feels like a waste of life. i talked about how i could pretty much get by with a couple pairs of favorite jeans, my ever-present scoop-neck long-sleeves, a thermal shirt or two and my favorite black flannel shirt. oh. and boots. and flipflops. and my hiking sandals. boom, done. what is it they call those minimal wardrobes?…..a capsule wardrobe. (in reading an aarp article about this, i realize i need a few more items to be in on this movement – though those items are likely already in my closet….a consideration for how to effect the pare-down.)
if all this sounds like avoidance, you are likely right. for there are moments right now when one is in peril of being overwhelmed by every single thing going on, one is in peril of succumbing to the angst. and, in those moments, well, let’s go with ‘hats for 200, please’.
anyway, anything i could wish to wear now – at this age – is anything that is actually me. there isn’t a dinner party, a stage, a trail, an adventure we would consider going to, performing on, hiking on, partaking in that would require anything fancy-schmancy. it’s simply not us.
and i’m actually certain of that.
because now – at this point in our lives – there is nothing to prove. we realize there was nothing to prove all along. there is just gratitude for being here – on this planet – and acknowledging that there is a fleeting moment – a.fleeting.moment. – between being here and not.
which i why i will never understand what is happening right now in current events – why there is so much cruelty, so much aggression, so much hatred, so much extremism, so much vile superiority. we all breathe in and out the same way. dominance over others is a waste of this life.
and which is why – on the trail – we talked about the hats i unearthed from hat boxes perched on the top shelf in the closet of my studio.
we recently saw a car of this color. it was a small vehicle, so it wasn’t an extraordinarily loud splash of chartreuse, but it was bracing nonetheless. i’m pretty sure this person has zero difficulty finding their car in a parking lot. kind of like people with hot pink rollie bags or wild print suitcases – as these bags come down the baggage claim ramp onto the carousel – along with hundreds of indistinguishable black suitcases – the owner happily swaggers up to the conveyor and – without a single doubt – claims their bag. maybe the owner of this car has a rollie bag like that.
no matter what, i remembered seeing this vehicle and maybe that was the point.
littlebabyscion is kind of a car like that. it is different and sticks out. not because it is fancy, not because it has any – really, ANY – bells and whistles. but because it looks different. despite the fact that it is black – i could have gotten it in copper or various other colors – it has a personality unlike other vehicles i have owned or driven. as this vehicle ages and rapidly approaches the 300,000 mile mark, i have some anticipatory grief about its tenure in our life.
big red – our 1998 ford f150 – is big, guzzles gas and doesn’t really zip around town in the same way as LBS. one has to be ever-conscious of its size, particularly in parking lots. one has to be ever-conscious of its lumbering, particularly when crossing traffic or entering highway on-ramps. zero to sixty is not its forte, so we allow a lot more space and time. big red’s personality is a bit cumbersome, a bit ungainly, but well-loved nonetheless, though every now and then it painfully surprises us with some of its 1998 parts parting ways.
even as we know we are in no position whatsoever, we find ourselves pondering what might be next. and that brings me to chartreuse.
as two artists we have always poked at the envelope. we’ll wear jeans and boots when no one else will. we’ll ride the edges of economics when most would shudder to even skirt them. we’d rather have a carried-in pop-up dinner on a trail than dine in haute cuisine. it’s a way of life to be vulnerable.
i stopped under the tree out on the trail, reveling in the color of its needles against the sky. it felt like spring – like an early march day – with only vests on instead of coats, my gloves carried in my pockets.
in the middle of the chaos that is this country right now, it felt good to breathe in some fresh air – damp with melting ice, on the edge of brisk but not quite there. it felt rejuvenating – this color. it felt hopeful.
we came home from the trail and listened to a podcast, watched a couple of updated news videos. i could feel the tiny vibration in my chest start back up again. we shook our heads at the impunity of this country’s leaders. i could feel tears welling up.
i opened my phone to look at photos i had taken on the trail, out in the forest, to look at this photograph.
and i reached out and tightly held hands with chartreuse – not just the color, but the whole notion of it.
it is a raw clay plate dating back to the 1940s. signed by the artist in 1947, four years after my parents married, two years after world war II ended. the painting depicts a scene that i would guess most of us might yearn for: idyllic, quiet, a dirt driveway to land next to a lake, a house, a barn, aspen trees. really simple. really beautiful.
along the bottom edge of this plate – its paint peeling from lack of firing finish – is what appears the artist’s monogram logo and the number 47, clearly the year this decorative plate was completed.
and therein is the problem.
for there will never – in our lifetime – be a number more burdened by foul memories. there will never be a number that has caused more pain, more divisiveness, more rifts, more sadistic cruelty, more self-serving agenda-ized policy that undermines the potential goodness of this country, even in the context of the greater global world.
that number – i wish it was not on this plate.
just like i erase the word “great” every time i write it. just like the word “tremendous”, the word “ballroom”, the acronym “maga”, the word “woke”, the words “better than anyone else”, the word “fraud”, the word “pardon”. just like red hats. just like the american flag. just like the thought of congress or the supreme court. just like alternative facts and people talking over, talking over, talking over others asking questions. i wonder how i might ask others if they want frozen water in their glasses without using the word “ice”. i wonder how we will fare in the future with so much ptsd on our plates.
there will be fallout from all this. and much of it will cause a great number of people in this country much long-term angst. not withstanding actual suffering of people far and wide, we will suffer the use of words, the turn of phrase, the sight of the white house, viewing the vast footage taken at the nation’s capitol on january 6, 2021. we will suffer the stripping of rights, the stripping of conscience, the stripping of truth, the stripping of sheer morality, the stripping of democracy. we will shudder to hear recordings of certain voices; we will turn away from the video of people’s faces twisted – contorted – by hatred, vitriol, bigotry.
we will need time to heal. we will need quiet to heal.
i used the old singer when i sewed the shutter-curtains for the nursery. i placed it on a piano bench and sat on the loveseat to sew. it was mama dear’s no-bells-no-whistles machine – the kind that is stored in a black case – and i was hoping that her seamstress skills would transfer to me as i stitched. i didn’t quite finish the curtains before our daughter arrived – a week earlier than expected.
i have another machine – a sears kenmore – from when i was about ten or twelve, i guess. it’s in a sewing cabinet – the machine stores down under the lid – and one can sit right at it to sew. i’ve sewn innumerable things on this machine. it doesn’t have bells and whistles either, so it’s a workhorse.
because i was dedicated to the art of sewing – at least back in the day – i’ve accumulated many patterns through the years, storing them carefully in a bin so that they would keep their tissue-pattern-integrity.
i just opened the bin and took them all out, laying them on the dining room table, organizing them to move them along. there are about 75 of them, many toddler patterns and craft patterns. the 80s and the 90s were craft-heavy times and i was right in there sewing bunnies and dolls, quilting pillows and piecing sweatshirt appliqués. the fabric store was an inspiring adventure limited only to your imagination. attending art and craft shows was glorious fun, a place to get new ideas and marvel at others’ craftiness.
it was quite late in the 90s when it occurred to me to show at these art and craft fairs as a musician. way different than concerts or even wholesale show marketing, i’d set up a booth with a keyboard and displays and play all day while simultaneously selling cds. the being-a-mom skill of talking while playing transferred easily from mom-ing to entrepreneur. providing music for the background of people – most notably, women – to shop with friends and linger over beautiful homemade objects was a joy and i sold thousands upon thousands of cds at these shows over the course of some years.
until, of course, the advent of writeable cds.
being able to rip a cd from another cd enabled the buying market to do-it-themselves and severely shrunk cd sales from independent artists.
and then came streaming, a death-blow to these same independent artists.
but i digress.
i wonder how many people sew now. i wonder if moms still make matching jumpers for their baby girls and themselves. i wonder if people are still sewing bunnies and dolls and pillows. with the bankruptcy of joann fabrics – a legend for those of us who devotedly bought fabric there – i wonder if imagination is sparked as brightly in small fabric departments of other craft-type stores; joann’s was packed with fabrics and knowledgeable store personnel who could answer most any question from aspiring seamstresses.
sewing is kind of like riding a bike. you think you’ve forgotten how to thread the machine – until you sit down in front of it and your hands automatically weave the thread in and out of tiny sprockets and around dials. you think you’ve forgotten the little tidbits of wisdom you’ve gleaned along the way as you lay out a pattern or cut or piece a few patterns together to craft your own iteration of something – and then it all comes rushing back as you touch the ever-familiar manila-colored tissue paper.
i thought i would just move all the patterns along. and then a few caught my eye. “i could make those overalls,” i thought, and “what an easy pj pattern” – and i was hooked.
maybe half a dozen patterns made the cut – to stay with my sewing supplies. the toddler patterns moved on – for other moms or for grandmas to joyfully create. the craft patterns will move on as well. i already have a yo-yo quilt in my future and who knows what i’ll do with all the sports t-shirts left behind by the girl and the boy. we’ll see.
the coolest part of it all – revisiting all these patterns – was remembering the fun challenge of a sewing project and the excitement of a newly-purchased bag of fabric, feeling my grandmother’s legacy surge through me, the expansive way creating creates more ideas for creating.
i am – truly – not quite sure how we would survive without this trail.
it offers sanity in a world that seems to be losing its very center. it offers quiet in a world noisy with horrific news. it offers peace in a country that doesn’t seem to understand peace any longer.
we breathe on this trail.
we talk about other things – projects and dreams.
we get lost in our own thoughts.
we – know – in the way nature makes clear – we are simply two tiny parts in a big whole.
blogsites supply some analytics about your blogposts. wordpress can tell us which posts are viewed, how many views, how many visitors we have, their countries of origin. the site, however, is not totally protected against bots, so some of the information – when the numbers seem exponential – is obviously generated by non-human sources. there are moments i laugh – or sigh – and say things to d like, “wow. like they have nothing better to do in name-a-country than to sit around reading reverse threading, eh?” i know better. my words are not likely to assuage – or even be the vaguest bit interesting – to people in dire circumstances, in countries full of upheaval or war, in places where trying to find just a bit of food is paramount. i am humbled by people who are in such drastic conditions or situations.
we have a thing about our shadows. and our feet, too, truth be told. there are many photographs on my camera that depict our shadows or our feet in a wide array of places. “we’ve been here,” i feel like these say.
it’s like a footprint. though the prints and tracks around us in this picture will fade with snow or rain or other prints and tracks, they will never really go away. the imprint will always remain part of the texture of the path, a part of the fabric of the trail.
i feel like our shadows are the same. though the moment the clouds move across and block the sun, the moment the sun dips below the horizon, the moment we move on – our shadows seemingly disappear. yet, something in me feels that they actually remain. our shadows – like the shadows of deer crossing the path to find shelter in the bramble, the shadows of hawks and a bald eagle or two above, the shadows of squirrels scurrying or horses elegantly cantering through, even the shadows of fuzzy caterpillars making their way – they all remain part of the many layers of what has existed, what has passed by, what remains in the energy of that place.
there are people imperiled in every corner of our world and there are people honing cruel skill at the denigration of others. there are people thriving in closely-held self-actualized dreams and there are people burdened with feelings of failure. there are people who are always the helpers and people who hostage-take others’ well-being. we all add to the energy of the world.
i feel like i really would like to do my best to make sure my shadow adds even the tiniest bit of goodness to the vibrating atoms of this world. being outside reminds me of the evanescence of it all, the transitory of us.
before she had her ears pierced, my sweet momma had a collection of beautiful old-fashioned screw-back earrings dangling on this display on her dresser. i don’t know if i have any of those earrings but somehow i have this chrome and acrylic display that i think she and my poppo used back-in-the-day when they owned a small jewelry store.
i don’t have a specific use for this. it sits empty on my dresser. every time i look at it i think of my mom, so maybe that’s its use (though thoughts of my momma are prompted by many things and moments in my days.)
in this time, in the going-through of the stored stuff – things in boxes and bins and closets – there have been a few treasures. the crèche from a well-loved christmas house in a little town in florida that i passed on to a dear friend who has significant connections to that town. the painting we sent to the family of the painter. the hand-painted collector plates – painted by ancestors – i’m sending to family members so that they, too, might have a piece of this history.
other things? well, not so much.
it will be a slow process and last night – before we went to sleep – we were talking about how we might have missed so much had we just quickly given everything away. i’m grateful we are taking our time. the gifts are in the time-taking.
now, i would be remiss if i didn’t mention how hard some of these things are to part with. despite no real driving imperative for banana curls, i am reticent to part with the pink sponge curlers. despite no current (or impending) babies in the family, it is a tiny bit difficult to give up the sesame street baby play gym. despite a lack of counter space for it, the 1970s roll top breadbox is a tough giveaway. despite never having used it – and frankly, not even knowing i had it – finding the Betty Crocker plug-in warming tray seems a splendid idea for entertaining. despite not wearing them for – like – ever, the sweatshirt collection – and yes, it is a collection – has a zillion memories, each one its own reason for purchase. how can i give up montauk or galena or northwestern university or long island or nyc or seattle or lawrence or the university of minnesota or the high school tennis team? despite zero talent for woodworking, my brother’s scrollsaw templates…were my brother’s. despite, despite, despite. despite no real need for them, i will struggle as i photograph and ponder the fate of these things…remembering always that they are simply things and that any memory is still a memory, cued up and ready for my heart to wander through or linger in.
it’s gonna take a while. likely, a long while. but each day something is given away or sold or sent to someone or – in some cases, when appropriate, thrown out. little by little we are making headway. and, now, david – who used to be much more ruthless about culling possessions – is finding himself also relishing the process. well, relishing might be a tiny exaggeration. but definitely appreciating the process.
i’m not sure about this vintage earring holder piece. it has no function on my dresser, but it doesn’t take up a lot of room. there is a gingham stuffed heart hanging on it right now.
maybe that’s all it needs.
when the play gym and the warming tray and the sweatshirts and the scrollsaw templates and all the other things i will unearth and unbox and unbin and photograph and ponder actually move on, maybe it’s the small seemingly meaningless that will remain. to someone else, those things might look extraneous. but my heart connects the dots. and this time through, well, the chrome and acrylic stand might make the cut.
the trail was a mixture of ice and mud. in some spots – where the woods doesn’t let in as much sun, there was still snow…with evidence of hikers, horses, some kind of atv tracks.
we needed to get out on the trail. it had been several days since we’d gotten there.
this trail, as I’ve shared before, is the place where we do much sorting. it is the place where we re-center when we feel disoriented. it is the place where we speak of celebrating, where we acknowledge grief. it is the place we can talk or be silent – and either way – in both conversation and silence, we are fully communicating.
so, pulling up our turtles and foregoing any imperative to keep our boots mud-free, we started walking.
in the quiet of these woods, the pastel sun sinking lower in a slowly-graying sky, stark trees as sculptural interruptions with the horizon, thoughts have a way of making their way to the forefront, unimportant stuff drops off, existential takes the limelight.
it was a couple days after this country we live in invaded venezuela, a couple days after a citizen right-around-the-age-of-my-own-children was shot three times in the face and killed by a government agency, which then went on to demonize her.
there are moments when i literally cannot imagine what it must feel like to believe – absolutely and without a doubt – that you are the most powerful person in the world, you are the smartest person on the planet, you are better than anyone else – anyone, anyone, anyone, ever, ever, ever. this kind of exponential narcissism is beyond anything i can comprehend, a complete and utterly ego-driven attitude beyond the pale. the callousness, the cavalier mob-boss certainty, the self-devotion is revolting. being witness to this is living inside this person’s sickness – and, as contagious as it is if one is a sycophant – to which, indeed, we bear witness – for me, it is nauseating, incomprehensible. appalling doesn’t begin to cover it.
we hike because it helps us sort to clarity. even with all the innate complexity of the forest, the ecosystems present, the symbiotic relationships in place, there is still not much that is complicated when you are hiking through. it is all there – surrounding us with beauty and simplicity, the goodness of planet earth.
to juxtaposition that with the hideousness of an administration that is warped beyond comparison is to walk in some sort of unreal reality. this place – these woods – make sense. in the way that winter falls upon the land, the leaves have fallen, the underbrush is in fallow, the land is simply waiting. this place – this nation – makes no sense. in the way that this winter falls upon the land, cruelty has beset us, goodness as-a-country is nowhere to be found, the land from-sea-to-shining-sea is waiting…for its soul to return.
for right now, the clarity that is evident, the thought that i literally cannot imagine but is ever-creeping-forward, is clear-eyed and colored with the horrors of democracy being dismantled – right before our very eyes.
and i wonder about those who find this worthy of cheering. i wonder about those who are aligned with the miserable, vile nature of people in current leadership. i wonder about those who believe in the mass deportations of their neighbors, the abject sadistic horror inflicted upon the populace, the removal of medicaid, of childcare, the endangerment of the LGBTQ community, the loss of affordable healthcare, the unemployment, the cost of living day-to-day, the loss of absolute sanity regarding actual medicine, actual research, actual science, actual healing, the dissolution of international agreements for safety and peaceful coexistence in the world. i wonder how it is that their brains – and hearts – have bought into – hook, line and sinker – this vacuous, ill-intended, dangerous administration.
many of these people were one-topic voters. their immaturity – and their ignorance – are evident. it is shameful that they did not look beyond their one flag-in-the-sand to seek actual clarity about the bait-and-switch in which they were participating.
because now – the thing they can say – as their country teeters dangerously close to falling to authoritarian fascism – is that women have no choice about their own bodies or that we don’t have to succumb to “socialist” healthcare or that we are cleaning out the “dangerous criminals” and, mind you, everyone else with skin color they don’t like or that they don’t have to worry about government oversight over or taxation of their big money and that air will be clean – only it won’t – and it will be deregulated and filled with fossil fuel particulate, and that water will be clean – only it won’t – and it will be deregulated and continue to be vulnerable to pollution and long term harmful pfas, and that crops will be clean – only they won’t – and deregulation on pesticides and fertilizers and sustainability and public health protections will add fuel to the dangerous fire and then – my personal favorite, surely the heartbeat of a healthy country – that their froot loops will soon – in 2027 – finally, finally, finally be safe.
these people – clearly – need to take a walk in the woods.
it was after a photo shoot – for pictures with which to list it for sale – that i discovered it.
this old rocking chair had been with him for decades. his studio chair, he bought it in a colorado mountain town and it traipsed along with him, re-homing down south, to los angeles, to seattle. it was one of the few items – outside of paintings – that made the cut when we moved him here in a budget truck.
when it arrived here it became a studio chair once again, tucked into his basement studio next to the rocking chair in which i rocked my babies.
but now, in the process of cleaning out and going through, he has decided it has run its course. this beautiful chair needs restoring. caning is missing and, if someone rathers finished over organic, it needs sanding and some good varnish. with really good bones and a decade of life-patina, it’s ready to move on.
we brought it upstairs for the shoot and i took photos of each angle and turned leg. doing research on mission style rockers like this i came across where to find identifying information. so i went back out into the living room to look more closely.
and there it was.
the word “wisconsin”.
to say i was a bit stunned would be an understatement.
diving into it, i discovered that this chair was made by the wisconsin chair company in port washington – just up the lakefront from us sometime around the early 1900s.
this chair – after a century of domestic travel – had come home.
i asked him if he wanted to keep it – knowing this new detail of the chair’s history. he said it was still time for the chair to move on, to be loved into renewal.
i’m wondering if this rocking chair had anything to do with david finding home – after a lifetime of living other places. if this chair somehow had strong enough ties to this place that it created the circumstances in which we met. if this chair had a gravitational pull back to wisconsin so strong that it brought david here, instead of the reverse. if this rocking chair brought him home.
(about this week: there is a peril, it seems, to writing ahead these days. we had decided that this week – the first full week of a new year – we wished to use images of light as our prompts, we wished to linger on the possibility of light, of hope, of goodness. though our blogposts might stray from that as we pen them, it was without constant nod to the constant updating of current events – a mass of indefensible, unconscionable acts. we pondered what to do about these blogposts we had written and decided to keep them. we hope that – whether or not any absence of the happenings of the day, whether or not the chance these written words seem somewhat inane at this moment – you might know that those events – of corruption, illegality, immorality – do not distill or distort our intention – to bring light and hope to this new year – the first days of which bring more insanity and unnerving instability. we are still holding space for light.)
and so…
reticent to un-decorate, we left it all up. we were just hesitant to take down all that glitters, all that sparkles, all that gives light to the season. we were hesitant because there has been so much dark.
it is not out of the norm to be questioning what is happening here. to give over – without inquiry to integrity or morality – is to abdicate, to align, to be complicit.
in this earliest part of 2026, i hope that there will movement to right this country and its unconscionable adoption of the unprincipled as its leaders. i hope there will be steps made that, instead of demolishing diversity, equity and inclusion, will light a fire beneath the heart strings of this very diverse populace, powerful wicks embracing differences. i hope that the inhumane and unjust treatment of people – downright cruelty – will cease. i hope that the constitution will hold.
it is outrageous – in this day and age – 2026 – a time that should be filled with brilliance, forward-advancing research, safety measures and social safety nets for all, a dedication to action concerning climate change, and a world concerned with those who follow – that we are in this place – by most measures – becoming a cauldron of atrocities.
it is unbelievable – in this day and age – 2026 – in this country – that we are surrounded by untruths, steeped in the tactics of evasion, drowning in elitist indulgences, worried about basic necessities.
it is chokingly sad – in this day and age – 2026 – right here and right now – that we are watching this democracy shake at its core, that we are being bullied from republic to regime.
leaving the holiday decorations up didn’t change any of it. but in these winter days of early darkness, it helped hold the light a little longer. and so, we have left a few bits still – bits of light surrounding us, not packed away.
reverse threading 