“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
Letters from children held in detention by the United States government in Dilley, Texas.
Welcome Morning by Anne Sexton
Welcome Morning
There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning, in the chapel of eggs I cook each morning, in the outcry from the kettle that heats my coffee each morning, in the spoon and the chair that cry "hello there, Anne" each morning, in the godhead of the table that I set my silver, plate, cup upon each morning. All this is God, right here in my pea-green house each morning and I mean, though often forget, to give thanks, to faint down by the kitchen table in a prayer of rejoicing as the holy birds at the kitchen window peck into their marriage of seeds. So while I think of it, let me paint a thank-you on my palm for this God, this laughter of the morning, lest it go unspoken. The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard, dies young.
Michael Wear, The Dispatch, February 8, 2026,
This last decade of American politics cannot become the new standard. If it does, few of our institutions will survive… This is the danger, of course. That everything will orient around this man [Trump]. That he will succeed in making everything subject to his interests and his whims. He’s willing to do it with God, and he’s certainly willing to do it with the country. Our nation’s choice about whether to elect him is in the past, but the choice we have to make about whether we will become like him is ongoing.
As for “wild,” I now think the word is misused. The longer I have lived and worked here among the noncommercial creatures of the woods and fields, the less I have been able to conceive of them as “wild.” They plainly are going about their own domestic lives, finding or making shelter, gathering food, minding their health, raising their young, always well-adapted to their places. They are far better at domesticity than we industrial humans are. It became clear to me also that they think of us as wild, and that they are right. We are the ones who are undomesticated, barbarous, unrestrained, disorderly, extravagant, and out of control. They are our natural teachers, and we have learned too little from them. The woods itself, conventionally thought of as “wild,” in fact is thought of and used as home by the creatures who are domesticated within it.
Wendell Berry, This Day - Sabbath Poems, 1972 - 2012 - Introduction
One-hundred thirty-three years ago today, my dear grandmother was born. In 10 days, we’ll celebrate our dear granddaughter’s first birthday. The blessings roll down the generations.
… we clasp the hands of those who go before us, and the hands of those who come after us … – Wendell Berry (h/t @jabel)
COYS!
If you want to jump in on the side of humanization, join the Great Conversation. This is the tradition of debate that stretches back millenniums, encompassing theology, philosophy, psychology, history, literature, music, the study of global civilizations and the arts. This conversation is a collective attempt to find a workable balance amid the eternal dialectics of the human condition — the tension between autonomy and belonging, equality and achievement, freedom and order, diversity and cohesion, security and exploration, tenderness and strength, intellect and passion. The Great Conversation never ends, because there is no permanent solution to these tensions, just a temporary resting place that works in this or that circumstance. Within the conversation, each participant learns something about how to think, how to feel, what to love, how to live up to his or her social role.
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated …
The world is built on relationships, not leverage, and relationships are built on reciprocity and respect. It is not Trump’s genius to recognize America’s unused strength; it is his blindness to see that our strength was a function of our restraint.
Other institutions – non-profits and for-profits alike – must call out ICE and Trump. This article about clergy (and others) pressuring airlines is an example.
For Kolnai, however, what attracted the young to fascism was not so much any real practical concern, nor any really coherent philosophy. It was, rather, a kind of boredom with the peace and orderliness of liberal times. Distinctly lacking in liberal societies is the kind of enmity, battle, conflict, and esprit de corps that a conquering master-nation can provide.
– Nathan Beacon, “How Not to Be a Fascist: How one Hungarian philosopher resisted the Nazis through ‘civilization.’"
Sounds a bit like ICE thugs, eh?
Celery is criminally underrated.
I’m hopeful that
to save its own species,
the tiger will become a poet,
the way dinosaurs became lizards,
And the poet, occasionally, a tiger
My only point is that no one benefits from a political, never mind, a policy debate, between Team Jackass and Team Thug fueled by a flood of voyeuristic videos. This spectacle feels to me like a metaphor in miniature of American politics generally. … Everyone plays to the crowds for attention and funding. Nobody wants to hammer shut the windows and do the work of the American people.
Right. Our politics are so juvenile. (Hence, the now almost mandatory dropping of f-bombs.)
Where did all the grown-ups go?
Remember how after 9/11 Katha Pollitt told her 13-year-old daughter she couldn’t fly the American flag, because “the flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war”? Pollitt was wrong. But this administration is making her seem less so.
By hijacking the language of patriotism for this nationalistic, statist, militaristic horseshit, the right is picking up the baton of the left by signaling to millions of Americans that America’s heritage—and the people who talk about it—are precisely the kinds of people who see the American flag the same way she did.
The lies spewing from Kristi Noem’s mouth about the bullshit “weaponization” of the murdered Minneapolis woman’s vehicle demand a mass response by the citizens of this country. Watch the video. Lies. Lies. Lies.
Tom Friedman in the NYTimes makes an excellent point: Trump’s toppling of Maduro provides Xi another precedent for invading Taiwan.
From the NYTimes: “50 Years Ago, He Was an Olympian. At 80, He’s Just as Happy to Finish Last. | Jeff Galloway, who popularized the run-walk-run method, is determined to complete one more marathon.”
15,051 days.
Already off the website. 🤷♂️
Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new. (!)
… Not the rat! Light the lamp, not the rat!
Joe Ely performs with Joe Strummer in 1979. Photo credit: George Rose/Getty
Joe Ely was so important to Texas music and especially to me when I lived in Austin in the early ’80s. This Texas Monthly tribute by Michael Hall is great.