January 26, 2026

A day like any other, but the latest death in Minneapolis and this calendar photo stirred up a lot of thoughts

Illuminations, South Platte River, CO. Photo by ©Darren White Photography

Across much of the country, the weather has been harsh, bringing subzero temperatures to the upper Midwest and snow in the South and East, but the national temperature feels like everything is burning.

There was yet another death on the streets of Minneapolis over the weekend.

So much has been said already, but it has left me mute. All I can do is sit and reflect.

No, you say, this is a time to act! Yes, of course. Yes, but today, I cannot carry that load. Today, I have no energy to march or hold a sign or cry “Justice!” Today, all I can do is sit and grieve. All I can do is allow the weight of the world to settle into my core.

In a few weeks, another grandbaby will be born into my family, and today I am thinking about that baby. This will be another blest child, a loved child, but a child whose parents see the world and want it to be other than what it is.

When my daughter was a baby herself, I remember seeing an attack on TV, in a night sky, half a world away. It was the first time I heard the term “Scud missiles.” It was the first time I worried about the future and the fate of the world.

The conflagration passed in less than five weeks, and I wondered if this was what wars were going to be like now. Volleys and skirmishes. I had come of age during Vietnam; the nightly news broadcasted the day’s body counts and college campuses roiled with rage. It seemed to last forever.

Fast forward a couple of years to the birth of my son. Fast forward yet again, and he was in school. Life moves apace. One bright fall day, as we headed for a field trip, a teacher whispered that a plane hit one of the Twin Towers in New York City. By the time we arrived at the park on the northern edge of the county, a second plane had struck the other tower.

This was before cell phones, and the only way to get news was from the bus radio. I thought about the two of us in these woods and the rest of the family miles away.

I thought about the movie “Testament” and wondered if the world was going to end. It was a strange reaction. That film was about a nuclear attack, so there were no real parallels to what we later came to call 9/11. Except the family in that 1983 movie was separated when the bomb went off, and so, now, were we.

That’s all I wanted that morning, for us to be together.

Perhaps that is what I’m feeling now: wanting to gather the chicks under my wing, as in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to protect those I love in a time when savagery reigns.

What’s happening now cannot be a surprise, not to anyone who’s been paying attention, but here’s the thing about human nature. Anyone who said after the election, “Look, this guy and his henchfolk are hellbent on destruction. They do not care about you or me.” Anyone who said that got laughed at, disregarded, or regarded as alarmist and dramatic. No one listens to Cassandra.

In the 1965 film, “Ship of Fools,” two outcasts—Glocken, a little person and Lowenthal, a Jew—are table mates on a ship sailing from Mexico to Germany in 1933. Glocken understands that the Jews aboard are sailing to their death. Lowenthal scoffs: “There are a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?”

Human nature doesn’t want to look in the dead eyes of hatred. We don’t want to listen to the Glockens. Americans are Lowenthals to their core.

“Congress will hold him to account.” “The Supreme Court will overrule.” “We have secure and safe voting.” “The safeguards will hold him in check.” “ICE won’t come to _____.”

During 45’s term, Americans simply didn’t want to see. The mishandled morass of COVID wasn’t enough? The deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Ashli Babbitt, and numerous others weren’t enough? January 6 was a day of love? Death and destruction is the point, and we cannot bring ourselves to admit it.

When Renee Nicole Good was killed by ICE, people said, “Well, now, NOW Is the inflection point. Now, the Democrats/Republicans/Congress will rise up.”

Yet, here we are. Another death. Alex Pretti. Say his name. Add it to the list. So, today, I sit in silence, hands in my lap.

And all of this reflection started because I looked, really looked, at the photo on the January calendar at work, the trees and grasses donned in a heavy coat of hoarfrost, the river open and flowing, the sky blue, clouds like rain, and I wished for a world where a walk along that river, on that frosty morning, was my only concern for the day.