It's going to be a short one this week, friends. Up here in Greater Boston we have the tools for a winter blast, but one of those tools is "snow day," and as I write this we're embarking on our second in a row. Which has entailed some deviations from the usual routine!

One of the real gifts offered by this line of work is flexibility: the projects take months if not years, they're rarely time critical (except when they are--almost always around the holidays, when everyone else is trying to get the hot potatoes out of their hands and into yours), and the most vital heart of the practice is the kind of deeply entangled codependently-originating problem solving that's often rewarded by enforced time away from they keyboard and the notebook, since things that look like work may in fact be 'anxious word-frittering' in a 'productive work' mask. Though please don't tell a writer that when life shifts out from under them to require the surrender of eight to sixteen hours of writing time in a row. We get bitey.

So I've been enjoying the time with my kid. But my kid hasn't consented my sharing our stories with the wider internet, and while parenting is such a huge part of my life that it often feels like the rest of my life is being lived in the cracks that aren't parenting, that part's got to stay outside of our particular shared space here.

The snow is amazing. Yesterday, as it pressed on into its 25th, 26th, 27th hour, the magic gave way to the vague impending dread you may remember from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising: 'Tonight will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining." But the sun is out today and the sky is blue and the landscape transformed. I know there's a picnic table under that drift, but Sherlock Holmes wouldn't be able to suss it out. On top of our neighbor's grill there is a column of snow as tall as a man. The rabbit tracks across the yard have a certain desperation to them; you can almost hear the bunnies saying, "What even is this?"

I've been writing, in fact, a bit: catching idle moments to string sentences together on the Pomera. It's a neat flip of the usual way I think about writer-focus, and it's led to rediscovering one of the things I love about this practice:the slow measured drip of problem solving. Each sentence, each paragraph, each word, has all the interest and joy and complexity of a turn in a game of Slay the Spire: a contained problem solving exercise, a chance to deploy mastery and express yourself and get the thing over in a way that sparks joy.

Also, reading. I'm about halfway through Elizabeth Bear's The Folded Sky, which feels like a nice warm bath of a novel so far and invites musing (too large for this space but maybe right-sized for next week's?) about what constitutes 'cozy' for different readers: I suspect 'pirate blockade' and 'parasite murders' aren't the thing for most, but for me this book is providing some cozy feelings. I also read Aliette De Bodard's re-release of the compelling, eerie House of Shattered Wings books, Alexandra Vasti's delightful Ladies in Hating, and Sam Keith's Batman / The Maxx crossover, an absurdist blast of nostalgia and thinkyness (The Maxx was a deep formative influence I don't talk about much, and not just because of the whole 'Hey! A Guy with my Name!' thing, though my email sig was "I am The Maxx, answer your phone" for... many years).

That's gonna have to do for now. There's a lot else live in my mind and heart, but getting that production-ready would take time I just don't have. So I'll leave you with benediction. Stay warm, stay strong. Bring what light you can into the world. Work for the liberation of all sentient beings.

But of course, as I go to post, I can't quite leave it at that. I had a beautiful dream last night, in which our national emergency was over: the regime fallen, some slow forward motion achieved, some thaw, some American spring. It felt good, friends, and the goodness reminded me of the worth of the work.

It's easy for those of us not in Minneapolis right now to feel like spectators of the struggle there, watching the courage and heroism and neighborliness on display, and the horrifying costs regular people have already had to pay to stand up for their neighbors. But we are not spectators. This is not happening in a fictional space, which we can only touch through feeling. We are connected to it. If you're in the Continental United States and you left your house right now, you could walk there. (Though, for purely temperature-related reasons, I don't think you should try. Dress warmly, y'all.)

Many of us, even Americans, are far way from Minneapolis--this is a big country; you can cross the continent of Europe from north to south, in many places, faster than you can drive across many of our United states. But a front can only be a front if it is supported--otherwise it's just cut off. So, those of us further away are called to support: to give the army the stomach it marches on. Anything is better than nothing. A little more is better than a little less. Folks closer to the ground have posted good resources for supporting demonstrators and endangered families; here are many great suggestions from Naomi Kritzer to that effect. Calling your representatives can feel futile, but it does matter and takes very little time.

If you have more time, connecting with groups in your neighborhood that share your values is very important--this will be harder of course the greater your caregiving load. (I've found myself able to do much less than I'd like in this direction, for example.) But on the flip side, your caregiving load likely places you in several automatic communities with other people who have a similar degree of skin in the game—PTOs, playground gatherings, etc. These connections are particularly important since this front is a mobile one. We're all targets eventually.

There is so much movement now. I see it everywhere. Political groups are moving. Churches are moving. I do keenly feel that Congress is failing to meet the moment--but these people are not leaders really. If they are, they're leaders only by accident. A politician, I've heard it said, is someone who runs to the front of the nearest and biggest parade. We can make be the parade. We can make them feel it.

Okay. There we go. I try not to talk like that on here all that often because if I did I would talk like that all the time, and perhaps you, like me, are talking like that to yourself in your own head every day and have come to particularly appreciate spaces made for talking about other things. We're all people here; I like to think that everyone on this list is a real human in a real community doing their hysterical best. I'm sending strength out there to y'all, is what I'm saying. I'm sending good books, as I can write and read them. Take care, stay warm, link arms, keep your head up and your eyes open.

Happy reading.