Category: Running Log

jan 12/RUNICEGETOUT

4.25 miles
lena smith boulevard
34 degrees
path: 100% ice / road: 5% ice*

*there are so many reasons why ICE is terrible and needs to get out and should be abolished. Here’s a small one: I like thinking and writing about winter ice — how it covers the trails, what it sounds feels looks like, the different forms it takes. But now that word overwhelming means: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and hate and evil. I want my ice back! Well, maybe not the thick, jagged ice that is currently cover the entire river road and made it impossible to run on today.

Today begins the 10th year of this log. I’m so grateful that I was able to run outside to celebrate it. It has been a whole week since I’ve been able to run outside above the gorge: too slippery on the trails and sidewalks. Today the roads were mostly clear, but the paths were not. So, I ran north on Lena Smith Boulevard until it ends at Minnehaha Academy on 32nd, then turned around and ran south until I hit 38th, then back north to 32nd, then south up the hill. Halfway up, I decided to do the hill again — hill repeats! So when I got to the top (it’s a small hill, so it only took 1 minute to climb it), I turned around and ran back down it. At the bottom, I took a 45 second break then ran up it again. I did that 5 times. It felt good!

During one of my breaks, I noticed a woman across the road, on the trail, holding up a big white sign. I couldn’t read what she had written on it, but I imagine it was Abolish ICE or something about Minnesotans standing up for each other because all the cars were honking. It was wonderful, hearing all the honks, and her loud, Thank You! after they did it. I started imagining different ways I could do something like her during my daily running practice. I decided a sign or banner would be too awkward. Next I thought about pinning a sign to my jacket. Then, the idea: work with RJP to design a shirt or something I could wear that offered some sort of resistance to ICE and/or expressed my love for my city. Should it just say LOVE? Whatever it is, I want it be big and brightly colored and easy to see/read. RJP stopped by and I talked to her about it. She’s excited!

Ice Get Out, Know Your Rights

Another more accessible version:

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS:
WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE STOPPED BY POLICE, THE FBI OR IMMIGRATION
Police are supposed to keep us safe and treat us all fairly, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion. This card provides tips for interacting with police and understanding your rights. Note: Some state laws may vary. Separate rules apply at checkpoints and when entering the U.S. (including at airports).

IF YOU ARE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING
Upon request, show police your driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. If an officer or immigration agent asks to look inside your car, you can refuse to consent to the search. But if police believe your car contains evidence of a crime, your car can be searched without your consent. Both drivers and passengers have the right to remain silent. If you are a passenger, you can ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, sit silently or calmly leave. Even if the officer says no, you have the right to remain silent.
YOUR RIGHTS
▪ You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud.
▪ You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your car or your home.
▪ Regardless of your citizenship status, you have constitutional rights.
▪ You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. Ask for one immediately.
▪ You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law. Stay calm. Don’t run. Don’t argue, resist or obstruct the police, even when you are innocent or police are violating your rights. Keep your hands where police can see them. Ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, calmly and silently walk away. If you are under arrest, you have a right to know why.
You have the right to remain silent and cannot be punished for refusing to answer questions. If you wish to remain silent, tell the officer out loud. In some states, you must give your name if asked to identify yourself. You do not have to consent to a search of yourself or your
belongings, but police may “pat down” your clothing if they suspect a weapon. You should not physically resist, but you have the right to refuse consent for any search. If you do consent, it can affect you later in court.
ACLU Minnesota

jan 11/RUNICEGETOUT

3 miles
ywca track

Still too slippery out on the sidewalk, so back to the y for another track workout. I don’t like running at the track as much as outside, but it’s better than the treadmill in the basement or nothing. Today it was crowded with lots of maneuvering around clueless walkers. I wasn’t angered by it, but it still took energy to speed up and shift and make sure I wasn’t running into anyone. I listened to my moment playlist and tried to stay relaxed. This year, running on the track feels strange — I struggle in the beginning to find my rhythm and my legs are sore when I’m done. But even though it was awkward and not nearly as fun as being by the gorge, it felt so good to be moving and getting my heart rate up.

Before offering so more context for future Sara, here’s a post from a former student that offers a beautiful description of the love here in Minneapolis:

LONG LIVE MINNEAPOLIS…

“…And the restaurateurs refusing ICE service;
The elected officials demanding access to detention facilities;
Long live the mutual aid runners organizing food caravans;
The hospital staff working to keep ICE away from patients and attorneys working to keep ICE out of our courts;
Long live our students pelting ICE with snowballs when they invade school grounds;
The teachers & school admins offering our youth hybrid & e-learning;
The noise makers keeping ICE awake in their hotels all night;
The generous folks handing out samosas, whistles, legal aid, hand warmers, & coffee at rallies;
Long live the immigrant rights orgs, working overtime for weeks to conduct ICE watches, coordinate legal service & comms among separated families, & prevent evictions under occupation;
The Signal coordinators fielding thousands of requests for rapid response alerts;
The artists opening their studios for poster-painting & sharing free downloads & screenprints of their images;
The city council leaders joining the frontlines despite utter exhaustion and risks to their own safety and wellbeing;
The veterans showing up at Whipple to denounce ICE’s abhorrent conduct;
The small business owners speaking out, at risk to their livelihoods;
The journalists upholding truth in the face of massive, state-sanctioned media repression & rubber bullets;
Ordinary folks braving single digit wind chills to lift their voices & march for hours;
Long live every immigrant to Minneapolis, & every child of immigrants.

Despite the truly unfathomable terror and violence unleashed by Trump and his supporters:

There are too many resistors to count. Too many resistors to thank.

We have The Many.”

More context for ICE in Minnesota

In my effort to educate myself about what’s happening in Minneapolis right now, I decided to look for more information about the latest ICE push by the US government here.

(6 January) The Trump administration has launched what officials describe as the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, preparing to deploy as many as 2,000 federal agents and officers to the Minneapolis area for a sweeping crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.
2,000 federal agents sent to Minneapolis area to carry out ‘largest immigration operation ever,’ ICE says

The fraud allegations have been simmering here for at least the last month, becoming very nasty, and getting so bad that it has led to violence against Somali residents:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its Minnesota chapter (CAIR-MN) today called on law enforcement authorities and public officials to take concrete actions to protect Somali-American day care centers and businesses that have been targeted with threats and harassment as children return to these centers in the wake of the holiday season ending.

A controversial and largely-debunked social media video of a conservative influencer showing up outside of day care centers in Minnesota has sparked a wave of copycat incidents in which white supremacists and social media influencers show up at similar institutions and demand access to children.
CAIR, CAIR-MN Call for Protection of Somali-American Day Care Centers Facing Copycat Harassment

It has also put so much pressure on Governor Walz that even though he is not directly connected to the fraud claims, he is not running for office again next year. The general sense among many Minnesotans is that the state, and Minneapolis and St. Paul, are being punished because Walz was the vice presidential candidate.

Along with the increased presence of ICE here,

The Trump administration has escalated its campaign against alleged benefits fraud, freezing social services funding for five Democratic-led states and announcing a new fraud-focused position in the Justice Department that will report directly to the White House. Officials also point, without evidence, to immigrants as the primary drivers of the fraud.
Influencer, White House welfare fraud claims are distorted, but the system has risks

added an hour or two later: Just read Heather Cox Richardson’s update on Facebook and this part was particularly pertinent:

Trump and his allies have singled out Minnesota in large part because of its large Somali-American population, represented in Congress by Omar, a lawmaker Trump has repeatedly attacked, from a population Trump has called “garbage.” As Chabeli Carrazana explained in 19th News, shortly after Christmas, right-wing YouTuber Nick Shirley posted a video that he claimed showed day care centers run by Somali Americans were taking money from the government without providing services.

The video has been widely debunked. In 2019, a state investigation found fraud taking place in the child care system and charged a number of people for defrauding the state. After that, the state tightened oversight, and state investigators have conducted unannounced visits to the day cares Shirley hit in his videos, where they found normal operations. Shirley claimed fraud when the centers would not let him in, but child care centers lock their doors and obscure the windows for the safety of the children, and would not let a strange man inside the facility to videotape.

But Trump used the frenzy to justify cutting $10 billion in antipoverty funding to five states led by Democrats—California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York—only to have a federal judge block his order yesterday. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins promptly announced she was withholding $129 billion in federal funding from Minnesota, alleging fraud.

Jane Hirshfield

Revisiting Jane Hirshfield’s wonderful poem, “Interruption: An Assay” that I posted on this day in 2024 and thinking about her definitions of interruption in relation to non-interruption, then disruption, then a break — break as a pause, a momentary stopping / break as a rupture, a split, a gap — a break in the trees, a break in the limestone.

What is the difference between interruption and disruption? Looking to Hirshfield for an answer, or as Mary Oliver puts it, a suggestion, I found a discussion of the periphery vs. the center. Wow!

INTERVIEWER

Your line “less to solve than to speak of what needs solving” reminds me of Chekhov’s statement, “Art does not provide answers, it can only formulate questions correctly.” What does this mean for an artist in our specific moment? One of your earlier poems, “In Praise of Coldness,” begins with another quote from Chekhov, “If you wish to move your reader, you must write more coldly.” It is a beautiful poem. “In sorrow, pretend to be fearless,” you say. “In happiness, tremble.” How do you relate to this statement from Chekhov now, after having written equally beautiful—but not at all cold—poems in Ledger that do, I think, provide answers, despite what you’ve said. I’m thinking of poems such as “Let them Not Say,” for instance, or “On the Fifth Day.”

HIRSHFIELD

Perhaps an answer in the realm of the arts is different from the right or wrong solution we bring to a problem in chemistry or mathematics. Arts “answers,” but in that word’s other sense of response, of reply. Both the poems you’ve named are bells rung hard. They summon attention. When you see a fire, you can’t stay silent.

I, though, do feel in them Chekhov’s coldness. A poem’s meaning requires an engineered, structural soundness, not so different from that of a building or bridge. Language, syntax, verb tense, soundscape, the placing of ink and ink’s absence on a page, are material things, just as steel is. Words experienced as comprehensible, consequential, do follow rules, though they are rules that a writer, like an architect, can test, press toward their outer limits. New materials bring new shapes of meaning and feeling. Those two poems feel strongly, but they are not an uncontrolled weeping. They argue, in the old-fashioned, rhetorical sense of that word, for something that matters, and make their argument in the ways art mostly does—from the side. I think it’s a good thing that poets work far from the center of our celebrity- and economics-driven culture. From the periphery, you can see more of the whole. From the center, any view will be partial. A poem is not a frontal assault, it is the root tendrils of ivy making their way into the heart’s walls’ mortar.
A Poem is Not a Frontal Assault: An Interview with Jane Hirshfield / The Paris Review

From the periphery, you can see more of the whole. From the center, any view will be partial.

A poem is not a frontal assault, it is the root tendrils of ivy making their way into the heart ‘s walls’ mortar. Yes! Hirshfield has another poem, In Praise of Being Peripheral, that I am reminded of here. Now I want to give more attention the peripheral, but later.

jan 10/GETOUTICE

Today Minnesotans spreading love, expressing grief and anger and a message, Get the Fuck Out Ice. Refusing to turn away. Not forgetting, remembering the larger context in which these acts of terror are being done by ICE and the Trump Administration. Here’s one example of that context:

Fort Snelling

Yesterday, RJP told me that ICE had taken control of a part of Fort Snelling. My immediate reaction: that’s terrible! It was a concentration camp in the 1800s! This article bolsters my initial response:

Wednesday, the FBI took control of the H.B. Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, a federal complex adjoining Minneapolis and St. Paul. The news broke at 2 p.m. when an immigration judge announced that she had to stop a hearing because the FBI was taking the building over and everyone needed to be out by 3 p.m.
Fort Snelling: The Advance Guard of Federal Invasion Since 1805

Today, Fort Snelling is doing what it was designed to do: acting as a site from which Washington can project violent power over anyone who gets in its way. Dakota people saw this in the US-Dakota War of 1862, when the U.S. deployed soldiers from Fort Snelling to do battle on the Dakota. When it forced Dakota women, children, and elders into a concentration camp down the bluff from the fort. When it expelled the Dakota from their homelands and oversaw the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

And we are seeing it today as federal agents fan out from Fort Snelling into neighborhoods, seizing peaceable people, and reserving the right to shoot anyone, like Renee Nicole Good, who gets in their way.
Fort Snelling: The Advance Guard of Federal Invasion Since 1805

Fort Snelling. Land stolen through a fake treaty. Land once used for a concentration camp, now as a detention center. Today, three members of the house, U.S. rep. Omar, Craig, and Morrison were initially granted then denied access to the facility:

“What happened today is a blatant attempt to obstruct members of Congress from doing their oversight duties,” Omar said. “When we appropriate funds as members of Congress, we are expected by the public to do oversight, because the public requires their money be used with transparency and accountability, and what happened today is ICE agents deciding that we were no longer allowed to fulfill our constitutional duties.”
U.S. Reps. Omar, Morrison and Craig denied access to immigration detention facility at Fort Snelling (Sahan Journal)

jan 9/RUN

3.1 miles
track
ywca

I would have liked to run outside. It was sunny, not too windy, and almost above freezing, but the sidewalks were way too icy. I tried to go out for a recon walk earlier today and only made it to the end of our sidewalk before realizing the surface conditions were terrible. I had to turn around and come home. Bummer. Fresh air might have relieved some of the anxiety I’m carrying in my body from what’s happening. At least I was able to go to the y and run on the track. Moving and working up a sweat helped some, I think.

Since I was looping around a track, I decided to listen to my “Wheeling Life” playlist.

10 Track Things

an orange bucket was out on the track in its yearly spot, catching drips from a pipe
a short man with white hair was walking backwards in the inner lane
the gym below was empty
not too many people on the track, all of them quiet
in the quiet, I could hear my feet striking the track surface — I think my striking feet were the loudest thing on the track — thwack thwack thwack
a woman walking fast, wearing a shirt that reminded me of scrubs — had she just gotten off a shift at a hospital?
some people follow the written rules and walk in the innermost lane, some ignore them and walk in the middle (which is for runners) or in the far left lane (which is for passing)
just remembered: just before entering the track, passed the woman in a scrubs shirt putting air pods in her ears
very few runners — while I was running, only me and Scott — after, while walking, one other runner
inside it was warm (good) and very dry (bad)

Working on a tiny (24 word) poem tentatively titled bio-regionalism, and I was thinking about something I recalled hearing from Stanley Tucci in his series on regions in Italy and their food: he said that a region/neighborhood was/is defined by anyone who was in earshot of that neighborhood’s church bells. I looked it up and found this helpful definition and video from Rick Steves. The term is campanilismo:

During Tuscany’s medieval and Renaissance prime, this region was a collection of feuding city-states dominated by rich families. To this day, Tuscans remain fiercely loyal to their home community, and are keenly aware of subtle differences between people from different cities, towns, and villages. (Italians have a wonderful word for this: campanilismo, meaning that a community consists of the people within earshot of its bell tower — campanile.)
source

I love this idea of defining a community, your home-place, by its bells. My bells are the bells of St. Thomas, just across the river.

jan 8/BIKERUN

minneapolis update: peaceful protests last night, more protests today, Noem/Trump are attempting to escalate it, Walz calls for peaceful protests and “good trouble”, FBI takes investigation away from Minnesota, public school is cancelled for rest of the week after ICE enters campus and threatens staff/students at Roosevelt High School (the threatening was yesterday, the cancellation begins today).

And, just discovered this: Renee Nicole Good was a poet who won an award for this poem: On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

bike: 30 minutes
basement
run: 2 miles

Icy outside, so inside on the bike and the treadmill. Important to get in some exercise for stress relief. Watched clips from the US figure skating championships while I biked, listened to Mood: Energy” while I ran. Songs: Panama/ Van Halen; We Got the Beat/ Go Gos; I did Something Bad/ Taylor Swift; My Sharona/ The Knack — an at least one other song I can’t remember now. It felt good to move, especially for the second mile of my run. A few times, I felt like I was floating. The thing I remember most: my bobbing shadow off to the side, in the shadows, near the old coal shoot — yes, my house is old enough to have a coal shoot in the basement.

Wow, this poem:

[from the time we were talking]/ Henri Meschonnic

Translated from the French by Gabriella Bedetti & Don Boes

from the time we were talking
to stones
we took on their
meaning their time and now
their memory is in us it
walks in our footsteps it moves
in our warmth we no
longer distinguish
between what they say and us
the time of the stones is us and
we are full of cries that we
leave in our wake like
stones
holding on to each other
to find among them our
path

This morning, barely one day after a woman was shot and killed by ICE here in Minneapolis, this poem speaks to me in a different way than it would have the day before. Before I would have thought about the time of stones as living in geologic time or talking to/with/as stones as echoes or Kafka’s parable of Prometheus in which Prometheus becomes part of the rock (“According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.”) but now I’m thinking of the stones — like Emily Dickinson’s granite lip — as tombs and the dead talking (or trying to) talk to us:

If I couldn’t thank you,
Being fast asleep,
You will know I’m trying
With my Granite lip!

jan 7/

This morning, a woman attempting to witness with her phone from the safe distance of a car, was shot point-blank and murdered by an ICE agent.
(Thousands attend vigil for woman slain by ICE Agent in Minneapolis)

jan 6/SHOVELSWIM

shovel: 20 minutes
slushy, icy, thick snow
33 degrees

Yuck! It’s an awful mess out there on the sidewalk, the roads. After he got back from his walk I asked FWA if it was, a. doable and b. worth it to go out and shovel. He said yes to both, so I did, but now I’m wiped out and sore and not sure if it was either of those things. Looking out my window right now at the street, I am disheartened. One big soupy, slushy mess. Will more of it melt and be cleared out before it freezes again? I hope so.

A quick note about my ankle: crisis averted! The RICEing (both resting icing compressing and elevating AND playing around with acronym) must have helped. My ankle feels fine today!

Sara from 4 jan 2026 asked me to let her know if anything big and terrible happened today. Not yet (as of 4:49 pm), but there’s a lot of talk about invading Greenland and I keep seeing the headline, The Danish PM says a US invasion of Greenland will mean the end of NATO.

In other shitty news: I noticed, while ~~clearing~~ trying to clear the deck that a wide stretch of snow under our crab apple tree has been turned into a port-a-potty by the two rabbits who visit every night to feast on fallen apples. Very gross! Some scat here, some scat there, scat scat everywhere. The snow is glowing brown — I’ll have to try and get a picture of it, because my words can’t quite convey the color or the grossness — a picture probably can’t either.

update: I pointed out the tree/rabbit/shit situation to Scott and we agreed it wasn’t all rabbit scat and it wasn’t glowing brown. A lot of it was discarded apple bits from birds or squirrels or the bunnies and the snow beneath the tree’s wide canopy was glowing a faint orange, not brown.

swim: 1.75 loops
123 laps / 55 minutes
ywca pool

Decided to swim without stopping until Scott showed up at the end of my lane. I was hoping to go longer — distance and time. Maybe that can be next week’s goal: to get to 140 laps, which is 2 miles. I’d like to do it in 1 hour. It felt great to be swimming again.

shadows: the afternoon light coming in the window created lots of shadows on the pool floor. Today I decided that it looked less like the floor was dancing and more like it was crawling. As I swam, I suddenly thought of the line from Raiders of the Lost Ark: why does the floor move? Other memorable shadows: the lane lines on the shallow floor, then the lane lines casting a shadow at the far end, all the way up the wall, from the deep bottom to the top. Such a cool image. I liked admiring it every time I neared the far wall.

10 Pool Friends

the yellow! grout between the bright blue tiles on the pool floor in the middle of each lane — I never noticed it was yellow and not white — is it, or was it just dirty?
the bright blue tiles marking a cross at the end of each lane — usually I read them as black or dark navy
some crud on a tile beneath me
a small red chunk of something that started on the pool floor a lane over, near the spot where it slopes down, then slowly shifted down each lap — tile after tile — until it made it to the bottom and then under me in my lane — I was fascinated by this red thing and enjoyed tracking it — I prefer not knowing what it is/was
a guy in black swim trunks 2 lanes over that I raced (in my head) and beat
someone in fins one lane over
the silver trail of bubbles that the swimmers’ fins made as they kicked
a lifeguard in a BRIGHT yellow jacket
a swimmer in green swimming on their back, doing some sort of reverse breaststroke
a swimmer in red doing freestyle then sidestroke then walking then kicking with a kickboard

Halfway through, I swam breathing every 5 strokes and tried to think one word each time I surfaced to breathe: 1 2 3 4 5 light 1 2 3 4 5 tile 1 2 3 4 5 window 1 2 3 4 5 door 1 2 3 4 5 tree — Nothing that interesting . . . yet . . . I’ll have to keep working at it, see if I can open myself up to more words. The bigger challenge: can I remember them? Nearing the end of the swim I was getting into a groove and thinking about how swimming for almost an hour without stopping is good practice for longer runs/marathon training. I was also thinking — okay, now the fun starts — as in, I’ve swum enough today to get into a flow state, what could happen if I kept going? What doors might open for me? What wonderfully strange ideas could I have? What delightfully tiny poems could I craft? I didn’t get to find out because Scott arrived and my swim was over, which was fine for today. I’d like to experiment with this longer swim this winter, see what I can do with it.

Little House Update

A few days ago, we made it to season 3 of Little House on the Prairie. We both knew something had shifted in the wrong direction when we heard the opening theme song: season 2’s funky 70s bass line had been replaced with a cheesy swing.

The first episode guest-starred Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. It was enjoyable, but had lost some of the dark edge of realism that we enjoyed in seasons 1 and 2. Episode 2 was the beginning of evil Nellie, which is camp-tastically awesome, but lacks a grounding in a real time and place. It was exaggerated and over-dramatic, shifting the story away from the lives of people trying to not die in the unforgiving frontier of the 1870s, to an epic battle between the flawed and feisty goodness of Laura and the pure, irredeemable evil of Nellie Oleson. Nellie and her twisted, unhinged glare. Nellie silent and still, lurking at the window. Nellie and her old-fashioned temper tantrums, one on the bed, wailing and squealing and pounding her fists into her pillow; another pacing the room, shrieking and breaking porcelain dolls on the wall, smashing an expensive dollhouse with a hammer on the floor. I do find Nellie’s antics to be entertaining, and get some pleasure in loathing Mrs. Oleson, but I miss the quieter, darker depictions of the difficult frontier life that we witnessed in seasons 1 and 2.

After Little House we’ve been watching an episode of Love Boat from season 1. We’re enjoying it. Such a contrast to Little House. It makes me want to watch the whole line-up from a 70s evening.* I’ll have to ask Scott what that would be; as a kid he memorized the tv guide and probably remembers exactly what was on and when. That would be a fun and enlightening project, to revisit the 70s values/perspectives/preoccupations represented in prime-time tv that we were both raised on.

*perhaps the more accurate recreating of our early kid viewing experience of these shows would be to figure out the reruns that ran back-to-back on TBS.

Wow, this entry went on a ramble! Before ending it, I’ll just add that I have been shocked by how relevant the themes in Little House are right now. Yes, I have problems with the show — too much God-talk and not enough discussion of what it means to live on stolen land less than 2 decades after the civil war — but the hope and resistance and the desire for social justice of the 70s shapes these stories in ways that I had forgotten ever existed (because: Reagan). I am resisting the urge to devote an hour or more to offering specific examples of what I mean here. I don’t have time today.

jan 5/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
30 degrees
100% loose snow

Loose snow. Difficult to move through. For almost all of the run, it was fine. I was careful, deliberate, light on my feet. On the last stretch, running up ~~that~~ a hill, I ran faster to pass a woman with 2 dogs. She was walking fast and I was irritated? Was she doing something worthy of irritation? She and her dogs were walking in such a way that took over most of the path and forced me into the uneven snow. And, she seemed to speed up as I neared her, like she was racing me. Not long after passing her, it happened. I rolled my ankle in the loose snow. oh shit, I exclaimed. It was fine for the rest of the run, and it seems fine an hour later. I’m RICEing (rest ice compression elevate) to be safe. To increase the odds that all will continue to be fine, it’s time for some fun with medical terms: RICE

R I C E

routinely, I crave eggplant
rust is corroding energy
rapt, I consider everything
rippled ice concerns Edgar
reciting Issa causes enlightenment
rabbits implore, cancel Easter!
rooted in creative excess
restive, impatient, contrary, edgy
rude individuals can’t empathize
ribald, irritating, caterwauling, egomaniacs
Rosie is counting elements
Rankled, I cry, Enough!
river island causeway eddy

Other memories from the run: the bells of St. Thomas playing a Christmas song, but which one?; crows cawing steadily, and syncing my steps to their song; several cars swinging wide to avoid splashing me with the melted snow; waving twice at a guy in a red jacket — once on my way north, then again on my way south; stopping several times to walk when the snow became too soft and uneven; small splashes of yellow dotting the snow, some bright, some faded; the road was bare and wet, the trail was not; feeling strong as I lengthened my torso, stretched out of my hips, opened my chest, and increased my cadence.

On This Day: January 5, 2025

Found these beautiful lines from the wonderful Carl Phillips while revisiting 2025’s January 5th entry:

Moving With: Carl Phillips

What if, bet-
ween this one
and the one

we hoped for,
there’s a third
life, taking

its own slow,
dreamlike hold,
even now —

blooming in
spite of us?
(from “Sky Coming Forward”)

Moving with Li-Young Lee:

for those three
primary
colors: staying,
leaving, and
returning.
(Big Clock/Li-Young Lee)

Found this delightful poem this morning. I thought about the contrary crows when I heard the crows by the gorge.

Birds on Statues/ Cole Swensen

On one side of the pond, a woman heads west in stone, while on the other, it’s a man heading east, but with the same extravagant gestures of headlong flight—one leg thrown back and both hands launched forward. And sometimes it’s on the tip of one of the lifted heels that a pigeon sits, and sometimes it’s on a thumb, but usually it’s on a head, often one on each, making a mockery of the phrase “in headlong flight.”

Though now they’re rebuilding the pond, so they’ve drained it, with the odd result that the pigeons have gone and have been replaced by crows. They too particularly like to perch on the statues’ heads, but, determined to assert their alterity, they make sure that they’re always facing backward.

jan 4/BIKE

30 minutes
basement

A bike in the basement to get my legs moving and to have the chance to watch something. Started with the next episode of Wednesday but, when she encountered another man with his eyes pecked out, then peered into his gaping mouth and was assaulted by a stream of crows emerging from said mouth, I didn’t know if I wanted to keep watching. Then she quipped, he was murdered by a murder of crows, and I did know, I didn’t. Next up: the new, 2025 version of Frankenstein. I got as far as the scene where the “monster” begins attacking the crew of a ship heading for the North Pole, but it was too violent for me. Then, I tried Train Dreams and made it to the part when the main character (who is white) is working for a railroad and his sawing partner — a Chinese immigrant — is dragged away from his work by 4 white men and thrown off of a high trestle. Too much for me today, I guess. I remembered that I was in the middle of watching a documentary about the poet, Charles Olson. So I found that, and managed to stick with it for the last 10 or so minutes of my bike. Sometimes I can find something to watch right away, and sometimes I can’t stick with anything. I should make a list of videos to watch before my next bike ride.

wrapping up the old year as I start the new one

Began working on my end of the year review. Realized that I’ve created a lot of new poetic forms. I should document that on my writing portfolio site. Decided I want to have a separate page titled, a year in pictures, since I posted pictures several times. After finishing this entry, I’ll get back to my 2025 cento. I’m not sure I like what I wrote yesterday.

Speaking about the new year, it started with a bang. Trump invaded Venezuela without congressional approval early Saturday morning. Heather Cox Richardson’s latest video does an excellent job of clearly describing why this is such a big deal. According to her, Trump and his administration are in a desperate position and are going to try a lot of bad shit (my words, not hers) to solidify their power. In the next 3+ months (she imagines we will know by May) either his Putin-esque totalitarian regime will take firm hold OR the American people will reclaim democracy and laws will be enforced. It’s going to get bad — much worse — before it gets better, if it gets better.

HCR on 3 jan 2025

All of this sounds bad, and it is, but HCR presents it in a way that is not sensationalized and is informed, informative, and offers hope and a chance for doable action.

note for future Sara: near the beginning of the video she mentions that some people are speculating Trump will do something big for the 5th anniversary of January 6th. Sara from 6 jan 2026, let us know what happens. Hopefully nothing.

jan 3/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls
20 degrees
100% snow-covered

Not a single bare spot on the trail or the road. Hard on the ankles, calves, and the eyes — so bright and white and endlessly nothing. Difficult to see where the snow was loose and where it wasn’t. It didn’t bother me; I’m just happy to be outside moving, connected to this place. Tried to greet everyone I saw — runners, walkers, at least one biker — with a wave or a hello.

10 Things

the smell of chimney smoke lingering near a neighbor’s house
soft ridges of sand-colored* snow covering the street — tricky to run over and through
empty benches
(almost) empty parking lots
a hybrid/electric car singing as it slowly rounded a curve near locks and dam no. 1
the sound of the falls falling over the ledge: almost gushing
scattered voices echoing around the park — at least one of them was from an excited kid
stopping to tighten my laces, a woman in a long coat nearby, standing and admiring the falls
splashes of yellow on the snow
bird song then a burst of birds briefly filling the sky

*sand-colored: using these words, I immediately thought of a favorite poem that I’ve memorized, I Remember/ Anne Sexton: the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color — no more than sand was a color

I listened to the quiet — barely any wind — for the first half of the run, then put in my “Sight Songs” playlist on the way back. Memorable songs: Sheena Easton’s nasally high notes in “For Your Eyes Only,” and the lyrics in the refrain —

The passions that collide in me
The wild abandoned side of me
Only for you, for your eyes only

Yikes. Also, these lines from The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”:

And if I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat

And if I shiver please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

And these, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which I don’t recall ever hearing:

Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be. . .

. . .Every now and then I know there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you

(Almost) 9 Years!

Typically each year, I mark the anniversary of this log as the first of January, with a new year beginning on that day. But, that’s not the real anniversary of this log. It’s January 12th, 2017. Why the 12th and not the 1st? I’m not quite sure; I’ll have to look through my journal from that year. It seems fitting, with my affinity (see D. Seuss below) for the approximate, the almost, to not start on the first day of the year!

On This Day: January 3, 2022

Reading this past entry today, I re-discovered this beautiful poem by a favorite poet, Diane Seuss, Love Letter. Rereading it, so many words, phrases, ideas tapped me on the shoulder, invited me it! Here’s the second half of the poem:

I’m much too sturdy now to invest
in the ephemeral. No, I do not own lace
curtains. It’s clear we die a hundred times
before we die. The selves
that were gauzy, soft, sweet, capable
of throwing themselves away
on love, died young. They sacrificed
themselves to the long haul.
Picture girls in white nighties jumping
off a cliff into the sea. I want to say
don’t mistake this for cynicism
but of course, it is cynicism.
Cynicism is a go-to I no longer have
the energy to resist. It’s like living
with a vampire. Finally, just get it
over with, bite me. I find it almost
offensive to use the word love
in relation to people I actually love.
The word has jumped off
so many cliffs into so many seas.
What can it now signify?
Shall I use the word affinity
like J.D. Salinger, not a good
man, put into the mouths
of his child genius characters? I have
an affinity for my parents. An affinity
for you. I will make sure you are fed
and clothed. I will listen to you
endlessly. I will protect your privacy
even if it means removing myself
from the equation. Do those sound
like wedding vows? Are they indiscriminate?
Well then, I am indiscriminate.
I am married to the world.
I have worked it all out in front of you.
Isn’t that a kind of nakedness?
You have called for a love letter.
This is a love letter.

sturdy! I love this word — the sound and the feeling of it: I like being sturdy. My Girl (in my Girl Ghost Gorge poem, the preferred version of me — Sara, age 8).

the “gauzy, soft, sweet selves” — these gothic girls, jumping off cliffs into the sea — a very different version/vision of a girl than mine

Linking these lines to others from Seuss, I imagine one version of her girl to be the one that died when her father did — she writes about him in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. That girl’s father became sick when she was 2 and died when she was 7.

Of course, this is only one version of her girl. How many different versions of girls do I have? Do I write about?

Affinity?! Yes, I need to put that beside my list of “love?” words, accustomed, familiar, acquainted, known. Affinity = kinship, attraction, liking/affection, causal relationship, attractive force, “a relation between biological groups involving resemblance in structural plan and indicating a common origin”

Right now, I’m reading “You” as the poem and poetry.

Indiscriminate = not marked by careful distinction — ambiguous, sloppy? a (too) rough approximation?

love letter world . . . suddenly, I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me

That was fun, giving some time to these words! I am drawn — do I have an affinity? — to Diane Seuss’s words. Is it because my introduction to her was her fabulous poem about vision that begins with the line, the world, italicized? Or her ekphrastic poems, in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl?

a return to the ekphrastic! I am reminded of my past reading and writing about still life, especially with Diane Seuss. I’m imagining my “how to see” series of ekphrastic poems with a section on still life paintings and one on pastoral poems! Also, a section on artists with vision conditions or that particularly resonate for my vision: Magritte, Monet, Vincent Van Gogh. Ideally, a series of poems. But first, taking the time to gather all of the resources together, then to stay open to what could happen! I’m also imagining a section on cut-outs/silhouettes, which I studied during my shadow month.

Colette Love Hilliard and the erasure poem

Last night I bought CLH’s a wonderful catastrophe. Wow! I love it. This one reminded me of my blind spot/mood ring visual poetry:

4.25 mileslena smith boulevard34 degreespath: 100% ice / road: 5% ice*