Category: Running Log

march 13/RUNGETOUTICE

4 miles
wabun hill and back
34 degrees

Wasn’t planning to run this late afternoon, but snow is coming and Scott was going out for a run and I got my new pair of shoes, so I decided to go for it (or get after it as Carrie Tollefson would say). Scott and I didn’t run together, just at the same time (5:45 pm) and in the same place (near the gorge). What a great run! Was it the sun and the crisp, early spring cold? The healthy food I ate for breakfast and lunch? The new shoes? I’m not sure, but I felt strong and fast and free. On my way back, I encountered a HUGE group of runners running north, all much faster than me. At some point, I heard someone call out, good job Mill City Runners! Of course, Mill City. That’s one of the biggest running groups in the twin cities. Wow, I knew they were big, but I had no idea they were that big!

I liked running in the early evening. Other than the huge group of runners, there weren’t that many people out on the trails. I noticed the light was lower, but it was too early to see any evidence of a sun about to set. The favorite thing I noticed: wild turkeys! Half a dozen grazing in the grass just north of turkey hollow, another one of them grazing in the grass between the trail and the road.

I stopped briefly at Rachel Dow Memorial Bench and took a picture of the blue water and the thin branches softening my view:

the very blue river with some bare branches on the bluff softening my view
blue / 13 march

Friday the 13th! Tonight Scott and I will do our annual tradition of watching Friday the 13th. It’s not as good as Halloween, but it has its moments.

update, 14 saturday 2026: We watched it and Scott figured noticed something neither of us had in our previous viewings of the movie (5 or 6 or more?): each of the deaths is foreshadowed by something that happened earlier in the movie: the character who is murdered on the archery field is almost hit with an arrow a few hours earlier; another character recounts a dream she had where the rain turns into a river of blood which she calls her shower dream, only a few scenes before an axe splits her skull in a shower stall; Alice (the final girl) is surprised by the town weirdo or town prophet, depending on your perspective, when she opens the door to the pantry and he emerges, calling out, you’re doomed. you’re all DOOMED!, and then hides in that same pantry later that nightonly to be found by the killer

Crazy Ralph warning the kids

Later, Scott also realized that there were connections with the murder weapon. For example: the arrow through Jack’s throat ends up at the archery range where Brenda is killed; the axe that splits Marcy’s skull is later found, bloodied, of course, by Alice in Brenda’s bed

a few memorable lines:
Jack (Kevin Bacon), about a coming storm: the wind just shifted a good 180 degrees and it’s going to tear down the valley like a son of a gun
Brenda (can’t remember the actor’s name, but Scott looked her up and she died at the age of 49 in 2007 from pancreatic cancer — my mom died at 67 from pancreatic cancer in 2009), reacting to Bill fixing the generator: what hath God wrought

HOLES

Reworking Holes 3 to allow for better spacing of the holes. Here’s the new version of the poem:

read sentences
sliced in half
with strangeness
each one glitch ing
just enough
to scramble the senses OR scramble the meaning

fall through the hole
your reading eyes find
and land in a logic
of blur and almost
on the border between
real and imagined

And here’s a photo of it:

holes 3

RJP and I went to the Textile Center and it was fun and helpful to think about translating my ideas about holes into actual fabric and textures. I found some black netting that will be helpful and another wildly color thin fabric that might work. The question now is: how to use the fabric. I’m not sure it’s can be as simple as cutting the fabric in the shape of my blind spot — that just seems like bad decoration. What I want to do is use texture to convey how I see/read and what it feels like to do these things with my blind spot. My blind spot is rarely actually visible, and when it is, it’s not a black, opaque spot.

  1. A few new ideas: cover the words where the blind spot is in plastic that you can see through, but that makes words too fuzzy to read.
  2. A lattice of twigs, gathered at the gorge, covering the blind spot — when I see these twigs, it often reminds of my scrambled central vision.
  3. Some sort of fuzzy, fluffy texture that evokes softness, which is one thing that happens to my central vision with less working cones: everything is softer, less detailed, not sharp or harsh

The key, I think, is to use texture to communicate different aspects of my new ways of seeing with hardly any cone cells: it’s fuzzy and soft; it’s vague; it seems like there’s a film over it and that I can almost see it but not quite

Get out ICE

Read about Minnesota lawyers quietly organizing to help immigrant families:

Lawyers Built a Network: MPR also reported Thursday that hundreds of Minnesota attorneys volunteered during the surge to challenge immigration detentions in federal court, creating a rapid pro bono legal network across the state. Lawyers from a wide range of practice areas stepped in, and the article describes a system that turned scattered cases into coordinated courtroom action. It is one more reminder that some of the most important resistance in this story has happened quietly, inside petitions, filings, and courtrooms.

Sean Snow on Facebook / 13 march 2026

and from the article Sean Snow is referencing:

Since the beginning of so-called “Operation Metro Surge” in December, attorneys in Minnesota have filed more than 1,000 cases challenging the legality of immigration arrests and detentions.

Many of those filings came from lawyers who don’t normally practice immigration law.

Hundreds of attorneys volunteered to help free people detained by ICE

march 12/RUNGETOUTICE

4.45 miles
the monument and back
35 degrees

Ran over the lake street bridge and to the monument today. When was the last time I ran this route? Just checked, it was 5 nov 2025. Wow! Of course, part of the reason why I haven’t run over there is because of the winter; they don’t plow the sidewalk on the bridge, and St. Paul, where the monument is, doesn’t plow their trails as well as Minneapolis. But another reason is definitely ICE; I’ve been staying closer to home with my runs because it feels safer.

Today’s run was good; I felt (mostly) strong, although my legs/feet are sore from wearing the shoes that make them hurt. It was windy and cold on the bridge, but it was beautiful. Steel gray water, open and high enough to hide the sandbars. Scattered stretches of the east and west banks were glowing with white snow. The sun was dulled by a thin layer of clouds.

10 Things

  1. drip drip drip drip — the steady drip of water falling off the bridge near the east steps
  2. graffiti — pink and orange and black block letters under the bridge
  3. I only encountered 1 or 2 people over the bridge, both walking
  4. the bells of st. thomas chiming at noon! 15 minutes later, at 12:15
  5. running above shadow falls I glimpsed a dark flash of something — a tree? no, a person
  6. with several more glances I realized the person was not hiking but running
  7. they were nearing the worn dirt trail that climbs up and out of the ravine
  8. St. Paul has replaced the port-a-potty at the edge of the monument parking lot — there is much less graffiti on this new one, and the door closes all the way — hooray!
  9. near the edge of an overlook on the east bank, staring out at the other bluff and down at the water — a hiker emerges
  10. a plaque on the bench for, “what a woman” Sharon. She was born 2 weeks after my dad was in 1941 and died in 2002 — so young!

Holes

Currently, I have 3 Holes erasure poems. Holes 1 is about my uneasy fellowship with the word. Holes 2 is about how the hole (my blind spot) makes it unprofitable to have faith in the visible. And Holes 3 is about falling through the hole into “who knows where”, on the border between the real and surreal. I need to do at least one more hole about the small holdout-of-a-hole in the very center of my vision that enables me to still read (even if that reading is slow and sometimes unreliable).

Tomorrow, RJP and I go shopping for textiles and textures at the Stashery, so today I’m working on mapping out Holes 3. I’m using “Me, Myself, and I: Helen Oyeyemi’s Novel of Cognitive Dissonance” from The New Yorker, August 25, 2025. Here is the version I just drafted:

swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doomed vision
with shadowed acts
that leap for the light (OR flee from the light?)

read sentences
sliced in half
with strangeness
each one glitch ing
enough to let in
the improbable

fall through the hole
your reading eyes find / or your reading finds / or your eyes find
and land in a logic
of blur and almost

Is this too many words to easily/cleanly map out? Let’s find out! And if not, let’s shift the form to make it work! — several minutes pass — Okay, I mapped it, and it seems like too many words. I think I’ll save my “darling” — the line that started it all about swapping the dead-eyed liturgy for another project — a liturgy of shadowed acts and the periphery! Anyway, I’ll try to keep the rest of the poem, and figure out the rest of holes is a project tomorrow morning.

Get Out ICE and Ice

The other day I wondered when the ice would be gone from Lake Nokomis. This morning, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board offered a prediction!

Minneapolis Parks Water Quality staff have tracked “ice off” dates on city lakes for decades. Ice off is declared when a lake is substantially free of ice after being fully frozen.

We’re probably not setting any records like 2018 or 2024, which dominate the record books. Staff estimate we could see ice off on small lakes like Powderhorn and Loring as soon as this weekend. It will probably be a few more weeks for larger lakes.

MPRB post

Will the HUGE winter storm we’re expecting on Saturday night and all day Sunday impact the ice off date? BTW, I’m pretty sure that they used to refer to this as the ice out date; I think they’ve changed it because of the very negative association with ICE. I checked past entries on my log, and yes, that was what it was called. Negative association aside, I like ice out better than ice off.

march 11/RUNGETOUTICE

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees

Snow. A dusting last night, then a little more in the morning. An inch? Enough to make everything white. I was happy to be done with winter, but I don’t mind the snow. Since past snow has already melted and the ground has already warmed up, the snow didn’t stick around. By the time I went out for my run in the afternoon, almost everything was clear. The run didn’t feel easy, but I pushed through several difficult moments and kept going. Hooray for mental victories!

I listened to the dripping and gushing and the wheel whooshing as I ran south, 2 playlists — “Bunnies and Rabbits” and “the Wheelin’ Life” — as I ran back north.

10 Things

  1. sh sh sh — the shifting grit under my feet
  2. the wet pavement was shining and sparkling in the sun — so bright sometimes that I thought it was slick ice
  3. entering minnehaha park, the parking lot was empty
  4. exiting the park 10 or more minutes later, there was one car at the far end of the parking lot
  5. the creek was rushing
  6. the sidewalk on the bridge just above the falls was wet and clear — last week someone had chalked a long message on it, which I couldn’t read because of my bad vision
  7. on the walk just before I started, I noticed a small black bird skittering along the grass — it had a small circle of white feathers below its eye
  8. a runner in a bright red jacket stopped at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, a minute later they ran down a hill on the winchell trail
  9. only 1 or 2 small patches of ice, a few puddles
  10. I almost didn’t remember this one! — three people on the bridge over the falls, looking over the creek side. One, to the others, pointing down at the creek: look, there’s 75 cents! One of the others, joked (I hope): better go down there and get it!

Rabbit Recap

Slowly but surely, I’m getting to the end of my rabbit recap, but not today! See past rabbit recaps here: 9 march, 6 march, 5 march, and 4 march.

14 — 25 march 2026

Here’s a useful explanation of some reasons why I do monthly challenges about new topics, like rabbits (or wind or dirt, etc.):

And what’s the point of all of this? Following the rabbit down the rabbit hole is a wonderful distraction. It is also an excellent opportunity to learn. And to learn more about rabbits, which leads to caring about them as living things and as symbols. This caring might (is) enabling me to open up a closed part of myself (closed = strong dislike of rabbits). And it is helping me to think more broadly and specifically about the impacts of humans and human encroachment on environments and the consequences of that encroachment for humans and non-humans. Plus, all (or any) of it could inspire new poems.

A quick summary of some rabbits references and reveries: the killer bunny in Monty Python; Bunny Lebowski; Rabbit in Red matchbook from Halloween; Jimmy Stewart’s invisible bunny in Harvey; Max and Ruby; the PBS doc The Pill; Rabbit in Winnie-the-Pooh; the Cadbury Creme Egg Bunny; The Runaway Bunny; fix me hausenpffefer right away!

Rabbits in Diane Seuss:

excerpt from backyard song / Diane Seuss — I LOVE this whole poem. I’d like to use it as inspiration for a hole poem and a bunny poem!

Uncorked, I had a thought: I
want the want
I dreamed of wanting once, a
quarter cup of sneak-peek
at what prowls in the back, at
what sings in the
wet rag space behind the garage, back
where the rabbits nest

excerpt from Her first poem had a rabbit / Diane Seuss — I want to bring in the optical illusion of the bunny and duck + the idea of what seems mild but is really wild

She tended
toward rabbits back then.
Toward the theoretically mild

that are really
wild. Like ducks on a pond
that is really a moon

full of menacing weeds.

What form should my rabbit poems take? an inspiration — Seven American Centuries

New Yorker Experiment: A hole through the bottom of the known world

Today I worked on the template for my hole poem that erases the “Whisker Wars.” It has some of my blind spot, some big circles (from a iron pill cap), some medium sized-circles (lexipro cap), small (a quarter), and extra small (a penny). I want to create texture for the blind spots but leave the circles alone as pencil/gray.

a hole through the bottom of the known world

My choice of blind spots vs. circles, and the size of the circles, was mostly decided by what would fit where, but there might be some room to play around with some of it. I’ll think about it some more.

The words: nothing still / details drift like snow / cut off heads with pewter-colored faces float / a hole through the bottom of the known world / here it’s unprofitable to have faith in the visible — should it be what is visible?

added an hour later: I realized a further clarification on the idea of the hole and holes. The blind spot creates a hole in my vision, an absence that has created an uneasy fellowship with the world and made it unprofitable to have faith in the visible. But, there is also the small hole that remains in the otherwise dark blind spot that enables me to still read — it’s a small hole, and it’s getting smaller, but it’s still there. I’m noticing that my whisker wars poem offers many different sizes of holes depending on how many words I’m trying to fit in it. I need to have a poem that highlights that tiny hole holdout — ooo, holdout is a word in the whiskey wars article. Should I do a completely different poem using the same text?

Get out ICE

Each morning a local journalist, Sean Snow, offers updates on what’s happening in Minnesota, both what ICE and those in state and federal government that support ICE are doing, and how people and their communities are fighting back. I read them on Facebook, but he also posts them on Threads, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube. Today one of his examples

— sitting at the dining room table, drinking my coffee while I write this, I just heard a long goose fly by — honk honk —

was about “a real act of public memory” n St. Paul:

Testimony Builds The Record: Minnesota residents, advocates, and families testified Tuesday in St. Paul before the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about what they experienced during Operation Metro Surge. Star Tribune reported that people described racial discrimination, abusive detention conditions, treatment of protesters, and the deaths of two citizens, all in hopes of pushing the commission toward a formal investigation. This was not a final ruling or a courtroom win. But it was a real act of public memory and accountability on a day when it would have been easy for the country to start looking away.

Sean Snow on Facebook / 11 march 2026

march 10/GETOUTICE

Today I had a blood test to re-check my iron and my thyroid in the morning. No coffee or food until it was done at 11, so also no running. Just sitting and writing and witnessing the world outside my windows: walkers, one runner, some dogs, the little girl at the daycare next door named Mabel stopping a walker and forcing a conversation, elementary boys — so LOUD — running down the street.

New Yorker Experiment / Holes

A slight shift in my first hole poem. Instead of, another name for barely not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the world, it is, another name for barely not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the word. So, word not world. Since this poem is about how I read, word makes more sense to me. Part of me would like to keep both world and word, but most of me thinks I should keep it simple with word.

In my draft version, I’ve hastily shaded in the circles/my blind spot with pencil, so they are all gray blobs and dots. The only times I recall seeing gray blobs are: looking at a backlit face and staring at the wall for several seconds. When I look at text, like on this screen, I see a few words in the center and then . . . what? Difficult to put into words. Everything is buzzing, shifting, textured. I want to experiment with the blind spot blob in my poem by adding texture — I mentioned adding gauze or glitter on 8 march. RJP and I are planning to visit the Stashery at the Textile Center this week to see if I can find some cool materials.

While I let that simmer, I’ll return to the last page of experiment #5 (continued from 9 march):

words that stand out from Whisker Wars, page 3

  • face / faced
  • self-mastery
  • the Lord knows who
  • hold outs persist ed
  • who was as devoted as
  • you might think
  • emerged
  • embraced
  • writing
  • float /ed
  • only
  • unprofitable
  • propaganda
  • a sideshow staple / enfreakment
  • mishaps
  • cannot fully explains
  • died
  • few of us see
  • express rapture at seeing
  • poem reads
  • endures

Here’s what I have so far:

nothing still
details
drift like snow
cut off heads
with pewter-colored faces float

a hole through the bottom
of the known world.

here it is unprofitable
to have faith / to put faith / to believe
in the visible / what is visible

an uneasy fellowship with the world

As of now, I’ve decided to use the line uneasy fellowship with the word, but I also do have an uneasy fellowship with the world because I am barely not blind. Here’s an example of that uneasy fellowship from today’s visit to the clinic for a blood test:

I walk into the clinic with Scott and he points out the line for me to stand in as I wait to be checked in. It’s happened so fast that I have not had a chance to read the sign that tells me what this line is, I just know I’m supposed to stand in it. So I stand and wait with the person behind the counter directly in front of me, several feet away. There is another line with people in it, waiting, with a person behind the counter directly in front of them. I wait, looking vaguely in front of me at the person behind the counter and the person they are helping, trying not to stare or look as if I’m impatient (even though I am). To the side, I notice the person being helped at the other counter is done and hear the woman behind that counter tell the person in her line, wait. Then I hear her call out sharply, Scheduled! And then, Scheduled! I wonder what she means; it sounds strange. And then, Scheduled! I feel several quick, sharp pokes in my back. The person behind me is trying to get my attention. I realize that the woman behind the opposite counter is calling out to me. I am “Scheduled” because I have a scheduled appointment.1 Oh, I’m sorry! I approach the counter and she barks at me, name and date of birth! She softens a little after I answer promptly.

For a flash, I wanted to cry, but didn’t. It is such a small thing that doesn’t really matter. For a brief moment, I was that person, the irritating one in the line that wasn’t paying attention, holding everything up. Yet, it is a reminder of what I can’t do, or what I can barely do, or what I can only do with a lot of effort — and patience from those around me. It is a reminder that I am nearly (legally) blind.

I suppose these moments might matter less the more I experience them — both because I’ll get better at accounting for them and better at not being bothered by them. And I suppose I should experience them more. I just told FWA and RJP and they disagreed. FWA said “Choosing to be in those situations is like selling your soul!” Yes! Repeated this conversation to Scott and he said, but you do need to learn how to deal with these situations. I suppose. Maybe I can find some middle ground?

It helped to talk with FWA and RJP and have them not only validate but bolster my assessment of the situation as not my fault. A thought: did the woman say more than Scheduled!, but all i heard was that part? I don’t think so.

Get Out Ice

The ice at Lake Nokomis is fraying at the edges. Will the lake ice be completely gone by the end of the month?!

  1. Not to long after this happened I wondered: why didn’t she call out, person in the scheduled line or something with a bit more of an explanation. ↩︎

march 9/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
veterans home and back
50 degrees

With the sun and the bare ground it felt warmer than 50 degrees, so I wore shorts! I started with long-sleeves, but by 2 miles, I shed that skin and ran the rest of the way with bare arms too. Ah, spring! Not the easiest run. It might have been because I didn’t wait long enough after my second breakfast/early lunch.

1

One of the best things about the run was heading south and admiring the river. Waves on the surface reflecting the light. A shimmer scene. Dazzling. I haven’t seen sun on open water like this for many months.

2

Since I’m thinking about holes and spots, which also means circles and loops, I thought about a playlist I made a year ago (25 march 2025), and decided to listen to it. Much of it is about seasons and cycles, but as I ran I thought about the hole inside the wheel and falling through it — into another dimension? another way of being? a space not consumed by the expected (normal) life? Then I thought about my growing blind spot and how it has cracked open “normal” life — this cracking can be painful and difficult, but it has offered new possibilities and an entrance to another way of being.

3

After stopping to put in my playlist, as I ran down the hill and away from the park, by right foot felt strange. Was there a rock in my tread? I finally stopped and looked. Not a rock, a hole in my shoe where my middle toes strikes down. I guess that proves it: I’m not a heel or mid-foot but a toe striker! Unlike the hole in my vision, I don’t really see an upside to this hole in my shoe — well, I guess it means I have get to buy new shoes, and, if any are still available, in a bright color!

minutes later: Done! My new Brooks Ghost 17s are dark blue, turquoise, and green!

a close-up of the bottom of my running shoe with a white circle which is a hole that goes all the way through
a hole in my running shoe

I have never had a hole in the bottom of my running shoe. I’ve had holes on the side where my bunion/wide foot has pushed through, but never a hole on the bottom. I think it’s funny that this hole happened just as I’m thinking and writing about holes. I feel like I need to incorporate this hole into my project!

A Return to my Rabbit Recap

11 continued — 20 march 2026

sources of bunny inspiration: 1. rabbits who eat buckthorn bark may pee smurf blue; 2. identifying the dark forms in the backyard as rabbits; 3. origins of “bold as brass”; 4. optical illusion — duck or bunny; 5. a cup full of 3 rabbit breaths (poem); 6. jackrabbit trapped in a wildfire (poem); 7. the rock that is not a rabbit (poem); 8. little girls deciding who will have their bunny when they die (poem); 9. a rabbit offering themselves to quell a woman warrior’s hunger (book)

12 — 24 march 2026

Bunny as muse? nudge? pest? ghost?

What am I doing as I keep putting the two bunnies in my backyard into my poems? And why do I insistent on calling these wild and mature eastern cottonwood rabbits bunnies? I’m not sure these rabbits are indifferent to me, but I think they notice me in terms of whether or not I am a threat to their main activity: grazing in the grass.

A title for a poem? Crepuscular. Why don’t rabbits flee when I approach? Do they see me as non-threatening? Has human encroachment screwed up their sense of friend and foe? My mom, a pesky bunny, and a drive out the country. Peter Rabbit: the horror movie.

the rabbit hole: 

“Down the rabbit hole” is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction.[1] In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.wikipedia

Out-of-control curiosity. Distraction. Losing track of time. Getting lost in strange worlds. These are presented as bad things. Are they? Many of them are embraced within poetry. And they are great tools of refusal and resistance against late-capitalism and wannabe fascist governments — you’re not working for/perpetuating the system while you’re following the rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole online.

13 — 27 feb 2026

The rabbit hole. “Back to hole-less cottontails. A new metaphor is needed — not falling down and through to other worlds, but something about edges and shadows and the fringes — the periphery! Dwelling on the edges, in the corners, not traveling to new worlds, but noticing the other worlds that are already there, have always existed in the midst of my world.”

I want to think more about this shifting metaphor in my understanding and use of hole in my erasure poem (or poems?)

New Yorker Experiment #5

First, an update on Holes. There’s an empty space without text in the lower left corner. I’m thinking of putting a definition or a quote or a line there. Or, I could put my poem written out in a straightforward way in the space. Would that undercut of enhance the experience of reading the poem? The text could also be an explanation of my version of reading; peripheral — big picture / central — one word or small phrase at a time, often experienced in isolation.

I’ve started (just barely) working on experiment #5. I’m using an article from July 28, 2025 titled “The Whisker Wars.” All I’ve done so far is write down words that stood out to me on two out of the three pages. I want to try experimenting directly on the New Yorker pages so I have a decision to make: two of the pages are back to back, so I need to pick either the first or second page. I’ll read through both of them and see which one I like better.

Hmmm….there’s a cartoon on the second page with the caption, “That’s an area for creativity and unstructured play.” I might want to use a few of those words.

words/phrases the stand out, page 1:

  • portrait
  • a game of Now You See It, Now You Don’t
  • in the beginning, not a whisper
  • otherwise
  • drift like snow
  • wonder
  • notice
  • russet-and-gray
  • pewter-colored
  • abrupt shift
  • who left
  • entanglements
  • weirdness
  • yellow
  • bore a hole through the bottom (of my coffin)
  • still

page 2

  • traces
  • people saw it as separate (from the body)
  • replaced by a view
  • faith
  • framed
  • revealed
  • meanwhile
  • from
  • however
  • trends
  • norms
  • world all know / known
  • waves
  • an area for creativity and unstructured play
  • lies details
  • natural
  • rather
  • nothing
  • believe (rs)
  • teach you
  • visible
  • cut
  • choice

Get Out ICE

On 5 march 2026, NPR posted a story about how doctors and nurses in Minnesota have created an underground network of medical care for people who are too scared to leave their homes. “There are now about 150 doctors — a volunteer “rapid response” team that has made more than 135 home visits” (When ICE came, Minneapolis created underground health networks).

These members of the care network have helped women in labor, babies with the flu, “At the Faribault clinic where Carroll works, staff members deliver medicine, food and other necessities to patients. A staffer drives 12 middle and high school kids to and from school every day in a clinic van.”

For more on ICE’s impact on healthcare in Minnesota, listen to this podcast: How ICE’s presence is affecting health care in Minnesota

march 8/WALKGETOUTICE

walk 1: 60 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
45 degrees

The hiking with Delia and FWA at the dog park is back! I’ve missed our walks and chats and encounters with other dogs. This morning it was beautiful: sunny, not too cold, calm. There was some mud at the top of the hill, but not much in the flats. We heard woodpeckers knocking and calling. Felt squishy mud and sand that nearly sunk me — so soft and difficult to climb out of! Saw the tall bluff on the other side of the river and remembered moving along its rim during my longer runs to the confluence when I was training for the marathon. A spring goal: be trained up enough to run this loop again by May.

FWA and I talked about rules and norms and our difficulty in following them. Not because we like to break rules for the sake of breaking rules, but because they didn’t work for us and that we recognized otherways to be outside of them.

Often on these walks through the dog park, I hear people calling out the names of their dogs. Today I recall it happening only once: Rosie! Come here Rosie! I mentioned to FWA how I’ve encountered several dogs named Rosie around here. I wondered if they spell the name Rosie, or Rosy, or Rosey?

Two favorite dogs: One was a shiba inu1 that was running around its human in wide circles, with the human holding a long leash and remarking to someone else, I feel like I’m playing with the airplane on a string toy I had as a kid. The other dog was tall and lean and a beautiful gray. He (I heard his human say he) was graceful and gentle and leaped over Delia to avoid bumping into her. I was so impressed, that I mentioned to his human what a wonderful dog he was. The human was wearing BRIGHT blue running shoes. Nice!

walk 2: 60 minutes
neighborhood / winchell trail
58 degrees

A wonderful afternoon walk with Scott. We walked through the neighborhood and down to the Winchell Trail at the river. Open water, blue, with glowing white snow on the banks of the other side. A pileated woodpecker: drumming then laughing then calling out. Other walkers in tank tops and shorts. A steady stream of cars.

Scott and I stopped at a deluxe, Scott called it a “high-rise”, free library. It had a shelf of adult books and a shelf with kids books and dog treats. I gave Delia a treat, which was for dogs twice her size. As we left I said to Scott, I would like to find a way to make the kind of delight I feel encountering things like this possible for others. What sort of delightful thing could I put up in our yard?

There was a note on the door of the library explaining that the owner re-stocked it frequently and had an instagram account where she gave book reviews! It’s @beccasnotsolittlefreelibrary. I followed her, and thanked her in the comments for bringing joy to our neighborhood.

Holes (aka New Yorker experiment)

Should I try some new erasures, or continue to work on turning my “hole in your vision” into something? Maybe I’ll try both. I’d like to push at this idea of a hole in the vision, with the hole not being (just) empty or a void, but something — like a rabbit hole: an in-between space, a passageway, a liminal space, a threshold, but also a clearing (JJJJJerome Ellis), the Nothing around which something functions, the gorge.

a note about reading and writing: I like using an erasure to show how I read words.2 Taken as a whole, words are too fuzzy or unintelligible to read. I can only read them as individual words. And when looking at one word, I often don’t see of the others around it, just one word then then next word then then next. I used to be able to grasp full phrases and sentences at once — at least I think I did. This not seeing the surrounding words is a problem when I write. My Plague Notebooks are full of examples of words running into each other, or one word being written over another. Whenever this has happened, I try to make note of it by writing Vision Error and drawing an arrow to it.

messy black text in a journal, two words mashed together: I'm/metallics, then an arrow pointing to them and more words: Vision error
vision error from the Plague Notebook, vol. 15 spy balloons, winter class, snow / 13 april 2023

Throughout the day, I was adding blind spots and then, when those were too big for the space, I added smaller circles (made by tracing the bottle caps for my iron pills and my old lexipro pills). Here’s how it looks now:

Four sheets of text taped together. Several circles are sketched over the text. Each ciricle has a hole in the center, revealing a word or pharse of my hole poem. Some of the circles are the shape of my blind spot, some are just circles
holes / work in progress

I’m pleased with how it is looking. As of now, I’m imagining this version as a template for another, more polished version. I might replace some of the pencil shading with material — like gauze or netting. Maybe other holes will be filled in with glitter or sparkling something, feathers, twigs?

  1. FWA identified it as a shiba inu; I couldn’t see it well enough to do that — it was all blur and bark to me ↩︎
  2. It might be interesting to do some audio, too. I’d like to record myself reading something for the first time, to show how I struggle to read words. ↩︎

march 7/RUNGETOUTICE

2.5 miles
44th street parking lot and back
35 degrees

Ran n the afternoon. Colder today. I wore gloves and a headband to cover my ears. It felt harder, maybe I ran too soon after lunch?

It snowed last night. Not much — not even an inch, but enough to cover the grass and make everything glow white. By the time I went out for my run, the paths were clear.

omens of spring-to-come: someone was roller blading! Not roller skiing, but roller blading. And, a woman was running in shorts. It’s not unusual to see a man running in shorts during the winter, but it’s rare to see a woman. That usually doesn’t happen until it’s spring, or feels like spring, or is warm enough to be spring.

I was planning to finish my rabbit recap today, but then I started thinking about and experimenting with my holes poem. No time for the rabbits — well, except for several paragraphs below, when I realize that my naming of this poem, Holes (or hole?), is probably at least partly a reference to the rabbit hole!

New Yorker Experiment #4, continued

Today some part of me decided that we (the Saras) would offer a more detailed account of the process of thinking through my latest poem, so that’s what we’re doing.

I want to keep working on my fourth experiment. Yesterday afternoon, I printed out the New Yorker article, “A Screaming Skull,” and found my poem on its four pages. Then I taped the pages together and mapped the poem out. The theme: holes. I imagine it as part of a larger project about my blind spot. Maybe this project won’t be all erasure/found poems; I might try to connect it to some other work on the blind spot — work I’ve been doing for several years now, but haven’t quite figured out how to turn it into something. Yes! Experiment #3 — swap the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision with shadow (or shadowed?) acts, wild and improbable could connect with my study of JJJJJerome Ellis, the stutter, and his liturgy of the name! Very cool!

I took a picture of what I’ve done so far:

1
2

What to do next? The second image offers a possible approach: Applying my blind spot — the one I recently created by staring at a blank wall until it appeared, then tracing it — to each of the “found” words. I could sketch the blind spot directly on the page, around the word, OR I could place a cut-out version of the blind spot on top of the word. Maybe I’ll try a practice sketch. Another idea, which is probably definitely beyond my technical ability: create an animation of the process of reading this that starts with an overview of the poem, then zooms into the first word, encircled by the blind spot which appears as I read it. Then it moves to the next word/phrase, and the next, and the next until the poem is finished. I could also do it as a series of stills (instead of an animation). You could look at each one individually1, the image as a whole, and the series of images in a gallery.

I like this last idea! The focus on individual words — isolated from the other words and the meaning as a whole, which is how I read, because what’s left of my central vision is so small it can only fit a few words, and which is how I often (but not always) experience the world with my big blind spot — in isolation, and removed from others. A question: should I keep the larger poem as a square, stacked 2 x 2 pages? Or should I have it extend as 4 pages across? I can play around with it.

an hour or two later: Here’s something I tried with a paper cut-out of my blind spot as a template. I’m thinking I should ask Scott to make a sturdier, cardboard version of this template.

an image of words, 2 circles with a hole in the center, sketched in pencil, representing my blind spot
in progress / 1 PM / 7 march 2026

Something to think about: should I have the blind spots on the entire poem/map? I was going to write: no, because that’s not how I would see it; I would see a somewhat fuzzy version of the map of the poem. But this poem is not an accurate representation of how I see. I hardly ever see my blind spot as a gray blob. But the blind spot is there and it distorts how/what I see and I need to represent in some way that others can see too.

Another question: should I hand-sketch this poem, or figure out how to do it on the computer? I like the hand drawing — the material aspect of it + I can do it all myself — but drawing it by hand is messy and unreliable. I’m thinking that this series will be part of my vision art installation — along with my snellen charts and mood rings. It seems too messy if I don’t do it on a computer.

Also: how should the individual stills look? Should they be a close-up on that part of the poem, or just the word/phrase centered in an otherwise blank page? Should they include the blind ring? If I have more of the text, should it be too fuzzy/distorted to read, or should I have it surrounded by gray? Looking at the words on this screen, I see: 1 or 2, maybe 3 short words in focus, then other words too dim or fuzzy to read, and, after staring for a few seconds, a glowing dark ring around it. This ring is not solid or very dark, it’s almost gauzy, like a veil, or the feeling that there’s a ring there. Does that sound strange?

(rabbit) holes: Today I start a new volume of my Plague Notebook: vol. 28! I’m calling it, What about Epstein, Trump? As I was writing in it, describing my latest visual poem, Holes, a thought: Am I calling this holes (or hole?) partly because of my recent study of rabbit holes?! Maybe! And maybe I could bring rabbit holes into a poem about my blind spot!?

Get Out ICE

“Accountability in this case looks incredibly simple. Minnesota must investigate the violation of constitutional rights at the hands of Noem and her ICE agents and prosecute where appropriate. The best part about this process is that Trump can’t pardon state convictions.” Boom.
(from a Occupy Democracy post, citing a MSNOW interview with Tim Walz)

  1. While applying my blind spot to the phrase, “another word for,” I realized that that phrase was too big to fit inside the inner ring. So, that’s a new limit to how I can construct this, and other blind spot, poems: the phrases/lines must be able to fit within my blind spot. It wasn’t a big deal in this poem; I just took out the for from “another name for” and found it somewhere else in the article. ↩︎

march 6/RUNGETOUTICE

3.5 miles
locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees / drizzle

A few more warm days, then cold again. I didn’t mind the drizzle, everything was gray and soft and misty and wet. Dripping and whooshing and seeping. Of course, now that I’m home, the rain has stopped and the sun is almost out. I ran to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 hill and admired the ford bridge. It looked more like a painting than an actual bridge — although it sounded like a bridge, with trucks rumbling overhead!

I love the reflections in this picture I took, especially the upside down street lamps and railings.

an arched bridge stretching from one end of the frame to the other with a clear reflection on the river surface

If the sky were a little darker, the river a little lighter, you might not be able to tell which bridge is up, which is down — at least, I wouldn’t be able to tell!1

Smiled at several runners and walkers and bikers. Made note of all the empty benches and parking lots. There were not too many people out there. For the last bit of the run I was able to get deeper into the mist by running on the Winchell trail. Very haunted and other-worldly!

I listened to water for the first half of the run, and “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist for the second. A new song popped up: Rabbit // Hole by Siddhartha Khosla. It’s part of teh music for a one-season series called Rabbit // Hole with Kiefer Sutherland. It’s a great song to run to. Near the beginning, the music breaks up for a few seconds then plays again then breaks up. I imagined a fast moving rabbit passing by an object when the music broke up, then being in the clear (when the music resumed), then passing my another object when the music broke up again.

Rabbit Recap, part 3

Can I finish this rabbit recap today? Nope. I got distracted with other stuff.

11 — 20 feb 2026

All late fall and winter, 2 or more bunnies have been hanging out under our crab apple tree — at night, in the afternoon, at sunrise and sunset. They’re very bold, these bunnies, not running off when I walk by. When this happens, I’ve started saying, these bunnies are as bold as brass! Why? Not sure. And, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: I like bunnies or rabbits about as much as I like squirrels, which is not at all.

Get Out ICE

Yesterday afternoon, Scott came to my desk n the front room and said, Do you want to hear some good news? I mean, some actual good news? Kristi Noem was fired!

from Needle & Skein (the red hat people)

As of March 5th, we have raised an incredible $705,000 to help our immigrant communities here in MN. This is just us. Other yarn shops in Minnesota and around the country have also raised money and generously donated both here and locally. ICE is still here. Our fight is not over. Join us. ❤️

If you are a business who has raised money, please send us a message. We would love to try and get a full picture of what the amazing fiber community worldwide has accomplished.

Facebook post

Read the comments for more on how the fiber arts community is showing up!

New Yorker experiment #5

These experiments are slow-going. I run out of time to work on them. I struggle to see what I’m doing. I’m messy and haven’t figured out how to work with glossy magazine paper. So why am I continuing these experiments? I asked that to Scott and FWA in the kitchen the other day and then answered it myself: For some reason, I2 want to do these erasures, so I’ll keep doing them until I don’t want to or can’t (because it is too hard with my bad vision).

a flash of an idea: As I was writing that last paragraph, I was thinking about how visual poetry is increasingly inaccessible to me as my few remaining cone cells die (are the dying or just malfunctioning?) Then this popped into my head: yesterday’s erasure involved using marker to cover almost the entire text. When I had FWA and RJP read it, they both got marker on their hands — not in big streaks, but in tiny marks that almost looked like cuts or scratches. What if I made these erasures about touch too? My first thought was about doing the erasure in such a way that created a residue. Second thought: what if these erasures involved texture and touch — here, I’m reminded of the kids’ book Pat the Bunny and its different textures to touch: the soft bunny fur, the rough bunny . . . nose? I can’t remember what was the rough thing in the book. If you can touch these erasures and their textures, which would somehow speak to the words/ideas on the page, maybe you can hear them too? I’m thinking of scales, and thick layers of paper, maybe some holes where the paper has been ripped open, some extra rough sections, some smooth, like a thin film, crinkly, soft, sharp-ish. And — maybe in terms of the visual aspect, find ways to cover it that reflect or glow or shimmer or sparkle. I can see these textures in a way that I can’t see the typical flat, black expanse of an erasure. So things like glitter, little mirrors, metallic surfaces, ridges. What about covering it with things that offer colors only visible in the light — thinking of bird feathers here. So many ideas! Again, difficult to execute without it looking like a mess, but fun to try.

Before I had that last flash of inspiration, I was thinking about how I’ve decided (as of yesterday) that the overarching theme of these found poems is my vision and how I see. Then I thought, I should apply my blind spot to these pages. Create an amsler grid out of the text, and then place a cut-out of my blind spot (found while starting at a blank wall and then drawing what I see) on top of the words to find the poem.

Maybe some of these erasures could be all/only about texture, some all/only about my blind spots, and some both. And just now, another thought: What if these erasures were all about my blind spot and the idea of blind spots? Would this work: one of the erasures could be covered in spots or dots or holes in the paper?

So many fun ideas to try. I imagine that some of them will only ever be ideas that are good in theory but don’t work on the page.

Oh — I almost forgot, until I looked over at an open tab that reads, “tools to use for magazine erasure poems,” I started writing about this experiment because I wanted to mention my need for better materials. I love how writing in this log opens me up and helps me to see new things to try! Before writing about textures, the supplies I thought I needed were: sharpies, an exacto knife (can I see well enough to use this?) and possibly paint. Texture through thicker and thinner layers of paint is an interesting idea. Now I’m thinking I need scraps of fabric — next week, RJP and I should go to the fabric scrap store at the Textile Museum! — that are soft and rough and bumpy and gauzy. I need glitter and sparkles and little things that reflect and crinkle. Fun!

Here’s a new version of experiment #3. I decided to paste the text into a document so I could have an easier time drawing on the text. Is this a good solution? I’m not sure, but I do like how this version looks:

an erasure poem, spelling out: swap the dead-eyed liturgy of / doomed / vision / with / shadow / acts / wild / and / improbable
swap the dead-eyed liturgy

Bummer. I just realized that I erased the ed on doomed. It is supposed to read: of doomed vision (I guess doom vision could work?).

text:

swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doom OR doomed3
vision
with
shadow
acts
wild
and
improbable

And now I’m redoing yesterday’s experiment:

text:

Another name for
barely

not
blind
is a hole in
your vision
that
makes
for
an
uneasy fellowship
with
the world.

  1. Both Scott and FWA could tell, but only after studying it for a minute. The giveaway: the waviness in the upside down version — in the streetlamps for FWA, the arch for Scott. I wouldn’t have been able to notice that because most lines/edges, if I can see them, look wavy! ↩︎
  2. Who/what is the “I” here? Not the fully conscious Sara-I. I am not entirely sure why I keep returning to these erasures — either in this particular experiment, or in previous experiments — when they are so difficult with my vision and I’m not very good at them. Is it shadow Sara, nudging me? ↩︎
  3. I prefer doomed vision; I think it works better. I really like this idea of challenging/getting rid of/swapping out a dead-eyed liturgy, where liturgy = “Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance” (wikipedia). ↩︎

march 5/RUNGETOUTICE

4.65 miles
veterans home and back
46 degrees

Still feeling like spring, another run with bare arms for the second half. Chirping birds, rushing falls, a knocking woodpecker. Kids on a field trip, walking on the river road trail. Only a few random clumps of snow remaining in the grass. I’m sure we will still get snow, either later this month, or in April, but it won’t stick around. Spring is coming!

I recited Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” and Lisa Olstein’s “Dear One Absent This Long While.” I intended to think about my mom on her birthday, but I forgot to, or did I? I’m sure she was there when I recited — in my head — the last lines of Olstein’s poem: Your is the name the leaves chatter/at the edge of the unrabbited woods.

As I listened to the rushing falls, I recalled my discussion yesterday about the poster with the words, Believe Your Eyes. I thought more about why you should Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes, although less catchy, is more accurate. I recorded a thought into my phone:

5 march 2026

transcript: the sound of minnehaha falls and, occasionally, some wind. “I’m thinking about my poster and switching it from Believe Your Eyes, to Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes. And I’m thinking about, on their own, they’re both unreliable, but when they work together, and with the other senses, they offer a more accurate representation of what’s happening.”

Listened to the birds, my feet striking the grit on the path, someone say, I’m a classroom teacher near the overlook, the falls, sounding like a June rainstorm on the first half of my run. Listened to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist on the second half. I started with “Rabbit Fur Coat,” and was struck by this verse:

She put a knife to her throat
“”Hand over that rabbit fur coat””
When my ma refused, the girl kicked dirt on her blouse
“”Stay away from my mansion house””

My mother really suffered for that
Spent her life in a gold plated body cast.

This last bit about the gold plated body cast — what a great way to describe someone who is obsessed with objects, like gold or fur coats, that bring status and luxury.

Happy Birthday Mom

If she hadn’t died in 2009, my mom would be celebrating her 84th birthday today. 17 years gone. Some memories of her have softened, lost their edges, others have been condensed into a flash or a few words. I was reminded of some of those words the other day when I heard Heather Cox Richardson say, oopsie poopsies. As I remember it, Mom was driving me and my best friend (JO) home. When we pulled into the garage, she called out, Front door service, Missy Doodles! I can’t remember our reaction in that moment — did JO and I exchange looks? did we laugh at her? — but I do remember that it became something we repeated to each other later for a laugh and as a way to mock my mom (mostly good-naturedly, I think).

Why does this dumb sentence stick, when others don’t? Maybe it’s partly because my mom often had a strange way of saying things — happy as a clam bake is another one that comes to mind; also, the way she pronounced absurd — abzurd — and milk — melk (I do that one too). There must be many more that I’m not remembering now; I should ask my sisters. These strange ways of speaking were part of her charm. Front door service, Missy Doodles fits with these others. I googled it just now, thinking it might be a famous catch-phrase from before my time, or that Missy Doodles might have been a character on some show from the 50s or 60s. Nope.

Returning to HCR’s oopsie poopsies, I’m thinking about how she uses it instead of swearing.1 Another connection to my mom surfaces: not swearing, or rarely swearing, or swearing in French or German. And now I’m thinking about her shit rock, which is now my shit rock. I created a digital story about it 10 or so years ago. I also posted about it on my TROUBLE blog. I need to find the video and a transcript of the story somewhere on a hard drive. I’ll post it when I find it.

the Rabbit Recap continues

Yesterday, working backwards, I made it through page 5, page 4, and half of page 3 of entries tagged, rabbit.

6 — 15 nov 2022

The optical illusion: the rabbit or the duck

I surmise that my general visual experience is something like your experience of optical illusions. Open any college psychology textbook to the chapter on perception and look at the optical illusions there. You stare at the image and see it change before your eyes. In one image, you many see first a vase and then two faces in profile. In another, you see first a rabbit then a duck. These images deceive you because they give your brain inadequate or contradictory information. In the first case, your brain tries to determine which part of the image represents the background. In the second case, your brain tries to to group the lines of hte sketch together into a meaningful picture. In both cases there are two equally possible solutions to the visual riddle, so your brain switches from one to the other, and you have the uncanny sensation of “seeing” the image change. When there’s not much to go — no design on the vase, no features on the faces, no feathers, no fur — the brain makes an educated guess. 

When I stare at an object I can almost feel my brain making such guesses.

Sight Unseen / Georgina Kleege

7 — 27 sept 2022

Those who have it to give are
like cardinals in the snow. So easy
and beautifully lit. Some
are rabbits. Hard to see
except for those who would prey upon them:
all that softness and quaking and blood.
(I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again/ Vievee Francis)

rabbits — visible only to those who prey upon them — all that softness and quaking and blood.

8 — 1 dec 2021

You only spot the rabbit’s ears and tail:

when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel,
but when it stops, it blends in again;
(First Snow / Arthur Sze)

So, does a bunny have two distinctive aspects to their form: ears and tail? Ears if it’s only the head, ears and tail if it’s the entire silhouette. Most things blend into the backyard if they’re still for me. I only see them by their movement and maybe the flash of a tail streaking away.

9 — 25 dec 2025

A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. 
(Ode to Gray / Dorianne Laux)

Why are stuffed animal toy bunnies usually gray when real rabbits are more often brown?

10 — 15 may 2025

“It suggests the fatal indecision of a rabbit caught in a hunter’s flashlight. . . .” Rabbits as prey, always needing a way to be escape, when cornered, they shut down. Survival strategy: run until you can’t then go stiff, play dead. The idea of always looking for an exit resonates for me. I would much rather avoid a bad/dangerous/uncomfortable situation than confront it. Wherever I go, I always look for the exits, or the entrances into other worlds.

And now I’m wondering about rabbits playing dead and how that works. According to a few different sites, it’s called tonic immobility or trancing and it is”

a behavioural response to a perceived threat, characterised by muscular rigidity, profound motor inhibition, and suppressed vocal behaviour. This behaviour occurs when freezing in response to a predator approach, fight, or flight are no longer perceived as options (Gallup 1974, Gallup 1977).
McBride et al. (2006) observed that rabbits held in a tonic immobility position had elevated respiratory rates, heart rates, and plasma corticosterone concentration. Additionally, they expressed fear behaviours such as widened eyes and flattened ears, and demonstrated more hiding behaviours and fewer grooming behaviours post-trancing.

Trancing / Tonic Immobility
  1. In yesterday’s Politics Chat, talking about her reaction to the news that Trump was bombing Iran, she said, “I said all the swear words you never think I say.” ↩︎

Get Out ICE

From Recovery Bike Shop in Northeast Minneapolis:

This is what community looks like. This is what “bustling” looks like. This is looking out for our neighbors. This is taking care of our own. This is supporting our city.

We feel safer when other people are around. We are those people. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And when we make our street a place that’s comfortable for walking, more people will feel comfortable walking. It’s a virtuous cycle. And it’s something we can do.

So come walk with us every Thursday evening at 5:30. Meet at Recovery Bike Shop. (And next week we’ll be walking in the sun!)

Note: any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer.

Recovery Bike Shop

Any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer. I love this idea!

New Yorker Experiment #4

But before I move onto #4, I added some numbers to #3, so it was easier to follow the path of the poem:

text, moving from bottom right to top right to bottom middle to top middle to mid left: 1. swap the dead-eyed liturgy of 2. doomed 3. vision 4. with 5. shadow

Experiment #4: A Screaming Skull / New Yorker 18 august 2025

text:

You may
feel
like a shadow.

Another name for
blind
is
a hole in the
vision

You may feel like a shadow.

I tried photocopying the pages from the New Yorker, but the quality is terrible. Also, I ran out of time. I like the idea of another name for blind is . . . but I could find the right words to fill that in. I’ll work on this one more tomorrow. I think that my theme for these is my vision.

march 4/WALKGETOUTICE

45 minutes
neighborhood with Scott and Delia
48 degrees

No sun today so it felt cooler. Mud and puddles mixed with bare grass. Noticed some bright green moss at the base of a tree. It was nice to take a walk with Scott; we haven’t done an afternoon walk like this in months.

a Rabbit recap*

*which is a summary, not a redux (revival). Rabbit Redux is the second book in John Updike’s series about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom The first book is Rabbit Run, which I just checked out of the library.

This morning I reviewing all of my entries tagged, “rabbit” and seeing what I can find.

1 — 2 june 2019

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean
(The Mending Wall/ Robert Frost)

What a wonderful first line! The rabbits and the gaps — I wrote about this a few days ago in my rabbit eyes section. I am less interested in going down rabbit holes and more in exploring rabbit peripheries, in the shadows, on the edges, in the unnoticed corners. For me, this isn’t about hiding-as- prey, but about dwelling on the edges, near the exits and the entrances to other places.

2 — 20 aug 2020

Listen to the black capped chickadee’s 2 note song. 
Can you hear him posing a question to the gorge?
Can you hear the honking geese overhead?
Can you hear your lungs grasping for air
and the green leaves thickening as they hold us?
Can you hear the chainsaw start, the tight weave
of the savanna’s oak unraveling?
It’s August, thick, crowded. Listen 
to the path, cluttered with acorns. Listen
to the sewer stink near the ravine, the sex-crazed
gnats swarming the hill. Can you hear 
the virus spreading through the neighborhood?
Can you make a noise like a panicked rabbit? There are
sounds your tweet lacks names for.
(Homage poem to Helen Mort / Sara Lynne Puotinen)

Rereading this poem from that first pandemic summer, another word popped into my head: cornered, as in Can you make a noise like a cornered rabbit? Which is better? Not sure. I like this poem; maybe I should do something more with it? Maybe that something should involve hybrid writing about that summer? And maybe I should return to Mary Oliver’s Long Life for inspiration?

3 — 24 april 2020

Lisa Olstein’s unrabbited woods in “Dear One Absent This Long While.” Yours is the name the leaves chatter/at the edge of the rabbited woods. So good! I memorized this poem five years ago; I need to refresh my memory. Just did!

4 — 24 feb 2020

A cup holds
sugar, flour, three large rabbit breaths of air
(My Weather / Jane Hirshfield)

I love imagining how much air is 3 large rabbit-breaths worth. How big is this rabbit? And, in general, how big are rabbit breaths (from the 2020 entry)? Yes! A rabbit’s breath! I should look it up. Googled “rabbit breathing” and this listing of a rabbit’s vital signs1 came up first:

  • A rabbit’s body temperature should ideally be between 101.5°F and 104.2°F.
  • The normal respiratory rate for rabbits ranges from 30-60 breaths per minute.2
  • A healthy rabbit’s heart rate averages 205 and has a resting range from 180-350 beats per minute.

While sifting through links, including watching a brief video on how bunnies apologize to each other — they touch heads, and if the other bunny doesn’t accept the apology, they run away,3 I read a line about how rabbits are very smart mammals and then this: “The rabbit is commonly used as a laboratory animal for inhalation toxicology tests” (source). I wondered, do rabbits feel pain? “Rabbits have the same neurophysiological mechanisms as humans to produce pain and therefore have the same capacity to feel pain as humans” (source). How awful!

A few more random breathing facts: rabbits breathe through their noses; respiratory issues are a main cause of death; if a rabbit is healthy, their breath should not stink.

I didn’t have any luck when I googled, ” how big is a bunny breath,” but since they breathe a lot per minute, I imagine it’s fairly small. In the middle of writing this sentence I looked up “rabbit lung capacity.” One of the, People also ask, was, Are rabbit lungs good for dogs? The answer, “High-value: Rabbit Lung is considered a super food due to its nutritional composition,” comes from a site selling rabbit lung treats.

All of these results are reminding me of a line from yesterday’s research about how rabbits are unique in their position as both beloved pet and food source.

5 — 21 may 2023

This
is a poem in which no chickens will die. A rabbit
will bound across the road and the car will slow
in time. The fox will discover the trampoline behind
the house next door and with it the wonder of flight.
Everyone I love will live and call me after supper
to say goodnight.
(What I Am Telling You, Jessica, Is That Those Chickens Are Fine/ K.T. Landon)

I discovered this poem from a poetry person on twitter. It was part of their running list of “Not Today, Satan” poems. Have I ever noticed a rabbit road kill? I must have, but I don’t remember it. Near me, it’s mostly squirrel or raccoon roadkill. Anyway, I love this poem so much that I might need to memorize it. And, like I wrote in this 2023 entry, I might need to create my own “Not today, Satan” list!

6 — 15 april 2023

these are the
going closures that organize mind, allowing

and limiting, my mind’s ways: the rabbit’s
leaps and halts, listenings, are prosody of

a poem floating around the mind’s brush
(garbage / A.R. Ammons

This! For today’s entry, I only posted the rabbit part, but the rest of the excerpt I posted on april 15 is wonderful too. All about motion and our interactions with the land/our surrounding and how they shapes our motions. The halts and leaps and listenings of a rabbit as it responds to its surroundings — the terrain, predators, the weather. These are the rhythms and sounds of a poem (prosody) — not a poem on the page, but a poem in the flesh, a poem that is a living and breathing and moving creature being made by and making the world. So good! I say, I am a poem. A rabbit is a poem. Any and all of us who move through the world, responding to its winds and rivers and storms, is a poem!

  1. In a footnote, there’s a link to a pdf comparing vital signs of several different animals ( ↩︎
  2. The average human’s breathing rate (whatever average means here) is 12 – 25 breaths per minute. I’m not going to try counting mine because that would stress me out too much. I don’t want to think about breathing; I just want to keep doing it! ↩︎
  3. From another more reliable source (reliable = trained expert, cites sources), I discovered that this head touching idea is from the 2018 movie, Peter Rabbit. According to the Bunny Lady, rabbits might groom each other after a disagreement. But this begs the question, why do bunnies disagree? What does a bunny argument look like? ↩︎

Get Out ICE

Protest art around the cities:

The banners, flags and posters can be seen in storefronts and porch windows, on telephone poles and electrical boxes, in neighborhoods across the metro area. They are part of an explosion of art made in response to ICE’s presence that has included protest songs, comics and zines and coloring books, snow and ice sculptures, stickers and buttons and whistles 3D-printed in every color of the rainbow.

Winning Hearts and Minds

Through this article, I found out about Heart Your Art and their ICE OUT posters and this event tonight at the Witch’s Hat:

This Wednesday, The ICE OUT Protest Posters take over the Witch’s Hat Water Tower for a one night outdoor projection.
.
Large scale. Public. After dark.

Instagram post

One of the posters from Heart Your Art struck a chord with me. The poster says, Believe Your Eyes, and it features the text in big block letters in the top half with two open eyes below it, and then a quote from George Orwell in smaller text at the bottom: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and your ears. It was their final, most essential, command.”

In the description of the poster, the artist writes:

It is important now, more than ever, to believe your eyes. You know what happened. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. The narrative is trying to sway you — to make you question yourself. You know the truth!

I deeply appreciate all of these posters and the artists who are designing them. I also agree with the call to resist the double-speak of the Trump administration and to never stop challenging the lies they present as truth.

And, I struggle with the privileging of sight and eyes as (the most) pure and reliable truth tellers. Eyes are not always reliable, and not just for people like me with low vision. As I’ve mentioned before on this log, eyes are not just cameras sending pictures to the brain. There is filtering and guessing and selective seeing — some things are seen, some ignored, some the brain filters out.

You might argue that this is not the point here and I would agree and disagree. Yes, there is a bigger message here about resisting manipulation and calling out fascist propaganda and trusting your own experiences of events. And yes, the inaccurate promotion of seeing/eyes as the way to access the truth, is easily manipulated by those in power. In the era of AI and the altering of images in such convincing ways that even my husband — whose attention to detail and nose for sniffing fakery out is very impressive — has been fooled, relying on eyes is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.

So, what would I like the poster to say instead? I’ll have to think about that; maybe I’ll try to collaborate with Scott on my own version? A preliminary response: Believe Your Eyes and Your Ears — which is what Orwell’s quote does; it’s not just looking/seeing but hearing and listening. I’m not satisfied with that as the solution, but I’ll leave it for now. I’ve already written abouteyes and witnessing on this log in different contexts, and I’m sure I’ll return to it again and again.

New Yorker experiment #3

Today’s experiment comes from a book review in the 25 august 2025 issue titled “Me, Myself, and I.”

text:

1
point to
sentences
sliced in half
askew
wile
with strangeness.
Stutter
just enough to let in the surreal.

Occupy who knows where
stay
vague improbable

2
swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doomed
vision
with
shadow

experiment #3 / from Me, Myself, and I

thoughts: Again, find markers that work before I start using them. Also, the second poem needs arrows but I didn’t know how to do that with the blackout. And, I wanted to add another word to shadow: reinvention, but I accidentally colored over it. Oops.