Happy February! Snow Moons, Unusual Birds, Cancer Scares and Big Birthdays, the Power of Community and More

Snow Moon

Happy February! Snow Moons, Unusual Birds, Cancer Scares, and Big Birthdays

I hope you have a good February in front of you. The Snow Moon, unfortunately, brought a lot of snow to a lot of parts of the country—Nashville, Mississippi—that definitely were not prepared for it. Lots of power outages and downed trees. I remember 20 years ago these kinds of cold snaps were unusual for Virginia and DC, but with the strange climate changes, they’re no longer “once every 20 years” storms.

My little brother Mike and me

You might have noticed I didn’t post last week. I was a little down. Besides the dismal goings-on in Minnesota, a member of my family has been diagnosed with cancer. I myself have another cancer scare—should be old hat by now, and it’s just my thyroid this time—and another member of the family was laid off. It’s been cold and damp here—old-fashioned London winter weather, though it definitely is worse in other parts of the country so we can’t really complain. We have had a celebration or two as well—my little brother turned 50 (which means I must be older than 50 now? Dang!), and we’ve had several unusual bird visitors, probably due to the cold. A possible immature golden or bald eagle over the house, a couple of quail—and a small bird of prey—maybe a falcon or sharp-shinned hawk. Not perfect captures, but I hope they entertain you, anyway.

The Power of Community and More

This last couple of weeks has also reminded me of the power of community. In Minnesota, community protests have meant a little boy released from ICE detention, a change of leadership of ICE in town, and even friendly National Guardsmen handing out hot chocolate to cold members of the community. I hope this means that ICE will back down (Trump noticing his poll numbers shrinking, too, no doubt helps), and we’ll have no more horrendous human rights offenses or trying to take away Constitutional rights (freedom of speech and assembly, the right to due process for all on American ground, the right to bear arms, which the GOP is usually quite quick to defend, and birthright citizenship). People are making a lot of noise—and though sometimes it feels like nothing is being accomplished, if enough Americans make enough noise, occasionally we can change things for the better.

In my own life, a gathering of poets reminded me of the small, good things we can do for each other. I noticed that in encouraging each other, there is power—more success that seems to follow meeting together. That has been the case in my own writing life—and at least, things are more fun to celebrate (and commiserate) in a group. And the scary things of life don’t seem quite as scary.