Warming This Winter's Chill

photos: Amber Capron

Shakespeare called it

“winter of our discontent”

William it is that

A February time out.  Jean-Yves Thibaudet performs James Newton Howard’s “Flow of Water.”  We float and water supports us.  Swim with me.

In his reader-supported publication “Thinking About,” author and historian Timothy Snyder details “The Logic of Destruction” and how to resist it.  About those denying reality by “trumpwashing the past,” he writes: “The new world they imagine is not just anti-American but anti-human….  They are god-level brainrotted.”  Snyder never minimizes trouble and always offers approaches—for example, starting a democratic “People’s Cabinet” whose leaders regularly meet with the press to report accurately the actions and proposals of current governmental agencies. 

It is in his closing examination of destructive brainrot that Snyder propels us forward. “Do not be alone and do not be dismayed.  Find someone who is doing something you admire and join them….  Sometimes self-government just means elections.  And sometimes it means recognizing the deeper dignity and meaning of what it means to be a people.  That means speaking up, standing out, and protesting.  We can only be free together.”      

From two neighboring DC churches come pastoral acts of inspiring resistance.

Reverend William H. Lamar IV serves the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church on M Street, founded in 1838—a harbor for runaway slaves, the home for Rosa Park’s funeral, and current hub of a bustling food bank.  The oddly-named “Proud Boys” vandalized the grounds of Lamar’s Metropolitan AME church in 2020, leaping the fence and partying as they ripped down and stomped on a Black Lives Matter sign.  Suing the assailants, the church won a 2.8-million-dollar lawsuit in 2023.  When no payment was forthcoming, Lamar’s congregation returned to court and in a default judgment won the right to all proceeds from the ever-odd “Proud Boys” trademark.  Every penny made from sale of their trademarked merchandise drops into church coffers.  “Our victory magnifies the fact that we need not shrink in this moment politically.”

Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington Mariann Budde speaks from the pulpit at the National Cathedral on Wisconsin Avenue.  In 2018 Right Reverend Budde offered the Cathedral to Matthew Shepard’s parents as a secure and sacred interment site for their son, victim of an anti-gay hate crime in Wyoming twenty years earlier.  Budde officiated at the service.  Two years later, she rebuked the president who ordered protestors tear-gassed so that he could “use a Bible and a church of my diocese as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our church stands for.”  Reverend Budde directly addressed that same president on January 21, 2025 as the National Cathedral hosted an interfaith Service of Prayer for the Nation: “Have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now….  Gay, lesbian, and transgender children in democratic, republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives….  Children who fear their parents will be taken away….  We were all once strangers in this land.”  Behold her face in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the next evening.  Budde’s smiling response to death threats saps their power.  May her message continue its ripple round the world. 

Coffee break time.  A favorite (“forever and ever”) singer (“before putting on her makeup”) says a little prayer for you.      

Corporate-controlled media’s linguistic sins doom that industry.  A lie called a misleading statement?  Lawbreaking termed questionable behavior?  Ignoring both a coup attempt and its robust resistance?  Independent media sources, subscriber-supported conveyors of reality like Timothy Snyder, broadcast the nationwide protests increasing daily in size and number.  Today’s activism predicts tomorrow’s victories.  Elected representatives host online townhalls for many thousands of constituents.  Tesla sales plummet—protestors picket dealerships.  Musician Sheryl Crow sells hers and donates Tesla money to NPR.  International pushback, such as Canadian and Mexican boycotts and targeted tariffs, call bluster’s bluff.  The federal judiciary, its appointees nominated by both parties quite recently as well as decades ago, hold taut the constitutional line.

A safe haven for accuracy and up-to-the-minute reporting, Bluesky’s popularity keeps growing.  Rachel Maddow repeatedly salutes it on her nightly program as “a social media network that doesn’t make me want to stab myself in the eye with a rusty fork.”  Here’s a threesome consistently posting on Bluesky.  Started by journalist Jen Rubin and litigator Norm Eisen, “The Contrarian” presents a community of distinguished contributors offering plentiful articles and motivating interviews.  Devoted to grass-roots democracy-in-action, co-executive directors Ezra Klein and Leah Greenberg organize “Indivisible” chapters in towns and cities in every state.  And, gulp your daily laughter vitamin aka “The Borowitz Report”—effects of the aluminum tariff or holding The Kennedy Center hostage!

We swim.     

“When your eyes are tired / the world is tired also.”  Poet David Whyte invites us into “Sweet Darkness” so that we might see again.  Weary eyes lose sight of freedom and belonging.  Our eyes can rest in the night’s warm confinement.  Stay cocooned in February’s night.  Clarity will return…gift-wrapped in the dark.  Blink.  See.  Free, at home, readying for love.       

We take a few steps outside and absorb these conditions with poet Linda Pasten.  The hanging moon and rising sun face off.  Snowfall drapes its chilly flowers on tree branches.  A bluejay perches, still as a statue, on a feeder.  Shhhhh….  Stop with me “In This Season of Waiting.”  Pause long.  “Then the earth becomes an emblem / for whatever we believe.”     

The beauty of human hands.  Hearing is believing.  His fingers and voice in flight, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham vows that he’s “Never Going Back Again.”  Hey now, enough, he reiterates,  “been down one time / been down two time.”  Haven’t we been down one time, now two times, too?  Want to find out what it means to win?  “Yeahhhhhhhh.”  Stevie Nicks blends her voice with Buckingham’s.  Yeah.   

 hints that springtime nears

democracy calls our names

as we swim birds sing