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Winter in Minnesota
Jan. 7th, 2026 07:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guppiecatI’ve traveled the world, and while there are places that are warmer, friendlier, cheaper, and easier to live in, Minnesota feels right. The people here leave one another alone - and what others view as standoffishness, I see as respectful distance. But when someone needs help, people show up. It isn’t perfect - no place is - but it’s right for me.
People who haven’t spent much time here don’t understand the cycle of the seasons. Spring isn’t bright and green like it is elsewhere; it’s brown and muddy. Summer is hot and humid - sometimes among the hottest places on the planet—, sometimes smoky from wildfires, sometimes thick with mosquitoes. But the days are long, and the hiking and nature can be spectacular.
Fall is a time of coming together. While it’s not really my thing, as seasonal affective disorder starts to creep in, I can appreciate how important it is for others to gather—to share food, stories, and warmth.
Winter, however, is cold.
In snowy winters, the snow piles up and just keeps going. The joke is that by mid-January, two-lane roads become single-lane roads, and by early February—when there’s nowhere left to put the snow—the roads just start getting taller. This is when people ski and skate, take winter hikes, or retreat indoors to cook, read, watch TV, and spend time with family. This aligns with the public image of Minnesota: a place where time slows, where people are nice to one another in warm, yellow-lit houses while we wait for the cold, dark blues, greys, and whites to thaw.
But that isn’t all Minnesota is.
Minnesota is also about people working together and supporting one another. It’s about protesting injustice, as we’ve seen in response to the killings of Philando Castile, George Floyd, Amir Locke, and so many others. It’s about defending the most vulnerable—immigrants and Native people, the poor, people of color, and those whose sexuality or gender identity puts them at risk.
Minnesotans - more than anywhere I’ve lived, and more than most places I’ve visited - are deeply engaged politically. Even those who claim not to be involved are often only a degree or two removed from people in office or people who have served. We donate money, time, resources, our bodies, and sometimes our own lives to make things better for all of us.
And even in winter, even in the darkness, the sun still comes out some days.
When it does, things melt a little. Tree branches shed their weight and rise. Hard-packed snow turns to slush, and things begin to move. It doesn’t even need to get above freezing. I’ve seen water running down the driveway on a bright day when it’s well below zero.
That’s the thing about Minnesota: even in the darkest days of winter, we make our own sunshine. We come together. We help one another thaw and reshape ourselves. We jump each other’s cars, clear driveways, bring food - because if we don’t help one another, collectively, we don’t survive. At least not as the people we want to be.
It’s in that context that I fiercely oppose the cold-blooded killing of Renee Nicole Good this morning by federal “law enforcement” operating far outside their jurisdiction. It’s why I support those attending tonight’s vigil, and the protests in the days ahead against this violence—and the violence still to come from those who claim to be governing this country.
I can’t do otherwise.
We can’t do otherwise.
Because in Minnesota, even on the coldest days, the bright light of the sun melts ICE.
Updating
Jan. 6th, 2026 09:14 ammarthawellsThis is a very common scam now, one of the many scams aimed at aspiring and new writers.
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I'm still sick, ugh
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Nice article on Queen Demon on the Daily KOS:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/1/5/2361356/-The-Language-of-the-Night-Martha-Wells-takes-on-colonization
One of Wells’ most compelling gifts as a writer is the way she interrogates trauma, and trauma is very much in evidence in her recent works, especially in both Murderbot and The Rising World. Where the Murderbot stories form an enslavement narrative as personal journey and healing, the Rising World series applies a wider cultural lens to trauma and loss.
Kai has seen his world ripped apart twice: the way to the underneath, the world of his birth, is shut off; the world of his above existence, the world of the Saredi, is also gone, both of them murdered by the Hierarchs. (You could argue that the third traumatizing loss-of-world is losing Bashasa, but that lies in the gap between past and present narratives.) In the past narrative, a vanquished Kai himself is imprisoned in the Summer Halls until Bashasa frees him and he joins the ad hoc rebellion.
2026, eh?
Jan. 2nd, 2026 01:21 pmmuninnhuginnSomehow got through it in (mostly) one piece.
Healthwise, I'm down to twice-daily tablets until mid-November. The CT scan from December showed no signs of cancer, but apparently I fractured a vertebra in the interim between that scan and the one a year prior. Who knew? Evidently, not me. Stanley continues to gurgle away, mostly unproblematically.
Workwise, I went back in May--and plan to continue until the end of this year. And then cash in my pensions (meagre as they are), and spend them in my (potentially brief) retirement.
Homewise, we added a bath in the middle bedroom/dressing room, had a new path paid along the front of the house, and had the chimneys repointed (and partially rebuilt) before they crumbled away. Hopefully, we've also fixed the leaky roof too.
Beastwise, no new cats, no new chooks, no bees. I've just let my membership of the beekeepers asociation lapse, tho' I could rejoin if I decide I am going to set up a beehive, but it seems less likely. We're about to celebrate the two-year anniversary of acquiring the Smolly Molecule, still the best thing to have happened in 2024. Shadow continues to be Shadow: a little bite-y, somewhat scrarchy, but still as loveable, and acquring ever more complex educational toys to keep him occupied.
So, this year? I'd like a little more energy to get throuygh what I need to do--declutter, sort finances, retire--and want to do--read more, make more, travel more, get bees(?).
Books read, late December
Jan. 1st, 2026 08:14 ammrissaLouisa May Alcott, Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. Rereads. I had run out of TBR before Christmas, and it seemed like time. And oh gosh. If you'd asked me the plot of Eight Cousins when I was small--when it was my favorite LMA--I would have said that the plot was "girl has too many relatives, chaos ensues." (This was a form of plot I found very relatable.) But upon rereading, oh my goodness. Oh MY goodness. So there is one aunt who has been giving Rose dozens of "patent medicines" and another aunt who says straight out to her face, "Oh, shut up, Myra, we all know you killed your kid with laudanum," and all the nicer characters are like, "welp, harsh but fair." (This is only barely a paraphrase.) (Also, rather than thinking this was a weird family conversation, I immediately identified which of my great-aunts I thought would be the one to deliver the "you killed your kid" line and went on reading. WELP.) The plot of Eight Cousins is actually "for the love of Pete will you people stop drugging your daughters into immobility." So much wilder reading it that way. The plot of Rose in Bloom has always been "which of my cousins should I marry, obviously not someone unrelated to me, don't be daft." So I always found that one alarming for the same reasons as I found the first one very relatable. I have so many cousins, and I am so glad to be married to zero of them. So at least one of my sets of memories here was intact, but it was the wrong one.
Stephanie Balkwill, The Women Who Ruled China: Buddhism, Multiculturalism, and Governance in the Sixth Century. Interesting detail about which women had power, and how they had it, and who was opposed to it, and how it was recorded/discussed after. Filling in a bit of history I didn't know much about.
K.J. Charles, Copper Script. A friend suggested that I might enjoy this one, since I have enjoyed Charles's mysteries and there is a strong mystery/thriller component here as well as a strong historical romance component. Friend was correct, this worked very well for me because I found the romantic obstacles sympathetic and believable and because it stayed reasonably far on the action plot side of the line. Will be poking around to see what else might suit in Charles's back catalog, as one can only expect her to write so many murder mysteries in a year.
Amanda Downum, The Poison Court. Kindle. Fantasy court politics and magical politics entwined, as they must do, with interpersonal politics, lush and engaging, not sure why I thought this was a shorter work than it is but I'm very glad I've gotten to it now.
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War. Reread. I had, I repeat, run out of TBR before Christmas, and I noticed that 2019 was a minute ago, so I had not in fact "just read" this one. I reveled in the language and playfulness of it all over again.
Margaret Frazer, Lowly Death and The Death of Kings. Kindle. I'm not finding her short stories particularly transcendent, but they are compulsively and conveniently readable, and I'm out of novels, so. The first is a murder mystery, the second is a political mystery about the death of Richard II, who is the wrong Richard for me to really engage, ah well.
Mischa Honeck, We Are the Revolutionists: German-Speaking Immigrants and American Abolitionists After 1848. Everybody knows I love me some '48ers. This is a study that deliberately looks at different regions of America and genders and classes of German-speaking immigrants rather than treating them as a monolith, so it's full of all sorts of interesting treats of information.
Alice Hunt, Republic: Britain's Revolutionary Decade, 1648-1660. What I really like is that Hunt is really good about questions like "what was going on with the Caribbean colonization at the time" and "okay but what were they writing and doing scientific research about that was not politics." It's about Britain in this decade+, not just about its politics. Really solid stuff, makes me very happy to have.
Tove Jansson, Tales from Moominvalley. Kindle. I'm pretty sure I read this as a child, but I have neither record nor memory of it. It is a delightful gentle fantastical collection, with many of the stories focused on the pleasures of quiet and solitude in a way I find entirely congenial.
Arturo Pérez-Reverte, The Flanders Panel. This was 3/4 of an interesting novel about art restoration, chess, and murder, but then it veered off into mid-late 20th century attitudes about gender and sexuality in ways that I cannot recommend. Go in braced if you go.
Linda Proud, A Tabernacle for the Sun. Kindle. Historical novel in the milieu of Lorenzo de Medici, centering on him but not featuring him as protagonist. This is the first in a trilogy apparently, and if you want to sink into thumping big historical novels, this sure is one. I do sometimes.
Alice Roberts, Tamed: From Wild to Domesticated, the Ten Animals and Plants That Changed Human History. The friend who gave this to me for Christmas opined that it was hard to get more in my wheelhouse than a book that discussed both dogs and apples, and he was correct, and this was fun and interesting and made me happy to read.
C.D. Rose, We Live Here Now. Surreal and sinister and sometimes quite funny, this is a book with a fairly niche audience, and that niche is: have you ever made snarky jokes about Anish Kapoor? To be clear, this book is not about Anish Kapoor. But it's steeped in contemporary art, and that's a pretty good synecdoche for its direction. We make a lot of Anish Kapoor jokes around here. I found this delightful. Installations and disappearances and different angles on similar happenings. (I find it so delightful when I read/listen to interviews with artists from the 1960s who are constantly having happenings! So many happenings! Why can't we have more happenings, I ask you. But this book is significantly more contemporary than that.)
Sean Stewart, Mockingbird. Reread. I had, I am telling you, run out of TBR before Christmas, and I remembered very little of this. It holds up quite well, having really good depictions of family dynamics as well as worldbuilding.
Marina Warner, Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights. An examination (nonfiction) of what that work actually said and did and also where it ramified in cultures not its own, really interesting storytelling stuff, hurrah, glad to have it on the shelf and think lots of thoughts about exoticization and fantasy.
T.H. White, The Once and Future King. Reread. I had, I hope you understand, run out of TBR before Christmas, and I had not reread this one since high school. I found that while there were a few images I remembered from the last three sections of this omnibus, it was for the most part the first one I remembered. It turns out there's a reason for this. Basically anything where White has to depict a female character is terrible, they're all irrational and yelly and stupid, and it looks to me like he's going "I don't know, I guess people want a one of these? sometimes?" The first section, the best-known section, though: when I first read this when I was 11, I got the vast majority of the funny bits and I did not get the cri de coeur, I did not get that it was someone who had been there for the Great War screaming into the void that another was coming and the alternative was worse. I'm glad to have a renewed sense of it, and also ow, ow, ow.
Robert Wrigley, The True Account of Myself as a Bird. This poetry collection was right on my knife edge between "observes something ordinary in a way that makes it extraordinary" and "plods along in the utterly undistinguished ordinary," with some poems coming down on one side and others on the other.