The good light . . .
Tuesday, January 27, 2026 The good light . . .
It's Tiw's day . . . A three-day thaw is in the forecasts for TulseyTown. Light breezes bring a few clouds to otherwise sunny skies and this afternoon with upper 30's.
At least once a day: Stop. Be still for a moment. Look. See without labeling what your vision brings.
On this day in 1945 the Red Army entered the gates of Auschwitz in horrified awe of what they encountered.
On the same day in 1944 the Soviet Red Army ousted German and Finnish forces from Leningrad (what is today St. Petersburg), concluding an 872-day siege.
Today is the birthdate of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was born in 1756, Salzburg, Austria.
Mikhail Baryshnikov is 77 today. born in 1948, Riga, Latvia, U.S.S.R.
It’s the birthday of Lewis Carroll. The author of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, was born in 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire, England.
How Can We Fix America's Corruption Problem. – video from The Brennan Center for Justice.
Finding the light of America. – Robert Reich, Tipping Point, online for 1.27.26
Colorado poet laureate Andrea Gibson and fellow poet partner Megan Falley are the subjects of the documentary Come See Me in the Good Light, recently posted on Apple+ and which I watched last night with a box of tissues. The film documents their marriage and how they dealt with Gibson's terminal cancer diagnosis and impending death. She died soon after the film’s production ended. Searing emotionally and gently radiant, the film was directed by Ryan White and produced by comedian Tig Notaro, it won the Festival Film Favorite Award at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival and has been nominated for this year's Academy Award.
Two lines from the film to nudge you into seeing this wonderfully moving film experience:
“You can't take your gender with you to the other side. So consider: how hard are you holding on?”
“ Everything you are experiencing: Name it love. Everything you are feeling: Name it love.”
. . . I could wear my heart
on my sleeve and never grow
out of that shirt.
. . . every falling leaf is a tiny kite
with a string too small to see, held
by the part of me in charge
of making beauty
out of grief.
– Andrea Gibson, “How the Worst Day of My Life Became the Best.” From You Better Be Lightning. Button Poetry, 2021.
Redefining the calm within the storm . . .
Monday, January 26, 2026 . t's the Moon's day … making its welcome appearance tonight. Forecasts for TulseyTown indicate sunny skies this afternoon, although remaining cold, in the upper 20's. Westerlies are to become Southerlies tonight bringing a brief thaw above freezing until the weekend.
May such calm be mine, so as to meet the force of circumstance.
The Phantom of the Opera, award-winning stage musical by composer Andrew Lloyd Webber began its Broadway run on January 26, 1988. It celebrated its 35th anniversary on Broadway in 2023 and closed later that year, having earned the title of Broadway’s longest-running production.
Irish statesman, co-founder of Amnesty International, and winner of the 1974 Nobel Peace Prize, Seán MacBride, was born on this day in 1904 Paris. His mother was Maude Gonne, Yeats’ unrequited muse.
And its the birthdate of cartoonist, novelist, and playwright Jules Feiffer. He was born in 1929 the Bronx, New York.
The week ahead: even Oklahoma's Governor Stitt is concerned. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse, 1.26.26
What else can we do? – Robert Reich, Mourning in America, 1.26.26
As the nation mourned yesterday, Trump watched a movie. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American, posted yesterday.
The following blog entry is a severly edited version of the original Pearcy essay dated yesterday – too long for this space, sad to say.
Immigration Enforcement & The Emerging Dual State by Raymon Pearcey 1.25.2026
In One Battle After Another, the newly released and already award-winning film by Paul Thomas Anderson, a moment of civic terror arrives without warning. Armored vehicles materialize at the edge of a quiet American town. No one knows what rules apply, who is in charge, or what compliance even means. The town doesn’t collapse—it is taken, in real time, by forces that refuse to explain themselves.
Minneapolis crossed a wildly similar threshold this January.
Conclusion: Reclassification, Repeated
What One Battle After Another ultimately depicts is not a coup but a malignant pattern: towns reclassified one by one, citizens unsure when the old rules stopped applying, power moving procedurally rather than ideologically.
Minneapolis now occupies that same narrative space.
The [recent] killings there—of a nurse, of a protestor—are not isolated tragedies. They are signals that the United States is flirting with a system in which constitutional rights remain intact on paper, but apply in practice only to those who remain within an increasingly narrow band of normality.
A government empowered to punish enemies without restraint will eventually redefine who its enemies are. Minneapolis confirms the warning—and sharpens it.
In a dual state, no one is permanently inside the law. Some are simply inside—for now.
Extended Endnotes (Augmented)
1. On the Dual State
Ernst Fraenkel’s The Dual State (1941) remains the canonical account of how legality and arbitrariness coexist. Its relevance lies not in totalitarian analogy but in structural bifurcation: law for some, discretion for others.
2. On Immigration Law as Exception
U.S. immigration law has long functioned as a “constitutional borderland,” with reduced due-process guarantees justified by sovereignty claims. Interior deployment converts this exception into a governing norm.
3. On “Normal Status”
Authoritarian systems rarely begin with universal repression. They begin by shrinking the category of the normal – rendering others administratively naked without formally naming them enemies.
4. On Protestors as Friction
Contemporary security doctrine increasingly frames protest as disruption rather than speech. Once protest is treated as operational interference, coercion escalates rapidly, even absent criminal intent.
5. On the Second Amendment Paradox
The Minneapolis shootings suggest a future in which lawful gun ownership increases vulnerability during federal operations – undermining the amendment’s foundational claim as a bulwark against state overreach.
6. On Emergency Without Law
Democratic erosion rarely requires formal suspension of rights. It proceeds through stretched statutes, normalized exceptions, and delayed accountability—what some theorists call “permanent emergency.”
7. On Cinema as Early Warning
Films like One Battle After Another function less as prophecy than rehearsal, staging procedural authoritarianism before it becomes socially legible.
Except as we have loved
all news arrives
from a distant land.
– Mary Oliver
Diamonds are enough. . .
Sunday, January 25, 2026. It's Sol's day . . . Overnight snow storm brought another 6” on top of yesterday's 3” deposit. Bitter cold Northerlies brought a 6º morning with a wind chill at -11º. Forecasts for TulseyTown today indicate the snows decreasing with Northerlies holding the wind chill to the single digits.
You are not your thoughts. You are the observer of your thoughts.
Psychology and neuroscience generally agrees that the internal voice is not just a passive commentator; it is an active agent. It has the power to alter our neural connectivity, shift our physiology, and ultimately, construct our experience of reality. If our internal narrative is rooted in fear and separation, we live in a fearful, separate world. If it is rooted in wisdom and interconnectivity, we live in a world of possibility. – Eva Detko, PhD, MSc, BA (Hons), IAHT
Enough. – Robert Reich, Sunday Thought, 1.25.26
Novelist Virginia Woolf was born on this date in 1882, London, England.
The English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer W. Somerset Maugham was born today in 1874, Paris, France. His short story “The Razor's Edge” was adapted to one of my fave films with Bill Murray in one of his most serious leading roles. Catch it if you can, if you haven't.
And today is the birthdate of Robert Burns. The national poet of Scotland was born on this date in 1759, Alloway, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Comin thro' the rye
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body —
Need a body cry.
Oh Jenny 's a' weet poor body
Jenny 's seldom dry,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie
Comin thro' the rye.
– Robert Burns
Yesterday Neil Diamond celebrated his 85th birthday. The legendary one of the best-selling singer/songwriter/musicians in history, he was born in 1941, Brooklyn, New York.
Kate Hudson and Hugh Jackman honored Diamond in their recent film “Song Sun Blue” now up for multiple Academy Awards. Caroline was truly sweet.
Tide Turn on a Winter Day
Wine dark sea
red dawn sky.
Forever ago a glass calm.
Magenta sails
on a flat earth sea,
incomprehensible as death,
birth bewildering
as the woman bringing it
from wherever the wind is born,
inconceivable as a round earth
conceived
in the imagination
of a mother's child
on an ice covered hillside shore
playing with stones.
– jab