Category Archives: Politics

Dogs, Minnesota, Music, Politics, US History

Action

January 29, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Thursday gratefuls: Dr. Josy. Petscans. Glaucoma. Shadow enconed and bandaged. Tom. Roxann. Jessie. Bruce Springsteen, The Streets of Minneapolis. Resistance. ICE. Border Patrol. Alinsky, the action is in the reaction. Prostate cancer. Winter, winter where art thou? Amazon. Safeway. New Korean restaurant in Evergreen. Rebecca and Joanne. Tara.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: the action is in the reaction

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another.

Tarot: #1, The Shaman

“The shamans unique quality is the ability to enter and commune with all levels of sentient life on the earth. It is he who shudders with the wisdom and joy contained in the haunting music of the whale song or whose skin prickles with arousal at the howling of the timberwolves. His soul reverberates with the unheard sonorous call of the mountains and smiles with pure joy at laughter of the waterfall.” Parting the Mist

One brief shining: Under the bed eyes glowing cone attached lay Shadow in her most secure most safe spot wondering wondering about the silly thing around her head about the bandage on her right front leg about her Dad looking at her and speaking softly.

Dog journal: Shadow came home, happy to see me, snuggled up in my legs, licked licked licked my face. If she wasn’t so furry, I might have done the same to her.

Dr. Josy said Shadow followed her around in the house. Wondered if she did the same to me. Was she anxious? No, I don’t read her that way. She wants to be in my vicinity, and when I sit down, she wanders off to do her own thing. Natalie, the trainer, calls Blue Heelers velcro dogs. Once they bond to you, you’re the center of their life.

This is gonna be hard. She needs to go out, yet have the bandage protected. Dr. Josy made a plastic leg cover out of an IV bag and tubing. Works, but I have to get it on her, my back not always a cooperator. Just two weeks. We’ll get by. Ordered some outdoor socks that will be easier to get on and off.

Just a moment: Saul Alinsky said the action is in the reaction. This basic principle of non-violent protest has played out once again on the Streets of Minneapolis. The violent, cruel, inhumane reaction of ICE and Border Patrol agents to the action of Minneapolis citizens has produced political pressure and a lot of it. Will it be enough to change the course of this thugee approach to immigration enforcement? I’m not sure.

My guess? Yes, for a bit anyhow. Yet. The entrenched callousness and ruthlessness of MAGA and their sorta leader, red tie guy, suggest they ain’t gonna wanna change for very long and no more than they have to.

Unless. More cities, more US citizens take to the streets. And if Democrats grow a spine. Push back. Possible. Just possible.

I’m attaching Springsteen’s song again just because.

Minnesota, Music, Politics

The Streets of Minneapolis

January 29, 2026 Charles 1 Comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Dogs, Far Right, Minnesota, Politics, Seed Keepers, US History

Always Looking for Minnesota

January 28, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Wednesday gratefuls: Thomas Friedman. Paul Wellstone. Al Franken. Ilhan Omar. Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. Rene Good. Alex Pretti. All the Minnesota resisters. ICE. Border Patrol. Minneapolis. St. Paul. Lake Superior. Up north. The Boundary Waters. Ely. Duluth. Grand Marais. The Gunflint Trail. Andover.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Resistance

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another.

Tarot: Two of Stones, Challenge

Many challenges… are born of insecurity and subconscious issues…In the modern material world, where so much emphasis is placed on a show of power or wealth, it is often a perceived position or status that enflames… rather than the reality of a situation. Holding your own ground and defending your position at such times can be achieved by keeping in touch with pure and positive motivations and holding on to personal integrity and sincerity…Remain clear and focused on your objectives and stay firm in your ethical efforts to proceed… Parting the Mist

One brief shining: Dr. Josy led Shadow out on her yellow leash, the cut on her right front leg below the carpal pad too deep to repair at home; Shadow didn’t want to go, she snuggled up between my legs, looking up at me with those pleading eyes, Dad can’t you fix this?

Dog journal: Shadow cut her leg, not sure how. Going to check the Dog run today. A deep cut. Dr. Josy had to take Shadow home with her, to her office. She sedated Shadow and stitched up her leg. Shadow will be home this morning wearing the cone.

The last time a Dog looked up at me with those fix me Dad eyes Vega had just come home from the Bergen Bark Inn after Kate and I returned from Joe and Seoah’s wedding. Vega died that night from bloat.

Shadow’s leaving last night brought that right back to the surface. Many weeks after Vega’s death her plea for help would come in my mind’s eye. I’d push it away because the pain, the pain of not being able to help…

I learned a great life lesson with that memory. One day I decided not to push it away but to bring it back, to relive the anguish in her eyes, to relive the moment when Kate and I went to Sano Clinic and knelt together over her body, both crying, saying goodbye to a Dog with an outsized personality, a companion we loved. After recalling it, reliving the pain, I no longer needed to push away the memory.

Just a moment: Thomas Friedman* and Al Franken are good Jewish boys from St. Louis, Park. Both, like Paul Wellstone, another good Jewish boy, roughly my age.

Wellstone’s 1990 campaign, conducted from the back platform of his famous green school bus surprised Rudy Boschwitz, the two term incumbent senator. Wellstone won.

He drew on the same reservoir of left populist political attitudes that today fuel the non-violent protests against ICE, the Border Patrol, and red tie guy’s cruel policies. A sense of decency, of justice, of belief in the American dream, of belief in equality before the law runs deep among Minnesotans.

Why I wrote on the 16th, after the murder of Rene Good: If any state in the country can stand against this abuse of Federal power, it’s Minnesota.

*”Friedman: I will just say one thing about my fellow Minnesotans, who I’m really proud of for the way they’ve risen up against what is basically a deliberate provocation. Minnesota is a unique place.

I always tell people this story. When I was about 5 years old there was actually a Jewish Mafia in Minneapolis, and my dad grew up with a lot of these guys. They were mostly bootleggers. One day, when I was young, my dad came home and said one of his friends had been sent to jail. When you’re 5 years old and your dad says he knows someone who went to jail, it just blows you away. I said, “Dad, what did he do?”

My dad thought for a second. I was just 5. He said, “Son, he was shopping in a store before it was open.” That’s Minnesota for breaking and entering. It’s that kind of place.

Whenever people ask me where I’m from, I say, “Well, I live in Beirut or Jerusalem or Washington, but I’m from Minnesota.” And you will never understand my column if you don’t understand that. My column is called Foreign Affairs. It used to be, anyway. But it really should be called Always Looking for Minnesota.” Interview in the NYT, 1/27/2025

Minnesota, Politics, US History

Love is the Power.

January 26, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Monday gratefuls: Good sleeping. Cold weather. A bit of Snow. Shadow, sleeping. Roxann, recovering. Tom, too. Jessie. Alex Pretti. Rene Good. Minnesota strong. January in Minnesota. Marilyn and Irv. Tara and Eleanor. Paul, shoveler of Snow. Braiding Sweet Grass. Furious Minds. Prostate Cancer. Western medicine.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Minnesota

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another.

Tarot: #6, The Forest Lovers

The Forest Lovers represent a positive spiritual force of creative emotional energy and a universal desire for harmony. The inhabitants of the Greenwood revere and respect the rites of love as the force that ensures the unfolding cycle of creation and emotional stability. Always bring the light of love with you; allow it to illuminate the darkest corners of your world and support you through whatever you set out to do.

One brief shining: Yogurt, yes, cheese and Egg burrito, yes, protein bar, yes, a tin of Sardines, yes and I’ve hit sixty grams of protein, ah, still finessing my diet, the biggest challenge of my life after Kate’s death, neither great nor bad, if not quite good, nourishment, I know. I know.

Tarot: I’m so glad I drew the Forest Lovers this morning. The Birch Tree wound with green Vines reminds me of Minnesota, especially the Arrowhead where Paper Birch, Aspen, Balsam, Spruce, Jack Pine, and White Pine continue the southern reach of the Boreal Forest, enclosing the many Lakes there and providing habitat for Moose, Wolves, Canadian Lynx, Black Bears, canoers, and other Wilderness loving tourists.

The reminder of Wild Minnesota and the reminder of the power of love to illuminate even the darkest corners of our world encourages me to see our political dark corner from a different vantage.

Non-violence as a strategy assumes power comes from helping others see the oppression, the injustice that can only endure when people of conscience look away, pretend it isn’t there. Non-violence chooses love as a healing force, as a way to make change, to be the difference the protester wants to see in the world.

There is an argument that non-violence cannot work in an authoritarian polity, like say Hitler’s Germany. If the ruling authority does not care about public perception, about individual human lives, then protest can be silenced either though violence or stopping it before it happens.

While it’s true that the Miller/Trump/Noem worldview reads as authoritarian, and that the leadership of ICE and the Border Patrol are outright authoritarians, we’re not Germany in the 1930’s. Not yet.

Why? Because there are still millions who love freedom, liberty, and justice. Sure most would rather ignore the immigrant among us. Many never encounter an immigrant, documented or undocumented.

But the love of our friends and neighbors in Minnesota will not let us look away. They brave the cold and the danger to awaken that ember within, to ignite a Wildfire of love that can burn down the twisted, dark forest of hate. Open your heart and you will become a wildfire of your own.

I will never forget Rene Good and Alex Pretti who gave their last full measure of devotion. I hope you won’t either.

Family, Far Right, Friends, Minnesota, Politics, White Supremacy

Sad. Yes. Despair. No.

January 25, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Sunday gratefuls: Minnesota. Each whistle. Each winter garbed protester. Each person of brown skin living there. Each act of defiance. The wonderful spirit of all those out in sub-zero weather melting ICE. Shadow, who comes inside. Work outs. The haiku writing glass lady of Bernal Hill. Its owls, coyotes, dogs. Counterrevolutionaries. Against radical reactionaries.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: America

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Rachamim. Compassion.

While chesed (lovingkindness) often refers to a choice of action, rachamim is deeply tied to visceral emotion and empathy—feeling the pain of another.

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

The King of Vessels (Heron) encourages you to trust your intuition and move through life with the calm assurance of someone who understands their place in the natural world.

One brief shining: Shadow goes out and comes in, rolls her red Kong ball, eating treats as they fall out, picks up her Barkely bone with the marrow now licked out, grinds it in her strong jaw, grating her teeth, flops over on her back still holding the bone, another Mountain morning well underway while the America we once knew lies broken, a ravaged bone beneath the feet of oh, so sad delusionaries.

Here’s my letter to the editor on an NYT article: Watching America Unravel in Minnesota.

Yes, the American government has revealed its dark, dystopian nature and how this ugly chapter can only worsen. It is unraveling.

But not America. As a 40-year resident of the Twin Cities, I’ve never been more proud of my adopted home state. America has shown up on the streets of Minneapolis, in a thousand acts of protest, in a general strike!

Bend no knee. Blow a whistle. Organize your neighbors. Say no to tyranny. That’s my America. And, my Minnesota.

I wish I had a lighter side to offer this morning, something to whisk away the descending darkness, reveal the ohr that I know lies hidden under the masked, jackbooted thugs, yes, even them. All I’ve got is a faith in the millions and millions of Americans who know in their heart that shooting civilians, killing them has never been acceptable. Who know that the deaths create martyrs for the cause of liberty and justice for all.

I cannot tell you the depth of my sadness. My ongoing grief as this, this tawdry simulacrum of democracy, continues to lay waste to American cities, laws, norms of decent behavior. At how it feels to near my 79th birthday and find my home shaken to its core, divested of harmony, all in service of long discredited ideas: xenophobia, white supremacy, oligarchical greed, and a devastating lust for power.

Yes, sad. Despair, no. My Wild Neighbors continue to thrive. Shadow sleeps after her morning’s play. I have family I love. Friends I love. Artemis has Garlic Cloves ready to send up Scapes in the warmth of Spring. Tara and I will plan our gardens this Tuesday. My birthday present to her. Ruth has begun her training to become a phlebotomist. Gabe feels life beginning to change as he enters the last semester of his senior year. Roxann had a successful procedure. Tom and Jessie supported each other. Alan has a new left knee. Life continues.

Far Right, Fourth Phase, Holidays, New Apostolic Reformation, Politics, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., US History, White Supremacy

Values and Norms

January 23, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Friday gratefuls: Shiva Minyan for Dick. Visiting times today. Ellen. Jamie. Russ. Asher. Isaac. Tol. Jonah. Mikaela. CBE. Shadow of the morning. Kate, always Kate. Gabe, looking at college. Minnesota melts ICE. Courage. Bravery. Resistance. Living from your nefesh. Refreshing the soul. Tom. Roxann.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Cold

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat. The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

“If Chokhmah (Wisdom/Inspiration) is a seed and Binah (Understanding/Analysis) is the soil that develops that seed into a plant, Da’at is the nervous system that carries the vital life force from the brain to the rest of the body. It is the point of transition from “thinking” to “being.””

Tarot: Three of Bows, fulfillment

Meaning: Nourishment from a spiritual source gives inner security and joy. Goals and desires are reached, making life rich with emotional scrutiny and a sense of completion.

One brief shining: Cold Air descends to Shadow Mountain, a Snow Storm comes behind it, offering another reprieve from dangerous Wild Fire conditions; life here at Shadow Mountain home greets the cold and awaits the Snow with joy, displaying, as Mary Oliver put it, stars on our shoulders.

Funerals/Memorial Services: Had an insight about these rituals of remembrance. Yes. Helping family and friends grieve. Yes. Public acknowledgment of a loss and the beginning of a readjustment in the community. Who will we be without Dick. Important work, for sure. And well known.

Another, perhaps more subtle effect. The reinforcement of community norms, what we consider virtues. So, when Marilyn said Dick personified the mussar traits of humility, compassion, gratitude, and generosity, we learned to measure ourselves.

When Jamie said his father hated funerals, it gave us permission to hate them, too. When Russ talked about reading The Prophet with his father, reading and spending time with our parents while they’re alive got underlined.

This is not insignificant. I went to bed last night wondering how I showed up for others. Was I humble? Aware I did not show up for my dad. These tensions between our perceptions of ourselves and the virtues our community values become a growing edge for each of us. No. Not to wallow in regret or to compare ourselves against the life of another, rather to weigh ourselves against our own aspirations, our own behaviors.

Weddings. Swearing in of public officials. Baptisms and bris. Observing holidays. Protests. All have norm setting, norm reinforcing moments. It’s how we learn to be Jewish, American, Christian, Coloradans. Minnesotans. MAGA or progressive.

Just a moment: Nearing the end of Furious Minds, the Making of the MAGA New Right. Dense and scholarly, Field’s points to three main intellectual sources for Trumpism and MAGA. First, Claremont College and Institute, where paleoconservatives and downright scary thinkers gather and push each other further and further to the right. Second, postliberalism, especially the work of Notre Dame scholar, Patrick Deneen, in books like Why Liberalism Failed. Third, National Conservatism, in particular the work of Yoram Hazony as in his National Conservatism, Rediscovered.

We can add Field’s work to the Violent Take It By Force in which Matthew Stafford offers a summary of how the New Apostolic Reformation aided the success of MAGA at the polls and influences the Trump Whitehouse.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to, at times, pull the focus off the latest outrage to discuss how we got here. What are the sources, the political and mass movement impulses that have put us in such a dismal damned place.

Aging, Far Right, Fourth Phase, Friends, Politics, US History

Transformations

January 22, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Thursday gratefuls: Rich. Dick. Tara. Laurie. Susan. Ron. Marilyn. Jamie. Joanne. Roxann. Tom. Shadow and her bone. The Dog run. Nathan. Kalispell. Dreams. Visions. Growing with the soul. Tarot wisdom. Furious Minds. The alt-right. The far right. DJT, wrecker of a nation. Rebuilding our country. NATO. Allies and enemies. Kong.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Minneapolis

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat. The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

Tarot: Ten of Bows, Responsibility

Prioritization: A call to assess what truly matters and learn to say “no” or ask for help.

One brief shining: One scoop, a cup, prozac in a pill pocket, crunching sounds, check her water, listen to her lapping it up until she comes next to me, asks to go outside, open the door, and Shadow disappears into the morning darkness.

Aging diary: No, not mine this time. Others.

Thinking about Dick’s sudden, unexpected death. A gut blow to his family and friends. Yes. As a way to die, which is something those of us in our golden years have to consider. And do, from time to time. Yes, please. Now I lay me down to sleep.

A friend, recovering from his own no good, terrible week, has his beloved suddenly scheduled for surgery. Aging demands so much of us at times. Collapses matters that would bring us to our knees in midlife into days and weeks of insults. Calls on reserves, resilience, often more than we may feel we have. When friends and family can step in, shore up the wave punished dock of our soul.

Another friend. Finally sold his business. This last month! So happy for him. A creative guy. Musician. Actor. Playwright. Scriptwriter. Author. Married to his best friend for forty years. Released now.

Go with your soul in all these instances. Link life changes to the deep purpose you and only you can fulfill. Then we can die with grace, console and comfort each other, once again let our soul free to create.

Just a moment: Our elected agent of chaos gives voice to and puts the unparalleled power of a waning hegemon behind racism, xenophobia, downright madness. An unwanted wrecking ball to years of liberal hubris. Imagining we could proceed with half measures, leaving out this constituency for the next one, not paying attention to the realpolitik of our nation.

We remain a creedal nation, one devoted to the dream of a place where many peoples have a chance, and only a chance, to learn how to live with each other in spite of the abysses of otherness. Somehow gaining strength and joy from staring right into the chasms between us, then eagerly building bridges across them.

I see today and yet hold fast to a new nation, one reimagined and committed to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For all.

Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

Greenland

January 21, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom recovering. Dick Arnold. Ellen. Jamie. MVP group. Death. Kate, always Kate. Jon. Regina. Pronoia. Shadow and her treat ball, her bones. Mussar. The Dog run. Our Snowless Winter. Christopher and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Hafar from afar. Mary down under with animals that attack. Murdoch. Annie and Luna. Eleanor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Greenland

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat. The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

Tarot: Ten of Arrows, Instruction

Focus on the “Why”: Connect your current hard work or training to a larger guiding principle or long-term goal, much like following a “Pole Star”.

One brief shining: Thresholds, liminal spaces, liminal moments like dusk and dawn, a babies first breath, that moment when liking turns to loving, when a thought passes into understanding and action, like death on a cold Evergreen night when it came for Dick Arnold.

Rabbi Jamie’s dad died Monday night. He went to sleep around eight p.m. and when Ellen, his wife, went to check on him he was cold. Dick’s death has hit the congregation hard.

Dick, as Tara noted, lived in the back ground. A master carpenter, a licensed consulting psychologist, and an accomplished golfer, Dick specialized in showing up. When shelving needed putting up. When Tara needed help working with drywall. When LGBTQ+ youth needed a psychologist.

Had we gone to Israel on our ill-fated 2023 trip Dick and I would have been roommates. His funeral takes place Thursday at 11:00. Shiva minyan Thursday night.

Just a moment: Our President, denied the “Noble” prize, admitted in a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister that he could now think about things other than peace, like seizing Greenland.

I can’t improve on this Robert Reich piece sent to me by his Substack:

“Friends,

It could be a Monty Python skit from forty years ago: A demented U.S. president demands the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble”), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the Prize, he says he’s no longer in favor of peace and decides to invade Greenland. When Greenland refuses him and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which are really import taxes that cost Americans dearly) and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.”

A five-year old playground bully who will brook no dismissal of even his most outlandish wishes and wants, red tie guy had better retake that cognitive test followed by one gauging e.q.

Far Right, Minnesota, Politics, US History

Minnesota Proud

January 19, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Monday gratefuls: The Ancient Brothers on books. Rams v Bears. Cold. A dusting of Snow. Field Guide to the Soul. Shadow, her joy. My joy. Mary’s pics of the Royal Show in Melbourne. (think State Fair) Mark’s conversation with Salman, his student. Joe back home. Ruth and her new car. Morning darkness.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Books

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat. The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

Tarot: Two of Arrows, Injustice

“The scales of natural justice have been skewed by false judgments, ignorance, or arrogance. Sitting in judgment with unbalanced scales to an untrue premise, however ardently or sincerely, will not prevail. The bow is broken and useless through prejudice and misuse.” Parting the Mist

One brief shining: Martin Luther King would have stood with the protesters, blown a whistle, followed ICE agents, taken videos of their corrupt action; wherever the scales of justice stood unbalanced, weighted on one side by ignorance or arrogance or false judgments, his moral compass led him to the other side of the scale. Minnesota proud.

Gemini struggles with images, too. But you get the point.

Never felt so much pride in my home of forty years, Minnesota. Pushing back against corporate and government arrogance runs through the veins of Minnesota’s left, sure, but it also comes naturally to a Scandinavian influenced culture which believes the common good should drive decisions.

It does not surprise me that just folks have their whistles, neighborhood phone trees, and a willingness to stay in the fray. Nor does it surprise me that Tim Walz and Jacob Frey (mayor of Minneapolis) have called out the storm trooper invasion by red tie guy and that weasel, Miller.

When I first moved to Minnesota in 1970, the anti-war movement had a very strong presence. When police came to arrest a student at my seminaryfor draft evasion, a guy I didn’t know very well offered to ride along with him.

Howard Vogel, who became a good friend and would go on to win a landmark environmental lawsuit against Reserve Mining Company, surprised the arresting officers with his humble appearance and his knowledge. My friend came back to the seminary that same day.

I spent fifteen years organizing in Minnesota. It was never difficult to find ordinary citizens who understood why it was not a good idea for Control Data to run the Elliot Park neighborhood. Or, why General Mills didn’t belong in the landlord business in Steven’s Square Park.

The Democratic Farmer Labor party, the DFL, has its roots in radical left politics. A Minnesota third party, the populist and leftist Farmer-Labor party merged with the state’s Democratic party in 1944. Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale. Paul Wellstone. Al Franken. Standard bearers.

What a state.

Family, Far Right, Friends, Politics

A Political Culture That Defeats Them

January 18, 2026 Charles Leave a comment

Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Sunday gratefuls: Broncos. Shadow, crosser of liminal spaces. Ruth, the kind. Joe back home in Korea. New Moon, dark Sky. Moon phases. Waxing, Full, Waning. Like a life. Tom in recovery. Books. Where do we find them? Drought. Snow. A-Basin. Jon. Kate, always Kate.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Family

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity. Yetziratiut. “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat. The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

Tarot: Ten of Arrows, Instruction

Passing on Wisdom: It asks what legacy or skills we are leaving for the next generation. It encourages moving beyond past struggles or frustrations to share the beauty of inspiration and dedication.
Focus on the “Why”: Connect your current hard work or training to a larger guiding principle or long-term goal, much like following a “Pole Star”.

One brief shining: She displayed her new-to-her Subaru Forester with a Vanna White sweep of the hand, pointed out the heated mirrors and heated wiper blades, the all-weather car mats, the three, yes, three screens, the manual handbreak, the shifter that was not a dial, and started Frances to give me a quick ride around the neighborhood so I could get the full experience.

Ruth did it right. She had a pre-purchase inspection of both the Mazda she liked and the soon-to-be Frances. Detailed reports on each at $200. The Mazda, a Wisconsin gal, had rust and eight pages of mechanical problems. Frances had only minor notes.

She bought a two-year warranty. Joe suggested that. As a college student she doesn’t have cash reserves adequate for a large repair bill.

Tarot: I’m focusing on two aspects of the Ten of Arrows. What inspiration and dedication am I modeling for the next generation and what is the pole star for my commentary project?

First, I’ve written Ancientrails, a bread crumb trail to the forest of my life. In my will a codicil ensures it will remain available in case Joe, Ruth, or Gabe want to consult it.

Second, modeling. I spend time each week with friends, in person and on zoom. Also with members of CBE through mussar and Torah study. I love and care for Shadow.

I greet Ruth and Gabe with joy each time I see them, encourage them, assist them when I can. Make sure they know Grandpop loves them.

I maintain close contact with Joe and Seoah. Even with 6,000 miles between us. Also with Mary and Mark, 8,000 miles away.

My commentary project needs tighter ratcheting to find its pole star. Even with the narrow parameters I established as I started, it’s too broad, not specific enough to make it distinctive. Probably headed towards a focus on the far right since I see very few folks doing regular reporting on it and I love the subject.

Know the opposition, build a political culture that defeats them.