WordSisters

Category: Uncategorized

  • Lazy, Crazy, Days of Summer

    So, this is summer. We all began daydreaming about this time of year during the February/March doldrums. Longer days, more time to bike, read in a comfy outdoor chair, walks with friends or family, cookouts, maybe swim, possibly attend a local festival or even a trip to the state fair or a getaway.  Don’t think about bugs, grass cutting, watering the gardens, traffic, crowds, bored kids, very hot days, house maintenance at your place or a relative’s, ants in the kitchen, work that doesn’t diminish or go away, higher food costs or utility bills. Just roll out the lazy days. Really?

    For each of us with plans for a long weekend, there is a scheduler or boss with post it notes from a few of our peers for the same time off and calendars needing additional worker hours. Caregivers are scrambling to fit in dentist appointments, physicals, and eye tests and all required before the last week of August. And don’t forget finding drivers’ ed if there is an appropriate age kid in the house.

    What is it about our easy-going collective summer fantasy? Planted in our rhythms by school calendars built around agricultural and/or weather limitations centuries ago. Perpetuated by advertisers and businesses. Lots of people work their longest hours in warm weather. For them summer means more bucks to stretch through slow times. Or those extra summer jobs pay for the extra summer expenses. 

    What we share in our summer dreams across many parts of the United States are the simple pleasures of walking outside without a coat or gloves, not slipping on ice, seeing neighbors or friends while casually walking, sitting on a public bench sipping a cup of coffee or slushy. There are flowers to admire, fresh vegetables and fruit available that taste better, sunlight more hours instead of porch and garage lights. After staying inside during sunlight-starved months of cold, this is worth the wait. Wasps, bees, flies, mosquitos and ticks: please give us a break.

  • Whistles Still Blowing

    As we file federal taxes, think about how our leaders chose to spend our money. Not on highways or better schools or improved health, but on 3,000 armed and masked government agents sent into multi-cultural communities with near complete freedom to hunt for people who might be in the U.S. illegally. Wearing expensive military equipment. No warrants needed. No explanation of how their lists are assembled. Federal domestic abuse perpetrated on men, women and children, particularly if they do not have white skin. And extended to anyone blowing the whistle on the ICE action or filming the action or merely annoying the masked strangers.

    Comfort is needed for people hiding in the occupied cities of Minnesota, for people brave enough to care for their neighbors’ needs, for all both here and abroad who have watched the loss of life and the trampling of basic human rights. For those who sing along with Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis” and fear their own communities’ futures.  Trauma exists far beyond the I-494-694 freeways.

    Family and friends have fled the cities looking for safety and security and the ability to work. Some people just disappeared. They may have returned to other countries. They might be in a DHS facility. Or they could be living in your state. Thousands of individuals continue to feed, provide transportation, pay the rent of those in hiding.  ICE may stalk caregivers’ homes as well. And our schools, teachers, staff, parents who patrol each morning and afternoon.

    For those willing to walk in subzero weather and throw their bodies in the way of harm to protect a stranger or neighbor, how will we keep fighting for the United States we love? There isn’t any end date for what is happening. Did anyone think we would be facing these questions a year ago? 

    The answers are large, unknown. 

    One day at a time. One struggle at a time. 

    Whistles are still blowing on the streets of Minneapolis.

  • From Minneapolis

    Renee Nicole Good

    January 7, 2026

    Vietnam Veteran Ron Eastman in answer to why he joined protests at the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building in Fort Snelling, MN, home of the regional immigration court and serving as the regional ICE headquarters: 

    “Number one, my oath compels me. I took an oath in 1969 to defend my country from all enemies, both foreign and domestic. I had to be seen so no one else was killed the way Nicole Renee Good (sic) was killed. Minneapolis is a peaceful place, but ICE has descended… like a storm. They’ve wrecked businesses that have been here for decades, and they have cost children the life of their mother (sic). I could not sit at home…I just had to face the enemy eye-to-eye and say what I had to say.”    (MS NOW Daily, January 10, 2026)