What a roller coaster week in so many ways. But today is sunny and what we call warm here in Minneapolis, which means 33F/ 1C. Now many of you will scoff and say that is definitely not warm. But I tell you warm is a relative experience when you live in a cold place, and compared to the -18F/-28C with an even colder wind chill when I biked to work Tuesday morning, you can understand how 33 feels warm. If you are thinking, like so many told me this last week, that I am foolish for biking in such weather, or that I am somehow brave or impervious to cold, please allow me a teaching kind of moment.

My bike commute to work is 7.5 miles/12 km. I wear layers depending on the temperature. When it is as cold at Tuesday morning, I wore wool thermal tights, fleece tights, and another light fleece layer beneath rain pants that are waterproof and therefore do not allow wind in or warmth out. This is called a vapor barrier. I also wore a wool thermal shirt, with a second non-wool thermal shirt over it and over that a long sleeve cycling jersey with medium-weight insulation. Over all of that, I wore a waterproof rain jacket as my vapor barrier.

On my hands I wore latex gloves as a vapor barrier beneath medium-wight fleece gloves all covered over by extremely well insulated mittens. On my feet I wore the thickest wool socks Darn Tough Vermont has, which are very thick, and, since my small plastic bags I use for a foot vapor barrier having gone missing because it has not been this cold since February 2021, I pulled latex gloves over my toes and folded the fingers under. Then I wear giant Sorrel boots I got at REI at a deep discount several years ago from the previously owned shelf on the recommendation of the REI person who told me they have a pair they wear when snowshoeing in the Boundary Waters way up north.

On my head I wore a lightweight gaiter pulled down over my ears, and insulated cycling cap with little ear flaps, a medium-weight wool gaiter over my neck and face tucked into the cap all around to hold it up. Then my bike helmet on top of all that. The only thing not covered up were my eyes.

By the time I get out the door I am hot beneath all those layers. It takes about 5 minutes outdoors to feel a little chilly. I’m chilly for another 5 minutes–by chilly I am just that, chilly not cold. Then I start to warm up. Because cycling to work is exercise. I’m sure you all get hot and sweaty when you exercise. Combined with the layers, I generate enough warmth from the exercise of cycling to arrive at work sweating. Also, my breath freezes on the wool gaiter covering my face and far from being cold, it keeps my face warm by keeping my warm breath next to my skin. So while I arrive at work a little ice-crusted on the outside, inside I am toasty warm.

If I were to take a bus to work, I would be terribly cold from standing and waiting, not generating any heat. The cold quickly creeping up from the frozen pavement through the soles of my boots and seeping in through my winter coat.

So you can see, I am not at all foolish or brave or impervious to cold. I just know how to dress properly. That’s all it is. It does take a willingness to experiment, talking to other winter outdoor people, finding the right gear and layers, and yes, sometimes being cold. I think we are so used to our climate controlled settings that we are afraid of a little discomfort. Don’t misunderstand me, -18F is serious cold and you can get frostbite in about 10 minutes. But you’d be a fool to try biking to work at that temperature wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Properly attired, however, it’s no big deal.

The Martin Luther King holiday Monday was wonderfully relaxing. James and I were on media blackout and spent the day reading, working on the attic project, and generally relaxing. James made us hot chocolate in the afternoon. Few things are as wonderful as sipping hot chocolate and reading a good book.

Tuesday was back to reality. Classes started at the law school bringing the buzz of all the students returning, which is a joy. One of my favorite first year law students greeted me with, “how you doing Queen?” I was startled and so delighted I burst out laughing. Then we had a lovely conversation about what a great and relaxing winter break they had.

I carefully sipped from the firehose of news. I am concerned for the safety of my LGBTQ friends. Have you noticed the white male patriarchy is couching their masculine insecurity and transphobia behind the excuse of protecting women? Trans women should not be allowed in women’s restrooms or on women’s sports teams they say. But they don’t seem very worried about trans men in the men’s restrooms or on men’s sports teams. And while they are so concerned about my personal safety from trans women, they clearly don’t care about protecting me from cis white men who are rapists, domestic abusers, and think I shouldn’t have the right to vote.

One of my colleagues has a friend who is an attorney who works for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). With the President’s executive order eliminating all things DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) in the federal government, this person’s department was told to scrub every mention of DEI from their department and ordered to not make any kind of DEI weighted decisions when contracting with outside vendors or hiring new employees. If anyone so much as mentions DEI or uses DEI considerations they will be fired. If someone knows of a co-worker talking of DEI or using DEI to make decisions, they are to immediately rat on their co-worker within 10 days or face being fired themselves.

My heart broke when I learned of the nearly 1,660 Afghan refugees who were pulled from their flights to the United states on the President’s order suspending U.S. refugee programs. All of these people were cleared to come to the United States. Some of them were unaccompanied minors whose parents are already living here. Others face threats from the Taliban for helping the U.S. when we invaded their country.

Then there are all of those thousands of appointments for asylum seekers, canceled. People who have been waiting in Mexico, like they were told to do, for months. Actions like this will certainly increase the number of people willing to face the danger of crossing illegally into the country. And as for those who are already here without documents, please know that if ICE knocks on your door and, you are not required to talk to them unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. Likewise if you are a citizen and ICE knocks on your door to ask you questions about your neighbors, don’t say anything. Protect your neighbors! Don’t be a collaborator.

I did find great joy in the words and bravery of the Right Reverend Mariann Budde who made a plea to the President from the pulpit of the Washington National Cathedral during the inaugural prayer service asking him to “have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” The President and Vice President were visibly displeased. The President has demanded an apology which he will not get.

I have also had joy in the early morning greetings of a fellow bike commuter. We’ve been passing each other in opposite directions most mornings for weeks. Tuesday morning, when it was so cold, they called out a muffled good morning through all of their layers. I chirped back an equally muffled good morning. And every morning since then we’ve been saying hello when we pass.

Then there was the student I spent an hour with talking over their struggles with legal writing. When I meet with a student I never know their writing background and what the root of their struggles are so there is always an initial chat before diving in. I can guess what their struggles are because they send me what they want to work on before we meet, but it is always important for the student to tell me before I start talking, because it gives me more information and helps me find an entry point to the discussion. It also indicates how self-aware the student is. Since I am not a professor, I am not threatening and we can have a conversation, approaching the issues from various directions until we find an opening and it all begins to make a little sense for the student. Then we can seize that opening and start to make it a little bigger. This one was more challenging than usual, but we got there. We both left the meeting feeling tired but energized and hopeful that the student has some new tools in the box.

In garden related joy, the ground might be frozen solid, but all the seeds I ordered have arrived. Though the place I ordered collards from sent me okra instead. I sent them an email today telling them about the mistake. I’m not particularly an okra fan, so I’m hoping they will send me the packet of collards I ordered. I also got the Save the Date postcard for the Friends School Plant Sale. If you think that all the seeds I ordered precludes me from also buying plants, one of us is delusional.

Reading

• Essay: Gardening to Remember by Radicle. A lovely essay about the whys of gardening and how it can help us create kin and connection.
• Interview: Vanity Fair Magazine: Rachel Syme on Reviving the Lost Art of Letter Writing. A nice little snack of an interview that, if you like writing letters, will get you all fired up to catch up on your correspondence.
• Article: Mother Jones: Heavy Car Dependency is Making American Lives Less Satisfying, Study Shows, by Oliver Milman. The study found that having to drive more than 50 percent of the time for out-of-home activities is linked to a decrease in life satisfaction. Many of us live in places that are completely car dependent, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Quote

“Gavin Van Horn points out that caring for small wonders is within reach of us all and that the world needs caretakers, not saviours. He asks us: ‘What is within reach?’ And I think gardening can help us do that – focus us on what is within reach. What can we do, how can we care, in our own backyards and green patches – and then how might this ripple out beyond?”

~Radicle, “Gardening to Remember”

Listening

• Podcast: Tech Won’t Save Us: How to See Tech Like a Luddite with Jathan Sadowski. Sadowski has a new book called The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. An excellent and interesting conversation about not only what it means to be a Luddite in today’s digital tech saturated world, but it also delves into the relationship between technology and capitalism.
• Podcast: In Conversation: Episode 55: Monopolies, Surveillance Capitalism & How to Dream the Future with Cory Doctorow. This is a new to me podcast that has been around for a number of years. I scrolled back through the episodes and picked this one from 2021 as a trial run. Host Nathalie Nahai talks with writer Cory Doctorow about his then recent book How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. It was an interesting conversation. I will definitely be listening to more episodes.

Watching

• Star Trek: Section 31. I love Michelle Yeoh and I loved her in the role of Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek Discovery series. James and I had high hopes for this one, but after about 45 minutes we turned it off because it was so lousy.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

This morning’s breakfast was our usual Sunday morning sourdough discard waffles. James put raisins in them which kind of caramelize in the waffle cooking process, and then we topped the waffles with apple pie filling James had made and preserved this last fall with apples from our tree.

There was also a delicious dinner during the week that involved homemade seitan, broccoli, brown rice, homemade vegan cheese and some kind of magic sauce. We ate it with a slice from my last loaf of sourdough that we put in the freezer because we can’t eat a whole loaf of bread in a couple days.