Keeping track: January 2026
I need to keep a better record of what’s happening. It’s difficult to find time for it, or rather, put the effort there. It seems like an unimportant, unhelpful thing.
Longform content feels beyond me right now, and I have little patience for self-absorbed introspection, but I’m starting to see the importance of preserving an honest account of events. So I’ll try to do it more frequently, if briefly.
At the same time, keeping track of those things alongside flashes of my personal life creates a harsh juxtaposition. It’s jarring—baking cookies then opening TikTok to an execution. But maybe that’s important. It’s the written equivalent of sudden sobriety in the middle of a normal day, a sharp awareness followed by sickness that I have to push down to keep working and mothering.
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On January 7th, Renee Good was murdered in her car by an ICE officer near her home in Minneapolis while attempting to drive away. She said, 'It's ok dude, I'm not mad at you,' before being fatally shot multiple times. The agent then stated, 'Fucking bitch.’
On January 20th, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken by ICE in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, and used as a pawn in the detention of his father, despite the family having an active asylum case.
On January 24th, 2026, Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was beaten and executed in the street by agents while helping a woman who had been shoved to the ground during a protest.
It’s unfathomable that there are millions of people, including some I used to like and respect, who are so willing to swallow the federal government’s demonstrably false narrative when there are multiple angles of the murders so readily available on social media. Any justification is willful ignorance and sheer inhumanity. It could not be more clear.
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This month, we planned a birthday party in a big, open barn. There were dozens of kids. I made a crazy amount of rigatoni.
We had our house blessed.
We packed brown bag meals for Jubilee Kitchen and made cupcakes shaped like penguins.
The boys are learning about short and long vowels and how to make timelines. They’re working with clay in art class. Our favorite books are Rabbit's Snow Dance and When the Storm Comes.
We got around two feet of snow in this weekend’s storm. The schools are off Monday and Tuesday. I’m grateful that I could spend a few days in darkness, hopeful that it creates helpful barriers.