Month: January 2025

I watched Schindler’s List last week. I’ve seen the movie before and knew exactly how difficult it is to watch, yet I was drawn to it anyway. I watched in pieces, taking breaks to breathe. In those breaks I wondered why I was doing this rewatch, why was I staring straight at this dark chapter in history. I think the answer is that I was trying to learn how to be a Schindler. How do I be the person who protects others? What compromises and collaborations were necessary for Schindler to accomplish saving those lives? What could I do to maximize the life-saving and minimize the compromising? Obviously the experiences portrayed in the movie will not map directly to anything that is coming, but the core of it, being a person who protects, it felt like I could learn something.

Another reason is that I felt a need to remind myself that people can be terrible to each other. That I should not be complaisant because the worst is possible. My need for this reminder comes from my deep privilege in that my life is full of kind people. Even the ones who I know have caused harm did so out of mis-aimed kindness or human frailty, not out of a need to be cruel. I am so fortunate to know so few cruel people that I have to remind myself that they exist. The watch reminded me that ordinary people can get shepherded into cruelty if they go with the flow of cruel leaders. So I was learning how to recognize when the flow is pressuring all of us into places where we are either careless or harmful.

Watching this movie did not help my anxiety during the first barrage of executive orders as the new administration took office. I watched them make choices that were deliberately retaliatory, vindictive, and cruel. That is the flow coming at us from above. Given the reality of what is being done at the highest levels in my country, I have choices to make. So I watched a hard movie to figure out how someone else made choices in difficult circumstances. I may re-read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom for the same reasons. Or I might read a bunch of soothing and optimistic fiction instead. Mary Robinette Kowal has a new book coming out, and my eyes just reminded me of Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. Sometimes I need to look straight at the hard things. Other times I need to rest so that when hard things actually happen I have the reserves to be strong against the pressure to join in cruelty.

In midwinter when everything is dark, cold, and difficult, I have to remember that spring has already begun to do the work that will make flowers bloom.

I once listened to the Hardcore History Podcast’s series about World War One. The detailed history was fascinating, but the thing that is sitting with me today is remembering how the change in war technology meant that the best tactic for governments to achieve their political aims was to turn people into cannon fodder in battle after battle, often not to gain ground, but to see who ran out of people first. It was a brutal, grinding war of attrition. The people who paid the highest price were the young ones who were thrown into the path of those machine guns. The technology of war has changed a lot in the past hundred years. That change is not just the weapons and equipment, but also in the existence of cameras and internet. This means the battlegrounds are different, but governments are definitely wrangling for power. I can see it happening. I can see these large scale choices being made, and I can see how the incoming US administration has indicated the need for some sacrifice to achieve their goals. I hear that word “sacrifice” and I recognize that they’re planning to turn many US citizens into economic cannon fodder during the impending tariff war. I look at the list of “day one” plans and the vast majority of them are going to make my life harder or increase the burden on my already strained finances.

My life will be cannon fodder in the upcoming political wrangling. I am like the peasants in the climactic battle of the show Galavant who have built a nice little home for themselves in the spot that turns out to be exactly where three armies come together to do battle. They’re doomed to lose everything and they can’t stop it, they can only hunker down and hope to survive. Given that this is how the world at large feels to me, my instinct to entrench makes a lot of sense. I want to create safety for myself and others. If possible I want to do it without losing any ground.

I wish I had better answers than this, or less anxiety over what is coming. Anxiety aside, my job for the next weeks and months is the same as it has been for the past weeks and months: Do the work in front of me. Keep my eyes open for ways I can help and support others. Make more books.

I’m a bird watcher. I do most of my watching in my backyard rather than making time to go to natural places, but even when I’m driving around town on errands, I watch for flapping or chirping or bright moments of color. Birds are an ordinary joy and I love them. A few years back I adopted a tradition of noting the first bird I saw on New Year’s Day. (I learned this from Canadian poet and author Amal El Mohtar whose books are absolutely worth your time.) Once I know what my “bird of the year” is, I can look up what that bird might represent. It is an augury of a sort. From what the internet tells me about the “meaning” of the bird and what the bird means to me personally I decide what I’m carrying forward.

In January 2024 I saw crows. I wrote about them in my Newsletter (which you can read here). Any time I saw crows all year, they made me happy. Crows are supremely confident problem solvers. I very much was that all year long. It was a good match for the year I had.

This year my first bird was waiting for me the moment I glanced out my kitchen window. It was a small brown puff ball sitting calmly on the perch of my feeder. At first I thought it was a house finch, which is a common and domestic sort of bird. I was beginning to settle my thoughts and find peace that my bird should be so common. It was logical that a common bird would be what came to me in a year where I didn’t have time to go seek a bird and instead expected one from my backyard. Then I looked closer. My bird was a female pine siskin.

She looks entirely ordinary, blending in with the sparrows and finches, but she’s unusual. It was only last week that I spotted my first ever pine siskin when her male counterpart flashed yellow at me in my back garden. If I hadn’t seen and identified the male previously, I would have doubted my identification. I stood at my window and watched her until she flew away only a moment later. Then I did my internet search.

Pine siskins are the hope and joy which surprises us unexpectedly like the flash of yellow on an ordinary looking brown bird. Siskins are beauty found in the ordinary. Seeing a siskin might be a message to embrace adaptability and resilience.

All of those things seem like good touchstones for me as I start the new year. They fit well with my intentions and priorities for the coming year. I don’t know if I’ll get to see many siskins through the year, they’re probably only stopping through, but I’m glad this one was waiting for me on New Year’s Day.