Once I wrote a love letter to January, but then, I lost it.
A few years ago I started a blog. It was a landing page for literary residencies where I stored essays about everything from how our shoes signal intentions to children to how grief drapes itself around my shoulders and either grounds me or drowns me, depending upon the day.
And then there was a piece about my complicated love of all things January. I wrote about the silence of snow and the frigid isolation of East River South Dakota, and how it feels like fairy-tale-ice-curse one day and glittering blessing the next. The January essay was popular with readers, and it pleased me to connect with people who use the turning of the calendar to reflect on themes of cold and loneliness, darkness and sanctuary.
The original blog is gone now. The domain name was snatched by the kind of people skilled at taking things that aren’t theirs and carving those things up into unrecognizable web distortions. I am saddened to have lost that particular marker in the virtual sphere. I’ve been hesitant to start anew.
But then — another January plans its arrival. This January feels less like a package thumping at my doorstep, awkwardly documented to prove its delivery. This feels like a locally sourced January of sorts, one I may have to venture out to find. A personal January. Humbled. Bruised. Unbranded.
So I have decided to begin again in the online space. I am no longer a teaching artist (or at least I don’t teach very often). Today I am a full-time public radio host and journalist. I’m still hopeful, however, there are readers and writers out there seeking connection and community beyond the In the Moment daily radio broadcast. I’ve missed writing. I want more of it in my life.
This newsletter is my new space to share essays and images, book reviews and poetry, conversations and audio ephemera. It’s a place for interests outside of work, creative compassion, and deep exploration of my own community, even as I learn to define community in new ways. There are stories I am told don’t carry “statewide interest.” You’ll find those stories here.
Subscribe to FiSH, if you like. (I’ll write more about the title later.) I promise to take the work seriously, even as I allow myself to send imperfect words into the world. This is a place of play. I invite you to open a notebook or newsletter of your own. Journey alongside with this digital commonplace book experiment, rooted in wherever you call home, rooted in language and love.
I’ll be here. Listening.
1 I snapped this photo on my phone from inside the Mpls Institute of Art while walking through with my brother before he died.
a poem for your day: That I who is but clay should feel such joy. Amanda Jernigan from "Years, Months, and Days" 2018
Love your writing, speaking, motherhood, sisterhood, and FRIENDSHIP! You calm myself and I am sure others with the serene quality we feel in you!
I know that smell. I can feel it!