My wife asked me what I would write about today. I replied I was unsure whether I would write anything at all on this February 1st. Midway through winter, my energy is at low ebb. I am not one to peruse Facebook, or other social media sites. Still, I am aware of the activities of the Federal Government in Minneapolis. Nearly every American knows about the two unarmed citizens who were murdered in the immigration crackdown melee imposed by heavily armed ICE Federal officers. No official statement of condolence has been offered. Only a public smear of the life and character of Rene Good and Alex Pretti.

Here are a few lines from what the Mayor of Minneapolis had to say yesterday:

I mean, we have seen so many people stand up for their neighbors, and I’ve never been prouder to be part of Minneapolis. Of course there are limitations on what we’re able to do at any level of government. And there are also those limitations that are not just baked in under the law, but also baked in on the practical reality of where we find ourselves right now.

We’re not going to outgun the federal government. Not to mention that would be wildly dangerous for the very communities that we want to protect. Nobody wants that.

— Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Interviewed by Lulu Garcia-Navarro of the New York Times.

I will offer a well know poem for your contemplation on this mid-winter’s day.

THE SECOND COMING

By William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Turning, turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
   Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and
          everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all convictions, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the
        desert;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at
        last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?