December 12, 2024: Construction worker parked on Webster St. in Racine, Wisconsin at 6:11 a.m.; temperature: 2º F.
Another Week: Number 103
This year is bottoming out. We’re getting just nine hours of daylight now. The coldest temperatures of the season (2º F.) have poured down from Minnesota on the Hawk Wind — and the usual Cooper’s Hawk is staking out my backyard. Mice run in manic circles to keep from freezing, and sparrows make themselves scarce to avoid being eaten.
Nevertheless, the ridiculous notifications on my phone continue:
Yeah, I’m not doing any gardening right now.
But when my car agrees to start, I do run to the store for provisions. That’s where — if you’re lucky — you can unexpectedly bump into someone with a smile that warms you for days.
Back at home, the $34 million renovation of Mitchell School continues in the dark and the cold across Drexel Avenue — occasionally at odd hours. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday this week, I heard construction equipment and felt deep, subwoofer-like poundings and rumblings to my east. A helicopter, maybe? A new railroad? Ocean waves? I have no idea what exactly it was at 8:55 or 10:27 p.m. or 6:44 in the morning. No activity was apparent from my window.
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, local officials and the citizenry have slid into a panic like nothing since 1938, when Kenosha, Wisconsin’s favorite son broadcast the invasion of Grover’s Mill on the CBS Radio Network. This time it’s drones.
In related news, I added an app to my iPhone called FlightRadar24 that can show you what’s flying overhead. Neato — this cargo plane is going to Sichuan, that LOT airliner is headed to Kraków. Many of the flights I see coming from Chicago are not headed to Milwaukee as I had assumed, but to the other side of the globe over the Arctic. Or, here’s a Dassault Falcon headed from San Juan to Saskatoon for whatever reason.
I walked zero miles this week.
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Graphic designer Allan Peters: ‘Do Not Let Fear Be Your Master’
I have a lot of favorite quotes about life. One of them is from TV producer Philip Rosenthal, famous for creating Everybody Loves Raymond, in the documentary Exporting Raymond:
The best advice I ever got was, “Do the show you want to do. Because in the end, they’re gonna cancel you anyway.”
On Sunday, I read a Creative Bloq story about a graphic designer fixing the controversial new Jaguar logo.
The designer is Allan Peters. Looking him up, I immediately found the seven-minute version of his keynote talk at the University of Minnesota. It’s called “Do Not Let Fear Be Your Master.”
Wow.
So far, I have not been shot. But I do frequently criticize design and have always espoused the “follow your bliss” school of career guidance.
Sugarcane (2024)
On Saturday, searching for a movie to watch with my mom, I read about Sugarcane, a National Geographic documentary currently streaming on Hulu.
It concerns the Canadian Indian residential school system and the horrific abuse of children at one particular school — St. Joseph’s Mission adjacent to the Sugarcane Reserve near Williams Lake, British Columbia — over much of the twentieth century. The school was run by a Catholic religious institute called the Oblates of St. Joseph.
My mom had heard about the abuse back in 2022 when 93 potential graves were found and, as a Catholic all her life, she wanted to know more. So we watched Sugarcane together.
The film is co-directed by Julian Brave NoiseCat, whose father, Ed Archie NoiseCat, was a child at St. Joseph’s Mission. It shows the investigation into the abuse and deaths, and survivors sharing their recollections. It follows former Chief Rick Gilbert to the Vatican, seeking accountability from Pope Francis.
The atrocities are revealed quietly, in painful conversations intercut with First Nation daily life and competition at the Williams Lake Stampede. We see the truth coming out, and the process of reconciliation and healing moving forward between father and son, and through the community as a whole.
My mom felt better informed after watching Sugarcane. She said it’s important that people make movies like this so the world can know.
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