Weeknotes: January 26–29, 2026
Monday, January 26 - Thursday, January 29
I walk the frozen city through trails that telegraph its residents' means and desires. The clean, sharp-edged channels of business who can afford a plow service terminate in white berms at property lines. Their residential equivalents usually extend the length of the block in neighborly harmony. Elsewhere, tidy lanes shoveled by hand taper into rough footpaths, then open back up again. You can identify the fastidious digger by the amount of cement showing underneath — they've been out more than once. The latecomers and reluctant shovelers' paths are lumpier, but at least they made an effort. All of it is stitched together in a patchwork of cooperation and need.
I love walking in the snow, but this week I’m so distracted. I don't want to write about politics here — this blog is my escape, the place I come to share my thoughts about music, art, running, and the quirks of my neighborhood. But, it's so hard right now to look away from the disaster unfolding before us. I could pretend I'm not constantly thinking about it and write about the pristine quality of the morning snowfall or how Andy's porch light has remained lit ever since he died four months ago. But, my mind keeps flashing back to that horrendous video of a Minneapolis nurse being thrown to the ground by masked men and shot multiple times while America watched.
The next day is a chore. All I do is work — school, job, homework. I sit at my desk with my TI-34 calculator muttering "I can't fucking believe I have to do math right now." Islay whines from the living room, begging for treats because it's 10° F and she's bored out of her mind.
I'm jolted from an emergency nap by a large yellow flatbed out on the street come to tow Andy's old Chevy van, inert since September and entombed in snow. A landmark of our street, never to be seen again.
I take another winter walk to clear my head. Too many vacant storefronts out on the main drag — the economy here is squirrely. A pair of spines in a used book shop window merge in my head: The Astronomy of Baking. I head down Michigan Avenue and back over the river, past the Honda dealership where Greg, who lives two blocks away, recently bought a car. You can't get more convenient than that. Just past the Dairy Queen, boarded up for the winter, I step into a cozy weed shop and on a whim, buy a couple pre-rolls. Back outside, the sky is pink and I laugh as if I've already smoked one of them. Sometimes decisions are medicine.
In Detroit, Serge and I sit at Bronx Bar, eating burgers and talking about records we're listening to: Luke Temple, Dina Ögon, WAAN, Aldous Harding. A couple blocks away we watch Sharp Pins play at Third Man Records. They're great — a young power trio from Chicago with a '60s fixation and songs to back it up. The singer has hair like Joan Jett and plays a Vox Teardrop Phantom XII. The drummer kicks out big, horizontal Keith Moon fills and frequently stands up to tap his ride bell for punctuation. When the bassist breaks his E string midway through the set, he has no back-up because the same thing happened last night. After a short break, he returns to the stage with an A string in its stead. They gamely soldier on, but you can hear the low end drop out whenever he dips down. They make it work. It's a good show and makes me want to play rock music again.