Forgiveness

 The Lord's Prayer says we are to forgive the trespasses/debts of others.  What has troubled me for the past few years is not forgiveness, but if forgiveness means I must let a person harmful to me back into my life after forgiving them.

Richard Balkin 's What we get wrong about forgiveness – a counseling professor unpacks the difference between letting go and making up (The Conversation) offers me an answer.

I often remind people that forgiveness does not have to mean a reconciliation. At its core, forgiveness is internal: a way of laying down ill will and our emotional burden, so we can heal. It should be seen as a separate process from reconciliation, and deciding whether to renegotiate a relationship.

***

Forgiveness is also confusing, thanks to the way it is typically conflated with reconciliation.

Forgiveness researchers tie reconciliation to “interpersonal forgiveness,” in which the relationship is renegotiated or even healed. However, at times, reconciliation should not occur – perhaps due to a toxic or unsafe relationship. Other times, it simply cannot occur, such as when the offender has died, or is a stranger.

But not all forgiveness depends on whether a broken relationship has been repaired. Even when reconciliation is impossible, we can still relinquish feelings of ill-will toward an offender, engaging in “intrapersonal forgiveness.”

***

With this in mind, I offer four steps to evaluate where you are on your forgiveness journey. A simple tool I developed, the Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory, looks at each of these steps in more depth.

1. Talk to someone. You can talk to a friend, mentor, counselor, grandma – someone you trust. Talking makes the unmentionable mentionable. It can reduce pain and help you gain perspective on the person or event that left you hurt.

2. Examine if reconciliation is beneficial. Sometimes there are benefits to reconciliation. Broken relationships can be healed, and even strengthened. This is especially more likely when the offender expresses remorse and changes behavior – something the victim has no control over.

3. In some cases, however, there are no benefits, or the benefits are outweighed by the offender’s lack of remorse and change. In this case, you might have to come to terms with processing an emotional – or even tangible – debt that will not be repaid.

4. Consider your feelings toward the offender, the benefits and consequences of reconciliation, and whether they’ve shown any remorse and change. If you want to forgive them, determine whether it will be interpersonal – talking to them and trying to renegotiate the relationship – or intrapersonal, in which you reconcile your feelings and expectations within yourself.

Either way, forgiveness comes when we relinquish feelings of ill will toward another.

Okay, I see it is okay to refuse any ill will on my part towards another without inviting them over for dinner.

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Cheerleading Creativity

 I keep repeating that my cure for despondency was coming back to the idea of creativity.

Therefore, I find Angela Yuriko Smith's Creativity Is How We Survive a great explication of my own ideas.

When systems strain and stories harden, we’re told, quietly and repeatedly, that there are fewer options now. Fewer paths. Less room to experiment. Less permission to change our minds. Creativity is reframed as indulgent, impractical, or dangerous at exactly the moment it becomes most necessary.

This is why we can’t think of creativity as a luxury. It’s a necessity. It is a survival skill.

Creativity is how humans adapt when the old maps stop working. It’s how we test alternatives, imagine exits, and keep meaning intact when familiar structures fail. Without it, we don’t just lose art. We lose flexibility. We lose ourselves.

Reclaiming our reality begins by rewriting over some of the most corrosive rhetoric we’re fed as creators… especially the idea that this work isn’t “real,” that it can’t sustain us, that it should be done only on the margins of a life that matters.

The truth is simpler and more dangerous: when we are creating, we are living. The return on that investment isn’t abstract. It’s survival.

We are all creators, and creativity is fueled by curiosity

***

When we reclaim our own reality, we help keep reality itself flexible. We keep imagination alive as a shared resource, not a private indulgence. Creativity is not something we do after we survive. It is how we survive.

Once we see that clearly, it becomes impossible to pretend this is a solo endeavor. Survival never is. Creativity doesn’t just help us navigate what’s ahead. It creates pathways others can follow.

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Morality Clauses

 I am far, far beyond getting much of anything done here. The after effects of the sinus infection that knocked me out last week is to be tired. That is why it took me several days to finish reading E. Lily Yu's A History of Morality Clauses (Quillette). Fascinating. I am, however, old-fashioned in my attachment to free speech - for all that the First Amendment protects against only government interference - as an antidote to a stifling and infantilizing moralism, I agree with the writer's conclusion:

 The answer to Comstock, the answer to McCarthy, and the answer to their modern-day descendants is the same as it always is: courage, discernment, and laughter. The writer should speak and write fearlessly in spite of morality clauses; agents should strike those clauses out of contracts; the publisher should neither bow to the mob nor force the writer to bow to it; and each individual should bear the responsibility of being an individual and stand apart from the howling mob. Laugh as well, Doris Lessing advises in Prisons We Choose to Live Inside, because laughter is a heretical act. Naked emperors waddling about are, after all, absurd, and so is our determination to repeat the 1910s. These tasks are as hard as they ever were, but we are not spared by our failure to carry them out. 

If a work offends your sense of morals, then you are free to refuse it into your life. That  does not mean you are free to impose on my sense of morals. Whatever immorality I indulge in will be judged by my conscience and my God.

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Rejections from the last of January

 No longer feeling like a mucus producing machine, but with goo still lurking in my lungs. I hope this will not mark the high point of my energy for the day.

 1/26

Thank you for your submission, but we don't think this is a good fit for the Against All Odds anthology. 

But feel free to submit for future Ink Alchemy anthologies.

Thank you again, take care.

Keegan Young

Editor at Ink Alchemy Books

inkalchemybooks.com

1/27

Dear Samuel Hasler,

Thank you for submitting "Agnes." We were glad to have the chance to read your work, but unfortunately we were not able to find a place for it in the New England Review.

It’s an important part of our mission to publish work by new and emerging writers as well as by those who have already earned recognition, so we read each piece with care. Because we are only able to publish a small percentage of the thousands of submissions we read each year, we often have to turn down very accomplished work.

If you haven't already, please consider staying in touch by signing up for occasional emails from NER.

Thanks again for sharing your writing with us.

Sincerely, 

The Editors

New England Review

 

 1/28:

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but unfortunately "A Heart’s Judgment Judged" was not a right fit for Hudson Review.

Thank you for trying us.

Sincerely,

The Editors of Hudson Review

***

Thank you very much for sending "Agnes" to Boulevard. Although it was not selected for publication, we're glad you thought of us. Good luck placing this with another magazine.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Boulevard
www.boulevardmagazine.org 

 

 1/30

Thank you for taking the time to send us your writing and for your patience. We are sorry to report that this story was not selected for publication in our Spring issue. 

We hope TGLR will remain on your radar when you seek publication opportunities in the future, and we wish you the best. 

Sincerely,

Shyla & The Good Life Review Short Fiction Team

 

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Eating in Anderson

 I know, dear reader, this will not be of interest to you in China, but maybe my persistent reader from Kokomo will find Food The Absolute Best New Restaurants in Anderson [Updated 2026] (Indiana Insider) has some points to consider.

First, Bonge's is not new - Bonge's has been going strong over 15 years, but it's not in Anderson. 

Second, neither Pendleton nor Chesterfield are Anderson.

Just nitpicking?

Good to see The Pitt is still open. I hope the food remains as good. 

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The Benefits and Costs of Illegal Immigration

 I have been sick these past two days; sick to the point I am not confident of my cogency. A sinus infection that started on Friday and took with a vengeance yesterday. I have slept more than I have been conscious. The last time I was out of the apartment was Saturday before the snow hit, a quick run to Dollar General, The coughing started yesterday, I sounded like an artillery barrage and my chest ached. I went back out today to get meds, and more Coke Zero. This will probably the only post I write today. Which is Monday; I slept so much I have been thinking it was Tuesday.

Onto today's topic; the benefits, first.

We forget what Milton Friedman said about illegal immigration  (The Hill); not that I am a fan of Milton - I find his ideas antagonistic to humanity.

Friedman said illegal immigration was a good thing so long as it is illegal. Illegal immigrants do not qualify for welfare benefits, Social Security, or other myriad benefits American citizens can receive. Illegal immigrants work hard, are good workers, gravitate to jobs, are better off here, and benefit the U.S. and American citizens. Illegal immigrants take jobs most Americans do not want.

But if you make illegal immigration legal, then “it’s no good,” Friedman added.

 The costs:

 Killing of anti-ICE protester exposes rare GOP rift on immigration — even in Florida  

Federal judge slams Iowa ICE agents for unlawful arrest, ‘misleading’ actions  

Immigration agents detain family taking 7-year-old child to Portland hospital  

The Trump administration’s playbook after fatal DHS shootings (NBC News)

Brendan Nyhan, a Dartmouth College professor who focuses on misperceptions, conspiracy theories and political communication, said that the Trump administration’s strategy can work to a point but that it brings risks: The images of Pretti killed by a federal agent could fuel a national backlash.

“It’s possible that’s what this will prove to be,” he said.

In a New York Times/Siena poll conducted after Good’s shooting but before Pretti’s, 61% of respondents said ICE’s tactics had gone too far.

Some Republicans are already speaking out. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., called for an investigation and said in a statement that the “credibility of ICE and DHS are at stake.”

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Pretti’s death was causing “deep concerns over federal tactics and accountability.”

“Americans don’t like what they’re seeing right now,” he said.

Trump and his allies have seemed to change their stance however slightly; after Good’s death, both Trump and Vice President JD Vance suggested ICE had made mistakes.

Border Patrol surveillance cameras approved over California city (SFGate)

 Chris Madel drops out of race for GOP nomination for governor, blasts immigration crackdown  

 Madel said in a video posted to X that he’s dropping out, in part, because he can’t stand by the Republican Party’s support of the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota, where many U.S. citizens walk the streets in fear and carry documentation to prove their citizenship. 

“I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so,” Madel said, whose defense of a state trooper charged with murder raised his profile in recent years. “Operation Metro Surge has expanded far beyond its stated focus on true public safety threats.” 

His statement underscores the increasing unease Minnesota Republicans — which now includes several swing-district lawmakers — are expressing about the surge of federal officers.

 ‘Moral and Political Debacle’: Right-Wing Media, CEOs Urge Trump to Stop Deadly ICE Crackdown (Common Dreams)

“The Trump administration spin on this simply isn’t believable.”

That’s what the editorial board of the right-wing Wall Street Journal wrote Sunday calling for a “pause” in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) anti-immigrant blitz following Saturday’s killing of 37-year-old intensive care nurse Alex Petti—who was disarmed before being shot by federal agents in Minneapolis—and top administration officials’ claims that the man who helped save US military veterans’ lives was a “domestic terrorist.”

‘Fucking Insane’: Journalist Finds at Least 2,300 Illegal ICE Detentions Since July   (Common Dreams)

Minnesota AG Keith Ellison Calls Trump Officials’ Response to Alex Pretti Killing ‘Flat-Out Insane’    (Common Dreams)

In a filing submitted hours after Pretti’s killing, Ellison and other Minnesota officials asked a federal court to prevent DHS and the Trump Justice Department from concealing or destroying evidence related to the shooting.

“According to reports, federal personnel may have seized cell phones, taken other evidence from the scene, and detained witnesses,” the filing states. “It is unclear whether federal personnel otherwise processed the scene—let alone how carefully. Then just a few hours after the shooting, federal personnel left, allowing the perimeter to collapse and potentially spoiling evidence.”

“From a law enforcement perspective, this is astonishing,” the filing continues. “The federal government’s actions are a sharp departure from normal best practices and procedure, in which every effort is taken to preserve the scene and the evidence it contains... [T]he federal government appears to have taken measures that directly led to the destruction of evidence.”

Senate GOP Plans to Give ICE $10 Billion More as Masked Agents ‘Murder People in Broad Daylight’    (Common Dreams)

An unnamed Senate Republican aide told Punchbowl that “government funding expires at the end of the week, and Republicans are determined to not have another government shutdown. We will move forward as planned and hope Democrats can find a path forward to join us.”

One of the bills up for consideration in the Senate this week would provide $64.4 billion in taxpayer money to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including $10 billion for ICE—an agency that is already more heavily funded than many national militaries. Last summer, congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump approved $170 billion in new funding for immigration enforcement, which ICE has used to massively jack up weapons spending.

Exclusive: Hegseth boosts Minneapolis immigration siege, approving use of military base (San Francisco Chronicle)

In an email obtained by the Chronicle, U.S. Customs and Border Protection asked for space at Fort Snelling, a decommissioned military base in an unincorporated area next to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, to house federal immigration agents, weapons, vehicles and aircraft.

Fort Snelling is already the site of a U.S. Immigrations and Custom Enforcement field office and a DHS immigration enforcement and detention processing center. CBP will use land on a U.S. Army Reserve base there.

“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requests support from the Department of War (DoW) to provide existing infrastructure to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of DHS, specifically an area for parking approximately 300-500 vehicles and 10 storage trailers, a ready room space for approximal 500-800 CBP personnel, a space to house, maintain and operate five CBP Air Assets, access to a magazine to store munitions, and other necessary facilities to support operations in the Minneapolis, Minnesota metropolitan area,” the email said, using the Trump administration’s name for the Department of Defense.

On Monday morning, Hegseth approved the request, according to correspondence obtained by the Chronicle.

‘Noem’s Impeachment Is the Bare Minimum’: Fury at DHS Chief Grows After Pretti Killing   (Common Dreams)

In a call, Trump told Walz he’d look into reducing the number of federal agents in Minnesota  

In a Truth Social post, Trump said that Walz called him “with the request to work together.” Trump said the call was “very good” and that the two “seemed to be on a similar wavelength.”

Trump also said that he spoke with Walz about his decision to send U.S. border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota to oversee ICE operations, which has led to speculation that Trump has lost confidence in current operations.

“He was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I!” Trump wrote in the post.

The call comes amid a two-month siege in federal immigration enforcement activity that Walz has sharply criticized, including in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published after the call Monday, and two days after federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old Pretti.

Videos from multiple angles of the killing appear to show Pretti disarmed of a gun he never drew before he was shot by federal agents, contradicting the immediate narrative set by senior Trump administration officials that Pretti had posed a clear and present danger. Criticism of Trump’s deployment of over 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota has only grown since then, with some elected Republicans and gun rights groups expressing discomfort with the Trump administration officials placing the blame on Pretti.

A Message from Your Federal Overlords (McSweeney's)

1. What happened was not what happened.
While it may have looked like a shooting, it was actually a “rapid de-escalation outcome.” We recognize that phrases like that may sound invented, which is why we ask you to repeat them anyway.

If you witnessed something disturbing, please understand that witnessing is not evidence. Evidence is what exists after it has been reviewed by the people who require it not to exist.

2. The real problem is your reaction.
We regret to inform you that your anger is trending. This is deeply unhelpful. When the public reacts emotionally to repeated tragedies, it puts pressure on leadership to respond with something other than carefully selected words. We ask that you limit yourself to the approved emotional range: concerned but not furious, shaken but not mobilized, heartbroken but still able to return to normal programming.

3. Words matter, which is why we will choose yours for you.
Certain phrases have become popular among Minneapolis residents, including:

• “This is unacceptable.”
• “Why does this keep happening?”
• “Who is responsible?”

  These phrases are inflammatory because they imply causality. To keep things calm, use safer language, such as:

• “A misunderstanding.”
• “A complex situation.”
• “Questions remain.”
• “Both sides.”

If you would like to express outrage, consider saying “This is concerning” while staring silently into the distance. This creates the sensation of accountability without the discomfort of actual accountability.

And there is more.

 

 

 

 

 Noem agrees to testify before Senate Judiciary in March   (The Hill)

How is that Obama deported hundred of thousands with killing any citizens? 

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Remembering Midwestern Writers. Charting A Course to the Future?

 I heard of Lingering Inland at I heard about "Lingering Indiana" at Proof: A Midwest Lit Fest - the program put on by Indiana Humanities. I bought the book, and in the past few days ran across a review from The Chicago Sun-Times, A new book makes the case for the Midwest’s literary might

Reflecting on these large-scale demographic changes, Olivarez says in his forward for Lingering Inland, “Because no one is looking to the Midwest for innovation, it has become an excellent place to experiment. The worst has already happened. Our former industries have collapsed or are on life support. What is there to do but dream a new way of living?”

“Lingering Inland” editor Andy Oler says that conception of the future happens when humans connect stories with people and places.

“What this collection is trying to achieve is to take those individual, idiosyncratic stories and start to sort of create a whole mosaic, a much bigger picture of what the region is, of what Chicago is, of like, how we think about the Midwest,” Oler said.

He hopes readers engage with the works slowly, letting the words sit with them. Each essay is around 1,000 words.

“I hope that they don’t read it all at once. I guess maybe, which is maybe a weird thing to say, but the brevity of the essays leads people to, you know, pick up one, read one or two, and put it down and then pick it up again,” Oler said. “I think that it’s something that you can sort of pop in and out of while you’re reading your coffee, while you’re, you know, waiting to leave, like, whatever it is, I think that it’s, it’s a nice little hit, and it, it lets people access it at their own pace.”

The collection is available at University of Illinois Press.

Well, that is what I am doing with the book - nibbling on it. I started with the Indiana writers - Booth Tarkington, Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Martone - and was pleasantly surprised by a non-academic approach. It is very much more oriented to what the Midwestern writer meant to the essayist, not a formal discussion of their literary output.

The choices are varied - Louis L'Amour is here as well as Toni Morrison. Oddly, no Hemingway or Sinclair Lewis or Theodore Dreiser. I don't think of Kentucky (Hunter S. Thompson) as Midwest. 

 

I do suggest buying the book for anyone interested in Midwestern writers, or just writers in general.

 

I make this suggestion not only because it endorses my idea that we out here in the Midwest have a license to experiment.

 

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