All posts in January 2026

In old movies, sometimes humanity came together to meet the alien threat. We have never needed an alien threat more desperately. Or zombies. Or even wookies or vampire accountants. We need to take our minds off each other. Because we cannot keep sniping at each other like this.

We might start by agreeing that any evidence that does not match our preconceived notion of the truth should not be reflexively rejected. Just because a person doesn’t like the evidence, that doesn’t make the pictures on the screen into deep fakes. I understand how tough this is. Hell, we’ve reached the point where we can make Godzilla look real.

So we need to exercise our common sense, while understanding that Fred on the other side of the political divide may be coming from a different set of premises. Fred’s deep fake may not be our deep fake. Fighting over the evidence will not help. Evidence we don’t like becomes just another Godzilla nowadays.

We can’t keep playing a game of Pick Your Godzilla.

MY ADVICE: Get your phones out, readers. Keep your phones out. Get your footage out into cyberspace. Enough phones and we might slaughter at least a few of the latest monsters. Enough phones and people may again begin to believe what their eyes are telling them.

My dog Lady has an excuse for being ignorant of what is going on around her. Despite having 17 identifiable breeds in her DNA, my mutt struggles to recognize the command “speak” — forget inconvenient commands like “come,” which mostly works at home unless she sights a squirrel, and seldom works at the dog park until she is exhausted. But Lady aside, the rest of us should probably pause more often to place ourselves firmly in time and space.

Reader, are you having fun yet? Do you like how you are spending your time? Or do you miss old friends? Maybe you miss favorite places and activities that you somehow never manage to fit into the week? Wonder why it’s been so long since you last made chocolate chip cookies, clam chowder or blueberry pie? People have become so crazy busy today that hours disappear one by one, the hours becoming days, days becoming weeks, weeks becoming years and voilá! We’ve crossed the bridge into 2026.

If that last paragraph resonates with you, reader, I’d like to suggest you grab your laptop or just a pen and paper. Write down the people you want to see or at least call. Make a list of pursuits and projects you want to somehow stuff into 2026. While this approach does not always work, writing desires down and then putting those plans in plain sight does help many people to focus. You might tape your list inside a cupboard, put it under a refrigerator magnet or just leave it on a desk. Whatever works for you.

Because regular reminders can change how a day unfolds. Each day is one of the bricks in our individual timelines — and one more chance to make tomorrow better.