PAUL CHRISTENSEN

We are all living in this bright diamond we call winter, staring out from facets of its luminous body at the shriveled world of ice and rags of snow. The crows are foraging for pill bugs in an idle field, a balding hillside with tufts of last summer's hair still curled around rocks and bits of stardust. The cars go by like ghosts, their lights pale and fading in the foggy air. The town is drifting in the frozen afternoon, breathing out a mist of pure silence that even a mysti

Well, 2020 will go down as the year with the least clear vision of our time. We are six weeks away from inauguration, and every hour seems to hang suspended in a sudden freezing of gears. But then the rasp of forward motion begins again with a sigh, a grunt, some stifled cry from the wind. And when the sky cracks open its lead canopy of snow clouds, and a tiny patch of blue appears shot through with sunbeams, you get the feeling your pain will subside after all. We can embrac