Yesterday the BBC played a clip from one of Jesse Jackson’s campaign speeches with his familiar refrain “Keep hope alive.” I’ll admit, I sighed at the line. Hope is hard to hold: in my experience, hope is fragile and easily bruised. Everywhere at all turns are reasons to despair: injustice is a weed with deep roots, and hope is a tender flower that is easy to trample.

Today is bland and gray, with temperatures hovering around freezing. Every year, February weather can’t do anything right: sunny days are too glaring, and cloudy days are too dreary. Melting days are too drippy, freezing days are too slippery, and in-between days are too meh. The whole vibe of February is too long, too much. Winter has dragged on too long, and whatever we have at the moment–snow on the ground, clouds in the sky, ice on the walkways–is too much.

Last week, I dreamed I was at a conference and left my laptop on a table after the keynote session. After lunch, I looked for my laptop in a stack of abandoned laptops and tablets one of the organizers had gathered, with each device carefully wrapped in a clear plastic sleeve. As I repeatedly combed through this stack of devices, I had a moment of clarity where I reminded myself this was a dream and my laptop was safely charging on my desk. Even so, in the dream I kept poring through the stack, certain I could find my laptop if I just kept looking.

If you’re an early dog-walker after overnight snow, you might see undeniable proof that neighborhood rabbits use shoveled sidewalks as their own hopalong highway.

We’ve reached that place in winter that Taylor Swift so aptly describes: “All my mornings are Mondays stuck in an endless February.” Every morning for weeks, it seems, the weather report is the same: sunny and cold. Every morning, the dog and I walk down the same snow-rut sidewalks, trying to avoid the same slippery spots. Someday in spring, when the snowpiles and snowmelt are gone, we’ll walk longer and farther, but for now, we slalom down the same sidewalks.

What kind of faith does it take to withstand the dark sterility of winter? I ask myself this same question every year. If you were Adam or Eve cast out of a summery paradise into winter’s chill, at what point would you give up hope that warmth and light would ever return? I wrote these three sentences in November, 2011, but I could have written them yesterday.

This photo tells you everything you need to know about February in New England. The streets are clear, blanched with salt, and fringed with snowbanks. The sidewalks are a patchwork of trampled snow, frozen meltwater, and bare pavement. And a toppled recycling bin is the only splash of green in sight.

I’m currently reading Kirsten Miller’s novel The Change, which in theory I should love. The basic premise is delectable. Three post-menopausal women channel various superpowers to bring justice and vengeance on a serial killer targeting young women. In a world where young women are prey, these grown women use their accumulated wisdom to extract revenge. The execution of this premise, however, is clunky and cartoonish.

Given the generally impassable nature of neighborhood sidewalks, which are navigable if you are able-bodied and wearing boots but not if you are in a wheelchair or pushing a baby stroller, I’m not sure how a Walgreens shopping cart landed in a roadside snowdrift more than a mile away from the closest store.

The sidewalks are still snowy chutes after last weekend’s storm, so I walk with my head down, navigating each next step. (If I seem overly cautious, keep in mind I sprained my ankle slipping on ice this time last year.) Luckily, I don’t have to look up to pay attention to the neighborhood birds. This morning, a red-bellied woodpecker was calling loudly from a bare tree down the street, and in our own backyard, I heard a Carolina wren fussing and trilling. I didn’t see either bird with my eyes, but I trust my ears to know they’re there.

Yesterday I read a New York Times Magazine article describing how wonderfully blissful a colonoscopy can be, once the unpleasantness of the prep is over. I can say from personal experience that the sedation provides a deep sleep and a chance to literally unplug…and that says something, I think, about a culture where we are typically so busy and overwrought, being sedated with a probe up our ass feels like a welcome respite.

After several days walking down the middle of plowed streets, the dog and I walked on sidewalks today. Right now, neighborhood sidewalks are basically trenches through tall banks of plowed snow, and they are still best traversed with hiking boots and Yaktrax. But walking on sidewalks instead of streets feels like the first step back (pun intended) to regular pedestrian life.

Forget what Robert Frost said about fences. Shoveled sidewalks and fire hydrants are what actually make good neighbors.

The morning after a snowstorm is one of the few times it’s acceptable in taciturn New England to talk to your neighbors. (Marathon Monday and the morning after a Super Bowl win are other notable exceptions.) The dog and I walked just over two miles this morning, avoiding sidewalks and walking right down the middle of (plowed) sidestreets. The streets were perfect for walking in hiking boots and Yaktrax, with a few inches of crunchy snow striated with tire tracks.

This morning, I photographed the bare streets and sidewalks knowing tomorrow’s dogwalk will look very different. Today’s snowstorm started around 11 am, and when J and I took our usual midafternoon walk, the snow was already ankle deep, so we walked down the center of the partially-plowed street. Tonight, the snow will continue, with a predicted total of a foot or two.

In the summer of 2020, in the midst of the protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd, some Americans responded to the statement “Black Lives Matter” with the rejoinder “All Lives Matter.” Today, as I consider this week’s detention of five-year-old Liam Ramos by federal agents and today’s execution of 37-year-old Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis, I find myself wondering exactly whose lives matter.

Today at the library, I finished a good enough draft of the chapter I’ve been stuck on for weeks. When I wrote my dissertation, I tried to set deadlines for each chapter, but fixating on a date only made me more stuck. This time around, I’m not setting any deadlines; I just have a weekly commitment to sit with whatever chapter I’m working on.

Today is a melting day, with temperatures above freezing and dripping icicles overhead. This morning I saw a throng of robins flying from a neighbor’s yard, probably in search of crabapples and other berries to fill their bellies. Among the calling chickadees and chirping sparrows, I heard a Carolina wren singing its spring song, as if hope alone could hurry the season.

Today is the first day of the so-called Spring semester. I say so-called because Spring semester starts in winter, with snow on the ground and salt on the streets. Temperatures were in the teens for this morning’s dogwalk, and they aren’t much higher now. It’s sunny, at least, with the promise of milder, melting weather tomorrow…ahead of an arctic blast and more snow this weekend.

Today is sunny and cold–well below freezing–but the sun should shrink some of the snow straight into the air. Sublimation is the scientific term for this, when ice becomes air without returning to water. Sublimation is slow but safer than rapid melting. Warm days bring puddles that freeze overnight, and there is nothing more treacherous than glass-slick ice underfoot. When the sun bakes away snow and ice, the streets and sidewalks become bare and dry: perfect for walkers.

Yesterday I read a Wall Street Journal article about the “retirement crisis no one warns you about,” which is the question of “mattering.” After leaving the paid workforce, the retirees profiled in the article feel undervalued and irrelevant in a society that presumably doesn’t need their skills and contributions. Having focused for so long on saving money and preserving their health for retirement, these retirees now find themselves wondering, “Does my life matter now that I’m no longer working?”

This morning while I was doing chores, I heard part of a Hidden Brain episode on how to get out of a rut. Psychology confirms what most of us know: it’s exciting to start or end a task, but it’s easy to get stuck in the middle, your initial motivation waning when your goal seems impossibly far in the future.

Today is bright and brisk: in the low 30s now, but in the teens when I walked the dog this morning, with a fierce wind. We saw no other dog-walkers, just bundled and sullen high schoolers waiting for a school bus. The way you survive the cold, barren days of January is by reminding yourself it won’t always be this way.

Today I went to a faculty retreat with my Writing Program colleagues at Babson College, ahead of the start of Spring semester next week. These kick-off retreats always feel like a dress rehearsal, even though there is no actual teaching involved. Instead, simply driving to campus, walking into the building where my office is located, and talking shop with colleagues helps me get back into the mindset of teaching.

Last night, my English language learner and I finished discussing Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which we read over winter break. The final chapter is called “An Approach to Style,” and it claims the rules in the previous chapters will help you write correctly but not necessarily well. Grammar rules can help you learn how to speak, but only practice, practice, practice will teach you how to sing.