“It’s dangerous,” warned the mayor.
“It’s scary,” said the city planner.
“Who knows what the Dark will bring with it,” said the lantern keeper.
“But the Dark isn’t scary,” Millie Fleur assured them.
“You just need to get to know her.”
from Millie Fleur Saves the Night
written and illustrated by Christy Mandin
Orchard Books, 2025
(accessed on YouTube 1/31/26)
Millie Fleur misses her nocturnal friends, so with her mother’s help, they block out some of the city lights that are keeping the night-time critters away. The critters come back and all ends well for everyone.
But these days, in this time, I’m not thinking of the cozy, warm dark where we watch the stars blink on when the sun sets early in the fall and winter, and when we cuddle wakeful babies.
These days are metaphorically dark. It’s a challenge to be hopeful, even to muster up optimism, and not run into Pollyanna territory. Crickets, spiders, bats, and katydids flew around the “sweet smell of moonflowers, snoozing sugarplums, and twilight tulips” in Millie Fleur’s moon garden.
The comfort I find in my own midnight garden is a quiet joy to discover, on Monday morning that I was one of over 5,000 people who called our Representative’s office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson expects to agree very soon on DHS and ICE policy. Some of what is being asked includes unmasking ICE personnel and requiring them to use body cameras is. A discussion about funding is also included on their agenda.
An agreement will allow the partial government shutdown begun last Friday at midnight to end. DHS will remain funded for just two weeks. Enough time to reach an agreement? We’ll see.
Meanwhile, citizens in Springfield, Ohio are gearing up to protect their Haitian neighbors whose TPS (Temporary Protected Status) is scheduled to run out tomorrow (2/4/26) at midnight.
Published on the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau's website, we learn that “Gov. Mike DeWine said Friday [1/30/26] it is unwise and a ‘mistake' for the federal government to take legal status away from hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the U.S., including Ohio.” (i.e. revoking their TPS status.)
The shadow that looms is his statement in the same article: that as a state governor, he will acquiesce to the decision of the President. Does that mean he feels inadequate to stand up for what he knows is right? We’ll see.
Haitians began moving to Springfield, Ohio over ten years ago. According to The American Immigration Council “officials say there are anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants living in [Springfield, Ohio], near all of whom have some form of lawful status.”
In 2010, a devastating earthquake in Haiti left 300,000 Haitians dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Some came here to Ohio. They helped grow an economy picking itself up after the continued population loss that turned the area into part of the Rust Belt. As conditions in Haiti continue to deteriorate and jobs in Springfield stay plentiful due to the hard work of city planners, Haitians came to Ohio for its low cost of living and availability of good jobs. They wrote home and more came.
And Ohioans welcomed them.
Now, following Minneapolis, MN, and Portland and Lewiston, ME, Springfield may be ICE’s and the president’s next target.
Consider this: it’s not the dark we are really afraid of. Maybe we really have a more general fear of the unknown, what we can’t see or understand. And the uncertainty that goes hand in hand with it.
What happens when “darkness comes and pain is all around”?
According to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel who won a Song-of-the-Year Grammy in 1971 for “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “if you need a friend, I’m sailing right behind.”
We need to have each others’ backs.
We need to be courageous, not foolhardy. Brave, but with a drop (or a gallon) of skepticism. Practical, but willing to share our sense of wonder.
And, carry a flashlight into the dark.
Revolving around the real story of a real thoroughbred, The Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Viking/Penguin Publishing Group, 2022) elegantly weaves three different time periods into a cohesive tapestry describing the love of a horse, the skill of the artist who painted him, and the dedication of the scientist/historian pair who studied together and tell his story against the ever-present backdrop of the Civil War. Recommended.
-—Be curious! (and neighborly)
“It’s scary,” said the city planner.
“Who knows what the Dark will bring with it,” said the lantern keeper.
“But the Dark isn’t scary,” Millie Fleur assured them.
“You just need to get to know her.”
from Millie Fleur Saves the Night
written and illustrated by Christy Mandin
Orchard Books, 2025
(accessed on YouTube 1/31/26)
Millie Fleur misses her nocturnal friends, so with her mother’s help, they block out some of the city lights that are keeping the night-time critters away. The critters come back and all ends well for everyone.
But these days, in this time, I’m not thinking of the cozy, warm dark where we watch the stars blink on when the sun sets early in the fall and winter, and when we cuddle wakeful babies.
These days are metaphorically dark. It’s a challenge to be hopeful, even to muster up optimism, and not run into Pollyanna territory. Crickets, spiders, bats, and katydids flew around the “sweet smell of moonflowers, snoozing sugarplums, and twilight tulips” in Millie Fleur’s moon garden.
The comfort I find in my own midnight garden is a quiet joy to discover, on Monday morning that I was one of over 5,000 people who called our Representative’s office.
House Speaker Mike Johnson expects to agree very soon on DHS and ICE policy. Some of what is being asked includes unmasking ICE personnel and requiring them to use body cameras is. A discussion about funding is also included on their agenda.
An agreement will allow the partial government shutdown begun last Friday at midnight to end. DHS will remain funded for just two weeks. Enough time to reach an agreement? We’ll see.
Meanwhile, citizens in Springfield, Ohio are gearing up to protect their Haitian neighbors whose TPS (Temporary Protected Status) is scheduled to run out tomorrow (2/4/26) at midnight.
Published on the Ohio Statehouse News Bureau's website, we learn that “Gov. Mike DeWine said Friday [1/30/26] it is unwise and a ‘mistake' for the federal government to take legal status away from hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in the U.S., including Ohio.” (i.e. revoking their TPS status.)
The shadow that looms is his statement in the same article: that as a state governor, he will acquiesce to the decision of the President. Does that mean he feels inadequate to stand up for what he knows is right? We’ll see.
Haitians began moving to Springfield, Ohio over ten years ago. According to The American Immigration Council “officials say there are anywhere from 12,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants living in [Springfield, Ohio], near all of whom have some form of lawful status.”
In 2010, a devastating earthquake in Haiti left 300,000 Haitians dead and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Some came here to Ohio. They helped grow an economy picking itself up after the continued population loss that turned the area into part of the Rust Belt. As conditions in Haiti continue to deteriorate and jobs in Springfield stay plentiful due to the hard work of city planners, Haitians came to Ohio for its low cost of living and availability of good jobs. They wrote home and more came.
And Ohioans welcomed them.
Now, following Minneapolis, MN, and Portland and Lewiston, ME, Springfield may be ICE’s and the president’s next target.
Consider this: it’s not the dark we are really afraid of. Maybe we really have a more general fear of the unknown, what we can’t see or understand. And the uncertainty that goes hand in hand with it.
What happens when “darkness comes and pain is all around”?
According to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel who won a Song-of-the-Year Grammy in 1971 for “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “if you need a friend, I’m sailing right behind.”
We need to have each others’ backs.
We need to be courageous, not foolhardy. Brave, but with a drop (or a gallon) of skepticism. Practical, but willing to share our sense of wonder.
And, carry a flashlight into the dark.
Revolving around the real story of a real thoroughbred, The Horse by Geraldine Brooks (Viking/Penguin Publishing Group, 2022) elegantly weaves three different time periods into a cohesive tapestry describing the love of a horse, the skill of the artist who painted him, and the dedication of the scientist/historian pair who studied together and tell his story against the ever-present backdrop of the Civil War. Recommended.
-—Be curious! (and neighborly)
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