(To those readers who enjoy my nature thoughts and writing, my apologies. I feel a need to offer my thoughts on our obscene political situation. With hope and prayers, maybe we will return to more normal times in the near future.)

An image from a few winters ago came to mind this week during the atrocious armed invasion of the Twin Cities, one titled “Fire and Ice.” In search of this particular photograph taken during a bone-chilling sunset over an ice-crusted wetland just north of the farm, I came across a few others. Contrasts of imagery.

Then, Robert Frost’s short poem, “Fire and Ice,” came to mind, all of which resonates since our “president’s” war-like efforts are now focused not on oil-rich Venezuela but rather on our state, perhaps one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever worked or lived. Every day seems more catastrophic, and now the White House is threatening the “Insurrection Act” … a move that speaks of the waging of an internal war on our own people, or more to the point, a collapse of the long-standing firewall between civilian life and military control.

Within his six lines of poetry Frost wrote: “Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.”

Capitalize “ICE” and you begin to wonder if the long-passed Vermont poet might have unwittingly forethought our peaceful city’s fate, at least a peace that existed before ICE was sicced upon our communities, schools, restaurants, hospitals, churches, shopping centers and streets where they murdered a young mother who had just dropped her child off at a neighborhood school. Read that list again. Three bullets in the head within seconds of her smiling and saying, “I’m not angry with you … “ Boom! Her car, and all those places in the neighborhood should suggest a harbor from fear and terror and being murdered by unruly storm troopers especially in the United States. 

Of course, unless you’re among our brown-skinned Natives, Blacks and now immigrants who all know that safe havens simply do not exist. And unscrupulous tricks and techniques are now being used to kidnap the unfortunate.

That murder was last week. Overnight in a nearby neighborhood war weapons were exploded on peaceful protestors who had taken to the streets in vast numbers, weapons masked ICE troopers deployed on unarmed observers after a fight broke out during an attempt to arrest a Venezuelan immigrant who, in the process of an illegal entry and arrest, was wounded by a gunshot in the leg. And now we face a threat from our unhinged president of having our national troops deployed against those protesting these illegal ICE tactics, all by a man who feels worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize!

This seems more of a move to harm a “blue” state and our governor, who was a vice presidential candidate on the ticket opposing Trump-Vance in the last election, Governor Tim Walz who is a decent man who has led investigations into a claim of fraudulent activities by alleged Somalian immigrants during the Covid years. 

Washington alleges that this storm trooper invasion and threat of war is about illegal immigration. Federal data pinpoints that only 0.9 percent of an estimated 14 million undocumented immigrants in the nation live in Minnesota based on 2023 statistics. In realistic numbers, 130,000. In contrast, pro-Trump red states Texas and Florida list two million and 1.8 million immigrants respectfully. Is this federal invasion in our Twin Cities about controlling immigration? Want to invest in a bridge from LA to Hawaii?

These threats and attacks against peaceful protestors, a murder of an innocent mother by ICE, elementary and high school students nabbed out of schools, patients pulled out of hospitals, workers including roofers pulled off roofs and out of factories, and now, just people minding their own business being attacked unlawfully. Don’t believe it? This report was in the Star Tribune this morning: “A family with six children in a van caught in the clash last night were hit with tear gas and air bags detonated by a flash-bang grenade. Three of the children, including a six-month-old infant, were taken to a hospital by ambulance for treatment. ‘My kids were innocent. I was innocent. My husband was innocent. This shouldn’t have happened,’ the mother told Kilat Fitzgerald of Fox9 in Minneapolis. ‘We were just trying to go home’.”

Fire or ICE? 

In truth, out here on the prairie we have our sunrises and sunsets. Life hasn’t changed a whole lot. The son of a friend and neighbor who has worked in relief efforts in war-ravaged Ukraine for a few years now lives a concerning yet peaceful existence on the western border far from the battles in the east. Not unlike life on his boyhood home here in the prairie. That is sort of how this feels here on our little farm.

Reading the dailies is a constant struggle that reminds me that in my son’s old Minneapolis neighborhood a war is being raged against his former neighbors and friends, folks who are observing and protesting both a murder and an insurrection of masked federal agents while facing despair, intimidation and fear of ICE agents who now seem quite anxious to deploy war weapons on crowds of innocent bystanders … and even a family who were simply heading home with their children. 

We now hear that an organized anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant group of counter protestors from around the country will stage a protest this weekend in that same South Minneapolis neighborhood. Observers and peaceful protestors who have been manning the streets and/or following the ICE thugs are now being asked to simply stay home and not confront the out-of-towners counter protestors. 

Tinges of a civilian war? A flat out Blue State war waged by our own government? Fire or ICE? 

Our madman in the Oval Office is, in my opinion, out of control. Deploying our armed forces to invade and capture the President and his wife from their bedroom in Venezuela, threatening to send troops to, ironically, fight the Iranian government who are at war with peaceful protestors that Trump himself has sicced his ICE and now threatens articles of war against in a state of his own nation while subquently threatening to send troops to snatch Greenland from Denmark? This, grant you, is threatening our post-WWII alliance with NATO as those cooperating countries move troops and war machinery into Greenland in defiance of a country they felt was solidified with them against the threats of Putin and Russia. No longer.

Fire or ICE?

Yes, I have used Frost’s iconic poem as a metaphore of our dire times, and that might not be so far fetched if you look at the writing of David Gosselin, an Indiana writer, researcher and poet who wrote: “(Fire and Ice) encompasses the universe and the forces behind the world’s undoing and at the same time peers into the depths of the human soul. Indeed, it is a poem of stark contrasts: fire against ice, the cosmic against the personal, the theoretical against the real, desire against hate.”

We have a madman stroking hatred worldwide, hatred that is now focused on the ground in one of the more peaceful and beautiful cities within our 50 states, one with hundreds of acres of trees, beautiful lakes, fine art, world-class restaurants and people who care about their neighbors; people who are now uniting in ideological protest of a war he is raging against our state that is in contrast with his demented soul … watchful and supportive neighbors who are feeling the “theoretical against the real, desire against hate.”

Oh, and about those images …  may they offer you a moment of peace.