February 2025 Newsletter

Not the usual monthly newsletter, but with the usual list of cooking ideas and links.

In mid-January I started writing a long-ish, lightly humorous post about how Peloton has saved my life - an absurd-sounding statement that I promise you is true. The theme of the post was love in general and self-love in particular. It was, I thought, timely for the month of February. I made a bunch of graphics from my favorite Peloton instructor quotes (IYKYK). I was feeling pretty good about the way it was taking shape.

It was scheduled to go live Saturday morning, but Friday’s night’s coup at the U.S. Treasury Department prompted me to unschedule that post and reconsider.

It is all fine, well, and good to read and write about our normal, everyday lives, even in the midst of chaos. It is vital to our well-being that we see the beauty around us, make art, cook and enjoy eating, and strengthen our dearest relationships, starting with the one of overarching import, the relationship with self.

All of those things are essential to our health and survival, especially now.

Yet it is also imperative that we look reality directly in its face.

As of Friday night, the U.S. Treasury payment system is controlled by a private citizen who is accountable to no one.

Read it again: A man, who was not elected by the people nor appointed and confirmed by Congress, seized control of the $6 trillion flow of federal money and has access to sensitive personal information about you, me, and millions of our fellow American citizens. That isn’t melodramatic hyperbole but fact.

Although it sounds very official, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was not established by Congress but was instead granted authority through an executive order that doesn’t pass legal muster.

All those self-congratulatory pieces last week about how democracy held, how the courts stopped the un-Constitutional OMB memo? It’s like arresting the lone shoplifter who was caught on camera and easily detained only to have a smash-and-grab event destroy the entire store a few days later.

Perhaps some tiny part of you wants to believe that what’s happening is a long-overdue correction, a belt-tightening that will ensure your hard-earned tax dollars go to things like roads and bridges and not to people you deem unsuitable. Did you appreciate, though, the recall of carrots contaminated by E. coli? Are you grateful for the cancer treatments available to your friend, your relative, or yourself? Do you expect to fly safely from one airport to the next?

It’s a big, complex, interconnected web. It’s imperfect, as all things are, but its imperfections are wildly outnumbered and outmatched by the benefits to common good.

And it is fragile.

No, I don’t have a magic set of actions that will feel empowering. Only you can know what feels like power and presence for yourself. Writing and calling elected representatives is certainly important, but what is happening in real time does not conform to any existing legal or community norms, so the normal channels likely won’t suffice.

While I’ve been writing and editing this piece, I’ve seen several alerts pop up. There’s a MoveOn call. Federal employees at OPM have been blocking unauthorized access and appealing to members of Congress to help them. There are protests in several cities.

Don’t look away.

Curate your own set of writers and reporters. Read and listen widely when you can, narrowly when overwhelm threatens your sanity. Choose the limited sources you’ll follow closely and then follow them.

The 50,000+ civil servants posting as Alt Park Service on social media are risking their livelihoods to keep us informed. Rebecca Solnit’s Facebook feed is an excellent curated reading list. Her newsletter launched today. Her opinion piece in The Guardian is a good one.

As Solnit and so many others are writing: Overwhelm is the point. So, stay alert but don’t drown yourself. Find your own psychological tolerance line, and hold to it. Consider a buddy system, pairing up with one or more friends and taking turns being the news watcher.

Practice making decisions for yourself, especially in the face of what seems to be a tide. Leave Facebook or don’t, but make that decision yours and not a bandwagon move.

Keep doing the things that support your own well-being — cooking, exercising, reading, making art, knitting, walking, playing cards with friends.

In other words: Love yourself with your whole ass. None of this is half-ass love.

Yes, that’s a Peloton quote.

Yes, maybe I’ll tell you that story another day.`Today, we have other work to do.

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25 Things to Cook in February
(or, how to feed yourself so you can stay in the fight, because it’s going to be a long one)