I give you this picture, inspired as I was listening to stories of the abuse of power when I was Artist in Residence for a Free to Believe conference many years ago. It speaks to the Martin Luther King narrative, celebrated on January 19th in the USA. He was, at the simplest, pointing out that power was being abused and most often to suppress those without white male skin. See on the bottom right corner the brown people struggling under the weight of the ‘laws’ and laws which excluded them from full humanity. At this time in all of our lives, I can’t begin to write all I know, feel and think about the horrendous track record and present behavior of my birth country. Right now, new atrocities are rising from the depth of what has always been seething through the pores of what kind of nation the USA has been struggling to be. Such oppression is a critical function for a society building its identity out of the massacres of indigenous peoples and the transportation of stolen African citizens who were converted to wealth for owners. To cover such crimes, myths of puritan patriotism are the mortar between the bricks of the wall against truth. People like Martin Luther King bloodied themselves to knock those walls down. And often succeeded. People like Martin Luther King inspire us now to see that not all is gone; not all is evil. Justice is being fought for, legislated for, revived where it has been trod to dust. Hope isn’t the retreat of wimps. Hope is the scary radical stuff of keeping truth alive and shouting it to those who think they’re in power. May you have much outlandish tangible hope as you fly courageously into 2026.