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  "path": "/posts/2026-01-12-cold-at-night/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-29T05:53:48.385Z",
  "site": "https://dansinker.com",
  "tags": [
    "this beautiful performance",
    "Mountain Goats",
    "since it came out",
    "overcame a massive deficit",
    "ALWAYS DOWN / NEVER OUT",
    "you can order it for $25 today"
  ],
  "textContent": "Hey, maybe you are struggling here at the beginning of the year, a year that has not started easy after a year that never let up.\n\nI know I am.\n\nEvery day feels like a fresh hell and every day it's more and more clear that the only ones who are going to stand up for us _is_ us. Same as it ever was, for certain, but it feels all the more stark in the cold of mid-January made colder still by the ICE killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis last week.\n\nBut here's the thing to remember, even amidst all _this_ : we are strong enough. We always have been.\n\nSo as I reminder of that I offer up, on this cold January day, this beautiful performance of the song \"Cold At Night\" by the Mountain Goats, complete with a string section. I've come back to this song so many times since it came out last fall because of one refrain:\n\n_The first thing you learn is how strong you can be, if you have to_.\n\nOver and over again in the last couple hard months, and especially in this last impossible week, I've reminded myself of that fact, and today I remind you too:\n\nThe first thing you learn is how strong you can be, if you have to.\n\nThe whole performance is beautiful and the entire song is great—a story of survival and perseverance and hope. And it's a good reminder both of our strength and as John Darnielle sings,_the first thing you learn will be the last thing to go._\n\n💪💪💪\n\nIt's important to find hope where you can right now and so it's with a little bit of surprise that I've found myself getting a lot of hope from the Chicago Bears improbable come-front-behind victories this season.\n\n \n\nI am not normally a fan of American football, but I am a big fan of Chicago and I am a big fan of keeping hope alive even when the chances seem impossible, and so I found myself screaming late Saturday night as the Bears overcame a massive deficit to beat their century-long rivals the Green Bay Packers and advance in the playoffs.\n\nPartway through the night, as the odds got longer and the team fought like hell to stay in it, I realized that this struggle was actually _quintessentially_ Chicago, a city that seems like it is always down, but never out.\n\nSo I made a shirt, ALWAYS DOWN / NEVER OUT (set, of course, in Cooper Black), and you can order it for $25 today.\n\nRight now it's good to remember our strength and it's good to remember that even when we are down, even when the odds are long, we are never truly out.\n\nWe will always come back.",
  "title": "Strength and Hope Amid the Year’s Cold Start",
  "updatedAt": "2026-01-12T00:00:00.000Z"
}