Remember to Dance

Watching my young granddaughters twirl with the late afternoon sunlight, I momentarily forgot what I was going to write about for this news cycle.

They were performing a sort of improv combination of gymnastics and ballet and I was their only audience.

They also were doing it without a care in the world, not about Trump stealing the election or climate change or runaway AI chatrooms. They don’t know about any of that stuff yet, nor should they.

Now is their time to dance in the sunlight. There will be plenty of time to confront the abundant darkness around them in the future.

I harbor thoughts like these all the time, but usually in the context of the rest of us who are not naive kids but aging adults. We still need to dance in the sunlight (or its equivalent) too. I think especially of my peers in the news business trying to find new angles on the stories they report, write informative yet catchy headlines, and promote their work on social media.

Sometimes they should take a break and just dance, twirling around the room like my granddaughters. But if we’re not careful, life has a way of emptying the music out of us over time to the point we no longer remember how to jump, twirl, stretch or skip. Our movements become stiff and labored and we just sit and watch the young enjoy life.

One way or another so much gets lost in the process. We stop taking risks in life and in love, trying to avoid the pain — but then nearing the end, as we look back on it all, we remember bit by bit what it was like before we got beaten down.

The country songwriter says, “I could have missed the pain…but I’d have had to miss the dance.”

Don’t miss the dance.

(The original version of this one appeared four years ago.)

HEADLINES:

• Thune rejects Trump’s call for GOP to take over and ‘nationalize’ elections (The Hill)

• Trump’s New Threats to American Elections (Atlantic)

• Border czar to pull 700 agents from Minnesota (NYT)

• Federal officers in Minneapolis to get body cameras ‘effective immediately’ (BBC)

• More federal prosecutors leave Minnesota US attorney’s office (ABC)

• The Real Reason ICE Agents Wear Masks (Atlantic)

• 10 Years of Trump, and the Alarm Keeps Going Off (The Bulwark)

• House GOP wins key vote to advance funding bill, end partial shutdown (The Hill)

• Colleges See Major Racial Shifts in Student Enrollment (NYT)

• MAHA has reshaped health policy. Now it's working on environmental rules (AP)

• ‘We will protect them from the digital Wild West.’ Another country will ban social media for under-16s (CNN)

• French police raided the offices of Elon Musk’s social media network X on Tuesday, and prosecutors ordered the tech billionaire to face questions in April related to a widening investigation into the platform, the Paris prosecutor’s office said. [Reuters]

• Trump’s Board Of Peace Could See US Firm Gain 300% Profits In Gaza: Report (NDTV)

• Human Rights Watch researchers resign after report on Palestinian right of return blocked (Guardian)

• US shoots down Iranian drone that ‘aggressively’ approached an aircraft carrier, military says (AP)

• Iran risks Trump’s ire with new diplomatic demands, provocations (Axios)

• Sheriff probes possible ransom notes in Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance, while pacemaker data could speak to timeline (CNN)

• Thousands of Epstein documents taken down after victims identified (BBC)

• A bots-only social network triggers fears of an AI uprising (WP)

• Humans are infiltrating the social network for AI bots (Verge)

• AI chatbots are not your friends, experts warn (Politico)

• Moltbook, the AI social network freaking out Silicon Valley, explained (Vox)

• The Problem With Using AI in Your Personal Life (Atlantic)

• ICE Agent Scores Easy Win By Deporting Own Family (Onion)