Deeper Listening | Feb 2026

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Neil Zusman. Deeper Listening | Feb 2026: Soft Gun — slowed observational study. (10:04) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Neil Zusman. Out Walking | Feb 2026: Soft Gun — realtime source. (3:33) HD video; 4K master available on request.

Out Walking | Feb 2026: Soft Gun

6 minutes read time

February moves between danger, play, and winter attention.

Snow, bridge, danger. An art window, ice, Rochester, moon, water. A cloth gun in a gallery window becomes the month’s soft warning: threat transformed into object, image, fabric, sign.

Snow at the lake. Stiller planning a painting. Cloth guns in the window at the artist’s gallery.

I walk on the bridge to get to the lake.

A snow circle — Earth Stage.

A fallen tree aligned by the shore. “Young, gifted and black.”

Chloe, my black Lab mix, licks her bed.

A dead vole turns into a snowman.

A panda says: “Every day work and play pain and joy.”

We hear water rushing by.

A dish with lemons. Ice floes and snow. I am mesmerized by the motion of the reeds in the wind.

“View art take art leave art” — a little free art library.

“Fuck around and find out” bumper sticker.

Ice in the creek.

State of the Union prep rescan. Photographers with large lenses getting closeups from afar.

Out Walking | Feb 2026: Soft Gun, screenshot.

Trump’s mouth closeup, grainy pixels.

I shoot the demos they use to sell large-screen TVs at Costco Rochester.

Peer Bode videos — early video art.

Near Susan B. Anthony Square.

A toy taxi on the snow.

Birds fly by the moon and blue sky.

Electrical danger graphic. Dioramas of the town at night.

The realtime source follows February as a sequence of winter fragments: snow, bridge, art window, ice, warning, screen, moon, water. In the slowed version, the fragments dissolve into one another until danger and play begin to share the same surface.

The cloth gun is not only a prop. The dead vole is not only a dead animal. The snow circle is not only snow. The toy taxi is not only a toy. February keeps turning danger into miniature, sign, image, and stage.

It plays, but it does not look away.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to settle,–varies a few degrees, and does not always point due southwest, it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always settles between west and south-southwest. The future lies that way to me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.
Henry David Thoreau. Walking. As published in Atlantic Monthly, 1862.

EPA / Lee Zeldin

EPA frames February as a month of lawful correction, consumer relief, agricultural support, PFAS action, coal reliability, and visible problem-solving. The agency presents deregulation as a way to follow the law, lower costs, restore choice, protect farmers and truckers, and deliver practical environmental outcomes.

Emphasis

Right to repair for farmers and equipment owners
Diesel Exhaust Fluid relief for truckers and operators
PFAS actions framed through family, farmer, and small-business protection
Repeal of the 2009 greenhouse-gas endangerment finding
Coal and power-plant rules framed as affordable, dependable energy
Tijuana River sewage crisis updates framed as urgent delivery

Key rhetoric

“Largest deregulatory action”
“Consumer choice”
“Common sense”
“Right to repair”
“Make America Healthy Again”
“Beautiful, clean coal”

Foregrounded

EPA foregrounds cost savings, statutory limits, relief from equipment shutdowns, farmer productivity, coal reliability, PFAS response, and federal action presented as fast, practical, and legally grounded.

Minimized or absent

The climate-health basis of the endangerment finding, the cumulative consequences of vehicle and power-sector pollution, the public costs of deregulation, and the question of whether “savings” for consumers and industry may shift risk onto communities, children, and future publics.

Guardian / Dharna Noor

Noor frames February as a month of rupture and public reckoning. Her reporting follows the rollback of the endangerment finding through public-health risk, climate science, disputed savings claims, legal challenges, and the possibility that weakening federal climate authority could also weaken fossil-fuel defenses against state and local lawsuits.

Emphasis

Contradictions between environmental rollbacks and “healthy America” rhetoric
The endangerment finding as a foundation of federal climate regulation
Health and climate harms shifted onto families and children
Challenges to EPA’s $1.3 trillion savings claim
Environmental and public-health lawsuits against the rollback
Legal exposure for oil companies after federal climate authority is withdrawn

Key rhetoric

Rollback
Repeal
Contradict
Challenge
Sue
Expose

Foregrounded

Guardian coverage foregrounds the public-health purpose of climate regulation, the legal meaning of the endangerment finding, the role of fossil-fuel influence, the vulnerability of children and communities, and the courts as a site where EPA’s new interpretation will be tested.

Minimized or absent

The official vocabulary of consumer savings, regulatory relief, and energy affordability is not treated as self-proving. Noor’s reporting asks what those claims leave out: climate damages, medical costs, scientific consensus, public protections, and long-term accountability.

The deeper contrast

EPA presents February as a turning point in administrative control: rules are corrected, costs are reduced, farmers and truckers receive relief, coal is defended, PFAS work is highlighted, and sewage infrastructure is advanced. The Guardian frames the same month as the dismantling of a legal and scientific foundation, asking who benefits from the rollback, who will bear the health and climate risks, and how courts may respond when federal protection is withdrawn.