Now is not somewhere else. . .
Monday, July 6, 2026. It's Moon day . . . easy Nor'easterlies and a return of heat are in the forecasts for Green Country and TulseyTown today. Sunny and mid 90s with afternoon index in the upper 90's.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though they thought it were somewhere else – Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
Today is the 91st birthday of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso. The spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism was born in 1935, Taktser, Tibet.
The Great 14th: Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama in His Own Words. Is an Emmy nominated film, available to stream until midnight on Friday, July 31, 2026. Following the link, you may be asked to subscribe to Tricycle. No charge for that. And you can unsubscribe.
Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was born on this day in 1907, Coyoacán, Mexico.
How to the begin the mending. – Robert Reich,Sunday Thought, 7.5.26
The Week Ahead. — Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse.
Jus' sayin': What if business education began not with shareholder value, but with human and planetary flourishing? What if music appreciation began with the Stones and worked back to Gregorian Chants? What if art appreciation began with Hamnet and worked back to the Stone Age? What if Creative Writing 101 began with Brautigan, Ferlinghetti, and Billy Collins and worked back to the King James?
Beauty in a parched parade . . .
Sunday, July 5, 2026, It's Sol's day at 8 a.m. . . . After overnight storms in Green Country, light Northerlies are in the TulseyTown forecasts for a cooler day in the upper 80's with a very slight chance for an afternoon shower. The heat returns tomorrow.
How we square our commonality and individualism has always engendered fierce national debate. Road traffic serves as a rare alignment of self-interest and the common good. There is a spiritual lesson in this – our interdependence – and it’s not a novel one: The self is illusory. And this illusion, the notion that we are all distinct individuals living among other separate individuals in an external universe, is at the core of income inequality, racism, climate change, and just about every other source of human misery. Our ability to solve these existential riddles will stem from a collective spiritual revelation as much as political resolve. – Jeff Krasno, Interdependence Day, substack, 7.4.26
Dissent isn't a threat to America. Dissent built America. Because the American people do not bow to kings. – Elizabeth Warren, 250 Years Ago We Fired a King, email 7.4.26
It's been two hundred fifty years since 56 men risked their necks signing a document built on one radical idea: You get to decide your own future. So somewhere between the parade and the potato salad, I hope you took one second to appreciate how rare that really is. [If you didn't yesterday, consider doing it today.]The British still say we go overboard with this holiday. Fair enough. But the only thing that ever went overboard was their tea. – Kim Komando, The Current, 7.4.26.
Today in 1687, Isaac Newton published Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.” In it, along with laws of motion, celestial and terrestrial mechanics were unified under one umbrella: gravity. It remains one of the most important books in the history of science. For a deeper dive into the Principia. ( For history/science denizens looking for a day-long-Sunday task. )
The ultimate Swiftian experience: News of the closest thing America has to a royal wedding was both everywhere and unknowable. – Emily Yahr, The Washington Post. 7.5.26
Prophecy
You see no beauty in the parched parade,
The quivering, heat-glazed highways mile on mile,
The fields where beauty holds a debt unpaid,
The gray, drab barracks in monotonous, grim file.
You take no joy when dust wraiths dimly curl
Above the winding column crawling on far hills.
You see but short beyond the present whirl
Of circumstance, your little wrongs and petty ills.
But when it all has passed and you have lost
The swinging rhythmic cadence of the marching feet,
Then you will reck as paltry small the cost,
And memory will purge the bitter from the sweet.
– Robert Penn Warren, “Prophecy” – This poem is in the public domain. Published by the Academy of American Poets in Poem-a-Day on July 4, 2026,
‘tis of thee . . .
Saturday, July 4, 2026. It's the Satyr's day . . . Another hot, humid Summer day is in the Green Country forecasts. Moderate Southerlies, mid 90's. A heat warning in effect for an index of 107º this afternoon. Rinse and repeat: there is rain in the overnight forecasts. 50/50 chance says the weatherfeather, so, either it will or it won't.
On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress announcing to the world the separation of the 13 North American British colonies from Great Britain. The Brits didn't take the news all that well, leading to the War of Independence and finally the establishment of The United States of America.
Two major figures of the American Revolution who became U.S. presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, died on this day in 1826—50 years to the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.
Waving the flag and shooting fireworks is not what July 4th means. – Robert Reich, The Real Meaning of July 4th. 7.4.26
Words to live by in 2026. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American. 7.4.26
It's our country. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse, 7.4.26
Today in 2012, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announced that they had detected an interesting signal that was likely from a Higgs boson.
On this day in 1855 Walt Whitman first published Leaves of Grass, a landmark in the history of American literature.
The author of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804, Salem, Massachusetts.
And today in 1845 essayist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau moved to his retreat at Walden Pond.