Transcending time . . .

Tuesday, July 7, 2026. It's Tiw's day . . . Summer forecasts have a habit of repeating themselves. Today's for Green Country are a good example: Sun, a few clouds, hot, humid, mid 90's afternoon. The only differences tend be where our breezes, if there are any, come from. Yesterday's easy Nor'easters are to continue in TulseyTown today.

Resentment is the compound interest on conversations you were too afraid to have. — Mark Manson.

While climate change makes extreme heat more dangerous, the Trump administration is fighting to remove or alter national park signs and exhibits that tell the truth about the crisis unfolding around us. The efforts are part of a broader push to censor national park materials about climate change, slavery, Indigenous history, immigration, racism, and other essential parts of the American story. That is not public service. It is political censorship. But, maybe, you knew that. If not, now you do.

Trump has taken to saying that those Americans calling for the government to maintain the rule of law to make sure the economic playing field is level, rather than working for corporations and the wealthy, are “communists.” So he is looking to put a thumb on the scale of the midterm elections as he did in the FIFA match and the economy. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.

Why Is He Using the Communist Trump Card? – Robert Reich, He's Run Out of Cards. Substack, 7.6.26

Today is the birthdate of historian and author David McCullough. The two time laureate of the Pulitzer and National Book Awards, he was born in 1933 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Marc Chagall was born on this day in 1887, Vitebsk, Belorussia, Russian Empire [now in Belarus]. The Belorussian-born French painter, printmaker, and designer composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic. Predating Surrealism, his works were among the first expressions of psychic reality in modern art.

Its also the birthdate of science fiction writer (Stranger in a Strange Land) Robert Heinlein. born in 1907 Butler, Missouri.

And, composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was born on this day in1860 Kaliště, Bohemia. One of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, that position has sustained into today. He wrote some of the most intense, powerful and large scale symphonies in all of music history.

Mahler and Bernstein = Transcendence

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,