Fantasy is a part of reality . . .
Saturday, October 10, 2026 . It's the Satyr's day . . . and the Moon is new. Record high temperatures are in the forecasts for GreenCountry today. Moderate Southerlies, bright sun, and low 90's are indicated for TulseyTown's afternoon.
Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. — Rumi
. . . retaining “human control” of AIs means purposefully and insistently instantiating the integral element drawn from lived human experience into our entwinement with intelligent machines. The challenge is not just about “disarming” the capacity of AI agents to act on their own, as the Pope has called for, but also about “arming” the integral conception of the human within the integrated cognitive framework in which we already dwell. – Nathan Gardels, “We are already post-human,” Noema, 10.9.26
Texas is no longer a fantasy. – Matt Kerbel, Wolves and Sheep.
Why “wild-caught” matters. The food your fish eat. – Sam Sifton, “The Morning,” New York Times, 10.9.26
Today is the birthdate of playwright, screenwriter and director Harold Pinter. The Nobel laureate was born in 1930 East London.
Giuseppe Verdi was born on this date in a village in 1813 Parma, Italy.
Yesterday was the birthdate of composer Camille Saint-Saens, born in 1835 Paris. His Third Symphony (the Organ) was featured at the first live classical music concert I attended as a teenager. It, along with Beethoven's Fifth at the same event, changed my life. Understatement.
My hurdy-gurdy is out of tune . . .
Friday, October 9, 2026. It's Freya's day . . . Forecasts for GreenCountry and TulseyTown indicate the last of unseasonably warm afternoons for the next five days. Sunny, moderate Southeasterlies and low 90's.
[Trump] is out of control as the election looms. He will try to interfere with the votes we cast. He will try to discredit the press. He does not care if American citizens get harmed in the process. It is all one story. It’s the story we must pay attention to. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse today.
Is Trump to blame for this, too? – Robert Reich, Results of a crippled DFA.
SpaceX wants to compete with land based phone service. The FCC has approved it.
Concertina for Hurdy Gurdy and Broken Banjo
I am not a part of a circle. I have no 'gang' to blame
or hit up for lunch money. But, in the fog-mist-
emotional-fringe of a town that celebrates honky-tonk
while struggling as a wannabe-a-city in the middle of nowhere,
frightened of its possibilities, I am not alone.
Writing is the only thing some of us can do with the insane gifts
bequeathed by the cosmos to keep us sane.
The “art scene” here is fragmented like the busted concrete
streets that join the lowest income sectors
to the gentrified high end bars.
Competition is the underlying spirit
of the multiple (and failed) attempts at unification.
Chaos brings the best out of a few of us
who, nonetheless, have no idea
where most of us live.
– james allen bethel 4.16.25 edited 4.2.25 10.8.26
Certainly uncertain . . .
Thursday, October 8, 2026. It's Thor's day . . . at 9 a.m. on The Way back from the mailbox at 60º you might never look forward to today's forecast of a 90º afternoon. But, there you have it: A bright sunny afternoon with easy Southeasterlies across GreenCountry and into TulseyTown.
[T]he truth is that we can never avoid uncertainty. This not knowing is part of the adventure, it’s also what makes us afraid, and it's at the core of what Buddha called “beginner's mind.”
The uncertainty has Trump panicking – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.
The republic revisited: A preview of a coming attraction (some of which will no doubt appear on these pages). – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse.
Pema Khandro, Women in Buddhism, The Lenz Foundation. Worthy, insightful.