Outsiders into insiders . . .
Monday, June 29, 2026. 8:30 a.m. It's the Moon's day . . . Green Country shares the heat wave moving across the U.S. Forecasts indicate heat index of 103º along with strong, gusting Southerlies mid afternoon today.
We are all instruments of Creation. No choice. Our only choice is between love or fear. Our lives and the world are the consequence. This is why Buddha's first noble truth is that Life contains suffering.
Mercury goes retrograde today with effects extending to July 23, 2026, and invites us to slow down and pay closer attention to the signals moving through our lives. What happens during this Mercury retrograde isn’t a blanket disaster. Often blamed for missed messages, tech issues, and crossed wires, the present cycle is less about chaos and more about awareness.
The Week Ahead. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse.
A short answer to Trump's projected fears of immigrants: The American century will not be extended by making the country smaller. No serious nation can win the twenty-first century by telling much of the world’s ambition to go elsewhere.
America’s superpower has been the ability to turn outsiders into insiders...Trump would have us abandon the concept of a regulated open border … The better policy is simple enough to state: open legal migration for peaceful people willing to register, work, study, or build; immediate work authorization; rapid residence; strong labor-law enforcement; serious penalties for trafficking and exploitation; portable benefits; language and civics investments; local settlement support; and citizenship for those who make their lives here. The border becomes a civic threshold, not a prison wall. The immigration officer becomes a registrar of new Americans, not a ration clerk for human possibility.
A sovereign nation may close itself. It may also open itself. It may decide that its greatness lies not in guarding scarcity but in manufacturing abundance. It may decide that the future belongs to the country that can welcome, absorb, educate, employ, naturalize, and inspire more people than any rival civilization. It may decide that population is not a burden but a platform as the U.S. has for most of its history...Open borders is treated as a fantasy because our imagination has been disciplined by restriction. But the actual fantasy is Trump's. He and his minions believe that a rich, aging country can wall itself into renewal. The fantasy is that exclusion produces cohesion. The fantasy is that talent will wait politely while America debates whether it is still brave enough to be America. – Raymon Pearcey, The Golden Door: A Strategy. Shared email, 6.27.26.
It was on this day in 1974, while on tour with the Kirov (now ) Ballet in Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union, citing artistic reasons, and he later settled in the United States.
Today is the birthday of the author of The Little Prince, French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He was born in Lyons in 1900.
Frank Loesser was born on this date. The composer, librettist, and lyricist, was born in 1910, New York City. He received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize and achieved major success writing for Broadway musicals.
The composer conductor, arranger Leroy Anderson was born today in 1908, Cambridge, Mass.
And, Anne-Sophie Mutter is 62 years old today. The German violinist and superstar in the world of classical music was born in 1963, Rheinfelden, West Germany.
The “unplayable” violin concerto ...
The Great Books . . .
Sunday, June 28, 2026. It's Sol's day . . . getting even for all the rain, Sol is coming on full Summer to Green Country. Strong, gusty Southerlies with hot, humid conditions in the mid 90's visit TulseyTown. Afternoon heat indices are to be in the low 100s. No rain in the forecasts for the next ten days.
Prayer is not sending in an order and expecting it to be fulfilled. Prayer is attuning yourself to the life of the world, to love, the force that moves the sun and the moon and the stars. – Br. David Stendl-Rast.
One of the most influential writer/philosophers in Western civilization, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on this day in 1712, Geneva, Switzerland.
Today is the birthdate of Mortimer J. Adler. The philosopher, educator, and editor was born in 1902 New York City. He was a successful advocate of adult and general education by study of the great writings of the Western world.
Peter Paul Rubens was born today in 1577, Siegen, Nassau, Westphalia [Germany]. His paintings fused a mastery of Flemish realism with the traditions of the Italian Renaissance to produce a powerful style that epitomized the immensely popular Baroque movement.
Today is also the birthdate of influential Italian playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, Luigi Pirandello. The winner of the 1934 Nobel Prize for Literature was born in 1867 Agrigento, Sicily, Italy. Years ago, Yers Trooley acted the role of “Father” in Pirandello's award winning play “Six Characters In Search Of An Author.”
In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a series of violent confrontations between police and gay rights activists began outside the Stonewall Inn , a gay bar in New York City; the riots helped launch an international gay rights movement.
Mourning in America. – Robert Reich, Sunday Thought.
And, it's the birthdate of the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley. He was born in 1703 Epworth, Lincolnshire, England.
Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can. – John Wesley
Where to shine our light . . .
Saturday, June 27, 2026. It's the Satyr's day at 8:30 a.m. . . .So much for forecasts: It rained overnight in TulseyTown. Forecasts for Green Country continue to indicate dry weather beginning in the afternoon. Summertime humidity and heat in the low 90's with moderate Southerlies.
Documented in the filmFarmacy of Light: Researchers analyzing historical agricultural data have documented significant declines in essential vitamins and trace minerals in modern crops compared to those grown in the 1950s … Why? Depleted soil. Industrial farming methods. Food that travels an average of 1,500 miles before it reaches your plate, losing biophotonic vitality every mile of the way – FYI: Today may be the last day to watch Farmacy of Light for free.
We actually are “beacons of light.”
The United States is now a beacon of heartlessness. The Supremes have sided with Trump on immigration … and it's beyond worse. Enough so, that Justice Kagan filed an angry dissent to the record.
Everything in your life is about to get more expensive (again). The hundreds of thousands of the people about to be sent home are the workers holding up your daily life. – Miles Taylor, in Defiance, 6.26.26
The Trump administration appears to be attempting to demographically change the country to what it looked like 75 years ago, when the white population was over 80 percent. It's a way of undoing the demographic and political power that has been coming with people of color. – Rogelio Sáenz, Professor in the Department of Demography at the University of University of Texas at San Antonio
It's no longer right vs. left … the dynamic is best understood as one of bottom vs. top, now underway. – Robert Reich, A Guide for the Perplexed, 6.26.6
Today is the birthdate of Helen Keller, born in 1880 Tuscumbia, Alabama; novelist Alice McDermott is 73 today, born in 1953 Brooklyn, New York; writer and activist Grace Lee Boggs was born today in 1915 Providence, Rhode Island; and Edward Gibbon completed the final sixth volume of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
The dharma keeps offering the same invitation: stay here, do less, trust this.
FYI “dharma” is a word with ancient origins dating back millinnia with multiple meanings with one general theme. In Western terms, dharma is the whole of ontological reality and is an expression of what I perfer to term as “The Way,” after Lao Tzu (also called Laozi) and the Tao Te Ching (The Way of The Way). It cannot be “told,” only experienced in each moment-by-moment existence.