Always in the small hours . . .

Monday, July 13, 2026. It's the Moon's day . . . and it is new tonight and tomorrow. Green Country forecasts for today are much like yesterday's. Sun, clouds, moderate Nor'easters for TulseyTown. Low 90's with an index in the upper 90's late afternoon.

Leave the door open for a little joy.

Robert Reich remembers Lindsey Graham. – Lindsey Graham R.I.P. 7.12.26

On May 3, 2016, Senator Lindsey Graham posted on social media: “If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed…….and we will deserve it.”

Call your Senator and explain why Todd Blanche should never, ever become U.S. Attorney General. – Robert Reich, substack, 7.13.26

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is 92 today. The Nigerian playwright and political activist was born in 1934, Abeokuta, Nigeria.

Today is the 94th birthday of Harrison Ford, born in 1942, Chicago, Illinois.

English poet John Clare was born on this day in 1793 Helpston, Northamptonshire.

In the Small Hours

Blue diaphane, tobacco smoke
Serpentine on wet film and wood glaze,
Mutes chrome, wreathes velvet drapes,
Dims the cave of mirrors. Ghost fingers
Comb seaweed hair, stroke acquamarine veins
Of marooned mariners, captives
Of Circe's sultry notes. The barman
Dispenses igneous potions ?
Somnabulist, the band plays on.

…

Departures linger. Absences do not
Deplete the tavern. They hang over the haze
As exhalations from receded shores. Soon,
Night repossesses the silence, but till dawn
The notes hold sway, smoky
Epiphanies, possessive of the hours.

This music's plaint forgives, redeems
The deafness of the world. Night turns
Homewards, sheathed in notes of solace, pleats
The broken silence of the heart.

– Wole Soyinka In the “In the Small Hours,” in Early Poems, Oxford University Press in 1997.

It's not a disease . . .

Sunday, July 12, 2026. It's Sol's day . . . Easy Northerlies are to bring cooler conditions to Green Country today. Sun, some clouds, upper 80's and an index in the mid 90's are forecasted for the afternoon in TulseyTown.

We have thousands of opportunities every day to be grateful…There’s opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful; that’s what life is. — Br. David Stendl-Rast.

Today is the birth anniversary of poet Pablo Neruda, born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto in 1904 Parral, Chile.

It's also the birthdate of Henry David Thoreau. The author, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, tax resister, and transcendentalist, was born in 1817 Concord, Massachusetts.

And, (Gaius) Julius Caesar was born on or around this day in 100 B.C. Rome.

The Republican Party’s message four months before the midterms appears to be, “You’re not getting affordable housing unless you give up your voting rights.” – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.

Robert Reich is grateful today.Sunday Thought.

Contemporary western culture conditions us to see loss as a problem and grief as some kind of disease. You are expected to get over it, solve it, move on. Marabai Starr invites you to move in. A free workshop for anyone who've ever experienced loss of any kind no matter how profound. There will be two sessions: July 25-26 at 1 pm Central timr. Sessions are recorded for future registrant access.

Love Sonnet XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

– Pablo Neruda, “One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII” from The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems, translated and edited by Mark Eisner. This edition: City Lights Books. 2024.

Messy beautiful . . .

Saturday, July 11, 2026. It's the Satyr's day . . . Interesting forecasts for Green Country and TulseyTown today. First, the real temperature this afternoon will be a bit cooler, around 90º but the index will still peak out in the low 100's. Next, a 50/50 chance of a thunderstorm is predicted after the noon hour into early tomorrow morning, otherwise cloudy and easy Southerlies.

Everyone knows firsthand that life is messy and painful, beautiful and unpredictable. The endless practice is keeping our heart open to the whole of it. – Mark Nepo

Pulitzer Prize laureate Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri is 58 today. She was born in 1967 London.

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize novel To Kill a Mockingbird was published on this day in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.

Trump has fired Election Assistance Commission members ahead of Midterms. – Bo Erickson and Erin Banco reporting for Reuters and published by the Huffington Post. 7.10.26

The White House surprise purge of the nation's top election referees is the clearest sign yet the president intends to cheat in November. He thinks its a Trojan Horse. It isn't. And lawsuits are being drafted as you read this. – Miles Taylor, Defiance, 7.10.26

Newest research yields unexpected effects of cannabis use on the brain of teens and older users. There's good news and some not.

And, songwriter/singer and multipath musician Andrew Bird turns 53 today.
‍ ‍ Sisyphus