Celebrating forgetfulness . . .
Saturday, January 17, 2026. It's the Satyr's day . . . Strong Norterlies make for a blustery cold day in TulseyTown. Sunshine will share itself with a few clouds and low 40's. Wind chill this morning was in the 20's. By evening forecasts indicate the chill to be in the teens.
When you realy “don't know,” , , , what happens?
Enlightenment isn’t something we march toward, and one day, somehow, we grab it. Enlightenment is the ending in yourself of that hope for something other than life being as it is. . .now. – Charlotte Joko Beck, “Just Snow, Just Now,” Tricycle.
Today is Benjamin Franklin's birthday. He was born in 1706, Boston, Massachusetts.
The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address today in 1961.
The calmness of television new anchors is teaching all of us not to feel the horror we are witnessing. – David Ignatow, “A First On TV (for Walter Cronkite).” The complete poem, originally published in Poems 1934–1969, Wesleyan University Press,1970, is available online only on audio.
The madness of King Trump. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.
A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven. – James Baldwin in The Price of the Ticket, reckoning with the immense creative process that is humanity,
And, today is the birthday of William Stafford. The poet – on my very best list – was born in 1914 Hutchinson, Kansas.
At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border
This is the field where the battle did not happen,
where the unknown soldier did not die.
This is the field where grass joined hands,
where no monument stands,
and the only heroic thing is the sky.
Birds fly here without any sound,
unfolding their wings across the open.
No people killed—or were killed—on this ground
hallowed by neglect and an air so tame
that people celebrate it by forgetting its name.
– William Stafford, “At the Un-National Monument along the Canadian Border” is from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems. Graywolf Press 1998.