Kranky until biscuits . . .

It's Satyr's day. TulseyTown welcomes a break in the heat with a mild, sunny Summer's day.

The mailbox brought sad news and memories of Tony Bennett who died yesterday.

Two birthdays of note: The poet Emma Lazarus was born on this date in 1849 New York City; and sharing the date from 1882 is Edward Hopper, born in Nyack, New York and became a prolific artist in several media celebrating the everyday.

Doing what needs to be done:

Past 70 there is a tremendous diminishment of B.S. around you. And your sins diminish: your greed is satisfied at any ATM, your lust is for more sleep, your gluttony is for a Dairy Queen Blizzard, your sloth becomes meditation. . .I’m in the deletion business: I’ve eliminated running, TV (except for baseball), and I gave away my unread Moby-Dick. Not enough time. I hear that Ahab dies and Ishmael survives to tell the tale. Good enough. Time for a walk. – Garrison Keillor

from “Happiness” by Jane Kenyon

There's just no accounting for happiness . . .

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

. . . It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

– Jane Kenyon, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press. 1996.