Optimistically Buoyant

In the mailbox this Sols' day . . .

Poet May Swenson was born on this date in 1913 Logan, Utah

It's also the 107th anniversary of Walker Percy's birth. The novelist was born today in 1916 Birmingham, Alabama.

“I still respectfully disagree with allowing Donald Trump to appear in that particular format. Maybe we should revert back to the newspaper editors and TV chiefs of the 1950s, who in the end refused to allow McCarthyism onto their pages.” – Christiane Amanpour Address to the Columbia School of Journalism’s Class of 2023.

“Bill Gates called himself an impatient optimist, and that feels pretty good for what I am.” – Geena Davis at the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media

. . .the future, like a forest

we never knew. . .

the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

– Rainer Maria Rilke, The Book of Hours (transl. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Riverhead Books, NYC, 1996.

Neglect

The generous world grants me bounty

beyond measure every day,

yet I spend my time

regretting my losses,

a ship with its paint cracking,

neglecting to thank the ocean for its buoyancy.

– Leslie Gerber, Rattle, Summer, 2023, Vol. 29, No. 2