Backward into the future sad party . . .

Saturday, April 11, 2026. It's the Satyr's day … so much for yesterday's 20% rain chance that turned into 100% frog-strangler shortly after our posting. Okieland weather. For what it's worth, forecasts for Green Country today indicate a 50/50 chance for afternoon thunderstorms scattered about the area, including TulseyTown. Moderate Southerlies and low 80's, so says the wet weatherfeather which indicates storms possible overnight and 99% tomorrow.

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. –Soren Kierkegaard

All events, no matter how preimagined, are unforeseen. Likewise, all expectations, all plans, are merely conceptions in the present. . .consciousness unfolds on a “blind and backward course” where each step is not seen as it is taken but only immediately after it has been taken. Consciousness is in the immediate.

It feels like something shifted in the United States this week. – Heather Cox Richardson in Letters From An American.

Robert Reich has a great idea on how to counter Trump's 10-billion suit against us: We sue him.

Yesterday was the birthdate for two of film's great actors. Max von Sydow was born in 1929, Lund, Sweden; and Omar Sharif was born in 1932, Alexandria, Egypt.

Today is the birthdate of writer Dorothy Allison. Born in 1949 Greenville, South Carolina. She's the author of Bastard Out Of Carolina.

And, poet Mark Strand was born today in 1934 Summerside on Prince Edward Island, Canada.

From the Long Sad Party

Someone was saying

something about shadows covering the field, about

how things pass, how one sleeps towards morning

and the morning goes.

Someone was saying

how the wind dies down but comes back,

how shells are the coffins of wind

but the weather continues.

It was a long night

and someone said something about the moon

shedding its white

on the cold field, that there was nothing ahead

but more of the same.

Someone mentioned

a city she had been in before the war, a room with two

candles

against a wall, someone dancing, someone watching.

We began to believe

the night would not end.

Someone was saying the music was over and no one had

noticed.

Then someone said something about the planets, about the

stars,

how small they were, how far away.

— Mark Strand, “From the Long Sad Party,” in The Late Hour Atheneum, 1973.