Living has never been an easy assignment . . .
Monday, March 24, 2025. It's the Moon's day . . . slowly waning toward “new.” Forecasts indicate moderate Southerlies to near 20 mph, bringing a mix of sun and clouds this afternoon to TulseyTown. Upper 70's. Westerlies tonight, Northerlies tomorrow.
Today is the birthdate of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The poet (The Coney Island of the Mind), publisher, and bookstore owner (City Lights) was born in 1919 Yonkers, New York.
Heather Cox Richardson wants to know who is in charge of White House policy. This past Saturday night gave her a clue.
Clearly, Der Trumpenfurher is purposefully in contempt of every court and judge in the country (Cannon excepted for the moment). Joyce Vance explores the options around making a contempt order stick.
I pray otherwise, but the sun set on the British Empire and perhaps it is our turn now...Greatness is good for people, once you know what it really is. – Garrison Keillor, The Column, 3.20.25
It is not an easy assignment, being alive. Coming awake from the stupor of near-living that lulls us through our days, awake to the knowledge that on the other side of the neighborhood ICE trucks are handcuffing people and on the other side of the planet children are dying in gunfire, while outside the first birds of spring are singing and everywhere people are falling in love and in some faraway mountain village a shepherd is singing under a thousand stars. And somehow, somehow, all of it has to cohere into a single world in which we, in all our incohesion, must live this single life. – Maria Popova, in The Marginalian, 3.23.25.
The Beauty of Becoming
This past Thursday (my birthday) marked the first day of spring. For many of us, this is a welcome change and an opportunity to celebrate the promise of winter’s end.
No mud, no lotus – Thich Nhat Hahn
Sometime During Eternity . . .
Sometime during Eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
[...]
claiming he is hip
to who made
heaven and earth …
— Lawrence Ferlingetti, “Sometime During Eternity,” in The Coney Island of the Mind, first edition by New Directions, 1955/1958.