Black, white, and every shade and hue between . . .

It's Sol's day . . . generating another heat-hammer of an early August day.

A priest and a Baptist are sitting together on a plane. The priest orders a glass of wine, the Baptist a 7-Up. The Baptist says, “Christians should not touch alcohol,” and the priest says, “Jesus drank wine.” The Baptist says, “Yes, and I’d have thought better of him if he hadn’t.” Every moment-by-moment-instant has always been and will be “a marvel.” – Garrison Keillor, perfect for this Sunday.

Speaking of marvels.

Turns out, plants communicate. Their agency and intelligence is shared, and not just with their kin.

Barack Obama turns 63 today. Our 44th President was born in 1961 Honolulu, Hawaii.

It's the birth date of Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong. THE jazzman was born in the birthplace of American jazz: 1901 New Orleans, Louisiana.

Poet Robert Hayden was born on this day in 1913 Detroit.

And Percy Bysshe Shelley was born 232 years ago today in 1792, Field Place, near Horsham, Sussex, England.

The natives have not yet learned from the white man his inventions for traveling away from the present, his scientific capacity for analyzing warmth into a chemical substance, for abstracting human beings into symbols. The white man has invented glasses which make objects too near or too far, cameras, telescopes, spyglasses, objects which put glass between living and vision. It is the image he seeks to possess, not the texture, the living warmth, the human closeness . . . In New York people seem intent on not seeing each other. Only children look with such unashamed curiosity. Poor white man, wandering and lost in his proud possession of a dimension in which bodies become invisible to the naked eye, as if staring were an immodest act. Here [in Mexico] I feel incarnated and in full possession of my own body. – Anaïs Nin