The Way … on ice . . . dancing.

It's Freya's day and much of OkieLand is covered with ice this morning. Opening the mailbox was challenging, but not impossible, and ultimately rewarding. Music poured out harmonizing with the freezing rain . . .

“You can't always get what you want...” not only according to the Rolling Stones, it becomes evident that the Buddha’s teaching on the source of distress is exactly right. We suffer because we have something we don’t want, we want something we don’t have, or we have something we can’t keep. Craving is a triune with three faces: avoidance, desire, and clinging. None of which are productive methods of navigating The Way. – Vanessa Zuisei Goddard

. . . strict genetic determinism has given way to the rising tide of the emerging fields of epigenetics: how gene expression modifies in relationship to the environmental inputs your body receives over the course of a lifetime. So, Who sits at the piano of your genes? – Jeff Krasno.

Birthdays today:

It's the birth date of Lord Byron. The poet was born in 1788, London, England.

Pioneer movie-maker D.W. Griffith was born on this date in 1875 Floydsfork, Kentucky.

It's the 126th anniversary of Sergei Eisenstein's birth. Another pioneering film director, editor (and theorist) was born in 1898, Riga, Latvia.

Playwright August Strindberg was born in 1849 Stockholm, Sweden.

And, on this date the choreographer and dancer George Balanchine was born in 1904 St. Petersburg, Russia

Never underestimate the power of love. The way to love anything is to realize it may be lost. The heart has its reasons that reason does not know at all. Music is love in search of a word. There is pleasure in the pathless woods; there is a rapture on the lonely shore; there is society, where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar. – Lord Byron