Swimming against the stream . . .

It's Tew's day and the mailbox, while much cooler, also seems to be melting . . .

A Montana judge ruled in favor of young residents who sued the state, saying its disregard for climate change infringed on their right to a healthy environment.

Trump is apparently daring Judge Chutkan …

. . . and witness tampering in Georgia . . .

. . . because . . . Trump and 18 others were formally indicted yesterday by an Atlanta grand jury in a sweeping racketeering case, accusing him and some of his former top aides of orchestrating a “criminal enterprise” to reverse the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. The statute underpinning the indictment carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a mandatory 5 years if convicted.

. . . from where I sit, he has been and continues to be “swimming against the stream.” The Watercourse has its Way and swimming against it is historically fraught with negative consequences.

Stories about swimming against the stream have been good grist for artists and writers of all sorts, several of whom are on a list of birthdays today . . .

Stieg Larsson was born on this day in 1954 Skelleftehamn. The Swedish journalist and novelist wrote The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels.

It's the 252nd anniversary of Sir Walter Scott's birth. The poet and father of the historical novel (Rob Roy and Ivanhoe among them) was born on this date in 1771 Edinburgh.

And, in perhaps a quinticential example of the folly of swimming against the stream of The Way, on this date in 1961 construction began on the Berlin Wall. It was formally dismantled, and Germany reunified, in 1990.

No one lives his life

. . . we come of age as masks.

Our true \face never speaks.

Somewhere there must be storehouses

where all these lives are laid away . . .

Maybe all paths lead there,

to the repository of unlived things. – Rilke, The Book of Hours, transl. Barrows and Macy. Berkeley Publishing. 1996.