Mirror, mirror . . .

In the mailbox on this full-moon day . . .

Following three days of intense fighting—casualties numbered more than 50,000—the Battle of Gettysburg ended on this day in 1863 with a victory for the Union forces and was seen as a turning point in the American Civil War.

Today in 1608, Samuel de Champlain founded the city of Quebec, the first permanent European base in Canada.

It's Tom Cruise's birthday. The now 61-year-old film actor was born on this date in 1962 Syracuse, New York.

Art holds up a mirror to hypocrisy, injustice, and abuse, and mobilizes people in ways that nothing else can. This has been especially true over the last 100 years. From Picasso'sGuernica and Duke Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige" suite, to the AIDS Quilt, the Guerrilla Girls projects, and Hamilton, the list of impactful works is endless and ever-growing.

It's easy to misread the vision embraced by The Watercourse Way of Lao Tzu as inclusive of a permissive embrace of the bankrupt nonsense of contemporary political conservatism. Quite the contrary. Knee-jerk, reactionary, turn-back-the-clock, “No”-ism is wholly counter to the progressive, forever creative flow of The Way, always in the moment moving forward.