From ashes, “High” lights . . .
It's a Satyr's day . . . Northerlies are cooling TulseyTown this morning. The mailbox needed it . . .
We admit to the beauty of a butterfly. Can you admit beauty to the changes it had to go through?
Eighty-five years ago today, in 1939, Billie Holiday recorded the song "Strange Fruit," which describes the lynching of a black man in the South. The mental illness that possessed the Southerners who engaged in such acts as those Ms. Holiday portrayed has not been eradicated by time, nor has it been confined to the South, nor to hooded perpetrators.
In 2021, Derek Chauvin, a former police officer, was found guilty of killing George Floyd, an unarmed African American man whose neck he knelt on while attempting to arrest him in 2020; Floyd's death caused massive protests against police brutality and brought renewed attention to the Black Lives Matter movement.
The flames of history brought the ashes of Adoph Hitler's birth date today in 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria.
Today is the 25th anniversary in 1999 Littleton, Colorado, of the Columbine High School mass killing of students and teachers by two fellow students.
“This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings. " So said Joan Miró the Spanish painter who was born on this date in 1893 Barcelona.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on this day in 2010 causing the largest marine oil spill in history.
And, as if we needed fiction … The first detective story was published today in 1841. Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, introduced many of the elements of mysteries that are still popular. While Poe managed to pack the elements into a short magazine story, these days writers milk the formula for 400 pages and 3 hours on the screen.
There is a "both sides equal" narrative addiction that afflicts traditional media and it is dangerous. The false equivalency of the present global warming environment and political situation is wholly misleading. The fact is that one party has embraced white nationalists, promoted draconian abortion laws, and rejected climate science, all while being led by a serial liar who encouraged an insurrection to steal an election. Suggesting otherwise pushes the very dangerous appearance of equivalency.
… counting today, two more days to Earth Day …
… there is no trouble-making-change-agent to match our very own bodies, which moves on without our asking or without a bye or leave, through the thresholds of maturation without a stop or a halt. – David Whyte. Whyte is starting us out on another journey beyond words.
Finally, from yet among the fire and ashes theme, one pleasant “high” light: Today is 420 day being celebrated notwithstanding the corporate profit mongering . . .
Alone
From childhood’s hour I have not been
as others were
… In my childhood—in the dawn
of a most stormy life—was drawn
the mystery which binds me still—
from the lightning in the sky
as it pass’d me flying by—
from the thunder, and the storm—
and the cloud that took the form
(when the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
— Edgar Allen Poe, “Alone” in public domain.