God's eyelashes . . .

Thursday, December 11, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . and the forecasts indicate a much warmer day for TulseyTown – into the mid 60's – with moderate to strong Southerlies and sunny skies. Turning cooler tomorrow.

Gratitude for the gift of life is the primary wellspring of all religions, the hallmark of the mystic, the source of all true art. – Joanna Macy, “Come from Gratitude,” in “Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning.”

Today is Human Rights Day in honor of the day in 1948 when the United Nations General Assembly announced the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American.

Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was born on this date in 1918 Kislovodsk, Russia.

The absence of proof is not proof of absence. Suffering has historically been equated with corporeality. The moral puzzles of the 21st century are pushing against that assumption: what if experience, awareness or distress could exist without the warmth and flesh of a body? How should we engage entities whose pain we cannot detect with the senses we are built to trust? – Conor Purcell, “Can Machines Suffer?” in Aeon, 12.11.25

Contrary to his doctor's advice to find ways to slow down, Robert Reich is going out of his way today to thank us for our attentive activism.

At the top of my list of faves ( in spite of this note at the bottom of the page) poet and novelist Jim Harrison was born today in 1937 Grayling, Michigan.

The River

Yes, we'll gather by the river,

the beautiful, the beautiful river.

They say it runs by the throne of God.

This is where God invented fish.

… All the 5,000 birds on earth were created there.

… Even now they remember this divine habitat.

Shall we gather at the river, this beautiful river?

We'll sing with the warblers perched on his eyelashes.

– Jim Harrison, “The River,” from Dead Man’s Float. Copper Canyon Press. 2016,