A full moon is no excuse. . .

It's a foggy Thor's day in TulseyTown obscuring tonight's full Moon. That said there remains sufficient light for the messages in the mailbox which featured food for thought and memorably great writers . . .

Far too many people still don’t appreciate how Trump will react to a loss, just like they don’t believe he will carry out an authoritarian plan for America. It does seem surreal. But he’s telling us, as clearly as he did in 2016 and 2020, what he intends to do. There are no excuses for missing the message. – Joyce Vance, “No more excuses,” Civil Discourse, 1.24.24.

It's Burns Night in Scotland, celebrating the birthday of poet Robert Burns, born 265 years ago on this day in 1759 Alloway, Scotland.

Virginia Woolf was born on this day in 1882 London.

And it's the 150th anniversary of W. Somerset Maugham's birth. The writer and dramatist was born at the British Embassy in 1874 Paris.

Gin a body meet a body

Comin thro' the rye,

Gin a body kiss a body —

Need a body cry. – Robert Burns

Amphiteatrics

The Tew's day's mailbox was full of fog ahead of more rain here in TulseyTown, and a handful of notable notes:

Derek Walcott was born on this date 94 years ago. The Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature – poetry and theatre – was born in 1930 Castries, Saint Lucia, West Indies.

It's the birthday of Django Reinhardt. The Romani (‘Gypsy’) guitarist, was born in 1910, Liberchies, Belgium. Despite the loss of two fingers, he was one of jazz’s greatest ever guitarists.

Édouard Manet was also born on this date. A leading artist in the transition from realism to impressionism, he was born in 1832, Paris, France.

Once upon a time: a poet might fill an amphitheatre … today it's in the backroom of a Barns and Noble wannabe. The whole of the art world once filled a small New York restaurant, now it won't fit in all of Chase Manhattan Bank and Deutsche Bank combined. At least according to Fran Libowitz and perhaps Siri.

And, today in 1986, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was inaugurated. The inductees of the inaugural class were Chuck Berry; James Brown; Ray Charles; Sam Cooke; Fats Domino; The Everly Brothers; Buddy Holly; Jerry Lee Lewis; Elvis Presley; Little Richard; Robert Johnson; Jimmie Rodgers; Jimmy Yancey; Alan Freed; John Hammond; and Sam Phillips.

There is no illness worse

than forgetting

what we must never forget.

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