In dark, always light
Under a New Moon, Freya's day is a cloudy and mild one here in TulseyTown . . .
All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware. – Martin Buber
Today is Amy Lowell's birth date in 1874. The trail-blazing and posthumously awarded Pulitzer Prize poet was born today in Brookline, Massachusetts.
In politics: Republicans have lost their minds … and their souls. – David Brooks, in The New York Times, 2.8.24.
Once upon a time, if you had a product you wanted to sell nation-wide, you had to hire thousands of people to go door-to-door in every town and hope for a one-in-a-thousand sale. Expensive? You bet. Sunday evening, for $7 million, you can get your product on television for :30 seconds. A bargain? You bet.
There is no time for anything but love. – Fr. Richard Rohr, writing in Meditations at The Center for Action and Meditation, 9 February 2024.
Let joy and beauty be your fuel for everything you do.
Always we are following a light,
Always the light recedes …
Distraught, but lighted ever onward,
we are brought upon our way
unknowing, in a dream.
– Amy Lowell, Lamp of Light, in the public domain.
Vision Questing
It's Thor's day . . . and another lovely pre-Spring day is at hand in TulseyTown. Jonquils are pushing up in my tiny cottage flower bed. Ah, but this is Okieland which usually means Winter ain't over.
In the mailbox today, some motion picture milestone notes:
It's the birthdate of James Dean in 1931 Marion, Indiana.
Lana Turner was born on this day in 1920 Wallace, Idaho.
Nick Nolte turns 82 today, born in 1941, Omaha, Nebraska.
Martin Scorsese's film, Taxi Driver, started screening in theatres today in 1976 after its premier release on February 7th.
Composer John Williams is celebrating his 92nd birthday today. He was born in 1932, Queens, New York .
A “vision quest” is not the recipe for a screenplay or video game or another “Two Buck Chuck” discovery … The myths and rituals that gave meaning to earlier societies, shaping and enriching the lives of individuals and knitting them into the larger community, weren’t designed to serve as marketplace commodities or theme park attractions. When the quest is degraded in such a way, we all suffer. – Ted Gioia, on his substack novella Music to Raise the Dead
What's that noise?
It's Odin's day . . . He who was found of making waves and rattling cages.
We are all in this together. So when you realize that you’re talking to yourself, label it “thinking” and notice your tone of voice. Let it be compassionate and gentle and humorous. Then you’ll be changing old stuck patterns that are shared by the whole human race. Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves. – Pema Chödrön, from Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living, Shambhala, 2018.
Today is the 546th anniversary of Sir Thomas More's birth. born in 1478 London. The Lord Chancellor to Henry VIII was beheaded for not being a “yes” man to Henry's designs on the laws of the church.
Three authors share this birth date across the years — Charles Dickens was born in 1812 Portsmouth, Hampshire, England; the author of Little House on the Prarie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born in 1867 Pepin, Wisconsin; and, the first American to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sinclair Lewis, was born on this day in 1885 Sauk Centre, Minnesota.
The Beatles landed in New York City today in 1964, launching the British Invasion.
An earthquake of a different kind occurred today in 1812. The New Madrid quakes were the largest in U.S. history.
Are you sensing a series of breakthroughs bubbling up under the surface of our fear-based, click-bait outer shell? – Karen Doyle Grossman, writing at The Garrison Institute, 7 February 2024.
When no new songs come your way
… What then? …
At the edge of something
unspeakable, unsingable …
Redefine the song.
Something else up there,
or down there
awaits, holding its breath,
waiting to be spoken. – Vijay Sundaram, “Songless, Groundless,” in Fractured Lens, Cervena Barva Press, 2023.