Harsh mistress . . .
It's a Satyr's day and Okieland seems headed for an early Spring . . . in the mailbox this morning:
Biden has taken on Elon Musk and Red America is the beneficiary. If you have or know someone with farm roots, this may make for a more broadband perspective.
Capitalism's ugly tentacles are trying hijack the FDA into forcing CBD access to pharmaceutical Rx and a price tag of in excess of $30K per dose.
Tonight is the night of the Snow Moon.
Also known as the Hungry Moon, Storm Moon, Wolf Moon and Candles Moon, it's the farthest from the Earth tonight. As a result it will appear as the smallest full moon of the year, rising red, about 6:30 p.m. in the Northeast skies. Its appearance will signal the start of the Lantern Festival, also called Shang Yuan or the Yuan Xiao Jie, which is part of the Chinese New Year celebrations.
Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo last year, is dead after apparently striking a building Friday on the Upper West Side, according to the New York Times. I wonder if he was distracted by the “Hungry Moon.”
For your sake poets, painters, creatives sequester themselves only that the world, so transient as made in each moment by moment instant, might be given to you once again. Lovers are the poets in the briefest of hours, who gather your inheritance. Awakening desire, they make a place where growth happens with all its joy, pain, suffering and laughter – all the longings that had slept and now awakens to weep in a stranger's arms, streaming into you when things and thoughts cannot contain it. – after Rilke, Book of Hours.
Nostalgia is not an immersion in the past; nostalgia is the first annunciation that the past as we know it is coming to an end. – David Whyte
Passing
Everything passes. I mourn backwards
through time ... all the things I remember,
and all I don't ...
I mourn the lost bookstores ...
story-tellers and singers ...
I mourn the lives of those
I have not yet met,
the lives of all the creatures
vanishing before I shall ever meet them ...
And through you – somewhere we'll meet.
– by Vijaya Sundaram, in Fractured Lens, Cervena Barva Press, 2023.
Moonlight mooning
It's Freya's day . . . lots of moon news today (below) and tomorrow (stay tuned) . . .
. . . and in the mailbox this morning, more thanks for Dark Brandon . . .
Yesterday evening (U.S. time) some of us watched the the first U.S.-built spacecraft land on the moon in more than 50 years and the first ever by a private company. In case you missed it . . .
A few notable moments from the past:
Today in 1945, U.S. servicemen raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II.
Today is the 156th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois' birth. The the most important Black protest leader in the U.S. during the first half
of the 20th century was born on this date in 1868, Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
339 years ago today, George Frideric Handel was born in 1685, Halle, Brandenburg, Germany.
And, 24 years ago tonight, Carlos Santana was awarded nine Grammy Awards for his album Supernatural.
The moon taps at my window.
Stars spell out their concern.
I pretend I do not see.
― Darshana Suresh, Howling at the Moon. Platypus Press Limited; 1st edition , 2016.
Created by Yang, the manifest
patriarchy would have us turn
away from Yin and all its dark mysteries and power.
The “mother of the ten-thousand-things”
is the fierce and tender nurturer of us all.
Yang wants to name and possess her
and all it names, to become the Sun God
while fearful of the changes brought by the moon.
In dreams, the Sun does not blind.
— jab
Possibly impossible
In the mailbox this Freya's day, named after another cousin of mine, some insight sent from yet another . . .
The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer. – Fridtjof Nansen
This is the 292nd anniversary of George Washington, the founder of the founding fathers if ever there was ...
On this day in 1997, researchers announced that Dolly, a female Finn Dorset sheep had been created a year earlier. She was the first clone of an adult mammal and lived from 1996 to 2003.
Today is also the birthday of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poet and playwright was born on this day in 1892 Rockland, Maine.
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
– Edna St. Vincent Millay