Aha! Rain.

It's Odin's day … and here in TulseyTown we await our annual, extended period of transitional storms …

While we wait, celebrate.

Today is the birthday of the first U.S. poet laureate, Robert Penn Warren. The poet, novelist was born on this day in 1905 Guthrie, Kentucky.

Barbra Streisand turns 82 today. The singer, composer, actress, director, producer was born on this day in 1942, Brooklyn, New York.

And, Shirley MacLaine turns 90 today. The virtuoso actress was born on this day in 1934 Richmond, Virginia.

Buddha’s quiet proclamation of ceaseless changes are the experiential basis of the truth of “no solid self.” If that’s true, then who is reading (or writing) these words?

Sometimes, the profoundest of lessons are learned from the quietest, most quotidian of happenstance. Suddenly seeing what you might have walked past countless dozens of times. A buck-naked tree, perhaps. A tree whose very nakedness suddenly offers an aha! – Barbara Mahany from The Book of Nature, Broadleaf Books, Minneapolis MN, 2023 and posting for Meditations at CAC, 4/24/24. Get better acquainted with Ms. Mahany on her website.

Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek – Barach Obama

When it rains, it should be raining

There are at least ten-thousand things

and most all have a voice of some kind.

Most of them, though

can't be specified or enumerated with

by or on a spread-sheet. That said,

it was you I heard

this morning just at sunrise.

There were 17 of you

but you flew as one overhead

all of us headed for the Heron pond,

talking, it seemed, about the day ahead:

Wonderments about your cousins

– the frogs – barking like

the neighborhood dogs

at your graceful, noisy, arrival.

Sometimes you whisper

in the leaves and grasses, and

once, all at the same time,

your thunder

announced that rain

was about to speak.

jb – shared on Prolific Press' Poets' virtual.

Rope for sale

On this Tew's day … Strong Southwesterlies here in TulseyTown tempt me to mow my lawn . . .

Today is traditionally held to be the birthday of William Shakespeare, who was baptized on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England.

The Boston Latin School opened its doors on this day in 1635 Boston, Massachusetts in what would become the United States. Its establishment set a precedent for tax-supported public education. It is the oldest existing school in the United States.

The singer/songwriter Roy Orbison was born born on this day in 1936 Vernon, Texas. Down a rabbit-hole of memories …

And, Michael Moore turns 70 today. The filmmaker, author, and political activist was born on this day in 1954, Flint, Michigan.

Continuing Earth Week . . .

Most Americans think their actions can help fight climate change, but they’re not always right on which are the most effective, according to a Post/UMD poll. Good piece, sent to me by a famous rocket-scientist-nerd friend here in TulseyTown. ... missing is the obvious: The profit interests of the most major contributors to global warming/climate change continue to suggest that we should take the responsibility of reducing our individual personal carbon footprint as the means to fixing the problem they created. I get it that a billion people switching from gas to electric stove tops might have a collective impact ... assuming there are a billion people have electricity, let alone stove tops. I've not seen any data comparing traveling by rail or car vs. air. Inventing the wheel may have been the first step in our undoing. Metaphorically speaking, patriarchal capitalism is leading itself to the gallows where they will sell us the rope.

The best steps we can take next is to vote to put the house, senate, and presidency in the hands of candidates who've publicly expressed their undying support for taxing the upper 5% for 15% of all their income sources, including corporations since those are now considered entities with free speech. Wouldn't hurt to legislate the elimination of processed foods and the poisons being sprayed on corporate farms. But that's a longer story.

Any real healing has to come out of some kind of psychological openness. There are constant opportunities for such openness—constant gaps in our conceptual and physical structures. If we begin to breathe out, then we create room for fresh air to rush in. If we do not breathe, there is no way for the fresh air to enter. – Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Imperative, catagorically

It's the Moon’s day and Earth Day. To celebrate, the Budding Moon is putting on on a full show.

Today is the 300th birth anniversary of Immanuel Kant. The Enlightenment philosopher was born on this date in 1724 Königsberg, Prussia, in 1724.

“We should judge our actions by whether or not we would want everyone else to act the same way. – Kant

Poet Laureate and Nobel Prize recipient Louise Glück was born on this day in 1943 New York City.

And, Jack Nicholson turns 87 today. The consummate film actor was born on this day in 1937 Neptune, New Jersey.

The earth, it seems, operates with the Categorical Imperative as a fundamental principle.

The belief that the world is brute matter us relatively recent, dating back to the rise of the concept of sola ratio – reason alone. The 16th Century saw science dividing from an association with faith and in the process dividing humans from an animate world. Now, five centuries later, we are slowing coming to grips with a new reality.

Turns out, the world isn't dead matter after all. Under the sloppy paint job of materialism and rationalism the animate world was just asleep. We have been living in the nightmare long enough. Fortunately there are better dreams to be had. Outside our own heads. What does it mean to wake up to the animacy of the world outside your front door? Reason, it turns out, to be complete must embrace that which it is not, in the same way that probability embraces error. There is reason in what appears to be chaos. Which clearly has a mind of its own. – after Sophie Strand in “Sleeping Beauty, Sleeping World,” The Flowering Wand: Rewilding the Sacred Masculine, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, 2022.

Affirmed, demonstrated, measured: Plants communicate with each other. So why would you feel stupid when you talk to yours? Try talking with them. Requires looking with your ears, listening with your eyes.

A love letter to the earth from Thich Nhat Hanh.

The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water. – John W. Gardner

I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea...I am part of the human race...an organic part of the great human soul…There is nothing of me that is alone and absolute except my mind, and we shall find that the mind has no existence by itself, it is only the glitter of the sun on the surface of the waters. – D.H. Lawrence

At the River Clarion

Sitting in the river named Clarion on a water-splashed stone

all afternoon listening to the voices of the river talking...

Said the river: I am part of holiness.

And I too, said the stone. And I too,

whispered the moss beneath...

You don't hear such voices in an hour or a day.

You don't hear them at all if selfhood

has stuffed your ears...

I don't know how you get to suspect such an idea.

I only know that the river kept singing.

– Mary Oliver, from “At the River Clarion,” Evidence Poems, Beacon Press, 2009.