Dropping rose petals into the Grand Canyon
It's Freya's day . . . counting the days to the Equinox, the return of cool and an election on the horizon.
Birthdays
The 14th poet laureate of the United States, Donald Hall was born in 1928 New Haven, Connecticut.
Writer Upton Sinclair was born on this date in 1878 Baltimore, Maryland.
Poet and novelist Stevie Smith was born in 1902 Hull, Yorkshire, England.
And, George R.R. Martin turns 76 today. The fantasy writer (Game of Thrones) was born in 1948, Bayonne, New Jersey
Why your voteS (yeah, plural) matter. Echoing National Election Day posts. – Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse.
What in God's name has gone wrong with newspapers? Garrison Keillor wonders and explains.
September has brought a threshold to Sophie Strand.
Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal into the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. – Don Marquis. Poetry reminds us of what we didn't know we knew. Echoes from ancient canyons.
To Autumn
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core . . .
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too . . .
full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
– John Keats, The poem “To Autumn” is in the public domain.
The timeless beauty of news fit to print
It's Odin's day . . . and typical of Okieland this time of year, heat indices continue to rise until the Fall Equinox passes late Sunday night.
Yesterday was “National Voter Registration Day.” Join the crowd: 1. Register if you haven't done so; 2) check to make sure your registration is up to date; and 3) clear your calendar for Tuesday, November 5th for what could be a record turnout.
Recalling yesterday's 271st anniversary of the U.S. Constitution as the law of the land, Heather Cox Richardson posted a reminder of its near miraculous nature, on her blog Letters from An American.
Speaking of anniversaries:
173 years ago today (1851) the first edition of The New York Times was published.
The French physicist Léon Foucault was born on this date in 1819, Paris.
And it's Greta Garbo's birth date. The Swedish/American actress was born in 1905, Stockholm.
Before Songs
Before songs became notions Dionysus sang
and danced the trees into bloom, spread
flowers like seeds, disrupting city committees
and with the slightest glance created havoc with such beauty
the young and the very old fell immediately in love.
Before songs became notions
there was never a time when there was
no music.
—jab
Harvesting the leftovers of Pax Romana
It's a Tiw's day . . . The Harvest full moon rises in Pisces tonight and it promises to be a bit of a celestial event. The “harvest” moon, also called the “hunter” moon will be a supermoon and include a partial lunar eclipse. Assuming clear skies – forecasts use the term “partly” to describe this evening’s clouds – the show begins in TulseyTown shortly after 7:30 this evening. The partial eclipse won't be particularly spectacular. The earth's shadow will “eat” – an astronomical term of my own invention – dimming a small part of the moon starting about 8:15 kind of like pac-man, and last about an hour, just in time for peak fullness at around 9:30.
On this day in 1787, delegates at the final meeting of the Constitutional Convention formally signed and created the United States Constitution, establishing the supreme law of the land. Arguably, the document launched the most revolutionary democracy since the ancient Greek civilization.
Birthday’s today:
The poet William Carlos Williams was born on this day in 1883 Rutherford, New Jersey.
Today in 1923, Hank Williams was born in Mount Olive, Alabama.
And, one of the heroes of the countercultural revolution of the 1960s, Ken Kesey, was born in 1935 La Junta, Colorado.
Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light. – Brené Brown
A year ago this month in Greenland, the entire earth vibrated.
No more Pax Romana. – Fr. Richard Rohr, writing in Meditations at the CAC.
A vote is not a valentine, you aren't confessing your love for a candidate. It's a chess move for the world you want to live in. – Rebecca Solnit