The wishful public domain . . .
It's Freya's (Frigg's) day... Moderate Northerlies bring a blustery cold, clear day to TulseyTown today. Tomorrow will be one second shorter entering the Solstice.
“Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and to repulse it.” – Thomas Paine, December 19, 1776.
Paine's lines had the effect he called for, remembered yet again by Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters From An American.
Today is physicist David Bohm's birth date. The American-born British theoretical physicist who developed a causal, nonlocal interpretation of quantum mechanics was born today in 1917, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life premiered today in 1946.
And, Irish revolutionary Maud Gonne, the lifelong muse of poet W.B. Yeats, was born on this date in 1865 Surrey, England.
He wishes for the cloths of heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
— W.B. Yeats. “He wishes for the cloths of heaven” was written for Maud Gonne and published in The Wind Among the Reeds in 1899. It is my pleasure to share it with you on this day before the 2024 Winter Solstice because it expresses my own sentiment about all who share this blog space with me. The poem, thankfully, is in the public domain.
To be filled with light . . .
It's Thor's day … after a below freezing, frosty morning, a mild and sunny day for TulseyTown . . .
Zen: exactly this, here and now.
Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. – David Whyte
This past week has been “finals” for thousands of students (and teachers)...including Joyce Vance.
103 years ago today in 1843 Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol.
The French singer Edith Piaf was born on this day in 1915, Paris, France. She reinvented the French Chanson (ballad). Many have tried to copy her style and/or covered her songs, while the French-Canadian Celine Dion has met that challenge.
Let it be said: There is a power in love within us and returning to the whole world.
...you too have come into the world
to do this: to go easy, to be filled with light,
and to shine.
– Mary Oliver, “When I Am Among The Trees,” Thirst, Beacon Press, 2006
The Grinch is still trying . . .
It's Odin's day . . . Northerlies and upper 40's today, Southerlies and upper 50's tomorrow and on to the Solstice. Below freezing mornings until the day after. The Okieland Winter roller coaster rolls on.
How you think today is how you live your life. – Grace Song
What path are we on?
Creatives rewarded for surviving “outside” that “box”
Today is the 145th anniversary of Paul Klee's birth. The painter – who's work spanned and absorbed expressionism, cubism, and surrealism – was born on this day near 1879 Bern, Switzerland. “One eye sees, the other feels.” — Paul Klee
Steven Spielberg turns 78 today. The iconic Academy Award laureat film director was born in 1946 Cincinnati, Ohio
How the Grinch Stole Christmas! premiered on CBS television 58 years ago this evening in1966.
Keith Richards turns 81 today. The British guitarist and founding member of the rock band the Rolling Stones was born in 1943 Dartford, Kent, England, UK. No Grinch, Richards recorded Chuck Berry's Christmas tribute to Rudolph back in 1968.
Maybe Christmas (he thought) doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps
means a little bit more. —The Grinch