Mercy, wild . . .
Friday, May 2, 2025. It's Freya's day … and overnight rains left TulseyTown this morning. Moderate Northerlies and mid 70's are in the forecasts with cloudy skies clearing this evening.
In the mailbox
Mirabai Starr turns 64 today. An award-winning author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and interspiritual teacher, she was born in 1961 New York.
The inner crisis. – Soren, 2.0.
The outer crisis: At the nation’s elite military academies, the library stacks are being emptied by executive order....directives are sweeping through the Naval Academy, West Point, the Air Force Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy, all under the guise of complying with President Trump’s executive order banning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) content and concepts.
Law day and Trump day. – Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse.
As Trump’s poll numbers continue to fall, It’s not clear that Congress will embrace the cuts DOGE has made willy-nilly throughout the government. This slightly more positive view was posted yesterday by Heather Cox Richardson in her Letters From An American.
Resist dogma. Accept uncertainty like a pragmatist. – Michael Bacon, Psyche
And today in 1611 the King James version of The Bible was published.
“When we show up to make art, we need to get still enough to hear what wants to be expressed though us, and then we need to step out of the way and let it. We must be willing to abide in a space of not knowing before we can settle into knowing.” ― Mirabai Starr, Wild Mercy: Living the Fierce and Tender Wisdom of the Women Mystics, Sounds True, 2019,
If a final day comes . . .
Thursday, May 1, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . and the weatherfeather indicates morning clouds yielding to a sunny day for TulseyTown. More thundershowers are possible tonight. A lovely weekend is in the forecasts.
We all carry stories about what is possible, stories influenced by conditioning, fear, and experience. But what if our limits are not real? What if they’re just unchallenged? What if everything you need to rise, to heal, to rebuild is already within you, waiting to be realized? – Susan Wang, on Tiny Buddha.
Catching up on a full mailbox:
The economy is contracting for the first time in three years: A report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis summarized by Heather Cox Richardson in Letters From An American
Trump's 100 day face-plant. “No president has ever botched the first hundred days more badly than Donald Trump has botched it.” – Rachel Maddow.
Dr. Richardson also provided a summary of the first 100 days of Trump.
Here is a devastating reality check for the Democratic Party in the Age of Trump: What if the real story of this era and the country's democracy crisis is not so much that the American people fell in love with Donald Trump and the MAGA movement but that they dislike the Democrats even more than him? – Chauncey DeVega, Salon 4.29.25
Yesterday:
Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities was first published in serial form yesterday in 1859. Annie Dillard turned 80 yesterday. The Pultizer Prize laureate for non-fiction (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) was born in 1945 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Anne Frank's diary was first published in English on this date in 1952
How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?... If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them? Every part of this earth is sacred...every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.… We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and human—all belong to the same family. – Chief Seattle in 1854.
If a final day comes, a capitalist will sell us the rope.
Slippery stories . . .
Wednesday, April 30, 2025. It's Odin's day . . . Moderate Southerlies return today along with thundershowers moving slowly through TulseyTown. Upper 60's this afternoon. Clearing tonight. Sunny tomorrow.
Our story is not the only frame, not likely the most important frame, and maybe even a frame with a lot of shadow and bias. – Richard Rohr, “The Cosmic Egg: Other Stories and The Story,” in Meditations at the CAC.
Today the controversial Danish film director, Lars von Trier turns 69. He was born in 1956, Copenhagen, Denmark
Willie Nelson turns 92 today. He was born in 1933, Abbott, Texas. Continuing to tour, he and Bob Dylan headline The Outlaw Fest currently through the summer, with a stop in Oklahoma.
Storytelling
What I've learned from Ken Burns:
Everyone is an opportunist
if they have the opportunity –Katherine Hepburn
Poems are the stories we tell
for all those who have
no way to tell them.
While it remains true
none can step into the
same river twice
nonetheless the circle
will always be
unbroken.
— jab