Does anybody even care?
Saturday, May 24, 2025. It's the Satyr's day . . . Lots of rain from thunderstorms are underway this morning in TulseyTown, as I begin the blog build. Forecasts indicate an on/off pattern of storms bridging the morning with the afternoon when moderate to strong Easterlies are to maintain 50/50 chances into the evening and into tomorrow morning with mid 70's.
All the mail this morning was soaking wet, but still readable ...
Once, an old fish met two young fish and asked “So, how’s the water today?” and the young fish responded, “Water? What's 'water'?”
Regardless of whose lips are moving in MAGA world, they're all lying, ignorant, and in denial of the damage they're doing even to themselves. —Heather Cox Richardson posted late last night in Letters From An American.
Bob Dylan is celebrating (perhaps, if celebrating is the correct term) his 84th birthday today. Labeled by many as the Shakespeare of our times, he was born in 1941 Duluth, Minnesota.
Novelist Michael Chabon turns 62 today. The author of Wonder Boys was born in 1963 Washington, D.C.
Poet, translator, essayist, playwright and Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky was born on this day in 1940 Leningrad.
And, today in 1626, Peter Minuit bought the island of Manahatta.
Three Angels
Three angels up above the street
Each one playing a horn
Dressed in green robes with wings that stick out
They’ve been there since Christmas morn
[…]
In this concrete world full of souls
The angels play on their horns all day
The whole earth in progression seems to pass by
But does anyone hear the music they play
Does anyone even try?
– Bob Dylan, “Three Angels,” recorded by Big Sky Music, 1970.
O you chaotic moon . . .
Friday, May 23, 2025. It's Freya's day . . . and moderate Easterlies continue to bring clouds and thunderstorm chances – about 40% – to TulseyTown this afternoon and another mid 70's day. The weatherfeather indicates a 70% liklihood of storms this evening and tonight.
The Supreme Court by a 4-4 decision yesterday left in place a lower court ruling in a case involving taxpayer dollars to directly fund religious schools -- meaning that the lower court's rule finding such funding unconstitutional will stand. The religious right and Christian-nationalist organizations believed that this was their best opportunity to drive a stake through the heart of our secular school system. But this outcome means that the separation of church and state in our public schools is safe… for now.
Highlighting a truism: In the United States, racism has always gone hand in hand with the concentration of wealth among the very richest people. – Heather Cox Richardson, in yesterday's Letters From An American.
The author of the classic children's book Goodnight Moon: Margaret Wise Brown, was born today in 1910 Brooklyn, New York.
It's the birthday of Edward Norton Lorenz, born in 1917 West Hartford, Connecticut. He penned chaos theory, one of the 20th century's most revolutionary scientific ideas, sometimes known as "the butterfly effect: "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?" From my take on chaos, the answer would have to be: maybe. You’d have to be in two places at once with an impossibly long ruler. It could be said that chaos created Lorenz since his discovery of it was, in his words, “by accident.”
And its the birthday of Jane Kenyon. The poet was born in 1947 Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks
I am the blossom pressed in a book,
found again after two hundred years ....
[...]
I am the one whose love
overcomes you, already with you
when you think to call my name ....
– Jane Kenyon, “Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks” from The Boat of Quiet Hours, Graywolf Press, 1986.
Alone in the crowd . . .
Thursday, May 22, 2025. It's Thor's day … and forecasts indicate moderate Easterlies, mid 70's and a 50/50 chance for storms this afternoon in TulseyTown.
“Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place. Nothing outside you can give you any place. You needn't look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show a place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?”
― Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood, Harcourt Brace,1952
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From An American provided an update after an all night session in the House. Trump's “big beautiful bill” is headed for the Senate.
Today is “Harvey Milk Day” in California. https://nationaltoday.com/harvey-milk-day/
It's Sir Laurence Olivier's birthday. The internationally acclaimed and legendary stage and film actor was born in 1907, Dorking, Surrey, England
Speaking of legends, today is also the birthday of Richard Wagner. The German composer who had a revolutionary influence on the course of was born in1813, Leipzig, Germany.
And, it's the birth date of Mary Cassatt. The painter and among the leading artists in the impressionist movement was born in1844, in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania.
The solitary act of making art involves intense, wordless dialogue. – Stephen Batchelor, in Maria Popova's Margialian
Solitude
– after Thomas Merton
It may be necessary for some of us to live alone.
Silence is our boon companion
and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world
becomes our love.
Out of the heart of that dark warmth
comes the secret that is heard only in silence,
but is the root of all the secrets
whispered by all the lovers in their beds
all over the world. Well may we be obliged
to preserve this stillness, the silent pure nothingness
arising in each moment-by-moment
at the center of all loves.
That we have chosen this task
may escape us in the doings of our being
amid the contradictory joyous burden
which sustains and drains our earthly life.
— jab