Happiness . . .
Friday, June 13, 2025. It's Freya's day . . . and gentle Southerlies bring cloud-cover to TulseyTown today and tomorrow. The weatherfeather indicates mid 80's and that traditional Summer 20% chance for on/off rain.
The Nobel laureate poet William Butler Yeats was born on this day in 1865 Dublin, Ireland.
...the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. – Heather Cox Richardson, posted last night in Letters From An American.
No Kings Day . . . Two hundred fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, Americans created an army to defend ourselves from an alien force intent on suppressing our right to home rule and threatening personal security in our homes and workplaces. Tomorrow, on June 14, 2025, we will be demonstrating across this country against our wannabe king and his decision to destroy the constitutional rights that Americans fought long and hard to secure...We will not allow this to happen any more than did our forebears. – Robert Reich.
Happiness
There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.
No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.
It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.
– Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise: New and Selected Poems. Graywolf Press. 1997. Published posthumously.
A big day in L.A. Federal Court . . .
Thursday, June 12, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . and rain showers, on then off, throughout TulseyTown this morning is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow morning. Moderate Southerlies and cool mid 70's this afternoon.
Anne Frank was born on this day in 1929 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
For the first time in a U.S. federal court, there will be cameras in the the courtroom today in the hearing in the California case, the one involving the state’s request for a temporary restraining order against the federal government after it deployed National Guardsmen and Marines to Los Angeles.
Peaceful protests don’t get covered by the national media. Most of the people who come together in places like Des Moines and Kansas City to express their outrage at what Trump is doing aren’t heard or seen. Yet such solidarity is to be celebrated. It is the foundation of the common good. – Robert Reich, Solidarity Now, online.
Maybe what we can do when we feel overwhelmed is to start small. Start with what we have loved as kids and see where that leads us. – Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Sophie Strand's June compost heap, in Make Me Good Soil, online.
Just as the Calendar Began to Say Summer
I went out of the schoolhouse fast
and through the gardens and to the woods,
and spent all summer forgetting what I'd been taught--
two times two, and diligence, and so forth,
how to be modest and useful, and how to succeed and so forth,
machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.
By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember
the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn't a penny in the bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.
–Mary Oliver, Long Life, Da Capo Press, 2004.
The generosity of a lily . . .
Wednesday, June 11, 2025. It's Odin's day . . . The sunny start to the day here in TulseyTown turns cloudy during the afternoon. So says the weatherfeather. Moderate Southerlies may make for a mid 80's day.
Generosity is an activity that loosens us up. By offering whatever we can—a dollar, a flower, a word of encouragement—we are training in letting go. – Pema Chödrön, in Comfortable With Uncertainty, Shambhala, 2018.
Today is the birth date of Jacques Cousteau. The ocean and underwater explorer was born in 1910, Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France .
It's the birthday of William Styron. The multiple laureate novelist was born in 1925 Newport News, Virginia.
And, playwright Ben Jonson was born on this date in 1572 London.
Under the Constitution, police powers are reserved to the states. Trump is clearly trying to assert himself as dictator. – Joyce Vance explains in Civil Discourse.
“This isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.” – Gov. Gavin Newsom, cited by Heather Cox Richardson, posted yesterday in Letters From An American.
The Noble Nature
It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere:
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night—
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.
– Ben Jonson. This poem is in the public domain.