Dragon training . . .
Saturday, July 5, 2025. It's the Satyr's day . . . Sun, clouds, Southerlies, low 90's and a 15% chance for a stray, seemingly spontaneous thunder shower – a typical Summer day for TulseyTown and Okieland.
Today is the birth date of Jean Cocteau. The French poet, novelist (les infantes terribles) and filmmaker (Beauty and the Beast) was born in 1889, Maisons-Laffitte, near Paris, France.
Great art and literature are the only models we have to help us stop lying to ourselves, replacing denial and self-pity with awe at the complicated mystery of all living things...We have to get used to the flavor of bitter truth. – Robert Bly, “Making a Hole in Denial,” The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart, Harper Collins, 1992.
The most popular form of denial in this moment is the agreement television anchors have to not become excited about anything. – David Ignatow.
On Training Dragons to Deliver Pizza and Chocolate
by Harriet Anead StoneCypher1
It has been written that “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” A truism if ever there was one. All a woman really needs is a trained dragon. And, guys, this you can't fake.
“Faking it” is not an art. It is, rather, an art form. Rather, it's a science, rooted in symbolic logic in an attempt to co-opt the ontological universe. Art, out of which grows the capacity to train dragons, is, well, a thing in itself about which hundreds if not thousands of books and essays have been written by men to disect and discuss forms. Meanwhile, the feminine principle, out of which the ontological core of the universe manifests, continues to evolve. The paintings in the caves at Lascaux and Altamira are not symbols. They are signs. Rather, they are more like sighs. They are voices still speaking in metaphors. The masculine form of which is usually written as “echoes,” totally missing the meaning. In short and more to the point, the masculine measures what he can name, the feminine trains the nameless.
1 Chasing down Wiley Miller for permission to thank him for the NonSequitur epiphany that prompted this essay was nigh on impossible. There is no such person as Harriet Anead StoneCypher listed in the residential directory for Whachacallit, Maine.
A single leaf of grass . . .
Friday, July 4, 2025. It's Frey's (Frigg's) day … and moderate Southerlies bring a few clouds to TulseyTown along with the seasonal 15% chance for a surprise thunder shower. Upper 80's are in store.
It's the 4th of July
The Statue of Liberty was presented to the United States by the French in Paris.
...the values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — freedom and liberty, civil rights and democracy, self-determination and equality — are all under assault at this moment from the government itself...so, Celebrating the Fourth of July this year may feel a bit strange to some. - Joyce Vance, in The Contrarian: Democracy Index, 7.1.25
Essayist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau moved to his retreat at Walden Pond,
Walt Whitman first published Leaves of Grass.
A leaf of grass
is no less
than the journey work
of stars.
– Walt Whitman
Where's it all going to end?
Thursday, July 3, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . Thunderstorms are in the forecast for TulseyTown today, but only a 50/50 chance.
Playwright Tom Stoppard turns 88 today. The recipient of multiple lareates including the Oscar and several Tony awards.was born in 1937 Zlín, Czechoslovakia.
It's the birthdate of Franz Kafka, born in 1883 Prague.
David can still slay Goliath. If the government won't enforce the law – in this case environmental regulations – organize and “sue the bastards.”
So what’s the real, underlying reason for the Trump regime’s attack on education? Because the greatest obstacle to dictatorship is an educated populace. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. That’s why slave owners prohibited enslaved people from learning to read, fascists burn books, and tyrants close universities.
In their quest to destroy democracy, Trump, Vance, and their cronies are intent on shutting the American mind. – Robert Reich, “Why they hate higher education,” online, 7.3.25.
The Supreme Court's Pandora box. – Joyce Vance, Civil Discourse, 7.2.25.
A must read from Garrison Keillor. The beauty of democracy: it’s an art and not a science, and sometimes it speaks clearly. – “Bravo democracy. Up with the underdog.” The Column, 6.30.25.
Eternity's a terrible thought. I mean, where's it all going to end? – Tom Stoppard.