The moon's a harsh mistress . . .
Sunday, July 20, 2025. It's Sol's day . . . Extreme heat warnings are in the forecasts for TulseyTown today with indices to 106º under clear skies and moderate to strong Southerlies.
On this day in 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from Lunar Module Eagle to the surface of the Moon. Heather Cox Richardson remembers, in Letters From An American.
Today in 1875 the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains. It was a swarm about 1,800 miles long, 110 miles wide, from Canada down to Texas.
In 1869, Innocents Abroad was published, firmly establishing its author, Mark Twain, as a serious writer.
It's the birthdate of novelist and screenplay writer Cormac McCarthy. The author of All the Pretty Horses and No Country For Old Men was born on this day in 1933 Providence, Rhode Island.
And Francesco Petrarca was born on this day. The Italian humanist, scholar, and poet better known as Petrarch, was born in1304 Arezzo, Italy.
Sunday Sermon
Collective greed is killing America today. We make everything about money—everything … How can we look at the suffering taking place in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan and be anything but sad? It’s sad beyond words or concepts...I recently turned eighty and the older I get, the more it feels like I must forgive almost everything for not being perfect … Forgiveness of reality—including tragic reality—is the heart of the matter. – Fr. Richard Rohr, “Grief, Anger and Compassion,” Meditations, The Center for Action and Meditation, Sunday, July 20, 2025
The moon taps at my window.
Stars spell out their concern.
I pretend I do not see. ― Darshana Suresh
[...]
Yang wants to name and possess
all it names, to become the Sun God
fearful of the changes brought by the Yin moon.
In dreams, the Sun does not blind.
– jab
Gonzo linguistic impressionism . . .
Saturday, July 19, 2025. Its the Satyr's day . . . Ditto, yesterday's forecasts.
Left-over Jetsam . . .
. . . The Great Fire of Rome began 1,950 years ago yesterday in 64 A.D. in the late evening hours of July 18. Nero may or may not have played a fiddle.
. . . Yesterday was Nelson Mandela Day. born in Mvezo, South Africa (1918
. . . The gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson born in 1937, Louisville, Kentucky.
Today . . .
On this day in 1848, the women's suffrage movement in the United States was launched with the opening of the Seneca Falls Convention.
On this day, 71 years ago, The Fellowship of the Ring, was published. It was the first part of J.R.R. Tolkein's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.
[T]he science of alien language...might learn to open itself to every conceivable degree of otherness, even the possibility of beings that share nothing with us but the cosmos. – Eli K.P. William, “The Grammar of a God-Ocean,” in Aēon, 7/19/2025
And, today is the birth date of Edgar Degas, The innovative French impressionist was born in 1834 Paris.
Another on the “must” list . . .
Thursday, July 17, 2025. It's Thor's day . . . Moderate Southerlies are forecasted to bring a somewhat cooler day to TulseyTown . Some clouds, and a 40% chance for rain this afternoon. Indices in the upper 90's.
Awakening is not a process of building ourselves up but a process of letting go. It’s a process of relaxing in the middle—the paradoxical, ambiguous middle, full of potential, full of new ways of thinking and seeing—with absolutely no money-back guarantee of what will happen next. – Pema Chödrön
It's the birthdate of Erle Stanley Gardner, born in 1889 Malden, Massachusetts. The the detective novelist gave us “Perry Mason.”
And, Disneyland turns 70 years old today. It opened in 1955 Anaheim, California.
There comes a time when humanity is called to shift to a new level of consciousness, to reach a higher moral ground. A time when we have to shed our fear and give hope to each other. – Wangari Maathai
Put this at the top of your “must” list.
From “Eating For Tomorrow” a film posted by Food Revoltion: See links below.
Estimates are that by 2050 only 10% of the world's forests will remain. The single greatest cause of deforestation is animal agriculture. – NASA. Livestock farming is the leading cause of global ocean dead zones. – U.S. EPA. What we do to the ocean we do to ourselves. – Dr. Sylvia Earle, Chief Scientist, National Oceonic and Atmospheric Administration.
Eating more fish isn't a solution if we destroy the oceans and forests. Every breath we take has been generated in one way or another by the oceans.
Links: I found two that may or may not work. Apologies for any dead ends. May have time limits to access. If these fail, do your own research. It's worth the time. Link #1 Link #2