The exciting age we live in . . .
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
It's Odin's day . . . Strong Southerlies are forecasted to bring another hot, humid day to Green Country. TulseyTown is likely to see an afternoon heat index in the low 100's.
Today is the birthdate of Princess Diana. The consort (1981–96) of Prince Charles and mother of Princes William and Harry was born in 1961 at Park House, Sandringham, England. Her 1997 death caused a massive outpouring of grief around the world.
Twyla Tharp is 85 today. The dancer, director, choreographer was known for her innovative and often humorous was was born in 1941, Portland, Indiana; Pulitzer Prize novelist Jean Stafford was born on this day in 1915 Covina, California; and it's also the birthdate of French novelist George Sand in 1804 Paris.
What Musk's New Net Worth Asks Of Us. – Soren, “The Trillionaire Stress Test,” Wisdom 2.0. 6.29.26
The new energy taking over the Democratic Party isn't Democratic Socialism. It's something far more exciting. – Robert Reich, The Next America.
The Age We Live In
. . .
I have stood nearly fifty years in this body,
long enough
to grow unashamed of want without trying
to make an art of it. Long enough to know
what I have each night
– Virginia Smith, “The Age We Live In,” Rattle, Issue #40, Summer, 2013.
In the past two months we have visited remembrances on Mother's and Father's day. For many of us, these anchors of our lives and personalities have left us with varying patterns of grief involving the experienced loss of wives, husbands, children, siblings and other family members and significant others, as well as the events of our world. We're a large group and growing for many. Grief is another word for loss, addressed by Mirabai Starr in a recent half-hour video post that examined the common “thresholds of grief.”
No one believes it's happening . . .
Tuesday, June 30, 2026. 8:30 a.m. CST. It's Tiw's day . . . another hot one in Green Country. Strong Southerlies, clear sunny skies and heat index temps in the low 100's are in the TulseyTown forecasts for the afternoon hours.
As the nation prepares to mark the 250th anniversary of our independence from a king, the Supreme Court and our current president are doing everything possible to resurrect a king in America. – Robert Reich, The End of Independent Agencies, substack, 6.29.26
Jus' sayin'
The time when you put normal life on hold as much as possible and focus your attention on saving the Republic? It’s now. Right now. Do not wait for something to be set on fire — America is already burning. Estimates made last year said we had fewer than 400 days. Today it's more more like 100 – Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies emeritus at the University of Oxford and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. September 2025.
This past Friday, June 26, James Talarico delivered his official acceptance speech for the Democratic nomination for U.S. senator from Texas at the Texas Democratic Convention held in Corpus Christi. It was one that could ring across the country. – Heather Cox Richardson, in Letters From An American./june-28-2026
Sunday night at the Kennedy Center, Bill Maher was awarded this year’s Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Today in 1936 Margaret Mitchell's Civil War novel Gone with the Wind, was published. A Pulitzer Prize winner, more than 30 million copies of the novel have been printed worldwide. The 1939 film adaptation won ten Academy Awards.
Laureate awarded actor and singer Lena Horne was born on this day in 1917, Brooklyn, New York.
It's the birthday today of Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz. The Nobel Prize laureate was born in 1911 Szetejnie, Lithuania.
A Song on the End of the World
On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.
. . .
No one believes it is happening now.
Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
There will be no other end of the world,
There will be no other end of the world.
Warsaw, 1944
– Czeslaw Milosz, “A Song on the End of the World,” from The Collected Poems 1931-1987, Harper Collins. 1988.
Outsiders into insiders . . .
Monday, June 29, 2026. 8:30 a.m. It's the Moon's day . . . Green Country shares the heat wave moving across the U.S. Forecasts indicate heat index of 103º along with strong, gusting Southerlies mid afternoon today.
We are all instruments of Creation. No choice. Our only choice is between love or fear. Our lives and the world are the consequence. This is why Buddha's first noble truth is that Life contains suffering.
Mercury goes retrograde today with effects extending to July 23, 2026, and invites us to slow down and pay closer attention to the signals moving through our lives. What happens during this Mercury retrograde isn’t a blanket disaster. Often blamed for missed messages, tech issues, and crossed wires, the present cycle is less about chaos and more about awareness.
The Week Ahead. – Joyce Vance, in Civil Discourse.
A short answer to Trump's projected fears of immigrants: The American century will not be extended by making the country smaller. No serious nation can win the twenty-first century by telling much of the world’s ambition to go elsewhere.
America’s superpower has been the ability to turn outsiders into insiders...Trump would have us abandon the concept of a regulated open border … The better policy is simple enough to state: open legal migration for peaceful people willing to register, work, study, or build; immediate work authorization; rapid residence; strong labor-law enforcement; serious penalties for trafficking and exploitation; portable benefits; language and civics investments; local settlement support; and citizenship for those who make their lives here. The border becomes a civic threshold, not a prison wall. The immigration officer becomes a registrar of new Americans, not a ration clerk for human possibility.
A sovereign nation may close itself. It may also open itself. It may decide that its greatness lies not in guarding scarcity but in manufacturing abundance. It may decide that the future belongs to the country that can welcome, absorb, educate, employ, naturalize, and inspire more people than any rival civilization. It may decide that population is not a burden but a platform as the U.S. has for most of its history...Open borders is treated as a fantasy because our imagination has been disciplined by restriction. But the actual fantasy is Trump's. He and his minions believe that a rich, aging country can wall itself into renewal. The fantasy is that exclusion produces cohesion. The fantasy is that talent will wait politely while America debates whether it is still brave enough to be America. – Raymon Pearcey, The Golden Door: A Strategy. Shared email, 6.27.26.
It was on this day in 1974, while on tour with the Kirov (now ) Ballet in Toronto, Mikhail Baryshnikov defected from the Soviet Union, citing artistic reasons, and he later settled in the United States.
Today is the birthday of the author of The Little Prince, French aviator and writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. He was born in Lyons in 1900.
Frank Loesser was born on this date. The composer, librettist, and lyricist, was born in 1910, New York City. He received the 1962 Pulitzer Prize and achieved major success writing for Broadway musicals.
The composer conductor, arranger Leroy Anderson was born today in 1908, Cambridge, Mass.
And, Anne-Sophie Mutter is 62 years old today. The German violinist and superstar in the world of classical music was born in 1963, Rheinfelden, West Germany.
The “unplayable” violin concerto ...