Thomas Merton's letter to a young activist: 'Do not depend on the hope of results... concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.' jimandnancyforest.com/2014/10/mert...

New albums of string quartets and more featuring Anamorphosis (#3), Refugium (#9), and the Tango (#7): Chamber Music 2 (2001-2023) open.spotify.com/playlist/49h... Chamber Music (1996-2011) open.spotify.com/album/3ao33S...

gazing out our window at the sparkling sky-reflected still bay water and a pile of once-hotel rubble after yesterday's implosive fireworks.

/r/buddhism: 🙃 "CR Lama told me that the best practitioners of dharma are somewhat simple and stupid. Their minds are not busy all the time. They don't have a sense of mastery, or feel that they have to be in charge, and so they just do the practice. from D.T. Suziki's 'Buddha of Infinite Light':

life may travel between planets on celestial debris. microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life.😎

Some of the new Hubble observations show the Cat’s Eye Nebula, also known as NGC 6543, in the finest detail ever seen. The nebula lies some 4,400 light-years away from Earth.

A recording of my 4th SQ ('98) that brings out the phase-shifting folky dissonances and fiddle patterns. 🤠

“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

I asked James Drew once why he wrote music. He sat there for a few minutes sipping a beer, as he always did at our lessons, and then said, "Jeff, there is an enormous, invisible order to this world. Music serves to glorify that order and is the greatest gift any human can give back to the world." 🫠

New doc about the newly renovated Chelsea Hotel, where Elsie's abstract expressionist dad, Alfred Russell, lived from the 70's until he died in 2007.

No-greed surpasses charity by P'ang Yun (Layman P'ang) No-greed surpasses charity. No-delusion surpasses concentration. No-ill will surpasses morality. No-self-centered thinking surpasses cultivating connections. ---- ---- We all ride together in the boat of wisdom.

this is not political... politics requires voting and accurate counting as a common sense science! 🫣

if you are anywhere near remotely involved in ending this deportation crisis, you need to read this gracious and poetic thank you note:

Gorgeous new image of the Egg Nebula, with the earlier Hubble image, a very young preplanetary nebula, a structure of gas and dust created as a Sun-like star approaches the end of its life. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_Neb...

new piano music, written in 2022 available: piano preludes, #24, 25: Piano Prelude No.24 imslp.org/wiki/Piano_P... Piano Prelude No.25 imslp.org/wiki/Piano_P... New recording: Piano Prelude No.25 soundcloud.com/jeff_harring...

Thomas Merton's letter to a young activist: 'Do not depend on the hope of results... concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself.' jimandnancyforest.com/2014/10/mert...

Leave it to a Jesuit to praise dish-washing as revelation, Father James Martin on how his real world working life inspired him:

A line of baby stars follow a shock wave, inter-galactic consequences of the first confirmed rogue supermassive black hole, probably ejected during a galactic merger. youtu.be/2imlUyTyJD4

as these frightening times progress, staying positive at ALL tmes and remembering always that there is absolutely no benefit from harming yourself, or others, is the ONLY way. 🙏🙏

revising my ittle song for sop. and sq, El aire se serena, that i wrote for a 1986 tulane req. but was never ultimately premiered. a setting of a 16th c. spanish religious poem celebrating a musician. A Francisco Salinas by Fray Luis de León Original text: www.poesi.as/fll03.htm

for those that understand, it's enough...

“The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community. The aftermath of nonviolence is redemption." -- Martin Luther King

toad sits in water surrounded by hopeful vocalizations... 😎

RIP Bela Tarr, w/an extraordinary clarification: “My opinion is that we were doing comedies. You can laugh a lot. I only ask this, how did you feel when you came out of the movie theatre after watching my film? Did you feel stronger or weaker? That’s the main question. I want you to be stronger."

Been a busy few days of birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries: We celebrated 44 years of marriage yesterday! Rome restaurant menu gazing w/Elsie in 2005?

Big news for anyone w/MS: 'Scientists have detected two new biological strands of MS using AI, a simple blood test and MRI scans. Experts said the “exciting” breakthrough could revolutionise treatment of the disease worldwide.'

A video of a protester sitting in the street and facing down police on motorbikes during demonstrations that erupted in Tehran in recent days has gone viral on social media, with some observers calling it Iran's "Tiananmen moment". france24 report: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCyq...

biggest crowds yet with a new sense of hopeful urgency as the buddhist walk for peace arrives in decatur, georgia. they hope to reach the white house 2/13. local news report: www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvja...

Why are private detecives taught to never stare when following someone? Under surveillance, how do we build a relationship w/the suspected camera locations? youtu.be/00fj-K2wsos?...

A pair of colliding spiral galaxies. Here, both spirals are shown face on, with the smaller of the two galaxies, IC 2163, at the upper left of the larger galaxy, NGC 2207, which dominates the center and lower right of the image.

Hey Ronnie, come on in... 😆

"How, then, can we not think of the tents in Gaza, exposed for weeks to rain, wind and cold?" he asked.

Nazaré - Lucas Chumbo surfs the mountain while his jetski partner marvels: youtu.be/-R1bDoKWjsM?...

I worked in the classical basement on 46th St. in '82. Morton Feldman and Bunita Marcus came in looking for the Ruth Crawford Seeger quartet. I was glad to be of assistance. 😉

The #1 movie from when you were 10 is how your 2026 is going to go... 🫣

Weird way to find your Brass Quintet, used as an example of transposing instruments in a Brazilian harmony textbook:😎

Citizen who presented legal proof transferred to LA deportation camp: Born in 2003 in Prince George’s County, MD. “It was very random,” Slatton said. “I don’t see any reason why they would have been targeting her, except she was speaking Spanish. Slatton was blunt: “She does not present as White.”

Frogs are our friends! 'Bacterium from the intestines of Japanese tree frogs has "exhibited remarkably potent" tumor-killing abilities when administered intravenously, outperforming current standard therapies and paving the way for an entirely new approach to treating cancer.'

French minimalism of a sort, impressive and wondrously orchestrated by Christophe Bertrand (1981-2010):

Big news about new buildings at Plum Village in France:

2 excellent vids about recent revelations on how we view animal intelligence. From teaching lizards how to open doors w/instructive videos to mourning fish and deceptive spiders, it seems that personal identification is a part of agency, so is sentience and 'person-hood' inherent in all animals?

Fighting against this racist immigration deportation crisis isn't even political... it's simply human, religious, normal. Great interview from our new mayor about why the Hispanic vote shifted.

ICE holding Chinese man who documented Uyghur camps Guan Heng's video of Chinese detention facilities from 2020. He escaped to the US only to be detained by ICE.

Red sprites seen from the ISS: Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) are colorful, high-altitude flashes of light that occur above thunderstorms, often mistaken for lightning but happening higher in the atmosphere. These events include various types like red "sprites," blue "jets".

Buddhist nun Kelsang Virya attends the Mutual Aid Monday she co-founded, on Nov. 17, 2025, near City Hall in Denver. youtu.be/pTz_IUrl18g

charming, heavy and funny:

The winning image at the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards by British photographer Mark Meth-Cohn: His photo, which is named 'High Five', features a shot of a "young gorilla cavorting through a forest clearing."