Love this❣️ I’ve been struggling for a bit with the chaos outside interfering with my ability to listen to what the “spongy” is trying to say. TGIF 😎

RIP Meixcan poet Pita Amor, died this day 2000. "¡Oh, mi alma, qué sorpresa! / ¡Al verme al espejo / me encuentro, frente a frente, / con mi propia desnudez!" (Oh, my soul, what a surprise! / Seeing myself in the mirror / I find myself, face to face, / with my own nakedness!).

happy bday Irish writer Roddy Doyle, b.1958. “Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…”

happy bday Scottish philosopher David Hume, b.1711. “It is an absurdity to believe that the Deity has human passions, and one of the lowest of human passions, a restless appetite for applause”. “Liberty of any kind is never lost all at once.”

happy bday Bengali polymath/writer Rabindranath Tagore, b.1861. "Not hammer-strokes, but dance of the water, sings the pebbles into perfection". "Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf". You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”

Happy birthday Martha Nussbaum.

Big win for democracy, decency, and a better world in special election in Michigan yesterday in State Senate district 35. A district split evenly between Harris and Trump in 2024, went 20 points for Dems. Brava!

happy bday writer/philosopher Martha Nussbaum, b.1947, NYC. “We become merciful, she wrote, when we behave as the “concerned reader of a novel,” understanding each person’s life as a “complex narrative of human effort in a world full of obstacles.”

happy bday German poet Christian Morgenstern, b.1871. “Home is not where you live but where they understand you.” "A weasel sat on a pebble in the midst of a brook's ripple. Do you know why? The moon calf divulged it to me surreptitiously: The art- ful animal did it for rhyme's sake."

Excellent! So well said Matthew. Happy Cinco de Mayo. Jim from Maine. Here’s our first violet for you! 👋😊

RIP German poet Sarah Kirsch, died today 2013 "Exuberantly the green changes From lighter to darker loveliness Strongly the sun now extracts The light from the trees Before it slinks off, the flowers Village cocks in the morning, welcome The evening w/ velvet colours In the floods of ripe fields...

As it is our strength and the true path to peace and understanding one another. Feliz Cinco de Mayo, Mi Amigo. 😊

happy bday Danish philosopher/writer Søren Kierkegaard, b.1813. “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

Happy Cinco de Mayo. Let us each welcome the cultures and celebrations of all, and understand it is our diversity which makes us human and gives us hope and a path forward.

Nice win for Stewart Cink too.

nearly every weekend I watch a bit of golf. this weekend i intentionally didn't turn on the PGA tournament held at Trump golf resort. no way was i going to give that any time. was happy to watch Korda dominate at LPGA tournament.

#CarlSagan “The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.”

Happy birthday Horace Mann.

Today in 1961 the first Freedom Ride left Washington, D.C to head to the South. They were "inspired by the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation".

happy bday educator Horace Mann, b.1796, Franklin, MA. “Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.” “Ignorance breeds monsters to fill up the vacancies of the soul that are unoccupied by the verities of knowledge.” “It is well to think well: it is divine to act well.”

James Talarico: We are living in an era of corruption. I don’t just mean illegal activity. I mean corruption in the deeper sense — the rotting of something from the inside. This is, at its root, a spiritual crisis. And it will require a spiritual solution.

there are no moderate Republicans in the US Congress. Every one of them are sycophants for the corrupt and cruel President. Time to vote against every single one of them.

Happy birthday May Sarton.

happy bday Argentine poet Juan Gelman, b.1930. "Like a hard taskmaster, it makes me work day and night, in pain, in love, out in the rain, in dark times, when tenderness or the soul opens its arms, when illness weighs down my hands. The grief of others, tears, handkerchiefs raised in greeting,...

Happy birthday Pete Seeger.

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” Explains a lot. Good morning and happy Sunday 😊 (door and windows open waiting to hear the birds wake up)

happy bday folk artist Pete Seeger, b.1919, NYC. “This banjo surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pZa...

happy bday Belgium-born American writer May Sarton, b.1912 “We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.” “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” “Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.”

Wow. I'm not sure why those words hit me this morning, but it did, and I think I had an epiphany. "Lonliness is not a longing for company, its a longing for *KIND*."

“... but truth alone should be the polar star by which she should shape her movements,” “Judith Sargent Murray Great morning message👆🏼👇🏼

Share the light 💡

RIP feminist/writer Marilyn French, died this day 2009 “She drowned in words that could not teach her how to swim.” “Loneliness is not a longing for company, it is a longing for kind. And kind means people who can see you who you are, and that means they have enough intelligence and sensitivity...

happy bday German writer/mystic Novalis, b.1772. “To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.”

happy bday writer/professor Sterling Allen Brown, b.1901, Washington, DC. "They dragged you from homeland, They chained you in coffles, They huddled you spoon-fashion in filthy hatches. They sold you to give a few gentlemen ease."

happy bday writer Judith Sargent Murray, b.1751, "her landmark essay "On the Equality of the Sexes" paved the way for new thoughts and ideas proposed by other feminist writers of the century." "Of unbending integrity Justice should feel, hear and see;...

on this day in 1958, "United States celebrates its first "Law Day," one day after President Eisenhower announces the observance to honor the role of law in the creation of the U.S." And the theme this year is "The Rule of Law and the American Dream."

it never turns out well when an incumbent political party goes out of its way to deny the economic reality of the American people. when you try to convince voters the economy is robust and inflation is under control when they are experiencing opposite, is never a good strategy.

"Virtue is incompatible with absolute power". Amazing that we haven’t learned this lesson thousands of years later 🫤

I wonder who came up with this load of crap? Delusional!

RIP Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known as Lucan, died this day AD 65. “to plunge so deep takes more than any sword: such gaping wounds belong to civic hands.” "Virtue is incompatible with absolute power". "That which you weep for is what you really loved".

Trump is such a corrupt moron. where Trump got this origin is anyone's guess. it comes from the hospitality industry.

happy bday writer Annie Dillard, b.1945, Pittsburgh. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” “You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.” "You can't test courage cautiously."

happy bday English artist David Cox, b.1783.

I think Democratic candidates ought to make liberal use of this photo in midterm campaigns. Blatant let-them-eat-cake moments are political gifts.

RIP Italian mystic and saint Catherine of Siena, died this day 1380. "Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear." "Love transforms one into what one loves." "Out of darkness is born the light."

Amen.