The intensity of light and color in Karl's corner caught my eye. I'm tickled that sometimes we used artworks bought long ago as paint chips. The acid green? Some new leaves in the garden out the window. 🌱📷

"If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for a moment." — Georgia O'Keeffe 🌱📷

Monochrome Monday. 🌱📷

My porch screen is terrific for filtered light, sweet breezes and privacy, but for mosquito control, not so hot. 🌱📷

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize." — Voltaire 🌱📷

Spay and neuter, horticultural edition: Seed-bearing branches, technically called inflorescences, lopped from my Christmas palms. You can't begin to imagine the mess they drop if they're allowed to mature. 🌱📷

"No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby." — H.L. Mencken🌱📷

René Magritte was born this day in 1898. Little did the world know he could see into the future.

This week, I withdrew from a speaking engagement at a public university because they sent me a list of prohibited “words & concepts.” I will not humor this censorship. It does a disservice to the stories I’m discussing & the audience, who deserve unfettered access to information & conversation.

"Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty." — Hannah Arendt 🌱📷

#tbt: So quiet out there, just us, lapping waves, the moon and distant island lights. 📷

"As the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work." — Jonathan Swift 🌱📷

Missed opportunity: Trump's fancy White House dinner for the Saudi crown prince served pistachio-crusted rack of lamb, but there were no tiny golden bone saws among the cutlery. They would have been a perfect finishing touch.

Here's a half-dozen tequila sunrises, decidedly intoxicating without the hangover. 🌱📷

"Things happen" sometimes, like when you walk into an embassy to apply for your marriage license while your bride-to-be waits outside, but then you get bonesawed to pieces for having exercised freedom of speech as an US-based journalist and have to be carried out in a series of suitcases.

"When it comes down to it, that's what life is all about: showing up for the people you love, again and again, until you can't show up anymore.” — Rebecca Walker 🌱📷

Anthers rise to do their duty, bringing fresh pollen to the world. The world sneezes. 📷🌱

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells 📷🌱 If the name of this giant in American journalism is new to you, I strongly recommend "Ida: A Sword Among Lions," by Paula Giddings. Wells's Wikipedia entry might entice you, too.

Monochrome Monday. 🌱

"A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side." — Aristotle 🌱📷

This is a green anole. (File under: Who You Gonna Believe? Me or Your Lyin' Eyes?) They can morph to brown — or this fetching mottle — for camouflage or heat regulation. It usually takes about a minute after they leap from leaf to porch railing to floor, and it's fascinating to watch. 🌱📷

"Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences." – Robert Louis Stevenson 🌱📷

Let's kick-start the weekend. 🌱📷

"The problem isn't to find the answer; it's to face the answer." — Terence McKenna 🌱📷

Ferron Bell painted this shutter slat for our front door 15 years ago when he needed some pocket money. (The other side says "Welcome," with a little portrait of our house garlanded in plumbago)....

"So fill to me the parting glass And drink a health whate’er befall, And gently rise and softly call, Good night and joy be to you all." — Celtic folk song 🌱📷

"I believe in Liberty for all — the space to stretch their arms and their souls, the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine... uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love." — W.E.B. Du Bois 🌱📷

Sorry about the glare, but it's the only way I could get the dew on the spiderweb to show up. I'm happy they're not ice crystals. 🌱📷

"Nothing can be permanently settled or solved. All we can be is alert to the changing winds – to ask who has been forgotten, to bend our own histories toward what is fair and kind, sensible and good. We will keep failing, but final success was never the point." – Naomi Alderman 🌱📷

"You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips." — Oliver Goldsmith 🌱📷

"Lord, give me a sign," she said. And the sign said "Exit through the gift shop."

Monochrome Monday. 🌱📷

K-K-KREEP

"Here in the land of the lackwit, while nitwits to the right of us and dimwits to the left of us volley and thunder, we permit the plunderers and their political boot-lickers to continue pillaging and looting.” — Stephen Hume 🌱📷

Warm thoughts 🌱📷

"A media environment with the capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in wildly negative light without any rebuttal – has accelerated in ways that sharply polarize the electorate and make it difficult to have a common conversation." — Barack Obama 🌱📷

Fantasy/reality: "O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see."

"Geometric logic" about strawberries was one key to Captain Queeg's downfall, but it works beautifully when my palms use it. 🌱📷

"As citizens of this great nation, it is kindness, love and compassion for each other that will bring us together — and keep us together. These are the values Donald and I will bring to the White House." — Melania Trump 🌱📷

Just naked bigotry, they don't even bother trying to hide anymore

Sometimes news photos ring through the ages — the Iwo Jima flag, the Secret Service agent clambering across JFK's car, Bush's reaction on 9-11. This one is likely to tag Trump for generations.

Great Performances: My cousin Nita made a lovely observation the other day about orchid blossoms leaving the stage bit by bit, then making a final "Swan Lake" bow. Here's one of mine as the curtain falls, with a "Bravo!" 🌱📷

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.” ― Hannah Arendt 🌱📷

#tbt: As much as I love my island, I miss autumn where you can still hear the Cherokee spirits whispering their age-old stories. 🌱📷

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men." — Ella Wheeler Wilcox 📷🌱

The Frost Moon, about as incongruous a name as you could give it here. 📷🌱

" 'Heresy' is only another word for freedom of thought." — Graham Greene 🌱📷

In my constant quest to find the positive in things, there's one bright spot in the East Colonnade demo: She can't do an encore of Carnagey Hall.

Take a walk on the mild side — a moment to sit, breathe and have a little break from chaos. 🌱📷

"Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion — always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know God's will and are ready to use force to make others conform, who cannot tell God's will from their own." — Rev. Dr. Barbara Brown Taylor 🌱📷