"Being born gay, Black and female is not a revolutionary act. Being proud to be a gay, Black female is." — Lena Waithe 🌱📷

From 2019, before he joined the countries that make so many of us political piñatas.

"To listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common — this is my symphony." – William Henry Channing 🌱📷

"To listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common — this is my symphony." – William Henry Channing 🌱📷

"Everybody thinks when he gets rich he’ll be a different kind of rich person from the rich people he sees around him; later on he finds out there’s only one kind of rich person, and he’s it." — Thornton Wilder 🌱📷

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." — John F. Kennedy 🌱📷

"Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place." — Kurt Vonnegut 🌱📷

The effort against Trump's ludicrous IRS "settlement" just gained some terrific allies — 35 former federal judges who've filed a friend of the court brief pointing out, in politer language, that it's a crock o'ca-ca. Hauling everybody back into court to do some 'splainin might kill this monster.

"Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered." — José Saramago 🌱📷

"To know that we know what we know — and to know that we do *not* know what we do not know — that is true knowledge." — Nicolæus Copernicus 🌱📷

Breezed through 95% of the surgery! All we need now are a pulse and respiration.

"Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; Take honor from me, and my life is done." — William Shakespeare 🌱📷

"Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action." — Leonard Bernstein 🌱📷

It's magic when two crazy kids in love find their families have things in common. Don Jr.'s bride, Bettina, is the daughter of the late Palm Beach social and business biggie Harry Anderson, who wrote glowing letters of recommendation for his dear friend Jeffrey Epstein. Small world, isn't it?

Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain — and most fools do." — Dale Carnegie 🌱📷

How does your garden glow? 🌱📷

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it and join the dance." — Alan Watts 🌱📷

"As a general truth, communities prosper and flourish, or droop and decline, in just the degree that they practice or neglect to practice the primary duties of justice and humanity." — William Henry Seward 🌱📷

"The idea that we can enjoy the benefits of society while owing nothing in return, not even a minor sacrifice, is literally infantile. Only children owe nothing." — Sebastian Junger 🌱📷

“Hope lies in dreams, in imagination and in the courage of those who dare to make dreams into reality.” — Dr. Jonas E. Salk 🌱📷

Like the Cheshire Cat's smile, this is all that remains of a cottage down a block from me. Propped up by 2-by-4s, the facade satisfies Key West Historic District regulations that preserve parts visible from the street while new construction goes on behind it. Sort of an everything-but-the-face lift.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.... It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power, you almost never get it back." — Carl Sagan 🌱📷

Monochrome Monday. 🌱📷

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” — Nelson Mandela 🌱📷

This really is rich, a scary stew of Rooshuns, Eye-ranians (aren't they busy elsewhere?), narcos and the reliable generic bogeymen, "terror groups." And they've bought 300-plus drones in... three years? Some buildup. And they're tapping our comms! How rude.

Word of the day: pretext — a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs. (See also: Selective leak.)

Besides our great snowbirds, Key West is lucky to have terrific perennial visitors, a couple of whom, from "the DMV," were just here. We've now been friends of 20 years. She brought me cookies; I sent them home with a piece of my heart — a plumeria cutting that I hope gives them years of beauty. 🌱📷

“However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing." — George Orwell 🌱📷

No one should overlook these words that President Xi will long remember: "Chinese restaurants in the United States today outnumber all five fast foods restaurants combined, and that's a pretty big statement."

"This is the great danger America faces: that we will cease to be one nation and become instead a collection of interest groups — city against suburb, region against region, individual against individual, each seeking to satisfy private wants." — Barbara Jordan 🌱📷

"It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought -- that is to be educated." — Edith Hamilton 🌱📷

"In order for me to write poetry that isn't political I must listen to the birds and in order to hear the birds the warplanes must be silent." — Marwan Makhoul 🌱📷

The guy on the left you probably recognize. Guy on the right? Big in Hollywood until 2017, when he left town after multiple women accused him of rape and sexual assault. More recently, he directed the "Melania" flop....

Stop the presses! Tear out the front page! Dust of the 144-point screaming headline type: TRUMP TELLS A TRUTH!

"The greatest evils in the world will not be carried out by men with guns, but by men in suits sitting behind desks." — C. S. Lewis 🌱📷

Raymond Chandler's classic line about his gumshoe hero getting so hopped up that he was "crazy as a couple of waltzing mice" always makes me laugh. Not so funny are Trump's rage posts — 55 in a couple hours last night, sometimes two and three a minute....

“Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free.” — Maxim Gorky 🌱📷

Monochrome Monday. 🌱📷

"You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: Love is eternal.” — E.M. Forster 🌱📷

"In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy." — Ivan Illich 🌱📷

Attention to detail.

"One must not be stingy with the affections; what is spent of the fund is renewed in the spending itself." — Sigmund Freud 🌱📷

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” — Sun Tzu 🌱📷

At the risk of telling too much truth, states rushing to dilute Black votes have a certain... Klancestry.

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” – George Washington 🌱📷

At this event he just said: "Drug traffic coming into our country is way down, and by sea — by sea, by ocean, by water. A lot of people say, 'What do you mean by sea? Is it see, like vision?' No it's sea, S-E-A." A lot of people with cognitive issues, unlike him, will be glad to have that clarified.

“Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.” — Ben Hecht 🌱📷

I didn't watch the Bezos's Met Gala — couldn't, really, without upchucking — after reading this the other day: "Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers." This is light years beyond greed. Something's gotta give.

"We are at a critical point in our country’s history. If you do not understand the complexities and promise of our past, you cannot imagine a better future. We either invest in the humanities, including history and civics, or we forfeit our democracy." — Ken Burns 🌱📷

Monochrome Monday. 🌱📷