Books! The color blue! Ghosts and Goblins! And the month of October! I approve this message (and repost it every year)....

From Saddam Hussein’s draining of southern Iraq’s marshes to Russia’s attacks on a Ukrainian dam and nuclear power plant, calls are increasing to recognize mass environmental harms as international crimes. @leilasadat1.bsky.social outlines a role for the proposed #CrimesAgainstHumanity treaty:

If only for the signage, the Green Man pub in Westminster would be my local...

So well observed....

Jim Parkinson was everybody's type.

On behalf of every pet I've had the honor of caring for, I second Elaine's opinion.

The new documentary, "Sally", is brilliant in every way. Please consider watching it. films.nationalgeographic.com/sally

"Summer, 1917" is my favorite painting of Cornish artist, Harold Harvey (1874-1941). Seeing it brings to mind the Henry James quote: "“Summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."

@actuallyelaine.bsky.social Naturally, Elaine, I thought of you when I saw this....

People are NOT understanding what empty cargo ships from China means. It means no work for dock workers. No work for truck drivers, no work for retailers, fewer dollars circulating. The cascade effect is just mind boggling.

Windy March!

I need to find a massage therapist who is willing to risk killing me

Sadly forgotten now, Jean Hersey wrote many fine books on gardening. Her observations on the changing seasons have a poetic truth about them. Here she comments on March & its contrary motion:

Perhaps Spring can distract me from the winter of our politics.

Unexpected good news - Mexico City bans killing or wounding bulls in the ring. www.ctvnews.ca/world/articl...

Artist Tasha Tudor's visual calendar, "A Time To Keep", is corgi-filled and unabashedly innocent. Still, it's nice for the modern mind to imagine a March day that never was but should have been.

I find this very moving: a 10-year-old Ukrainian boy who moved to the West of Ireland 2 years ago as a refugee, speaking in Irish of his love of playing Irish music

“You cannot be great without the greatness of others.” - Philadelphia Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni after winning Super Bowl VIX.

Oslea Ridge at blue hour December 2024

Wild Horses • Camargue (2024)

Not far from where we all live is a magical entrance to a land of enchantment: our public library. In Cerritos, California this is literal truth...

“I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at that center within you and I am at that place within me, we shall be one.” ~ Crazy Horse, Tasunké Witko-(1841-1877)

Thinking about the loss of visionary director David Lynch I was reminded of a poem we read in college. The poet celebrated differences, peculiarities, the crazy quilt of the natural landscape. Wherever he found "dappled things" he saw evidence of the divine...

C.S. Lewis often speaks to my condition...

The "in-between" days after Christmas and before New Years cast a strange magic over me. Until I hear the firecrackers of New Year's Eve I'm never quite sure what day it is. Like in the "snow ball" pictured below, the dancers, the music, time itself is frozen during these spellbound days.

Odd that in this season of peace & goodwill my stack of Christmas murder mysteries keeps getting higher. This sub genre with its COZY, WINTRY COVERS, the country house crime scenes festooned with garlands--I'm addicted to it. The shelf below is not mine but I own every book pictured & then some!

I haven't re-read many books but "The Secret Garden" and "Lost Horizon" top that very short list. And they share a premise: their lead characters both stumble upon secret places; a hidden valley, a forgotten garden. Adventure & enchantment fill their mysterious pages...

Among novelists from the past I wished I'd known, Sherwood Anderson (1876-1941) comes to mind.

My first post: A message I have yet to learn. (Illus. by N.C. Wyeth from "The Yearling")