Renewal! – Cathy's Blog!

We’re in West Marin, in Marshall, on a house literally on Tomales Bay. I am bathed in the sound of lapping and waved in beauty as I sit on one continental plate and view another across the water.

What a contrast to reading Robert Hubbell today. Here’s an excerpt:

It is about whether Congress will retain its authority under Article I of the Constitution to lay taxes and appropriate funds through legislation. As of October 1, 2025, that remains an open question.

On Wednesday, Trump and his sidekicks announced billions of dollars in “cancellations” of funds lawfully appropriated by Congress. Trump has no authority to cancel those appropriations, but the GOP-controlled Congress is apparently willing to cede its control over the power of the purse—one of its chief constitutional duties.

But it gets worse. Not only does Trump claim the authority to cancel congressional appropriations, he also claims the authority to raise revenue through illegal tariffs.

He goes on and comes to this: If Democrats needed any further evidence that compromise with Trump is foolish, the president began canceling grants and projects in states that did not vote for him in 2024.

Withholding funds appropriated by Congress is unlawful in the first instance. But doing so to exact political revenge is among the most corrupt presidential actions in the history of our republic. The withheld funds do not belong to Donald Trump and should not be used for political purposes. Those funds belong to the United States of America, to be spent as directed by Congress.

In reading The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, I learned that “When Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945, it is said, the first living thing to emerge from the blasted landscape was a matsutake mushroom.”

I’ve been at Green Gulch Zen Center and farm for four days. I parked at Muir Beach and after crossing a wooden bridge, I walked into a land of gardens, bunnies, quail, deer, and flights and songs of birds. I can’t imagine one country dropping a bomb on another but I can imagine the mycelium web of mushrooms surviving the damage. I offer photos of invitation.