I rose early this morning. It was warm, for here, and still, as I watered by hand outside. Then, the wind came up, shaking the trees with a shift, and the fog came pouring over the ridge.
I’ve been with the disaster in Nepal and Tibet as we see more examples of climate change, change that isn’t bound by the boundaries of countries. Many who died were on a spiritual pilgrimage. They were circlingMount Kailash, a 33 mile trek.
Again today I’m with the words of Fritz Perls:We don’thavean organism. Wearethe organism.
And this organism extends beyond what we perceive as “ourselves”. We are all affected by what happens on this planet and around it.
I read about the immediate response to the fire near me. Responding resources included two fire crews, four Type 3 wildland fire engines, two water tenders, three helicopters, including MCFD & PG&E Helicopter 6PG, one air attack and two air tankers. Totaling about 70 first responders.
I watched the helicopters going back and forth long after the fire was officially out. The response was quick here, and yet, this country is currently led by an administration wearing blinders, going backwards when it comes to climate change. Each day we’re reminded, whether we live where we’re dealing with unprecedented flooding, tides, winds, or breathing in smoke from another country, another state, or nearby. Climate change is real. How do we come together as a planet in response?
I read the tributes to this outstanding human being. I didn’t know that when the pandemic struck in 2020, Dolly donated $1 million to Vanderbilt University Medical Center to fund research on developing the Moderna’s vaccine. She then got her Moderna shot on camera and performed a new version of her hit “Jolene.”
“Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, I’m begging you – please don’t hesitate. Because once you’re dead, then that’s a bit too late.”
Then she rolled up her sleeve and offered one final piece of medical advice:
“Don’t be such a chicken squat. Get out there and get your shot.”
Go to youtube and watch her sing and get her shot. We’ve been looking for someone to shift the tide on this horror show. I’m sorry for her passing, and yet, I thank her for giving us the shot of inspiration we need. She’s giving us our shot of hope and trust in love and care for all!
Thank you, Dolly!
Dolly: If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
I’m struggling with the political atrocities these days.There are so many things one might discuss but I’m going with the essay The Barbie Backlash by Susan Faludi, where she compares Christopher Nolan’s movie “The Odyssey” with Greta Gerwig’s movie “Barbie” both representing the hero’s narrative. She then goes on to discuss how women are treated today.
She writes: Mr. Trump’s return to power resembled a sack of Troy — with women getting the sack.
She goes on and comes to this on the treatment of women in the military in his administration:
Who are these veteran female officers relieved of their commands by the “central casting” (Trump’s words) matinee idol with the gelled hair and pocket hankie, the face that launched a thousand missiles?
Well, for starters, just in the Navy —
Admiral Franchetti: rose from surface warfare officer to command the Sixth Fleet; first woman to lead the Navy and the first permanent female member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; 40 years of service. Fired from her post, no explanation. Replaced by a man.
Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield: commanded the Helicopter Sea Combat units; first female president of the Naval War College and the only woman on NATO’s Military Committee; 37 years of service. Fired from her post, no explanation. Replaced (in an acting capacity) by a man.
Vice Adm. Yvette M. Davids: veteran of Desert Shield, Desert Storm and the Iraq war; commanded a carrier strike group; first woman and first Hispanic officer to head the U.S. Naval Academy; 36 years of service. Relieved of her post, no explanation. Replaced by a man.
Adm. Linda Fagan, Coast Guard; Vice Adm. Nancy Lacore, Navy; Col. Julie Sposito-Salceies, Air Force; Lt. Gen. Telita Crosland, Army; and on and on. These women didn’t claim heroic status; they embodied what the military has traditionally valued: service, teamwork, courage, dedication. But in terms of their mythic warrior life journeys, they are among our Odysseuses. And their elevation has enraged some Odyssean wannabes eager to enshrine what Mr. Hegseth calls “the highest male standard.”
In his book “The War on Warriors,” Mr. Hegseth maintained that so-called D.E.I. hires have made the military weak and “effeminate.” The “standard,” though, has nothing to do with military effectiveness. Were Admirals Franchetti and Chatfield, General Crosland and company fired for not being good enough? Or for being too good, with skills and experience that threatened the restoration of a masculinist culture? Small wonder the photos of Mr. Trump’s cabinet meetings — especially after the departures of Pam Bondi, Kristi Noem, Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Tulsi Gabbard — have begun to resemble the shipboard scenes in “The Odyssey”: men seated around the edge of a long wooden ellipse, with a board table standing in for a galley deck. Pull, boys, pull!
Mr. Trump’s return to power resembled a sack of Troy — with women getting the sack.
We were at the beach yesterday with my son and grandson building in the sand. The high tide will wash their creations away. May the same happen to all that Trump and his cronies have touched.
Sand FishBuilding a sand castle that even protected by a moat, the incoming tide will wash away!
I’m struggling with the political news these days. The bombardment of corruption and lies stuns. How then do we revive, bring in the tide?
I find support in Rebecca Elson’s poem from her book,A Responsibility to Awe. She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the age of 29. She continued her writing and scientific work until she died of the disease at the age of 39. I offer the first two stanzas, and then can’t stop and give the whole poem.
ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH by Rebecca Elson
Sometimes as an antidote To fear of death, I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back, I suck them from the quenching dark Til they are all, all inside me, Pepper hot and sharp.
No outer space, just space, The light of all the not yet stars Drifting like a bright mist, And all of us, and everything Already there But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough To lie down here on earth Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields Of our discarded skulls, Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis, Thinking: whatever left these husks Flew off on bright wings.
Low tide as the water returnsReflecting in low tideThe intricacy of a flower
Here’s the winning poem in Tricycle Magazine’s Best of Season haiku for Fall 2026.
this world we live in
ten thousand scarecrows on guard
and only one bird
You can find your own interpretation but I consider that we are the one bird that can defeat those who try to scare us with what is false. As birds we fly up, and seeing the whole field, we feast on the truth.
And here are two birds – Great Blue Heron and Great White EgretWe do it for all. Here’s a squirrel at the base of the redwood tree in our yard.
Hannah Arrendt in an interview recorded in 1973 and published after her death:
“If everyone always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but that no one believes anything at all anymore – and rightly so, because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, to be “re-lied,” so to speak. So a lying government which pursues different goals at different times has to constantly rewrite its own history. That means that the people are deprived not only of their capacity to act, but also of their capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
It’s time to hold the GOP accountable for their lies and deceit. Be like a bird. Take a bath!
In my meditation today, I found myself visualizing H.A.L. 9000 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as he was being shut down for malfunctioning. H.A.L. stands forHeuristically Programmed Algorithmic Computer.According to AI, heuristically means that the computer would “solve problems, learn, or discover things through practical experience, trial and error, or mental shortcuts rather than strict rules or exhaustive calculations”. It was programmed to be like “us”.
Oddly, I found myself reflecting back to A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3. Then I settled into earth, water, fire, and air, and felt my blood and bones, the movement and passage of air. Can a computer do that? Perhaps.
Herman Hesse wrote:While wandering down the path of wonder, I briefly escape the world of separation and enter the world of unity.
The morning when I read thatthe president wants the new fleet of aircraft carriers to more resemble those from World War II even though the change could cost billions, I thought of how senility can settle in so that one doesn’t know what time period they’re living in.They’re caught in a world of separation, their own mental breakdown.
I’m hoping to keep flossing my brain cells so my synapses can flow and connect to the time in which I live which changes every moment, and yet, within impermanence is simplicity as we adapt, connect and perceive a world of unity.
Our president needs to be shut down and removed. He is malfunctioning. It’s way past time.
Garrison Keillor just sent $100.00 to a guy named Trygve Hammer running as a Democrat for Congress in North Dakota. Why?
Keillor’s words:9/10ths of the state is owned by something called Alignment Rectangular Regulatory Trust, the stock of which is 95% held by Chinese investors, will the state still have two U.S. Senators and a seat in Congress? Are citizens allowed to serve in public office if employed by a foreign country? Or does this come under the heading of “None of your business”?
One could ask the same about South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming.
I skip a bit and continue with this:
The polling I’ve seen from North Dakota tells me that seven out of eight wouldn’t vote for a Democrat if she were appareled in golden light and could levitate. Dakotans think of Democrats as people who saw The Nutcracker too many times as children and who get their political views from Norman Rockwell paintings. People who can’t drive a car without the government GPS telling them when to turn and which way.
He ends with this:There hasn’t been a Democratic Senator from North Dakota since I was in high school. If there’s another one, I want to go to the victory party. I won’t drink but I’ll stand near people who do.
If you agree, you might send money to Trygve Hammer.
Looking down on my grandson’s baseball camp where they teach ethics and affirmations through baseball.
I know that those who read this blog are politically astute, but in case you missed Nicholas Kristoff today, I’ve copied the link to gift it. There’s many reasons to despair about our country’s decline, but I think Nicholas Kristof is graphically and tragically clear in what’s happening. Both political parties have responsibility though one clearly dominates the abuse. I’m happy to pay taxes to support those who need help, but that’s not what’s happening. It has to stop and reverse before we have a revolution like the French and I doubt any of us will benefit from that.
I’m sorry to keep quoting from Heather Cox Richardson but her words again today disturb as she reveals more of this administration’s corruption. I offer the beginning and last paragraph of what she says today.
It turns out Trump has not abandoned his plan to paint the massive grey granite Eisenhower Executive Office Building white. As Philip Kennicott reported in theWashington Postyesterday, more than two dozen experts have sued to stop the plan, saying paint could irreversibly damage the stone and would be a “taxpayers’ nightmare” as the building would have to be repaired and repainted regularly.
But on Monday, deputy assistant to the president Heather Martin filed a declaration saying the White House Office of Administration was beginning preparations for the paint job. As Kennicott points out, the administration is using the case to give the president the ability to “erase the nation’s physical culture, its man-made, natural and cultural wonders.”
The administration is arguing that the General Services Administration (GSA), the agency that normally handles maintenance of federal buildings, has ceded control of the building to the White House Office of Administration. The GSA follows the requirements of the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, laws that require extensive reviews and input from experts and the public.
Those laws do not apply to the White House Office of Administration. Greg Werkheiser of Cultural Heritage Partners, one of the organizations that sued to stop Trump from painting the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, told Kennicott: “The precedent is potentially devastating. Anytime the president takes a personal interest in a project, he can simply pluck it out of an agency that is subject to review and put it in his own shop.” That change would not be limited to buildings, Kennicott explains. It could be used, for example, to rush a pipeline through pristine wilderness.
A White House official told Kennicott that the White House conducts necessary reviews and that taking over for the GSA allows the White House “to more efficiently and economically manage the project.”
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would like a word.
She goes on and ends with this:What is at stake is more than just buildings. It is the whitewashing and bulldozing of our history and culture, created over centuries by the many people who have built the United States, in service to the small vision of Trump and his enablers.
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