More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling. Such a commitment is difficult when lying is deemed more acceptable than telling the truth. (bell hooks, All About Love)

… yes, but we appear to be headed in the opposite direction…

I have this sickening feeling that the hubris of Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg will combine to become the downfall of Democracy.

I don’t care who the dems nominate. But they need to decide and get focused. I will support whatever they decide to do. But please, decide and get on with it.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe. (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man)

… marriage is not a noun; it’s a verb. It isn’t something you get; it’s something you do. It’s the way you love your partner every day. (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)

… walking is a mode of making the world as well as being in it. (Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust)

From this morning’s walk…

Shadow of tree branches and person on storefront window. Window has vertical blinds, which are closed. Chairs and a side table at the bottom of the frame.

Pride colored bead strands in a shop window.

Early morning sun on weeds growing out of a crack between sidewalk and building.

Sky with fair weather clouds and jet trail running from mid lower left to center right.

… i ordered my first maxi dress… i got it on sale too!… can’t wait to try it on…:)

Woman in white linen maxi dress with 3/4 sleeves. Ocean in the background.

… my wife is watching the Republican convention… she’s not a supporter… she just can’t look away… there is nothing i would learn from watching that could make me any more or less determined that 45 not become 47… watching it would just give me agita… off to the local coffee shop…

Judge Canon dismisses classified documents case… it just keeps getting worse and worse…

Also from this morning…

Vegetable detritus on a grass with concrete curb above it and asphalt road surface above that.

Plastic wrapping lying on concrete pavement with crack in concrete running past it from bottom to top of frame.

Cardboard egg carton with space for 30 eggs in the cardboard recycle pile outside a restaurant.

Crumbs from a waffle cone on concrete sidewalk.

Empty green cardboard box with “happiness” written in yellow letters on a red background on the side. The box lies on a concrete sidewalk next to the aluminum saddle of an entry door.

From this morning’s walk…

Ends of two red picnic table seat boards. The boards run from the right edge of the frame about 2/3 of the way across the frame. The upper board is warped upward about an inch.

Stainless steel refrigerated cabinet unit standing next to a garbage can.

White recliner chair surrounded by weeds.

Metal drainage grate with street marking stripes painted onto it, one extending a street crossing line and the other the extension of a line no longer in the scene.

Abstract composition of concrete sidewalk, asphalt paving and manhole cover.

From a trip to city yesterday…

Needle skyscraper building with curved edge of building in the foreground on the left. The curve of the foreground building matches the curve of the needle shaped building.

Relieved that the shooter was a registered Republican and at most made a minor donation to a Democrat cause. Though I would have preferred no shooter at all.

… i am… just… so… sad… nobody needed this… can’t escape the feeling we are heading for a world of hurt…

Trump Bloodied in Possible Assassination Attempt at Butler, Pennsylvania, Rally

In a statement to CNN issued shortly after the incident, the Secret Service said Trump was “safe” and said an investigation is ongoing. Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger confirmed to multiple news outlets that the shooter is dead, along with an audience member.

Trump shot… this is bad… very bad…

This feels like the divide between conservatives and liberals…

There are plenty of examples… in which the left hemisphere not only clearly does not know what it is talking about, but behaves as though it knows perfectly well. Its manner is confident and unhesitating, even when it is talking about something of which it knows absolutely nothing (I will discuss some striking examples in Part I). By contrast, the right hemisphere tends to be hesitant, tentative and flexible, even when it is entirely right. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

In particular, men have a tremendous contribution to make to feminist struggle in the area of exposing, confronting, opposing, and transforming the sexism of their male peers. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

July 12, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

… have i ment how despicable i find certain kinds of white masculinity?…

Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) said yesterday that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.” Grothman said that President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually a “war on marriage,” in a communist attempt to hand control of children over to the government.

Blue sky with cirrus clouds.

Ice cream spill stain on concrete sidewalk. Stain looks like an amoeba complete with nucleus. A bottle cap lies at the edge of the amoeba as if about to be consumed by it.

Sunlight reflected off a car window early in the morning. A wet stream from air conditioner runs through the upper right corner of the frame.

It cannot be overemphasised that regularities in nature do not imply mechanisms, nor do they imply determinism. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

bell hooks explains why it is not enough to simply get women into power if they exercise it in a way that harmonizes with oppressive patriarchy. Women can be of the patriarchy just as men can be of the feminist movement.

Narrowly focused feminist ideology tends to equate male development and perpetuation of oppressive policy with maleness; the two things are not synonymous. By making them synonymous, women do not have to face the drive for power in women that leads them to strive to dominate and control others. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

The most hideous crime against humanity,” she reminded me, began with a legal election. It is not, therefore, purely on the level of politics that we avert the unconscionable. It begins deeper, she said: in the moral foundation of the people, which is laid early in life; it begins with the impulses we nurture in our young. (Maria Popova, What Makes a Compassionate World: Sophie De Grouchy’s Visionary 18th-Century Appeal to Parents and Teachers)

(peer review)… a flawed process, full of easily identified defects with little evidence that it works. Nevertheless … scientists and editors have a continuing belief in peer review. How odd that science should be rooted in belief. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

July 11, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Raiklin said the list was just the beginning. “This is the scratching of the surface of who is going to be criminalized for their treason, okay?”