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?” 

July 11, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Yesterday, Raw Story reported that Ivan Raiklin, Trump’s self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” has compiled a “Deep State target list” of 350 people he wants to see arrested and punished for “treason” if Trump is reelected. The list includes Democratic and Republican elected officials, journalists he considers to be Trump’s enemies, U.S. Capitol Police officers, and witnesses against Trump in his impeachment trials and the hearings concerning the events of January 6, 2021.

Will the hubris of Joe Biden and Ruth Bader Ginsburg combine to become the downfall of Democracy?

From yesterday’s walk…

Closeup of tropical plant leaf.

Closeup of tropical plant leaf.

Morning sky with pebble fair weather clouds.

Since we live in a society that promotes fads and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

However, emotion is a critical part of our capacity to comprehend the world at all, the ability to understand and interact with other living beings. Without it we are foolish, however much we may know, and we are only alive in a diminished sense of the word. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

From this morning’s walk…

Plastic toy prize balls in the window of a vending machine.

Water stain patch in lower left corner of frame with rivulet running to the top right center of the frame and terminating at a cross shaped intersection of joints in the concrete pavement.

Early morning sky with ethereal, wispy clouds running horizontally across the frame from middle to the bottom of the frame.

One shiny metallic silver fake nail lying in the expansion joint of a concrete sidewalk. Expansion joint runs horizontally across the frame at the middle. The nail is a little left of center.

Abstract composition of wall, floor and outlet cover plate. Wall and floor intersection makes a diagonal line from upper right to lower left. The cover plate is just above the end of the diagonal intersection line bottom left of frame.

… last year i planted cardoon… it did not flower… it did overwinter and this year is throwing up these six foot tall blossoms… cardoon leaves are edible and taste a bit like artichoke… i am curious to see what happens when blossoms are done…

Two cardoon blossoms, one of them opening with vibrant purple brush head.

From the weekend…

Detail of a storefront window with wooden panel detail on the left, vertical blinds seen through the window, one of the vertical blind slats has fallen down and cuts diagonally across the remaining slats from lower right to the center of the frame.

Sidewalk and street crossing markings making an interesting composition with the sidewalk curb arcing from upper left corner to middle bottom of frame, white crossing stripes running from upper right corner to middle of frame.

Empty shop window with black and white diamond pattern floor inside and reflection of street seen and photographer overlaid.

Clothing boutique shop window with furnishings and clothing displayed.

Vintage store window with pink dress on a mannequin to the left and table and shelves with green uranium glassware displayed.

From the weekend…

Grassy landscape with wooden deck and the backside of a billboard. Hudson River in the distance.

Hudson Rive with silhouette of shore line and wooden piers in the lower right corner and bridge in the distance. Early morning.

Tree and utility pole on the shore of the Hudson River.

Hudson River and distant shore line, trees and grassy area to the left, framed by the roof, deck and wall of a structure.

Early morning landscape with trees on the left, grass in the foreground, cinder path moving from the lower right to the left center of the frame. Mist and trees in the distance.

From July 03…

Empty “Jack Links: Beef Tender Bites” package on the edge of a public trash bin.

Brown paper napkin on the grass, folded and wrinkled in an interesting way.

Pacifier and beaded chain on concrete in the early morning sun.

Empty clear plastic pill packaging lying on concrete. A crack in the concrete passing under the packaging.

… aligns with The Matter With Things by McGilchrist…

thinking has, of course, changed a great deal relative to the ancient one, the two have had one key feature in common: i.e. they are both generally ‘blinkered’ by the notion that theories give true knowledge about ‘reality as it is’. (David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order)