Peonies are especially beautiful as they are wilting.
… an interesting part of my experience presenting femininely, is that i have begun to be a little anxious when i pass a man on the street… i find myself fearing their potential for violence…
I don’t know… the Alito tapes seem like a bit of a nothing burger to me. Bias is a given in judges of all stripes. Balance comes from having a variety of judges.
… an hypothesis about what we are experiencing… we are overrun by a masculine way of looking at the world… both men and women are supporting this myopic view of the world… we need rebalancing with a feminine way of looking at the world… both men and women can support this…
Doing my daily review of book highlights generated by Readwise… this and the last number of quotes shared are from that review…
In the modern Western world, we are constantly crashing, and puzzled as to why; constantly faced with paradoxical outcomes to our actions, what particle physicist and quantum theorist David Bohm called ‘sustained incoherence’. We often find that we strive for something and achieve its precise opposite. Why is that? I suggest it is because our currently dominant model of reality is mistaken. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
We tire of the man-made, but not of that which shows human influence, such as a beautiful landscape lived in for generations, the result of civilisation working in harmony with what Pope called the ‘genius’ – the spirit – of the place. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
The great abolitionist and autobiographer Frederick Douglass put the point with memorable force and clarity in a Fourth of July oration of 1852, saying: “There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” That single line destroys whole volumes of faulty argument—beginning with Aristotle. (Sarah Bakewell, Humanly Possible)
“If you start to believe the map is the world, you are lost.” (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
Happy pride month!
“Sexism has never rendered women powerless. It has either suppressed their strength or exploited it. Recognition of that strength, that power, is a step women together can take towards liberation.”
— Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks a.co/elT093n
June 9, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
It’s either death of the Christian Patriarchy or death by…
A key argument for a strong administrative state was that it could break the power of a few men to control the nation. It is no accident that those arguing for a return to a system without a strong administrative state are eager to impose their religion on the American majority, who have rejected their principles and policies. Americans support abortion rights, women’s rights, LBGTQ+ rights, minority rights: the equal rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
bell hooks Feminist Theory is a fascinating and revelatory book…
“Feminist movement would have had, and will have, a greater appeal for masses of women if it addresses the powers women exercise even as it calls attention to sexist discrimination, exploitation, and oppression.”
— Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks a.co/eqTInzj
Have any of you ever done a savory whipped cream? OMG, whole new horizons…
June 6, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
During the ceremony, the past and the present came together. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky shook the hand of a U.S. veteran in a wheelchair. When the man tried to kiss Zelensky’s hand, the Ukraine president instead stooped and hugged him. “You’re the savior of the people,” the man said. Zelensky answered, “You saved Europe.” The exchange continued: “You’re my hero.” “No, you are our hero.”
“I think to be truly vulnerable is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration. In that place we can feel extraordinarily alive and receptive to all sorts of things, creatively and spiritually.” (Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage)
OMG, Banana Republic has a bunch of dresses I really want to get… I don’t have money right now… i am saving for a new computer… hopefully, when i have bought the new computer, they will still have my size…
From this morning…
! Blue tents temporarily housing bicycles and mopeds for rent.(https://www.notesonattentionpaid.com/uploads/2024/6ad75450-b0d1-4579-9205-eeb46507b7b3.jpg)
June 3, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
A barn burner post from HCR…
The fallout from the New York jury’s conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts last Thursday, May 30, continues. Trump’s team continues to insist that the guilty verdict will help him, but that’s nonsensical on its face: if guilty verdicts are so helpful, why has he moved heaven and earth to keep the many other cases against him from going to trial? And why are he and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) calling for the Supreme Court to overturn the convictions? HCR
Some photographs from this morning’s walk along the beach and the beach road… Beach and ocean, early morning, cloudy, overturned life guard’s chair on lower right of frame.
Second of two perfect beach days… not a given this time of year.
I understand now… backing Trump is the safe play… you avoid retribution if he wins and won’t loose anything if he doesn’t… it’s spineless, but it isn’t stupid.
Gender roles among the Indigenous peoples of North America - Wikipedia
I like this way of seeing gender… as spirit power… it is certainly how it feels to me.
They would say “He is a man (in body), he has changed to a woman (in dress and manner of life). But he is not a woman (in body). It is his spirit-power it is said that has told him, You become woman. You are always to wear your (woman’s) dress just like women. That is the way you must always do."[25]
The lack of a rational understanding of the limits to reason may prove fatal. The coherence of a civilisation depends on accepting the reality and value of principles which we do not, and perhaps never can, fully understand. In all societies hitherto this has been achieved by the influence of knowledge embodied in traditions, sometimes religious, that asked for acceptance by an appeal to imagination, not to reason alone.
(Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
The more overtly unshakeable someone’s beliefs are, the more diminished they seem to become, because they have stopped questioning, and the not-questioning can sometimes be accompanied by an attitude of moral superiority. The belligerent dogmatism of the current cultural moment is a case in point. A bit of humility wouldn’t go astray.
(Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage)
More from this morning… concentrating on the sculpted bluffs at Vale Beach Block Island.
