“One gasps in admiration at the ingenuity of it all—the housewife can participate in science itself just by buying something new—or something old that has been given a brand new personality.”
(Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique)
“The right hemisphere view of proof derives its value from the context, and so can never be absolute, regnant for all regions of space and time, and never single or immune from evolution.”
(Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
“Freedoms that save the saviors also save the degenerates and allow them to tear the whole society apart. But restrictions that stop the degenerates also stop the creative Dynamic forces of evolution.”
(Robert M. Pirsig, Lila)
“Reason cannot be the creative principle, unlike intuition: it is the quality control department only.”
(Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)
May 23, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
Today, by a vote of 6–3, the Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision and signed off on the new South Carolina congressional map that dilutes Black votes. It approved the map because, it said, the gerrymander was politically, rather than racially, motivated. And, it said, “as far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, a legislature may pursue partisan ends when it engages in redistricting.”
… why should any group have the right to disenfranchise any other group from its fair share of representation?
My shadow, the meadow and the sea… yes, Block Island is mostly like this.

May 20, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson
This one is a good read… full of quotes of Trump telling us who he is…
It is not clear to me how anyone can any longer deny that Trump is promising to destroy our democracy and usher in authoritarianism.
Well, basically all ready to leave on vacation tomorrow morning and it’s not middle of the night. We must be forgetting something big.
So, tonight at a party I was in almost full feminine mode. Only lacking lipstick. An acquaintance said to me, “you have a different look,” to which I replied, “yes, I am exploring trans-feminine space.” I much prefer being asked about my changes to polite silence. Just saying.
Those are the stakes. It is tragic and shameful that so many fail to see it.
We are staring down the possibility of putting someone back in power who has demonstrated that he is willing to use informal violence to achieve his anti-democratic ends. He attempted a coup with a mob of enraged zealots. How tragically foolish must you be to give him the power to wield formal, state-sanctioned violence? Think the president hasn’t the power? Read the Insurrection Act.