From this morning’s walk…

Early morning streetscape, wrought iron gate shadow lower left corner, mountains and building in distance, sidewalk receding around corner of building on left, pickup truck parked on the street.

Early AM streetscape, Valero gas station canopy and car on left, price sign right of center, corner store in distance on right.

Illuminated front of local mosque.

Key Food grocery storefront. Empty parking lot in front of store.

Bale of cardboard boxes, white abstract shaped box at front that says “eggs”.

Public service announcement…

Plastic encased magazine on sidewalk. Cover of magazine says “VOTE”… did you?

From this morning…

Scaffolding in front of a building, illuminated by a security light. Peaked roof house structure in background.

Building in distance illuminated by street lights, some windows illuminated from within.

Store fronts on a street illuminated by street light. Early morning.

Shop display window illuminated by light in window hanging from ceiling.

… and one for the end of Halloween

Skeleton on an exercise bike in an antique shop window.

And one having nothing to do with politics…

One finds that there is beauty or at least interest in everything, seen with an acute enough eye. (And the aestheticizing of reality that makes everything, anything, available to the camera is what also permits the co-opting of any photograph, even one of an utterly practical sort, as art.) (Susan Sontag, On Photography)

This may be an extreme point of view, but views like this sour me on religion in general and Christianity in particular because it is such a sinister force in American politics.

October 31, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-31-2024)

Christian pastor Dale Partridge posted: “In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial.” But, he added, “submission does have limits. A wife doesn’t need to submit to her husband in sin (in this case voting democrat).”

October 31, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-31-2024)

To assist those women who might not feel safe letting their husbands know how they voted, women have been posting notes in women’s public bathrooms assuring other women that their vote is secret.

October 31, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-31-2024)

“I moved on her, and I failed,” Trump says in the tape. “I’ll admit it. I did try and f-ck her…. I moved on her like a b-tch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married,” Trump said. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful— I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the p-ssy. You can do anything,” he said.

…when buying a shirt with scrabble tiles printed on it pay attention to what can be spelled with the letters… clusters of the letters “N” “T” “U” “C” on the shirt i bought my mom to wear in her scrabble group… oops… at least she noticed before wearing it…

We must see both men and women in this society as groups who support the use of violence if we are to eliminate it. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

Truth is emphatically not a free-for-all, a matter of individual whim. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

From this morning’s walk…

SUNOCO gas station canopy with pumps underneath. Early AM. Scene illuminated by canopy lights.

Globe lighting fixture on side of white brick building. Shot looking up. Windows of the building disappear into the shadows at the top of the frame.

Courtyard of a bar/restaurant with illuminated sign showing graphic of flying saucer above the door, giant human skeleton in the shadows to the left.

… this sign amuses me… it reads to me like an invitation to having your car keyed…

Illuminated sign with a house key and car key, the former left to right, the latter right to left. “KeyMe” is written above the two keys.

A few from this morning’s walk…

Uranium glass goblet illuminated by black light. Other green glass dishes and glasses in background.

Car illuminated by street light. Tree and mountain in the background. Dawn sky at the top of the frame.

Book store front, early in the morning, illuminated by lights in the store.

Succulent plant in a window casting shadow on the folds of a curtain. Dim illumination from street lights.

An entry light beneath roofed entry to building on the left illuminates the pavement in front of it and a van parked on the right side.

We went to meet our new niece’s new daughter yesterday…

Portrait of four caucasian people, three adults, one baby, two adult women, one adult man.

Portrait of four caucasian people, two adults, one toddler child, on baby. One man, one woman.

How is it that so many good minds diagnose capitalism as the central problem, for women in particular, but everyone really, and nothing can be done about it?

There is no way—none—for anyone in this society to make a great deal of money without exploiting other people. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

What has to be faced now by women and men together are the life-threatening excesses of the culture of greed, of brutal, unbridled corporate power. (Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique)

Are greed and lust for power baked into the Patriarchy? Are Patriarchy and capitalism synonymous? Co-dependent?

There is a curious lack of political signs in the places we go. NY, CN, NJ… liberal states because of urban areas, but deeply conservative in rural areas. We are seeing very little overt expression of political preferences. Fear, exhaustion? What do you think?

From this morning…

Food delivery truck in front of Key Food supermarket in the early morning.

How interesting nature is sometimes… put your web in front of a security light that will attract flying insects?

Intelligent placement of spiders web in front of insect attractive security light.

I’m from this morning…

Moon, branches and foreboding sky.

Fascist to the core…

October 27, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

But the biggest sign of the damage the rally did was the frantic backpedaling from Republicans in tight elections, who distanced themselves as fast as they could from the insults against Puerto Ricans, especially. The Trump campaign itself tried to distance itself from the “floating island of garbage” quotation, only to be met with comments pointing out that Hinchcliffe’s set had been vetted and uploaded to the teleprompters.

October 25, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Musk’s SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite system, won a $1.8 billion contract with U.S. military and intelligence agencies in 2021. It is the major rocket launcher for NASA and the Pentagon, and Musk has a security clearance; he says it is a top-secret clearance.

… something doesn’t seem right here… not that Musk isn’t a disturbing human being… isn’t this something our own intelligence services would have known about?… or certainly should have?… why is NASA all of a sudden saying it is concerning that Musk talks to Putin?…

A commitment to spiritual life necessarily means we embrace the eternal principle that love is all, everything, our true destiny. (bell hooks, All About Love)

…I have begun to doubt the “love is all” proposition, much as I love bell hooks…

Niels Bohr: ‘it is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth.’ (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

… it’s not possible to know all the ways we impact those around us… we can only know if we behaved with honesty, integrity, and compassion… if we have done that most of the time, then our impact will be significant, even if we don’t know it…

Last night around rhe Todd Rundgren Concert there was a man from Amsterdam, or was it Copenhagen?… we chatted before concert began… he said Europeans are astonished our election is so close… i told him 50% of Americans are too…

Hoping the rumors dems are slipping in blue wall states are intended to energize the dem base…

October 21, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/october-21-2024)

… the line between democracy and fascism was not wealth, or education, or race, or age, or nationality. “Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi,” she wrote… “But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success—they would all go Nazi in a crisis,” she wrote. “Those who haven’t anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don’t—whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi.”