November 27, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Thanksgiving became a thing during The Civil War… it is worth reading HCR’s post for context… my hope is that we can have the argument more peacefully this time around…

i wish everyone celebrating an American Thanksgiving a happy one filled with family… i wish everyone else things you can be grateful for throughout the day…

Yesterday i was grateful for time spent reading with Holly.

Today i am looking forward to thanksgiving with my brother and sister in law.

The Christmas mood growing…

Red Christmas sweater in a shop window.

Christmas displays in a shop window.

Christmas wreath hanging on a utility pole. Mountain and crescent moon beyond.

In other words, the fact that we in the US care so much about money and possessions, and have collectively accumulated such staggering material wealth—these are indicators that something is very wrong. They speak to how diminished our lives are in very important respects, and how disconnected we have become from the fundamental wealth of ourselves and the world. (Jeff Golden, Reclaiming the Sacred)

As John Muir put it: No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Just as naïve materialists do great damage to science by their over-reaching claims of access to ‘the truth’ – even to sole access to truth – on her behalf, so do misguided religious figureheads and their lay ‘supporters’ to religion, when they don’t know enough to see what it is they don’t know. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

What Zeno discovered was that, if you stop time’s flow, and find states (by definition, ‘static’), you make nonsense out of it. Because it doesn’t just have flow, but is flow: stopping it therefore destroys its very nature. There is no flow without time, and there is no time without flow. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

‘the greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field the less likely the research findings are to be true’. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Yesterday i was grateful for the good work of my colleagues at the cemetery.

Today i am looking forward to lunch with the yoga men.

Radical feminism, and this by no means includes all positions within the Women’s Liberation Movement, postulates that the domination of one human being by another is the basic evil in society. Dominance in human relationships is the target of their opposition. (bell hooks, Feminist Theory)

What has been happening to our intelligent capacity to make sense of the world? I will argue in this chapter that it is in decline because we are increasingly wearing what James Flynn, one of the most famous living intelligence researchers, calls ‘scientific spectacles’. What this amounts to is that the right hemisphere understanding is being ‘elbowed’ out by the left hemisphere’s insistence that we see the world its way: even though this way is less intelligent. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Truth is not a thing to be possessed, however immaterial, but a path to follow, a process. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Love does not lead to an end to difficulties, it provides us with the means to cope with our difficulties in ways that enhance our growth. (bell hooks, All About Love)

Yesterday i was grateful to get home safely in spite of heavy traffic.

Today i am looking forward to returning to my routines.

From this morning…

Cardboard santa gnome on a stair railing post. Railing shadows on steps behind.

Lobster trap pyramid Christmas tree in early morning sun.

Side of enamel lobster pot with lobster painted on it.

Illuminated lobster claw and Christmas lights.

Last night I was grateful for the crescent moon on my midnight bathroom run.

Today I am looking forward to traveling home and trying on the new clothes that came while I was gone.

Yesterday i was grateful for a text conversation with my sister and a phone conversation with my mom.

Today i am looking forward to cooking dinner for my wife and her mother.

From this morning…

Sky before dawn. Storm clouds. Hood of a car in foreground.

House in landscape. Storm clouds in distance. Early morning.

Two masted sailboat. Early morning cloudy skies.

Crumpled English muffin foil with pools of butter.

Wild turkeys on edge of forest.

Last night I was grateful for the sturdy cottage that gave us shelter from the storm.

Today I am looking forward to the end of the storm.

… this is a change we haven’t made yet… time to get started…

Eat a plant-based diet…

Raising animals for meat accounts for roughly 20 percent of greenhouse gasses worldwide, due to the impact of feed production and processing, along with the belching of methane by cows, which is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. (Reclaiming the Sacred: Healing Our Relationships with Ourselves and the World by Jeff Golden)

Yesterday I was grateful for time spent with Steve and Diane, and for a news free day.

Today I am looking forward to rain, which is badly needed.

From last night…

Composition of lighted hallway door and light on ceiling, all at a right shifted angle. Makes interesting angular abstract.

From this morning…

Concrete walk step with dashed caution markings on the leading edge.

Closeup of side of granite boulder.

Tiled terrace surface with imbedded boards over raceway leading to thick cables protruding above the surface. Rounded rocks strewn around.

There is a deep connexion between excessively rationalistic thinking and delusion. (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

yesterday i was grateful for time spent with our friends Steve and Diane

today i am looking forward to sharing the island with Steve and Diane

November 18, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

Ramaswamy today posted on social media, “A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids.” He has suggested that cuts are easier than people think. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump noted that on a podcast in September, Ramaswamy said as an example: “If your Social Security number ends in an odd number, you’re out. If it ends in an even number, you’re in. There’s a 50 percent cut right there. Of those who remain, if your Social Security number starts in an even number, you’re in, and if it starts with an odd number, you’re out. Boom. That’s a 75 percent reduction done.”