milk and honey

The Beach Balls have completed their winter migration!

As Isaak Walton said (almost): "Surely, God could have made a better cocktail. Surely, God never did."

#arrangement in white, gray, and olive

I must admit, sometimes I find the daily lectionary to be a chore. Not today.
This, from Baruch (Baruch! - in the Apocrypha), is simply wonderful:

... the stars shone in their watches, and were glad;
he called them, and they said, ‘Here we are!’
They shone with gladness for him who made them.

Baruch 3:34

“Dad, now that you’re officially old, do you have any bits of wisdom to share?” “Yes, child. It’s always a good idea to put some lemon zest on whatever you’re eating."

Another mass shooting. This one close to home. A fetishistic fascination with guns, power, and violence permeates American society. It’s symptomatic of a deep cultural pathology, and it’ll take more than laws to address the sickness. BUT, at least gun regulations are a place to start. And, compared to treating a moral illness, they’re low-hanging fruit. So, let’s make gun regulation an “easy” first step in trying to find a cure for this disease in our national soul.

I can imagine someone who found 
these fields unbearable, who climbed 
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust, 
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot, 
wishing a few more trees for shade.

An Easterner especially, who would scorn 
the meagerness of summer, the dry 
twisted shapes of black elm, 
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape 
August has already drained of green.

One who would hurry over the clinging 
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy, 
knowing everything was just a weed, 
unable to conceive that these trees 
and sparse brown bushes were alive.

And hate the bright stillness of the noon 
without wind, without motion, 
the only other living thing 
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended 
in the blinding, sunlit blue.

And yet how gentle it seems to someone 
raised in a landscape short of rain – 
the skyline of a hill broken by no more 
trees than one can count, the grass, 
the empty sky, the wish for water.

Someone spoke to me last night,  
told me the truth. Just a few words,  
but I recognized it.  
I knew I should make myself get up,  
write it down, but it was late,  
and I was exhausted from working  
all day in the garden, moving rocks.  
Now, I remember only the flavor—  
not like food, sweet or sharp.  
More like a fine powder, like dust  
And I wasn't elated or frightened,  
but simply rapt, aware.  
That's how it is sometimes—  
God comes to your window,  
all bright light and black wings,  
and you're just too tired to open it.

Russian propagandists do not need to wait to check facts or verify claims; they just disseminate an interpretation of emergent events that appears to best favor their themes and objectives. This allows them to be remarkably responsive and nimble, often broadcasting the first “news” of events (and, with similar frequency, the first news of nonevents, or things that have not actually happened). They will also repeat and recycle disinformation. The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model: RAND Corporation, 2016.

... flood the zone with shit. Steve Bannon (to Michael Lewis, 2018)

“The meeting will come to order.”

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Cabora Drive Trail, Playa Vista, Los Angeles, CA🥾

 

Jill Filipovic via ayjay

Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response. That isn’t to say that people who experience victimization or trauma should just muscle through it, or that any individual can bootstraps their way into wellbeing. It is to say, though, that in some circumstances, it is a choice to process feelings of discomfort or even offense through the language of deep emotional, spiritual, or even physical wound, and choosing to do so may make you worse off. Leaning into the language of “harm” creates and reinforces feelings of harm ...

Stanford Law School Dean Jenny Martinez:

... Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them (or even hearing arguments about them), but however appealing that position might be in some other context, it is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school. Law students are entering a profession in which their job is to make arguments on behalf of clients whose very lives may depend on their professional skill. Just as doctors in training must learn to face suffering and death and respond in their professional role, lawyers in training must learn to confront injustice or views they don’t agree with and respond as attorneys.

Law is a mediating device for difference. It therefore reflects all the heat of controversy, all the pain and suffering, and all the deeply felt moral urgency of our differences in position, power, and cherished principles. Knowing all of this, I believe we cannot function as a law school from the premise that appears to have animated the disruption of Judge Duncan’s remarks -- that speakers, texts, or ideas believed by some to be harmful inflict a new impermissible harm justifying a heckler’s veto simply because they are present on this campus, raised in legally protected speech, and made an object of inquiry. Naming perceived harm, exploring it, and debating solutions with people who disagree about the nature and fact of the harm or the correct solutions are the very essence of legal work. Lively, candid, civil, and evidence-based discourse in disagreement is not just positive for our community, constituted as it is in difference, it is a professional duty. Observance of this duty matters most, not least, when we are convinced that others haven’t. [emphasis added.]