In recent decades it has become customary, and right, I guess, and easy enough with hindsight, to damn the ancestral frame of mind that ravaged the world so fully and so soon.
What I myself seem to damn mainly though, is just not having seen it. Without any virtuous hindsight I would likely have helped in the ravaging, as did even most of those who loved it best.
But God! To have viewed it entire, the soul and guts of what we had; and gone forever now, except in books and such poignant remnants as small swift birds that journey to and from the distant Argentine, and call at night in the sky.
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John Graves’ Small Swift Birds -
For Valentine’s Day: Love Tokens from the Thames Another great post from the inestimable Spitalfields Life.
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To make a BLT, start (with) tomatoes 
Check. 🌱
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Victoria Goddard Fantasy readers, I highly recommend Victoria Goddard’s wonderful books. Her masterpiece, in my opinion, is The Hands of the Emperor, and for sheer fun (and, at first, disorienting weirdness), Stargazy Pie and its companion books are wonderful. Goddard is so good.
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Bueller… Bueller… Bueller… Um, he’s sick. Vis a vis the 2025 coup: Checks and balances only work if the other two branches check and balance. Congress and the courts are, um, sick (unto death, for Congress). If they croak, they’ll be very difficult to resurrect.
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Caught. 
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Whaddya Think? Ringo Starr and Lucinda Williams need to record together. (And, not to put too fine a point on it, daylight’s burning.)
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Poetry Unbound with Pádraig Ó Tuama Often, a highlight of my week is a new (to me) poem shared by Pádraig Ó Tuama. Today’s, “Neanderthal Dig” by Don McKay, is especially rich.
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Hangin’ Out A good one from Poorly Drawn Lines.
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RIP, Garth Hudson “Anybody who gets a chance to play with Garth Hudson, they’d be a fool not to. As far as The Band is concerned, he’s the one who rubbed off on the rest of us and made us sound as good as we did.” – Levon Helm
Update: more here.
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