As of today, I’m beginning to get my wind and footing back a mile above sea level in the US of A. Not the spring chicken I was on the Good Ole Days, but coping with challenges of age and perpetual new discovery, like wind and muscle flexibility, sadly compromised by age and lack of initiative. But I’m invigorated now, by golly. The outer world rolls along at its own pace, but I have risen above the struggles of Consumerism gone insane. I can ignore our president’s fixation on land grabs at home and abroad, for now. I can breathe the rarified air of freedom from TV, if necessary. Whew!
The summer is ending, here in the latter days of August. At 8700 feet of altitude, in the blessed mountains of Colorado, I feel I can breathe easily again. The hardships of humidity and biting insects, and the oppressive heat of Summer in Georgia are behind me.
Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 9 am, mdt.
Today is my birthday. I turn 73 years old a little after noon.
Sunday August 3, 2025. PM.MDT.
Pope Leo XIV seems to be getting off to a good start. I respect his message of peace and brotherhood.
He has a lot to contend with on the world stage. The internet is spurting Vatican News. Fine. His Holiness is spreading peace and love. Good. He inspired me to look into baseball. He’s a fan of the Chicago White Sox.
The Boston Red Sox hail from different areas of the Nawth US of A. Is there a Dirty Sox team? I don’t watch, play, or even care about baseball, but we are in the middle of Take Me Out To The Ball Game Season.
Carole says durian fruit juice smells like dirty socks. Maybe the Dirty Sox team could use Durian fruit as an emblem.
On Wednesday, August 6, 2025
Is anybody surprised? I just saw on Fox news that a male, of course, drove from Nevada to NYC to shoot people, including a security officer at a midtown location. He killed four people. Has a suicide note on him. No further info.
Temp Tuesday 86 degrees at 9 am edt.
Tuesday, 6 pm edt. Cooling off. Temp 93 degrees.
Monday
Monday, 6 pm. It’s still Monday, folks. I’ve been in motion all day.
I now have ice in my cold coffee and a towel for condensation. Temp is down to 90 F.
The sun entered the constellation Leo on Wednesday the 23rd. Leo, ruled by the sun astrologically, marks mid summer in the Northern hemisphere.
i just learned today that barometric pressure for my area hangs around 30. Higher than that signifies rising air and clearer skies. (air pushing upward) Lower indicates falling air and clouds above (atmosphere pushing downward).
This is presented in numbers. It took some doing to discover what those numbers mean, for an average person like me.
Trumpsky is shaking in his golf shoes. The whole world is intrigued by his dramatic disclaimers. Ho hum. The Trump shell game continues. Keir Starmer is playing it cool, but nobody asks Ghislaine. Why not?
I was looking at an old issue of the NYT, from Wednesday, December 26, 2018, and found an article entitled “US Arms sales to Saudis leave a stain in Yemen”. It refers to a Saudi F-15 warplane taking off from King Khalid air base in southern Saudi Arabia for a bombing run over Yemen. The article explains the plane and bombs are American. American mechanics service the jets and carry out repairs on the ground.
American technicians upgrade the targeting software and other classified technology, which Saudis are not allowed to touch. The pilot is likely trained by the US Air Force.
Meanwhile at the end of June seven years later, in 2025, the US President, King Donnie, has unleashed American bombs on Iran. Trump has acted pre-emptively, apparently fishing for nuclear weapons Iran claims not to have. Trump has not followed the restraints provided by the US Constitution, nor has he sought backing from elected representatives in the US Congress. In fact, the Circus Entertainer who has finagled his way to the top of the Washington Swamp is drying in its exposed sewage.
Who benefits?
Meanwhile, in south Georgia, on the Atlantic Ocean coast, Federal bureaucracy is scrapping with residents around the Okefenoke Swamp and its Florida cousin, the Everglades, downstream.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of Baby Bush infame has matured into a teenage hoodlum of law enforcement. It is involved in building a detention facility for immigrants awaiting deportation to their respective countries of origin.
The dilemma in the US of A depends now on who stays, and who goes, and to where?
In short, who are the Real Americans, and who are the Paperwork Americans?
The southern border between the US and Mexico was set after the Mexican-American War, during President Polk’s term, about 1848.
That scene of US expansionary vision was cut off by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in February, 1848. The US paid $15 million and assumed claims of US citizens against the Mexican government.
And now, on the last day of June, Monday the 30th, at almost 10 am edt, this piece of old news is ready to be put to bed.
The human world is all aflutter in the media and governments. I can’t or won’t try to predict how events will play out.
Who knows or can predict Truth?
Our US of A Prez Donnie claims responsibility for bombing three nuclear facilities in Iran. Reports vary. The players shift, telling the public versions of each megaphonic opinion. Who knows? The show continues . . .
Wednesday, June 20, 2025. 9 am edt. Glowing white clouds eastward. Temp 78 degrees F and rising. Birds conversing.
Go back to sleep, if you can. Out There, in Humanland, noisemakers are doing what they do best, out of my hearing range. The way I like it.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025. Afternoon. Mostly sunny. 88 degrees F.
This is a photo of a Tarot card, one of the Trump cards, number 12. The Tarot is full of symbolism depicting the journey through life.
I include it here to show an example of human writing and art.
The tarot has roots in the 14th century, when so-called “gypsies” offered witchcraft and fortune-telling as part of travelling enterainment shows. It is believed the Gypsies originated among the Indo-European tribes or clans that lived on the go, in bands or groups, for protection, and maybe for odd jobs when available.
This also happened around the time the bubonic plague ravaged Europe, and when a volcano off the Atlantic coast of Africa fueled doomsday predictions on the northern Eurasian continent. Many died, and more fell sick. Superstitions abounded.
Later, the cause of the plague was determined to be a microbe, Yersinia pestis, carried by fleas on rats that infested ships coming from the east to what is now Turkey, through the outlet from the Black Sea, where Istanbul (formerly Constantinople) now stands.
The symbolism here corresponds to my novel about Joe, a technological genius of AI engineering, designed by Beon, an immortal alien determined to find a way home to his 7-D universe. Beon decides the purpose of his 4-D prison here is to save these Earthlings from themselves: Joe is his Earth Proxy:
Tuesday 9 pm edt dark. Still. Temp 87 degrees.
Current news reports confuse, because they overlay different periods in time. Times change. The players play familiar roles, but the stage remains the same. Despite minor variations, the heros and villains follow a pedictable plot.
Friday, June 20, 2025
I guess the Department of Homeland Security, created under the Baby Bush administration, along with ICE, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement subdivision, are collecting headlines, along with a few undocumented immigrants from south of the California border.
Federal bureaucracy exploded after those NYC skyscrapers imploded, and Osama bin Laden was tagged as the culprit. He was tried in the media then hunted down and shot to death by US Marines. I bought a copy of the “Atlantic Monthly” issue that advertized the story on its front cover. The man who claimed to have fired one of the shots was already suffering from having been discharged from the Marines a few months prior to his retirement.
During the 7-year manhunt, the Baby Bush Administration passed the Patriot Act, which made local booksellers post notices about new federal laws affecting print matter.
Bush won a second term, then Barack Obama rode into the presidency on the heels of the 2007 stock market crash and rising public sentiment against Islam. It took Obama’s administration to find and make an international spectacle over Osama bin Laden’s murder. The entire White House inner circle, including Hillary Clinton, who was Secretary of State, witnessed the supposed shooting of bin Laden, from a room set up on closed circuit TV. I don’t remember where media said the supposed murder took place, but US Mucky Mucks played it up as though it would solve the problem of terrorism forever.
Tuesday evening. 6 pm edt. Sun going down in the southwest. Skies above marsh blue and hazy with humidity. Temp 87 F.
I try to move on multiple tracks at once, but I’m limited by hands and the brain’s ability to process, then convey information. People rarely try to understand how complex this brain processor is.
The 70 year old pages in my lap want to slide to the floor while I jiggle thisTechnoGadget in left hand and punch with right index finger.
Symbolism is the human attempt to convey what it perceives of reality.
Cause and Effect
Joe understands Cause and Effect, from a scientific point of view. That’s why he doesn’t understand Mack, the bar-and-grill owner who smokes cigarettes and weighs 250 pounds.
Today, Joe awakes with a headache and tries to approach it scientifically:
The sun, shining through dingy, crocheted curtains, casts a mosaic of light and shadow across the worn rug. By the angle of the light and shadows, Joe knows it is at least 11 am.
His head throbs with an intensity of 200 on a one-to-ten scale. The light hurts his eyes, but he doesn’t have the courage to move. He remains curled stiff, eyes clenched shut, until his bladder forces him to attempt the impossible and get out of bed.
He moans. He eases to a slouching position on the edge of the bed, resting his aching forehead between tender hands. Slowly, ever so slowly, he stands and staggers to the bathroom, carefully shielding his eyes from the light. He downs two aspirin and then a third, to abort the stroke he must be having. It is at least a stroke. Maybe an aneurysm has burst. He stares into the mirror. Images of his certain, agonizing and imminent death spread like black, acrid goo across his quivering brain.
“I’m dying,” he tells his haggard face. It stared back at him–coldly critical, his appearance substandard today, even for him.
He and his reflection eye each other. He notes the dark eye sockets, red eyes, fuzzy vision, chin stubble, wrinkles, and greasy hair. He doesn’t smell too good, either. Let the embalmer handle it, he decides. That’s what he’s paid for.
Joe treads a wobbly path through the living room to the kitchen, where the percolator is full of yesterday’s grounds. His stomach isn’t feeling much like coffee, but his head says he is in caffeine withdrawal. He curses Marian for getting him so drunk he forgot to set up the cofee pot.
He pictures Marian boiling in a vat of coffee, begging for mercy.
Suddenly, Beon’s face appears on his inner screen. Beon’s balding, round visage grins like the Buddha, his eyes innocuous, his portent ominous. Joe’s head pounds harder, and his knees feel weak.
On Wednesday afternoon, this spinning ball has carried its inhabitants through another day. The Earth’s spin ticks off another cycle of dark leading to daylight.
Old Sol in the Southwest casts long shadows, and temperature is dropping, slowly.
Our Joe is beginning to feel better after a full pot of coffee, so decides to go to Mack’s for some potato soup. To be continued, in time . . .
The drawing above shows a brain hemispere, the left hemisphere, where most humans store foci dedicated to speech and comprehension of speech.
I have a vivid memory of an experience involving an elderly veteran, whose wife and daughter brought him in to see me in a VA facility, to prescribe medications for problems related to his stroke. His body was otherwise functioning well, except he had lost the ability to speak.
On questioning, his adult daughter eagerly told me he could still sing in church!
This evening, Saturday, June 21, 2025, at 9 pm edt, My focus has changed. I just read online that Donald Trump, the US Presdient, has authorized attacks on Iran. He apparently believes Iran has or is developing nuclear weapons.
This is deeply flawed reasoning, according to me. The Disunited States of America is actively involved in wars all over the world, none a direct threat to our so-calld “National Security”. The US Congress has not asked for a declaration of war. Trump has not asked anyone’s permission to make war on another sovereign nation, yet his unnamed conspirators have decided to act in the nation’s name.
What part of this is legal, ethical, moral, or justified?
No wonder the Parliament of Pakistan is considering a bill to constrain Black Magic.
It looks like some force has cast a spell on the US Prez. I hope Pope Leo can exorcise all our demons.
Sunday, June 15, 2025. 7 pm edt. Thunder and more rain. Dusk.
This soggy weather gets me down.
Sunday, June 15. 12:30 am edt. 73 degrees F. Dark. Still. Crickets being crickets.
Today is Fathers’ Day. I think of the US of A’s “Founding Fathers”, who often had absent or surrogate fathers of their own. George Washington, the “Father of Our Country” was raised by his mother, Mary, after his father, Augustine, died when George was 11 years old.
Thomas Jefferson lost his father at 14. And Benjamin Franklin, the youngest of 13 children, was apprenticed to his brother in Boston from Philadelphia, where he learned the printing trade before escaping to Philadelphia to avoid beatings from his brother/boss.
Saturday, 14th, 2025. 10 pm edt. Dark. 73 degrees F. Muggy, but not raining outside.
Saturday, June 14, 2025. 7 pm edt. A heavy thunderstorm rained itself to rest when I was between houses an hour ago. Paths are still flooded. I made it, dampened but victorious, across the 100 foot span back to my comfortable nook out of the rain.
“Make haste slowly”, says Seth, my cosmic advisor. And so I did, stepping around the rivulets and wet grass that soaked my Goodwill shoes.
Saturday, June 14, 2025. 5 pm, edt. Sunny, reflecting off white cloud layer above the eastern horizon.
The temp has dropped to 80 degrees since the thunder shower earlier this afternoon.
I feel sorry for Donnie, on his birthday. Banners and peaceful protests are sweeping the country. In Trump’s own home turf, New York, the democracy advocated by ancient Greece is playing out in real TV time.
Meanwhile, another channel of Humanity’s democratic arm is saying King Donnie is backpedaling on his tariff stand, because CEOs from WalMart and Home Depot are begging the chastened autocrat to back off.
Maybe this is how democracy is supposed to work.
Saturday, June 14, 2025. 11 am edt. 84 degrees F. Mostly sunny.
Donald Trump’s birthday is June 14. He is older than I am, but not by much, a mere six years.
Lately, I divide humanity into two groups: Those older and those younger than I am. I admire the long-lived, those who have drawn more breaths. The Younger Set will learn, maybe. I do know they will never be as old as I will be, so there’s hope for our collective future.
In the World At Large, current news reports are fraught with tension.
The US of A is reaping its fruits, but what does that mean? Founded on noble ideals and promises of freedom, it attracted people from all over the world.
Some people have found opportunity; others have made opportunities for themselves and others, but this country has never had a cohesive identity. Events lately make me think of Julius Caesar, whose armies made names for him and for the Roman Empire. Ernle Bradford says the Roman Republic expanded north, east west and south during and after Caesar’s time, largely because Caesar made a career of conquest, trained and rewarded his soldiers well, and set up foreign outposts to maintain order and to collect taxes for Rome.
I’m no expert in Roman history, but current trends remind me of Rome’s authoritarian approach to its provinces.
Caesar spent little time in Rome. He aligned himself with rich Crassus and with his general, Pompey, to form a “Triumvirate” that sidelined the Republic.
But the first Triumvirate descended into a bitter struggle after Crassus was killed in Mesopotamia in 53 BC. The rivalry between Caesar and Pompey induced Caesar to follow Pompei’s troops to Egypt, where Pompey was assassinated.
Julius Caesar became Top Dog, eventually Dictator for Life in 44 BC, then gave up that life two months later, when a few Roman senators decided the dictator had lived long enough.
Friday June 13, 2025 Evening. 84 degrees F.
The skies are hazy with humidity, the sun is setting. Weather like this drains me.
Julius Caesar lived to age 56, according to posthumous calculations, but birth records are scarce or nonexistent. Who would remember or care?
His death is marked clearly in Roman and Western history. The Ides (15th) of March was the date members of the Roman Senate attacked him with knives and assassinated him, in a conspiacy to shorten the life of the “Dictator for Life” they had elected only two months before.
So much for the Now. AI can’t keep up with the change in my fingernail status. Clipped fingernails reduce Tappos on this TechnoGadget, sort of.
Tuesday morning. 9 am edt. Cloudy. Humid. Rain expected now.
Monday afternoon. June 9, 2025. 90 F.
At almost 6 pm edt in the Now, and Over Here, I’m sitting in the dark. My most recent problem is linked to a violent thunderstorm an hour ago that knocked our power out. GA Power has already texted to say it will be restored after 7 pm.
At 8 pm edt I’m still in the dark. The US Prez and California’s governor are one-upping each other in the media. Trump has called in the Marines. News is buzzing that this may be a constitutional crisis, not unlike the fatal martyrdom of Rodney King in the Watts LA riots in 1992.
Meanwhile, I’m learning this latest hooha has been escalating since Friday and shows no signs of abating.
Over There in Los Angeles, California Powers That Be in the sullied halls of the multiple levels of the US government are raising the ante. Nowhere has Reason entered the game
“Dictator” Donald Trump is adding he National Guard to fight protestors against the federal government agency known as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) who support the people crossing over the Mexican border to California. Governor of California Gavin Newsome resents this federal overreach.
Do I care? No. I simply observe from my position on the opposite coast at almost the same latitude as San Diego, south of LA.
At least the temp here has dropped ten degrees, and the rain has stopped.
At almost 7 pm, power still out, I checked in to ongoing US news. Trumpty Dumpty is dominating the media, but flags behind him are flying the Mexican standard.
He’s saying Gavin Newsome is incompetent. He’s not saying that ICE was created out of a knee-jerk Baby Bush reaction to 9/11 in the early 2000s.
“Never let a crisis go to waste” says a savvy friend. Governments around the world have maximized this opportunity to profit from crises like this.
But to the title of this blog:
Gaius Julius Caesar became dictator for life early in 44 BC, guaranteeing his life would be short.
Monday, June 9, 2025. 10 am edt. Overcast. 81 degrees F. Still.
Caesar died in 44 BC, he reset the compass of time.
I’m referring to his Julian calendar.
Ernle Bradford’s biography about Caesar, “The Pursuit of Power”, published in 1983, cannot describe what Roman life was like 2500 years ago, but he tried, before the author died, too, in 1986.
Most significant, but not included in the book, was the Julian calendar, which remained in effect until Pope Gregory XIII updated it in 1582. This was in reaction to the shift of calendar dates forward over time. Easter came too late, according to the Papal Bull at the time. It no longer fit closely enough to the spring equinox.
Britain and the British empire resisted following the Vatican’s lead until 1752. Even then, Protestants resisted the “popery” that prompted the changed schedule. By then, King Henry VIII had broken from Rome and had declared himself the high authority in matters religious. The Popes had insulted him by refusing annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who had only borne him a daughter, Mary, not the son he desired.
Sunday, June 7, 2025. 10 am edt
“Let the dice fly high.” Julius Caesar said.
Today: Gunners blasting. Fans all on. Humid, with thundershowers predicted later. Temp rising fast. Sun backlighting low white clouds.
Who can predict the weather?
June 7, 2025. Evening
Sun is setting, but days are still getting longer. It reached a high of over 90 degrees this afternoon but skies are clearing now, and temps are dropping as the sun sets.
Noon, Saturday, June 7, 2025. 90 degrees
Saturday, June 7, 2025. 9 am edt.
Gunners are blasting already this am. Lollipop the cat has come and gone. He ate a good breakfast.
Air is still. Humidity high. East sun is back lighting the white clouds piled on the morning horizon.
Temp is over 80 degrees F and due to rise 10 degrees by late afternoon, with thunder showers predicted around 5 pm.
My fixation on reporting measurable phenomena stems from a desire to convey observations in the changing Now.
News in the Now through AI technology is filtered through a number of screens limited by technology and human preferences.
Thoughts this morning lead to Virginia Woolf. A Room of One’s Own must have seemed a luxury to a Victorian era woman in Britain. Woolf was married but childless, and she wanted to write. Maybe she had domestic help so could live unencumbered by the duties of cooking and cleaning. She wrote groundbreaking novels like The Waves.
Friday, June 6, 2025. 8 pm edt.
The sun is still lighting the southeastern sky. Marsh is glowing, as the sun sets behind me. Air is still and humid. Temp has gone down to 84 degrees F and due to decrease more at sunset.
Today’s news reminds me the world turns in spite of humanity’s upheavals.
Friday, June 6, 2025. Mid-afternoon.
Clouds are parting. Temp is almost 90 degrees Fahrenheit. All fans are on, the door open. Gunners blasting at the Gun Club, a staple in my life.
Thursday, June 5, 2025, 4 pm edt.
Cloudy. 79 degrees, F. Predictions of more rain later today.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025. 4 pm, edt.
Raining again. The deer like it, but cats remain hidden.
Politics and catastrophes, dominate the on line news.
Did you know Julius Caesar was crowned “dictator for life” with a crown of oak leaves two months before his life was ended by Roman senators on March 15, 44 BC?
His famous last words, “Et tu, Brute?” reveal how Caesar’s honorarium was a death sentence, in the eyes of those who feared his power.
Caesar’s death precipitated the expansion and end of the Roman Empire. Although lands far afield remained under Roman control, internal factions vied among themselves for dominance.
Sunday, June 1, 2025. 11 am, edt. 73 degrees F.
“Isn’t enforcing freedom an oxymoron?” asked Timothy McVeigh before his death by lethal injection in Terre Haute, Indiana on June 11, 2001.
Something prompted me to look into Julius Caesar last week.
He was crowned with a ring of oak leaves, maybe in January. It is believed he was born in 100 BC, so would have died at 56 years old, on the “Ides of March”, March 15.
Recorded history becomes fuzzy here. We must rely on written or cuneiform scripts, old language, or archaelogical evidence to uncover evidence of human tracings through time.
We do know that the Roman Empire was built on conquest, that it was heavily influenced by Greek and Macedonian culture north and east of Italy. Caesar also made it to Africa, where he rescued Cleopatra VII from posible assassination by her younger half-brother.
But Gaius Julius Caesar was only about 16 years old when his father died in Pisa, so Julius became the “man of the family”.
He spent the rest of his life conquering territory for the Roman Empire. A supposed ancestor Gaius defeated the Phoenicians in ancient Carthage, across the Mediterranean Sea from Rome.
Alexander the Great had preceded him. Alexander was son of King Phillip II of Macedon, who brought Aristotle to tutor his young son. Aristotle was a Greek in the Hellenistic tradition, who was taught by Plato, who was a student of Socrates and witnessed Socrates’ death by order of the “democracy” of Athens in 300 BC. Later, Plato would denounce the “democracy” that “killed Socrates”.
A biograper, Ernle Bradford, wrote in 1983 that Caesar spent most of his life conquering foreign territories for Rome. Caesar himself, an educated aristocrat of the Optimates, or noble families, wrote of his own exploits in Gaul, north of Italy.
The three major Abrahamaic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – follow from events that occurred around the time of Christ’s birth. The Roman Empire was an outgrowth of Greek and Macedonian influences, and incorporated the myths, folklore, and oral traditions of their past.
The “Old Testament” in the King James Version of the Christian Bible records the “begats” of Jewish lineage. These stories were incorporated in the Bible by King James I of Britain (who was also James VI of Scotland) after being invited to England to assume the monarchy after reigns by three of Henry VIII’s offspring: 1) Edward VI, who was only 9 years old in 1547 when he ascended the throne. He died, maybe of malaria, in 1553.
2) Mary, daughter of Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon;
3) Elizabeth I, daughter of Anne Boelyn.
“All the world’s a stage,” said William Shakespeare, the great Bard who lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth I of the United Kingdom. The play goes on . . .
Sun burning through clouds. Birds awake. Temp 76 degrees F and rising.
The human world is busy tattling on itself. Trump. More Trump. Last night I got caught up in Jeffrey Sach’s memories of JFK’s speeches early in his presidency. He proclaimed the Soviets were people too, and wanted their children to have the chance to know peace.
This came shortly after Kennedy assumed the presidency. He was confronted by war hawks in his cabinet and administration and elsewhere, supposedly on the US side in world affairs.
What has changed now, except the names and dates?
Monday, June 2, 2025. 11 am edt.
Clouds are clearing. Birds happy.
I spent last evening researching the Salem witch trials, in 1692 and 1693, in Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Why? A little bird told me today’s Current Events sound like the witch hunts of yesteryear.
Witch hunt – Deadliest in Colonial North America
In old Salem Town, word spread of “spectral evidence” of witchcraft, mostly by accusers who claimed to have been under spells that made them behave in ways unbecoming to Puritan values. Over 200 people were accused. Nineteen people – 14 women and 5 men – were executed by hanging. One man, Giles Corey, died under torture after refusing to enter a plea.
An indentured woman named Tituba, from Barbados in the Caribbean, worked for a minister in Salem Village named Samuel Parris. She confessed to witchcraft and was held prisoner for over a year but never tried. A grand jury dismissed her case in May, 1693. No one knows what happened to her.
In today’s version of witch hunts, Spectral Evidence abounds, but we don’t know what we are fighting.
I read online of enhanced solar activity that could affect electronics on earth. Earthly MuckyMuckers are stirring up Earthly waves, too, with Russia and Ukraine especially hot in the news. Israel is taking a low profile, ever since King Donnie snubbed PM Netanyahu and decided he is now mad at the Republic of South Africa for mistreating Afrikaners.
Sunday Afternoon, May 18, 2025, 5 pm edt: The gardenias are still blooming in the shade. The magnolias are blooming, too, but too high for deer to reach. Both have sweet fragrances but turn brown when touched by grubby human hands. The temperature this afternoon has begun to drop from a high of 88 degrees. The sun now comes from the southwest. No breeze.
Sunday, May 18, 2025, at 9:30 am edt: Sunny morning. Birds twittering outside. About 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Today’s name probably seems obvious to most English-speaking people. Sunday is named for the sun. Tomorrow, Monday, honors our moon. Together, these provide the earth’s two major “lights” in the sky.
Tuesday’s name has more mixed roots. Representative of the god of war in multiple cultures and languages, the day following Sunday and Moon-day, Tuesday, is named for the gods of war, named “Tiw” in Anglo-Saxon tradition, and “Tyr” in Norse mythology. The Romans associated Tuesday with the planet Mars, the “red planet”. The Latin name for Tuesday was “dies Martis”.
At noon, the skies clouded over, and a few raindrops fell. I’ve been busy researching some Norse and Celtic mythology. The Norse were mostly Scandanavian and Icelandic, warlike and seafaring people with male and female gods, like Odin (Woden), Thor, and Freya, which lend their names to our days Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
The Celts followed Druid, earth-based practices, bonded to the land, the fertility of the earth and agriculture. Both groups belonged to the Indo-European language family. The Celts spread east and south throughout Europe and Western Asia.
Friday, May 16, 2025, Midday: I started this blog over a week ago. The human world is still in chaos, with the US empire fighting wars within and without, but birds are chirping in the Now, outside my door.
Midday Saturday, May 10, 2025: Update:
The world continues to spin on its axis.
The US of A is making waves again, with New York provincialism waving its dirty laundry for all to see and judge.
Ho hum. Amtrak is having delays between Baltimore and Washington DC, because of local issues. At which end? Not that I care, because I’m not stuck on an Amtrak train in the Now.
Copenhagen’s PM is insulted that the WSJ is reporting the US is spying on Greenland. Another problem that is Not Mine.
India and Pakistan are provoking each other with drones and other TechnoGadgets, supposedly made in China.
I consult my fold-out world atlas to refamiliarize myself with the national boundaries created when the Brits split Pakistan from India in the 1940s. Yawn. A MuckyMuck fight, again.
It is still cloudy and damp here where I sit, tapping away on this TechnoGadget. A single bird is tweeting repetitively outside the open door. I’m about to move. Restlessness stirs me. Refrigerator starts itself. Otherwise quiet.
Midday, Saturday, May 10, 2025 on the southeast coast of the US of A. These are my gardenias happily grown tall and well nourished in the shade behind the Big House Over There, downhill from the old asphalt street that has changed addresses multiple times over the 70 plus years of my life. I have come and gone numerous times, too. Gone and come, rather, because my parents brought me here from the local hospital, back before managed care, local MuckyMucks, and the state and US federal MuckyMucks mucked all names up, from here to eternity and back.
Last Friday, I read online that a town named Valhalla in the state of New York is proud to strut its citizenry’s cell phones and protests against NY attorney general Letitia James for her role in defending lawsuits in NYC.
Where does the name Valhalla come from, one might reasonably ask. Well LilOleMe has found my book on Scandanavian mythology gifted to my father at Christmas, 1970 , from my uncle Billy, who was named for Olaf North Otto, after their father. Olaf came from Norway in the late 1800s.
I have never visited Valhalla, NY, except via on-line media coverage. My book describes Valhalla as a mythological Viking hall, overseen by “Odin”, or Woden, whose name gives us our Wednesday. Valhalla had many rooms.
Since last week, I have refamiliarized myself with the traditional, mythological name of Valhalla. It comes from the Viking feasting or merriment-making eternity of the “good guys” who distinguished themselves in battle. Some were rewarded by fighting all day, then springing back to life the next morning, so they could fight again. Thursday is named for Thor, the thundering god of lightning,
Where were the women? Here history and mythology blend in Friday, named after Freyja, a prominent goddess in Norse mythology. She was associated with love, beauty, fertility, war, and magic.
Finally, Saturday is named for Saturn, sixth easily visible planet from the sun.
Astronomically, Saturn defines the outer limit of the visible solar system. Symbolically and astrologically, Saturn represents limitation, the need for patience, persistence, and time. The Greek name for Saturn was “Kronos”, or Cronos. Saturn has almost a 30-year orbit around the sun. Its cycle, divided into seven-year periods (from an earth perspective), is associated with significant phases in the human maturation process.
And now, 7 pm edt on Sunday, I will sign off before it rains again tonight. A bird is chirping his evening lullaby. The sun is setting. The eastern sky has a yellowish glow in front of the sheet of white clouds. The gardenias are still blooming.
What stinks? Something vague and hard to identify?
Today, Wednesday, May 7, 2025, in the AM edt, in the US of A, birds are greeting the rising sun. Lollipop has come and gone. I moved my hand in time to avoid a swipe from that cat’s affectionate gesture at daylight almost 2 hours ago.
Today’s news perpetuates the skunkiness of humanity’s internecine struggles. I find online that India is now fighting Pakistan, and, US VP JD Vance is lambasting Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for her affiliations with people the Trump administration doesn’t like.
As the day brightens, I searched for my book Infidel, by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a woman raised in Somalia and subjected to old rules by her grandmother, when her parents were not at home.
And, as the day moves forward, I learn that a low-level MuckyMuck in the CIA tells us the Bitcoin is here to stay. So this will be a short blog today. I have errands to run, before the world crashes around me.
On Sunday, May 4, 2025. Mid morning. Clouds parting, and sun shining through. 74 degrees, F.
Spring is springing, but the outer reaches of humanity are still in chaos.
Humanity is always in chaos, but now Artificial Intelligence can spread humanity’s chaos emotionally and graphically throughout the world.
The US military is thrilled to have this access to drones and remotely controlled gadflies to spy on people remotely and sting those it doesn’t approve of. Our designated boss at the Pentagon, built on land confiscated from Southern Gentleman-Rebel Robert E. Lee after he dared fight Yankee Aggression in the 1860s, is now pronouncing Fort Benning in Columbus, GA, will begin this new military Operation Conquer the World at Ft. Benning in Columbus, Georgia.
Pete Hegseth, King Commander-in-Chief Donnie’s latest pick to run the US military operation, now billed as the Department of Defense, has pontificated from on high that military drones will soon be available to swarm their little selves around my homestead whenever the conglomerated Military wants.
And this Taurus-blessed weekend moves on, now winding down from Friday night, here in the swamps of southeast GA, US of A.
Taurus is fixed earth, representing stability, durability, and determined strength. Venus-ruled, it is basically lazy. It needs reasons to move.
During May in the Northern Hemisphere, the earth is vibrant, renewed, and singing spring.
Friday, May 2, 2025. Almost 11 am edt. Cloudy. A bird chirps ouside my open screen door. I smell pollen. Temp mid 70s.
The sun is still in Taurus, that fixed earth symbol marking the greening up of spring.
The sun “entered” the sign of Taurus on Sunday, April 20, 2025, according to my ephemeris, the book of astrological tables that shows planetary signs and positions for each day of the years between 2001 and 2050.
The bull in the sky is depicted by the stars shown above, from a childhood book printed in 1956.
The bull’s head and horns are the most prominent features. The double star Aldebaran is Taurus’ brightest star, at the level of the bull’s right eye. In Greek and Roman mythology, Zeus (Jupiter), ruler of Mt. Olympus, converted himself into a white bull to seduce Europa.
Today, Thursday, May 1, 2025
The symbolic signiicance of Taurus goes far deeper. How were the constellations named? Who chose the stars that formed various patterns in the sky?
This morning, at almost 11 am, edt , the sun has risen to obscure its night-side stars, so I can’t see the bull above, but I see its earthly effects. Birds are singing, and grass is greening. Sunlight is glowing, and clouds dissipating, at about 75 degrees F.
Taurus reminds us to pay attention to birdsong, smells, and sensuous delights of the earth’s rejuvenation.
katharineotto 