2020
2030
January 2, 2021Betting on the future.
From Seth Godin:
“I just installed new smoke detectors in the house (definitely worth the hassle and low expense) and the batteries now last ten years.
There’s a little spot on the side of the detector to write the year you installed it.
I’m wondering what the person (maybe me) who changes the batteries a decade from now will think when they see “2020” written on the side.
Whatever happens over the next ten years, if history is any guide at all, the year we just finished will be mostly a faded memory.
What will matter more than what just happened is what we decide to do with where we are, daily, persistently, generously, for the next 3,650 days.
Here’s to possibility, to justice, and to betting on the future.”
Time.
October 22, 2020
For the first time, the TIME logo on the magazine’s cover has been replaced with another word: VOTE.
This election we decide if we want to keep the America we believe in and hope for, or the America we have become. Choose wisely. Be the bridge.
‘Star stuff harvesting sunlight.’
October 3, 2020As our collective hearts continue to break in 2020 for so many reasons of sorrow, remembering, look up.
The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars. -Carl Sagan
Each dot is a star in our neighboring galaxy. 500 million stars at the heart of the Andromeda Galaxy.
Cosmic Community
The truth is doing us good.
The truth of the sunshine.
The truth of the rain.
The truth of the fresh air.
The truth of the wind in the trees.
These truths are always acceptable.
-Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of Action
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
Julius Ceasar, Act I, Scene III
60 years ago.
August 21, 2020
Eleanor Roosevelt
DNC in the summer of 1960.
From her book The Moral Basis of Democracy [1940/2016]:
“Therefore, as their elders leave the stage, it remains for youth to find a way to face the domestic situation, to meet the conditions which confront their country in its relationship with the other countries of the world” (p. 43).
The democratic theory of government and of life in a democracy opposes one-man rule, and holds to the belief that the individual controls his government through active participation in the process of political democratic government, but bows to the ill of the majority, free expressed” (italics mine) (p.7).
Hillary Clinton won the election by 2,864,974 votes. A handful of Electoral College members voted against the popular vote to put a man, wholly unqualified, into the presidency.
“…it remains for youth to find a way to face” this assault on the majoritive. If you register and VOTE, you will give the democratic process back to the American people.
Please. Vote. And find five friends to register. We need you. This country needs you.
NOVEMBER 3, 2020
no más.
April 19, 2020He lied.
He lies.
He’ll lie again.
And again.
And again.
This is the most devastating political ad I’ve seen in years. It reveals the truth about Trump and China, and that truth is ugly. pic.twitter.com/52cNf9Ay9u
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) April 18, 2020
#TrumpGenocide
V
O
T
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November 3, 2020
#ConsiderElizabeth
February 17, 2020“I was proud to fight beside Senator Reid and Barack Obama and to protect consumers—and I’ll keep fighting to protect consumers as president of the United States. Watch our new ad airing in Nevada now.”
[Follow the link to view :30 ad running in Nevada.]
#ConsiderAmy
February 15, 2020?
Nevertheless, she persisted.
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Happy Birthday Susan B. Anthony!
Today marks what would have been her 200th birthday.
The year 2020 marks the centennial anniversary for women’s suffrage, when the 19th amendment took effect giving some women the right to vote in U.S. elections. And on Saturday, one of the movement’s key figures, Susan B. Anthony, would have turned 200. In honor of the famed activist and the women’s suffrage movement, a unique event is kicking off this weekend in New York. Karla Murthy reports.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/cultural-institutions-celebrate-womens-suffrage-centennial
The Washington Post
For Klobuchar and Warren, the 2020 primary is an endurance race
Now, almost exactly three years later, the phrase seems to be a campaign strategy for Warren and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), the two top-tier women in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.
On Tuesday night, at the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, Klobuchar surged ahead, finishing third with 19.3 percent of the vote, with more than 91 percent of precincts reporting Wednesday morning.
Bounding onto the stage in Concord, N.H., on Tuesday night, joined by her husband, John, and daughter, Abigail, Klobuchar beamed as she addressed the crowd: “Tonight is about grit. And my story, like so many of yours, is one of resilience.”
Warren, whose mantra is “Outwork, Out-Organize, Outlast,” is taking a similar approach. While she finished third in the Iowa caucuses and fourth in New Hampshire, hours before the polls closed Tuesday, she rolled out her endurance strategy in a memo to supporters.
Klobuchar and Warren have both said they are running campaigns of durability, an approach that may favor female candidates who tend to be judged on performance rather than potential, said Democratic strategist Jen Palmieri.
[full read]
Also, happy birthday today to abolitionist, suffragist and friend to Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglas, marking what would have been his 202nd birthday.
“I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.”
In 1848, Douglass was the only African American to attend the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women’s rights convention, in upstate New York. Elizabeth Cady Stanton asked the assembly to pass a resolution asking for women’s suffrage. Many of those present opposed the idea, including influential Quakers James and Lucretia Mott. Douglass stood and spoke eloquently in favor; he said that he could not accept the right to vote as a black man if women could not also claim that right. He suggested that the world would be a better place if women were involved in the political sphere. [theodysseyonline.com]
#ConsiderAmy
February 8, 2020“I know you. I will fight for you.”
Meet Amy Klobuchar
Senator Amy Klobuchar is the granddaughter of an iron ore miner, the daughter of a newspaperman and a union teacher, the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Minnesota and candidate for President of the United States. Amy is running to bring people together, take on the major issues facing our country and to get things done. From leading the fight to win a 48-hour hospital stay for new moms and their babies to passing landmark legislation to end human trafficking, combat the opioid epidemic, protect consumer rights and strengthen our election security, Amy has the track record needed to build a better future for our country. That’s how she’s passed more than 100 bills into law as lead Democrat and was named the most effective Democratic Senator.
America needs a candidate who can beat Donald Trump and get our country back on the path to progress with an ambitious, optimistic economic agenda. Amy has won every race, in every place, everywhere, every time — including places President Trump won by more than 20 points. And that’s why she released a plan outlining the concrete steps she will take in her first 100 days as president to improve health care, combat climate change, pursue economic justice and shared prosperity, and build a stronger democracy and safer world.
As president, Amy will look people in the eye, tell them the truth and govern with integrity. If you think it’s time America had a president who does the same, join Amy to stand up to Donald Trump and say that people matter.
https://amyklobuchar.com
https://t.co/yFENnucUIX
David & Seth
January 2, 2020
Seth Godin:
A Box of Infinity
It’s hard to look right at it.
The possibility that lies before us, the chance to connect, to lead, to be heard–it’s bigger than it’s ever been.
Tempting indeed to avert your eyes, because staring into infinity means embracing just how small we feel. We avert our eyes because to realize how much potential we have to contribute puts us on the hook.
But whether we ignore it or not, the infinity of possibility remains.
Dance with it.
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
David Whyte:
Hiding
It’s a way of staying alive. Hiding is a way of holding ourselves until we are ready to come into the light. Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost eery part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the head but of a future summer rose, the snowbound internal pulse of the hibernating bear. Hiding is underestimated. We are hidden by life in our mother’s womb until we grown and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world; to appear too early in that world is to find ourselves with the immediate necessity for outside intensive care.
Hiding done properly is the internal faithful promise for a proper future emergence, as embryos, as children or even as emerging adults in retreat from the names that have caught us and imprisoned us, often ways where we have been too easily seen and too easily named.
We live in a time of the dissected soul, the immediate disclosure; our thoughts, imaginings and longings exposed to the light too much, too early and too often, our best qualities squeezed to soon into a world already awash with ideas that oppress our sense of self and our sense of others.
What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening. What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.
Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others, especially in the enclosing world of oppressive secret government and private entities, attempting to name us, to anticipate us, to leave us with no place to hide and grow in ways unmanaged by creeping necessity for absolute naming, absolute tracking and absolute control.
Hiding is a bid for independence, from others from mistaken ideas we have about ourselves form an oppressive mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed. Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control. Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself. Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.
2020
January 1, 2020Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.
-Rilke
Whatever today brings, try to make the most of it, making it the best day you can. I hope you will fill the day with many magical moments and grace notes and remember that everywhere, all of us are struggling and striving to do the same. In Emerson’s words we are seeking the divinities that are sitting disguised. Grace notes are multifaceted, rich. They are as scattered as shooting stars, as diverse as the sea and the sky. Some are wise and wonderful; some are intentionally vague and mysterious. Whether they are instructional, specific, questioning, inspiring or just plain fun, pay attention to them and how you react to them each day.
-Alexandra Stoddard
‘In dangerous times like these we have to produce generations of dedicated, courageous, and creative contemplative activists who will join [the conscious collective] to bring radical healing and change to this damaged world, before it’s too late.’
-Fr. Richard Rohr
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
“Whatsoever things are true,
Whatsoever things are honest,
Whatsoever things are just,
Whatsoever things are pure,
Whatsoevery things are lovely,
Whatsoever things are of good report:
If there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise,
Think on these things.”
-Philippians 4:8
︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶
Thomas Merton…”literally meditated on paper.”
‘But I do have a past to break with, an accumulation of inertia, waste, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk, a great need of clarification of mindfulness, or rather of no mind…a return to genuine practice, right effort, need to push on to the great doubt. Need for the Spirit. Hang on to the clear light!’
New arts, new sciences, new philosophies, better government, and a high civilization wait on our thoughts.
-Ernest Holmes
♀
In 2020, let us commit to evaporating patriarchy, power, and greed.
‘The influence of the Feminine is responsible for the growth of the Environmental Movement; for the determination of women in every culture to free themselves from their long oppression and encourage their increased participation to healing both psyche and body. It is reflected in the mountain revulsion for our addiction to war; in the engagement of hundreds of thousands of people in the work of helping both the planet and the victims of oppression. These different channel of influence are creating new perspectives on life, new ways of connection that bring together body, soul, mind and spirit. All this is being accelerations by organizations like Avaaz which now has many millions of subscribers.
The recovery of the Feminine invites a reorientation of consciousness: a receptivity not only to the events occurring in the external world but to the long-ignored voice of the Soul. The activation of the Feminine is helping us to relate to the deep cosmic source of our psychic life and draw up the living waters from those depths. This enormous shift challenges every aspect of our beliefs. It immeasurably deepens and broadens our perspective on our presence on this planet. It gives deeper meaning to our lives. It is changing everything.’
-Anne Baring, The dream of the Cosmos a Quest for the Soul
‘The journey in search of soul is difficult and even dangerous because it requires that we relinquish the certainty of what we think we know and what we have been taught for generations to believe. It means surrendering the desire to be in control and opening ourselves to a quest, a path of discovery. Many myths and fairy tales emphasize the need for surrender and trust in the strange non-rational guidance offered by animals or shamans on the quest. As the hero follows their guidance, so the hedge opens, the way unfolds. Following the guidance and wisdom of the instinct is the royal road into the realm of soul.’
-Anne
The Dream of the Cosmos is the story of a multi-layered quest to understand the causes of human suffering and to reconnect with a deeper reality than the one we inhabit in this physical dimension of experience. It seeks to answer the questions: “Who are we?” and “Why are we here, on this planet?” [google books]
♀
December 15, 2019
‘…the idea of democracy.’
December 8, 2019
Photograph by James Marabello / Alamy
By Jill Lepore
The Impeachment Hearings and the Coming Storm
New Yorker
The madness of the moment lies in looking at how this came to pass, at how many people had to give up on the idea of democracy for things to come to this.
Almost always, I bite my tongue. But, yes, he is that bad, and this is unprecedented, and these acts are impeachable, and, if it seems as though people have been clamoring for his impeachment since he took office, that’s only because he has behaved abominably since he took office. Is abomination impeachable? No. But the abuses of office of which the President now stands accused are the very definition of impeachable.
The madness lies in looking, honestly, at how this came to pass, at how many people had to give up on the idea of democracy for things to come to this. The sadness lies in the recognizing of the unlikelihood of anything getting much better anytime soon, what with the slush and the sleet and the coming storm. A farmer walks across a field, bracing against the wind. Hardness is what’s required to get through a political winter: determination, forbearance, sacrifice, not bitterness but a certain sternness.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-impeachment-hearings-and-the-coming-storm