Cat Stevens
Dayle in Limoux – Day #83
September 26, 2022“You only dance on this earth for a short while…”
-Cat
♡
Pour les bonnes femmes et les bons hommes. Les Cathares.
Cat.
May 31, 2022‘Peace be on them. Peace be on you.’
ღ
For the little ones of Uvalde, Sarajevo, Dunblane and every place where innocent souls have been taken!#Uvalde #UvaldeMassacre #TexasSchoolMassacre #Children #innocent #Peace pic.twitter.com/71uLEQZUKB
— Yusuf / Cat Stevens (@YusufCatStevens) May 26, 2022
‘Go in peace.’ -Abraham Lincoln
‘How peaceful do you feel right now? Our nerves, our home and our country crave peace.’ -A. Stoddard
‘What kind of courage is required of us? ~ This is, in the end, the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to meet the strangest, most awesome, and most inexplicable of phenomena.’ -Rilke, 1904
And act.
💯%
The Atlantic
[Posted today, May 31, 2022]
‘Our writer argues that students should not return to school in the fall until Congress passes new gun-control laws.’
#BoycottSchools
#GunReformNow
#AssaultWeaponsBan
by Gal Beckerman
‘The argument that we’ve been here before, that the gun lobby has a generation of politicians in its pocket, that our political system, and particularly the structure of the Senate, will always give outsize influence to Second Amendment absolutists—all of it is true. And yet, as awful as it is to say, we’re learning with every killing. We’re moving closer to the kind of movement that might actually make a difference.
Today, I’m left with one conclusion: The children and parents of our country need to take the summer to organize locally, build a set of national demands, and then refuse to go back to school in the fall until Congress does something.
Let me explain. Social movements need two elements to be successful: narrative and tactics. Borrowing from the political scientist Joseph Nye, we might think of these as soft power and hard power, respectively. Activists need to tell a compelling story that brings people along to a new way of thinking and emboldens them to act. But that isn’t enough. There is also the hard work of mustering actual political power to elect different representatives, change laws, and leverage lobbying.
When it comes to narrative, those whose lives are most at risk in mass shootings make for the best storytellers. This has been a strangely hard-won realization. Dave Cullen, who covered the Columbine shooting in 1999 and later wrote a book about it, has said that in the days and even weeks after the attack, none of the survivors wanted to talk about gun control. Though a common right-wing talking point is that speaking about new regulations immediately after a shooting is “politicizing” the tragedy, few people pay this much heed anymore. “Everybody keeps telling us that it’s not the time to be political,” Kimberly Rubio toldThe New York Times, two days after her daughter was killed in Uvalde, Texas. “But it is. It is.”
Full piece:
Dad.
June 20, 2021
Robert Dale Ohlau
‘Bobby D’
1937-2017
“It’s a beautiful day. It’s always a beautiful day.”
“How do you eat the elephant? One bite at a time.”
“That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”
I miss you, dad.
♡
We love you.
Cat. For ‘D’.
Our beautiful diversity. 🌙
April 13, 2021A celebration from Cat.
Ramadan is a time of spiritual reflection, self-improvement, and heightened devotion and worship. Muslims are expected to put more effort into following the teachings of Islam. The fast (sawm) begins at dawn and ends at sunset. Ramadan commemorates the time when the prophet Mohammad revealed the religion’s holy text—the Quran—1,400 years ago.
✿✿✿✿✿✿✿
Animated version of Yusuf Islam’s [Cat Stevens] ‘Ramadan Moon’ song.
This day.
February 8, 2021
“I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life.
-Sylvia Plath
In between the now and not yet. – Rev. Masando Hiraoka
The theological virtue of hope is the patient and trustful willingness to live without closure. – Fr Richard Rohr
Prayer enables us to tap into the healing power of the universe. -Rolph Gates
I listen to the wind, the wind of my soul. -Cat Stevens
ℒℴve❥❥☆҉ this book.
To all the health care workers. And the care workers. Thank you.
The middle.
Bruce.
https://www.ign.com/videos/jeep-super-bowl-55-commercial-the-middle-ft-bruce-springsteen
Yeah. Even the middle is polarizing for America now. Still. We loved it.
“The middle has been a hard place to get through lately. Between red and blue; between servant and citizen; between our freedom and our fear.”
“Our light has always found its way through the darkness, and there’s hope on the road ahead”
Cat.
February 20, 2020
‘Grief is heavy with sadness and tears
Great is the noise from the earth and the seas
O love! O love! Be with us always.’ -Yusuf Islam
Cat.
June 27, 2019“Unless good people stand up to be heard then fear and cruelty will always dominate the world. So it’s time for those people to stand up and lift their heads.”
It was Cat. Not Rod. ❀
May 10, 2019Rolling Stone
Massive Woodstock Box Set Planned for August
Massive 38-disc box includes nearly every note of music played during the festival’s three days in 1969 – but assembling old tapes and having musicians sign off 50 years later was a daunting task.
Yeah, but. It’s $799. Although, there’s a guitar strap.
“The box — which will also include a Blu-ray of Michael Wadleigh’s Woodstock movie, a guitar strap and a replica of the original program, among other items — will cost $799. More condensed versions — a 10-disc set and a 3-disc one — will also be available. In the mega-box, the 38th disc includes various audio flotsam. The “Groesbeek Reel,” named after festival sound recordist Charles Groesbeek, includes comments from random attendees taped by Grosbeak–like, Zax laughs, “this one guy moaning about what a disappointing experience it was and that it was a sell-out. It’s a great slice of real people in the moment reacting to it, which pleases me immensely.”
“Complete performances of the Who, Joe Cocker, Sly and the Family Stone, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and others, along with acts who weren’t in the movie or the original Woodstock album, like the Band, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Janis Joplin will be available for the first time. The tracks are also arranged chronologically, by day and set times, from Richie Havens’ opening set that August Friday in 1969 to Jimi Hendrix’s festival-closing set on Monday morning. To ease the overwhelming listening experience, each act is accorded its own disc.”
“There have been large boxed sets devoted to particular eras or tours — the Grateful Dead do a great job of that sort of thing — but there’s never, to my knowledge, been an attempt to present a large-scale durational experience of this sort,” says Andy Zax, the Los Angeles producer and archivist who co-produced the set with Steve Woolard. “The Woodstock tapes give us a singular opportunity for a kind of sonic time travel, and my intention is to transport people back to 1969. There aren’t many other concerts you could make this argument about.”
Back to an Even Bigger Garden: Massive Woodstock Box Set Planned for August
Cat.
January 7, 2019
Cat.
May 6, 2018‘A year had passed and everything was just as it was a year before
As if was a year before
Until the gift that someone left, a basket by my door
And in there lay the fairest little baby crying to be fed
I got down on my knees and kissed the moon and star
on his head
☾ ☆
As years went by the boy grew high and the village looked on in awe
They’d never seen anything like the boy with the moon and star before
And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the word he spread
I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned
And love is all, he said.’
Cat.
September 11, 2017‘Poverty eradication is definitely a way to peace.’
Yusef Islam
‘One of the most influential singer-songwriters of all time releases his
latest studio album, The Laughing Apple. The Laughing Apple features original songs and covers, though the covers on this album are Yusufs own. He celebrates some of his earliest material, with new presentations of the songs. Conceptually, The Laughing Apple returns to the journey of the Tillerman, as he recalls his travels and life lessons to a younger generation. The album’s cover features Yusufs own illustration, the first time he has designed one of his covers since 1972. Yusuf has drawn additional works of art for each of the 11 songs on The Laughing Apple.’
“Slowly let me tell you a story of a tree
An apple tree,
Once in a summertime garden lived a little apple tree
And the man who owned it wanted it to be picked
So he sent forth to hire me
Well, I’ve traveled the mountains, and I’ve traveled the sea
But a never in my traveling days
Have I ever seen a little apple smile at me!
Laugh, oh laugh a little apple
Autumn is waitin’, you’d better be careful,
For it will bring you down
If it ever sees you wearing a frown
So laugh, laugh a little apple
Well all the apples were hidin’
Frightened that they might be plucked
And everytime that somebody passed
All except that one little apple ducked
Well, I’ve traveled the mountains, and I’ve traveled the sea
But a never in my traveling days
Have I ever seen a little apple smile at me!
Laugh, oh laugh a little apple
Autumn is waitin’, you’d better be careful,
For it will bring you down
If it ever sees you wearing a frown
So laugh, laugh a little apple”
Cat.
March 23, 2017
‘They’d never seen anything like the boy with the moon and star before.
And people would ride from far and wide just to seek the word he spread
I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned, and
Love
is all, he said.’
[The Boy With a Moon & Star On His Head]
☾ ☆
Yusuf Islam
♫
July 26, 2016
Cat.
April 18, 2016
‘Humankind branching into beautiful races, languages & colours is a blessing & should encourage respect of each other.’
-Ysuf/Cat Stevens
