Nine Brazilians and a Corgi

 Twas the day before Christmas. Yes I'm finally writing about that day.

Warm weather, about 70 I'd guess by 3:30 and I just had to go somewhere.

Maybe walk around Lake Tomahawk? But as I drove to the turn off to the lake, 5 other cars took that turn. Nope, I didn't feel like dealing with a busy lake and parking lot. So I stayed straight, going to Black Mountain proper.

It was deserted almost. I noticed the parking was aplenty, and a few tourists were walking along the sidewalks. My friend Sarah Vekasi had her pottery shop open and I parked in front of it. I walked easily across US 70 (State St.) to Kilwins, a chain unfortunately, but it has two things worth my patronage. Ice cream and fudge. I told my patient clerk I was glad she was working today, but I was also sorry she was working today. She confessed to looking forward to 5 pm when she'd go home to a loan soak in a hot bath.

I noticed a whole bunch of people standing near Sarah's shop, but they were focused mainly on themselves.

Once I decided on which ice cream (Butter Pecan) and fudge (dark chocolate walnut) and paid my way, I sat down outside in shirt-sleeves to watch the world go by. And a big bus from the women's prison did go by, with women pounding on the grilled windows and shouting happy Christmas as they drove by. 

Some nice furry friends stopped to say hi.

And then the Brazilians sat down on the remaining spots on benches.

Nine of them. They looked at their phones mostly. I did ask where they were from, it being a southern thing and they were obviously tourists! Brazil! Well, I said, you missed out on getting cold weather this year! 

What was striking about them was not the global phone thing, but their body language. They just sprawled all over the sidewalk area. People walking by had to detour out into the street. Not just one, but everyone! There was a kind of ignorance that anyone else needed to use that space. Maybe an urban thing...maybe South American. But it was obvious to me. Welcome to Black Mountain, and just take over!

They were obviously visiting someone here...I thought. Maybe  that was who went inside Kilwins.

And after I finished my ice cream and no conversation...I crossed the street, read the menu on the new restaurant "Tuscan Table" and took photos of their exterior.

Sharing with Monday Murals.

Then I had a nice visit with my former neighbor Sarah, in her pottery shop.

My little slice of fudge provides me a daily bite...such sugary joy!

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Today's goddess:

Clay goddess figurine, dated ca 4400–4200 BC found at Strashimirovo on the north shore of Varna lake, Bulgaria. It is 11.3 cm high  TMG

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While we might feel small, separate, and all alone, our people have never been more tightly tethered. The question’s not if we will weather this unknown, but how we will weather the unknown together.

AMANDA GORMAN

Maybe the Angry Women - 5

Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022...

Owl and the Moon on Facebook in 2022

"Anger is an assertion of rights and worth. It is communication, equality, and knowledge. It is intimacy, acceptance, fearlessness, embodiment, revolt, and reconciliation. Anger is memory and rage. It is rational thought and irrational pain. Anger is freedom, independence, expansiveness, and entitlement. It is justice, passion, clarity, and motivation. Anger is instrumental, thoughtful, complicated, and resolved. In anger, whether you like it or not, there is truth.

Anger is the demand of accountability. It is evaluation, judgment, and refutation. It is reflective, visionary, and participatory. It’s a speech act, a social statement, an intention, and a purpose. It’s a risk and a threat. A confirmation and a wish. It is both powerlessness and power, palliative and a provocation. In anger, you will find both ferocity and comfort, vulnerability and hurt. Anger is the expression of hope.

How much anger is too much? Certainly not the anger that, for many of us, is a remembering of a self we learned to hide and quiet. It is willful and disobedient. It is survival, liberation, creativity, urgency, and vibrancy. It is a statement of need. An insistence of acknowledgment. Anger is a boundary. Anger is boundless. An opportunity for contemplation and self-awareness. It is commitment. Empathy. Self-love. Social responsibility. If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an act of radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.

In the coming years, we will hear, again, that anger is a destructive force, to be controlled. Watch carefully, because not everyone is asked to do this in equal measure. Women, especially, will be told to set our anger aside in favor of a kinder, gentler approach to change. This is a false juxtaposition. Reenvisioned, anger can be the most feminine of virtues: compassionate, fierce, wise, and powerful.

The women I admire most—those who have looked to themselves and the limitations and adversities that come with our bodies and the expectations that come with them—have all found ways to transform their anger into meaningful change. In them, anger has moved from debilitation to liberation. Your anger is a gift you give to yourself and the world that is yours. In anger, I have lived more fully, freely, intensely, sensitively, and politically. If ever there was a time not to silence yourself, to channel your anger into healthy places and choices, this is it."

~ Soraya Chemaly, "Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger"

Angela Yarber of Tehom Center, "Protest Goddess"

https://tehomcenter.org/prints

https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/npr-pbs-newshour-marist-national-poll-the-overturning-of-roe-v-wade-june-2022/

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And in 2024 many women (and many men) did put efforts to elect Kamala Harris to the presidency of the US.

We are members of the 8 billion humans alive today...

But did you know this?

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Today's Goddess:

800 BC, Aomori prefecture Japan. Dogū

We tend to look for greatness
always in somebody else
rather than yourself.
Go inside and
get your sound.

Carlos Santana

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Venezuelan war

 Here I am looking at blogs, a few emails, and just dealing with learning this that and another...when someone in an email says we're at war with Venezuela. 

NPR has  an article published at around 6 am.

I have another aural migraine now...stress anyone?

Here's what Jay Kuo said "Waking up to News of War."

We’re all waking up to the same sobering, disturbing yet somehow unsurprising news out of Venezuela. I posted some of the below on social media but wanted to share and expand on it briefly here, too.

Some things to keep in mind as we process news of the war in Venezuela:

1) This act of war is unauthorized, unjustified and unconstitutional, no matter what the near term “success” the White House claims in toppling a foreign government or capturing its president.

2) Regime change is always unpredictable and could lead to greater instability.

3) With such acts, we lose all moral authority to condemn other nations that similarly attack their neighbors or carry out illegal renditions of foreign leaders.

4) Trump wants Venezuela’s oil reserves for his friends and a war to distract the public. This was never about interdicting drugs.

5) We still don’t know how many people the U.S. may have killed or injured so far, and we must demand all hostilities cease immediately to prevent further loss of life.

6) Two things can be true. It’s possible both to despise Maduro for what he has done to Venezuela AND to oppose this war as an illegal invasion of another country to seize control of its oil reserves.

7) Expect the GOP in Congress to lay down again and surrender their constitutional authority. Some already have fallen in line.

8) It is unclear what the plan is should Maduro’s people not give up. Their government is illegitimate, so a lot will depend on what the opposition and the Venezuelan people do from here.

This is not how any of us wanted to begin the new year. Now that the U.S. has committed unauthorized acts of war, we can only hope that they are short-lived and that chaos and further violence does not ensue.

Stay tuned, more to follow.

Jay

Soft critters

 While many people have pets which are soft and warm to cuddle, I have substituted them with stuffies, little soft stuffed animals. There used to be many more who lived with my children, but they (children grew up) have all gone.

This is Boo Boo Bear. He's named after a cartoon bear from the 60s...but doesn't look like him. I mainly wanted a black bear in case I should move away from Black Mountain NC, where these bears visit so many garbage cans of the area!

A good friend heard my plea for a bear to remember Black Mountain's bears...and gave me this!

When I used to give little stocking stuffers to young grandchildren, I kept this finger puppet for myself. Being a Leo, I love the lioness in my personality (though not everyone else does!)

A friend gave me this painted stone, which reminds me of my dear cat Muffin. (OK so not soft!)

A very soft stuffed bear which is designed to even be warmed in a microwave and then cuddled to help one go to sleep. I admit I haven't tried it yet. Thanks to my oldest grandson, Michael!

I've a few more, which I've already shared with y'all.

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Saturday's Critters with Eileen!

Just some good thoughts

 ༻The Wisdom of John Lennon༺

"The thing the sixties did was to show us the possibilities and the responsibility that we all had. It wasn’t the answer. It just gave us a glimpse of the possibility.

Love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep on watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are! There’s nothing new under the sun. All the roads lead to Rome. And people cannot provide it for you. I can’t wake you up. Only you can wake you up. I can’t cure you, only you can cure you.

You’re all geniuses, and you’re all beautiful. You don’t need anyone to tell you who you are. You are what you are. Get out there and get peace, think peace, and live peace and breathe peace, and you’ll get it as soon as you like.

That’s what the great masters and mistresses have been saying ever since time began. They can point the way, leave signposts and little instructions in various books that are now called holy and worshipped for the cover of the book and not for what it says, but the instructions are all there for all to see, have always been and always will be.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away. Declare it. Just the same way we declare war. That is how we will have peace… we just need to declare it.

Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not if you put it on the leaders and the parking meters. Don’t expect Carter or Reagan or John Lennon or Yoko Ono or Bob Dylan or Jesus Christ to come and do it for you. You have to do it yourself.

My role in society, or any artist’s or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end."

~John Lennon

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“Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed” Abraham Lincoln 

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Today's goddess:

Marble female figure

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Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

PAULO COELHO

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Sharing with Thankful Thursday 

and Sepia Saturday

Join the fun of sharing old photos, or whatever, with Sepia Saturday!

Happy New Year to all lovers of old photographs and all friends and followers of Sepia Saturday. Since 2009, Sepia Saturday has been providing a platform for enthusiasts to share their old photographs with others throughout the world by means of our weekly theme-based blog. Although there always tends to be a theme, we have always emphasised that going off-theme was perfectly acceptable - the theme isn't really important - the old photographs are. Sepia Saturday is now in its 807th week and we start 2026 with a theme image that is not only an old photograph - it is a recognised work of art as well: Dorothea Lange's famous 1936 photograph of a Californian agricultural worker.

The photograph comes from the Library of Congress collection of images on the Flickr Commons platform. Flickr Commons has been running a year longer than Sepia Saturday and has managed to bring together over 100 museums and archives from over 25 countries to share their photographic archives on-line. It is a wonderful resource and it has done so much to spread the understanding of the importance of our shared photographic history. The theme images for the next couple of years on Sepia Saturday will be drawn from the various collections available on Flickr Commons, and our first image is therefore from one of the founder institutions - the Library of Congress.

Happy 2026

 

A New Year's Blessing

May this new year unfold with light and promise.

May your body feel strong, your mind feel clear

and your heart remain open to possibility.

May you awaken with purpose in your breath

and rest at night knowing you did enough.

May opportunity meet your effort,

patience walk beside ambition,

and challenges sharpen you

without ever hardening you.

May laughter arrive often and stay awhile.

May love, old and new, grow deeper, truer.

May you give freely without losing yourself,

and receive fully, without hesitation.

And when the road bends without warning,

may you trust the strength you’ve earned

and the wisdom you carry to guide you.

May this be a year of steady growth,

honest joy, and gentle courage,

a future that feels not only hopeful,

but open and welcoming too.

~ 'A New Year's Blessing' by Spirit of a Hippie

One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion. -Simone de Beauvoir, author and philosopher (1908-1986)

Rabbit rabbit...wishing you good luck in this new beginning. (Girl on rabbit. Early 3rd century BC. Apulia Italy)

Today's goddess:

It's a new year, a birth of time, a beginning again. A wooden statue of a squatting woman giving birth supported by two attendants. 18th century CE, from south India, now housed at the National Museum in New Delhi

I was born in the year of the horse, 1942. No wonder I was crazy about them when a pre-teen...reading all the books, having a little white plastic horse who's saddle came off...but never being around live ones. I missed that! (Incidentally, no unicorns were mentioned while I was young, but I did have a story about Pegasus!)

Peace on earth

 

Peace: A Gift for All Beings

"May peace flow like a quiet stream through all hearts and across every corner of the Earth.

May it touch the wings of birds, the breath of animals, the souls of humans, and the roots of trees alike.

Let kindness be our language, compassion our gift, and understanding our bridge—so that all beings, seen and unseen, may live in harmony, free of harm, embraced by love."

posted on FB Serendipity Corner in 2024

by Anna Speshilova

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Where we've been, historically speaking:

As published in 2020, a Timeline of World History!

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Environmental news

Australian good eco-news! That's ecology, not economy!

The Australian government has just announced that beginning next July, residents of three of the country’s six states will get three free hours of electricity every day, with the rest of the country to follow in 2027. This is because the country has put up so many solar panels that at midday, when the sun is highest, they’re producing truly massive amounts of power.

The free offer is a way to get Aussies scheduling their lives a little differently to take advantage of the surplus—one imagines that many of them will be programming their washing machines to run midday, and charging their EVs then, too. It’s a good moment to be selling ever-cheaper household batteries too, since Australians can fill them on the cheap power and then run their homes all night.

In the largest sense, this is truly remarkable news. For at least 700,000 years humans have worked hard to get energy—first by gathering firewood, more recently by scraping together the money to pay power bills. But now—thanks to our new understanding of how to generate energy from the sun—we can be relieved of that burden.

It’s potentially an epochal moment—in some ways as remarkable as the invention of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution. Back in the 1950s, the nuclear industry literally promised electricity “too cheap to meter.” Now, thanks to the largest nuclear reactor in our corner of the universe, that is entirely possible.

Thanks Katharine Hayhoe

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So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

John Lewis

Today's goddess

Dogū Goddess. Ebisuda site in Tajiri, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, 1000–400 BCE. Dogū are analogous to the stone figurines that were made by people throughout the late Paleolithic and Neolithic eras.

Thanks Jenny Mendes Ceramics on FB

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Today's quote:

Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. HOWARD THURMAN I love the idea of a cease to all conflict and war. That doesn’t mean I don’t want consequences for the behaviors that have hurt others. Yes, I can be angry about injustice, and want resolution of harmful acts through legal civilized means, but not by becoming as hurtful as those who are being judged. Others may feel justified in wanting revenge. I won't go there, as it just perpetuates violence. My doctor visit yesterday was uneventful. I'm grateful that my migraines just give me auras, and no pain. I do continue to be sensitive to light following them, and it's so frequent suddenly that I wanted to address the problem. For the last 30 years or so I've only had a couple a year. For the last month, almost daily. So I'm being referred to a neurologist (who I already see for the essential tremor in my hands and neuropathy in my legs) an eye doctor to check that my visual nerves are ok, and a CT scan to see what's going on in my brain. No drugs, since she said they would have worse side effects than not taking them. Anyone on social media should have become aware by now of the Monks walking in the Peace March from Fort Worth TX to Washington DC. They are now in Georgia I believe.