February picnic

 

This was the day we planned to sit outside and eat by the lake. Cool 60s and wet showers. No thanks.

Next day, early morning windy showers! 

Then an unplanned sunny and 65 F, we just happened to run into each other, then sat in the gazebo to eat! It was very windy, but we enjoyed being able to be outside. So did the Canada Geese. I sadly had to avoid being in the sun thanks to antibiotic, and was pretty darn short of breath getting to and from car. Would I say yes again, of course!

This is the shot before I cropped it for the header pic, showing yes indeed, there were daffodils blooming in Feb. in my neighbors garden.

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A nearby construction (destruction of old trees fist) site. Here is planned to be the "main entrance" to Montreat College Black Mountain campus.

Last week...

You can just make out the "one lane bridge" sign on the right...which goes over the famously flooded Swannanoa River. The building down the road in the distance is the derelict one that will not be torn down before the new interstate entrance is built...I-40 is just beyond that!

This entrance is about 25 feet from the railroad crossing...which is where a traffic light exists on US 70. Blue Ridge Rd. is about to become a major thoroughfare.

This last week, showing some of the trees which have been cut, waiting to be hauled.

As you can see, the new main entrance on this plan is on the far left of the campus. Currently it is in a small neighborhood on the far right of the campus. 

All those dark grey areas are parking lots. And see the little blue stream bed of the Swannanoa River...just waiting to flood that new road. Fortunately there's a big hill that the actual campus sits on, so all the buildings are unlikely to be in a flood plane.  On the number 26 area are 4 baseball fields, part of Veterans Park...which was flooded badly in Sept. 2024.

I wasn't asked a thing regarding the increased traffic on our 2 lane road, where we already have to take turns to cross the one lane bridge. Just really looking forward to all the college kids zooming around in a year or so. The plans for an exit/entrance onto I-40 have been approved, so maybe they'll build a new bridge too.

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Sharing with Wordless Wednesday on Tuesday. 

OK, ready with snow equipment and winter clothing again this week!

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The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

 -Nadine Gordimer, novelist, Nobel laureate (1923-2014)

Peacemakers 5 - us!

  

Signs and symbols...

,

From the internet...feel free to share!

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

H. JACKSON BROWN JR. Check out Yesterday's Pages on The Ukraine.

My own story

 My own stories are often told in my pottery images. Thus this vase with 4 aspects of importance to my life. I have shared the first "Persist" side recently, so here are the rest of them.

Here's part of the creation of it, from Alchemy of Clay in 2017, and more completed work on it the next week.  

I focused on a detail of otters Here on the vase, beneath the tree of life, with drawing on curved surfaces as the topic.

So I obviously made the 4 drawings to express myself.

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Sharing with  Saturday's Critters.

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Sign your own permission slip to go on a field trip and renew your energy.  

or  in case you haven't been parent to a kid in school for a while (like me)...

"My grandma told me that the Universe is singing in the snowflakes, the raindrops, in the trees, the water, and all Creation. Physicists call this holistic holographic universe. Lakotas call it Taku Wakan Skan Skan/Mitakuye Oyasin, which means everything is connected and related in divine rhythm, vibration.

Remember the Lakotas know that the song sings the singer. 

The Spirit sings the song.
—Basil Braveheart

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I parked next to this jeep-like yellow monster. I feel so bad that a child has that window shade to look at in the back window. Eerie!

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Good news - my iPad healed itself, with the latest update! I had no idea until a FB video had audio as well! The sound on the iPad worked again. So I checked out a new murder mystery to listen to while I’m sitting around waiting to heal. Can I get an update too?

Two Views, Same Place

 Many of these photos are from the internet.

Catawba Falls NC (not my photo)

 Catawba Falls, NC

From Asheville, 1893 and 2026...

Biltmore Village in 1893 and today. All Souls church was being built

Different views of Looking Glass Falls NC

Looking Glass Falls 1925. Asheville Post Card Co.

 Lower left corner shows photographer, Masa, numbering 0-5456.

This could be my photo, or one like it. This site is right next to US Highway 276 near Brevard NC.

Taken by drone probably...

Lady Liberty

Yellowstone Lower Falls, WY by Rob Moody

Yellowstone Falls in winter

From London England

The Temple Bar, the last surviving ceremonial gateway to the City of London

Sharing with Sepia Saturday

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A body of clay, a mind full of play, a moment's life -- that's me. 

-Harivansh Rai Bachchan, poet (1907-2003)

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Yesterday, February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled tRump's tariffs were illegal.

"BREAKING: The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 20, 2026 ruled in a 6–3 decision that Donald Trump’s sweeping global tariffs were illegal because he exceeded his authority under federal law when he imposed them without clear congressional approval.

The Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the 1977 statute Trump cited to justify his tariffs, does not authorize the president to impose broad import taxes. Under the Constitution, that power is reserved to Congress.

Majority (6 Justices) Tariffs Struck Down

Chief Justice John Roberts (wrote the opinion)

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Justice Elena Kagan

Justice Neil Gorsuch

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

These justices agreed that IEEPA does not grant tariff authority and that imposing tariffs of this scope without clear congressional authorization violates federal law.

Dissent (3 Justices)

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

Justice Clarence Thomas

Justice Samuel Alito

The dissenters argued that the statute could be interpreted to permit these actions or that the majority misread the president’s authority under existing law.

What This Means

The tariffs Trump imposed under emergency powers, including wide-reaching duties on imports from major trading partners, are no longer lawful.

The Court did not fully spell out the refund process, but companies that paid billions in tariffs may now seek refunds.

The ruling represents a significant check on executive power in trade policy and underscores that only Congress can authorize new taxes or tariffs.

This decision is a major blow to Trump’s economic agenda and could reshape how future presidents approach trade authority and executive power.

It's our world

The Environmental Defense Fund posted on "Vital Signs" about the latest political ploy which will endanger the environment as well as many people.

Endangerment Finding repeal ignores decades of evidence, 

would harm millions of people.

"...under the Trump administration, the EPA promised fossil fuel companies “concierge, white-glove service” and offered some of the nation’s worst polluters opportunities to evade clean air safeguards. 

Here are three key points from that newsletter.

Climate pollution worsens asthma and other health issues

Without the Endangerment Finding, the air we breathe is about to get a lot dirtier and more dangerous. That’s because it is foundational to a host of vital clean air protections that limit pollution from power plants, oil and gas operations and vehicles. 

(as an Asthma sufferer with Bronchiectasis (a COPD) I will not be able to go for walks safely.)

Climate pollution fuels hurricanes, heat waves and more dangerous weather    

A mountain of scientific evidence shows that climate pollution is warming the planet and driving more frequent and intense heat waves, storms, floods and wildfires.

As a survivor of the floods of Hurricane Helene, and having relatives in Florida who frequently have hurricanes, this is obvious to all of us!

Asheville NC Sept 29, 2024

Climate pollution makes gas, insurance more expensive  

Rising home insurance premiums, driven in part by climate-fueled extreme weather events, are placing severe financial burdens on Americans. 

Home insurance costs have doubled in parts of many states, including in California, Florida, Colorado and Louisiana over the last several years, making it impossible for some Americans to purchase insurance at all. In many of these disaster-prone regions home values have, at the same time, dropped by tens of thousands of dollars.

Driving a gas-powered car is about to get more expensive too. The Trump administration’s own analysis shows that getting rid of the Endangerment Finding will raise the price you pay at the pump, increasing gas prices by 25 cents per gallon by 2035. 

Without the Endangerment Finding, there will also be fewer jobs to help people pay for all these rising costs. Repealing the Endangerment Finding and vehicle standards is projected to cost 450,000 jobs across the country over the next decade. Those job losses have already begun: since the start of the year, the administration has cancelled $25 billion in clean energy manufacturing investments — a move that’s cost 34,000 American jobs.  

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Katharine Hayhoe also gives some environmental notes:

With the Winter Olympics in full swing, athletes are using their platforms to encourage action on the climate crisis. As the Associated Press reports, a coalition of Winter Olympians and other athletes delivered a petition with 21,000 signatures to the International Olympic Committee, urging the IOC to consider ending fossil fuel sponsorships.

and

 Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show drew attention to Puerto Rico’s ailing power grid, which has been battered by climate-fueled hurricanes.

and

Entertainment companies, sports franchises, media outlets and other cultural institutions won’t prioritize climate unless consumers demand it. So, demand it.

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Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. 

- Howard Zinn

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Sorry Canadian friends. I didn't watch the game. I was watching the US win gold in Women's Single Figure Skating.

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Well, the doctors found another bug in my lungs – so I’m on antibiotics again. There were two recommended to treat this rare bug, but one of them makes me so dizzy I cannot walk. The other was one which I thought I was allergic to for the last 60 years. But I am giving it a try. My sense is that it wasn’t the antibiotic, sulfa, which perhaps made me throw up, but that it was the disease process which I already had. Anyway, I’ve now had 3 doses and I’m hoping that my tummy can accept it.

Story Telling, aka Myths

Excerpt from :

An Outlandish Generosity, On Dr. Martin Shaw's Mythteller Trilogy

 by Dougald Hine, Feb 10, 2026

"The environmental movement has long tended to frame things in terms of the vulnerability of the planet. This is, in an important sense, a misunderstanding of what is at stake. Yes, we are living in a time of extraordinary ecological destruction, a mass extinction, perhaps the sixth in our planet’s history. But there’s the thing: the planet has been here before. Even the rapid shift in climate we have set in motion may not be unprecedented from a geological perspective. A million years from now, the planet will almost certainly be here, alive, in some as yet unimaginable ecological configuration. This is not to excuse the epic of destruction we have unleashed, but to try to understand it better.

What is at stake is not the planet, as such, but a way of living within it that we have created as a species, parts of which go back tens of thousands of years, while other parts are barely a generation deep, though we already struggle to imagine living without them. Our sense of loss at all the shadowed beauty being driven out of existence, our guilt, our still-remaining desire to feel proud of our place as a species — all of this exists in tension with our attachment to what we know and our sense of powerlessness within the structures we have built. These forces play out within us and on a planetary scale.

Within the traditions on which he draws, (Dr. Martin) Shaw distinguishes two modes of story, the pastoral and the prophetic:

The pastoral offers a salve, an affirmation of old, shared values, a reiteration of the power of the herd. The prophetic almost always brings some conflict with it — it disarms, awakens, challenges, and deepens. It is far less to do with enchantment and much more to do with waking up.

It is this second kind of story we need right now, Shaw suggests: the kind that takes us out of who we think we are, that allows for the emergence of something new. Yet one of the characteristics of mythological thinking is that such pairings are not reduced to oppositions: instead, if we look carefully, we catch sight of the mutual dependence between seeming opposites.

The old stories most often end with a homecoming, a feast, a celebration of the union of opposites. By contrast, if we go any distance along the wild paths to which Shaw invites us, our own return to the everyday is likely to be lonelier. We come back to a reality in which a myth is something to be debunked. Our experience of the possibility of other ways of knowing is met with incomprehension or disinterest. One of the strengths of Dr. Martin Shaw's books is that they contain a great deal of experience of how to live between worlds — which is to say, between very different ways of understanding the world — without withdrawing, going crazy or burning out. That alone is worth the price of admission.

There remains, though, the larger question: what does it mean to appeal to the imagination, to the realm of fairytales, in a world of failing negotiations and melting icebergs?

One answer is that it provides a clue to the real nature of this crisis.

To understand the relationships between the inner and outer worlds that define the crisis, something like the subtlety of mythological thinking is required, its ability to dance with paradox and its openness to surprise. And perhaps, even now, there remains within the stories the capacity to make those relationships anew. For as Shaw says, that has always been the power of story: to ground us in such a way that a universe becomes a cosmos."

• A Branch from the Lightning Tree and Snowy Tower are available direct from Cista Mystica Press.

• Liturgies of the Wild is out now from Penguin.

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I have tried reading Dr. Shaw's books, and watched several of his videos (see YouTube) and find him most engaging and entertaining, but somewhat beyond my own daily sense of existence. I am not educated in mythology, alas. But story telling does mean a lot to a culture, having been humanity's original form of history making. So I would love for others to enjoy his writings and lectures, and tell me all about it!

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Sharing with Thankful Thursday

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You must cherish one another. You must work — we all must work — to make this world worthy of its children.

PABLO CASALS

Signs to consider

 If you're of a religious bent looking for help making decisions, you might look for a "sign" to guide you...in many ways. Nature symbols are sometime used, like crows flying in one direction or another. Or perhaps a song you might hear on the radio. It's up to your own belief system.

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Then there are street signs. They are supposedly the law. But sometimes they slip out of their meanings.

And of course a sign lets you know where you are. In wartime England (at least) many street signs were removed in case Germans invaded.

A simple sign can let people know you want to sell something. Funny, I don't think people put up signs who want to buy something.

This organization gives away food to people who come to collect at different sites throughout the area.

My son on the right holds a sign during a demonstration in OH, in the cold.

You may have to be from NC to understand the humor of this sign.

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See how I swung/swang/swinged from serious to humorous and back again. Let's do that today. Too much serious going on.

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Sharing with Tom's Signs2 meme.

Bistro Bites, hot brownie with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream.

Kind of missed that one...

I bid four - er five - hearts!

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Although the connections are not always obvious, personal change is inseparable from social and political change. 

-Harriet Lerner, psychologist (b. 30 Nov 1944)

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