Moving about over the face of the earth

  I enjoyed seeing the map showing ancient rulers of Europe and the Mediterranean.

The connection is (not about rulers, though that's pretty big in conversations these days) but about how we human move about and deal with changes all around us! Civilizations, cultures, immigrants...it's been happening since the beginning of time.

And another map which shows the peoples who lived in North America before the western Europeans arrived. 

So here's a map showing the routes the various visitors from European counties took into the Americas.

Locations of Stone Circles and Henges in the UK & Ireland - just so you don't think I'm totally 

Ameri-centric. But I'm sorry this was such a pale photo-map...a bit hard to see where what is.

No idea how to pronounce, but it is preferable to Gulf of America (as Trump wants to change it.)

And this is the Dymaxion Map...which shows the land masses in proper sizing...as opposed to the more popular and inaccurate Mercator maps.

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OK, back to real life. Today I'm thankful that the cold front which slammed into our area with heavy winds on Sunday as I was writing this, didn't bring snow as had been forecast. However, you never know, as of then it was due on Wednesday which was yesterday as you read this.

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Sunday I got into a cooking frenzy...I want you to know my usual meals go from refrigerator to microwave...so there I was cleaning some baby bella mushrooms, cutting up some garlic, and sauteing them all in butter. It smelled so good. So how about making it into a soup, I thought. I hunted around in the pantry and found some vegetable stock that expired in 2023. It's going to boil, I thought, so whatever might have happened to it will be ok. Then I thought, cream. Nope, didn't have anything but 2% milk. I put 2 cups in anyway. Thickener? There was this expired container of mashed potatoes. 

DO NOT USE THESE! I was innocent of what would happen. Science came along and smacked me upside the head. The potatoes were runny, so I gently stirred them into the soup mix. No problem. No chunks appeared, so I got bold and poured the rest in. I sure didn't have any other use for them, so thought they might make a nice body for the soup. I sprinkled my favorite spices and some dried onions (since I didn't want to cut a whole one which might be too much for those baby bellas.)

Then there were little blobs that formed throughout the soup. They were like little pieces of tapioca, which for all I knew had been hidden in the potatoes which had stopped having any firmness to them already. But nothing, stir stir stir, would get rid of the little blobs. And they were noticeable when I tasted the soup. Yuk.

OK, maybe I can blenderize them away. So slowly poured hot soup (without mushrooms) into the glass blender, tried low setting, no help. Tried the highest setting. And the blobs were gone. Of course the soup was now aerated with plenty of tiny air bubbles. I poured that first batch into a container which would go in refrigerator. Then did another batch. Let me just say by the time I got to the lase of 6 batches I tried using a colander that had a bigger bottom than the top of the blender...so soup ran down all the outside as well as inside, and the mushrooms I'd been trying to save were covered with little blobs...so that wasn't working.

I just blenderized the mushrooms too. Once I was trying to let some steam escape from the blender, and whirring at the same time...so it splattered mushroom soup all over the place. So that had to be cleaned up. 

I finally had all the soup turned to aerated liquid without any blobs, and I served myself the last cup. Of course lots of the seasoning was in it...whew, lots of flavor. But I ended up with 2 quarts of my own creamed mushroom soup!

Now if only I had someone to do the dishes....

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Today's politics: (yes, I am back thinking, reading, listening, sharing!)

So how do Democrats fight back? If the GOP doesn’t care about the negative impact Trump’s and Musk’s policies and decisions have on ordinary Americans, aren’t Democrats essentially negotiating with political terrorists?

Many demonstrations against Musk and Trump "Not our King" on President's Day, Feb. 17, 2025

 So far we have seen three models of Democratic pushback.

One camp of Democrats appears to think that doing the same thing and expecting a different result is the way to go, clinging to norms that have been shattered by the opposition in hopes that a bygone notion of bipartisan consensus about the importance of public service can be preserved. We saw how this worked out for Merrick Garland the last four years. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also appears to be mounting a wait-and-see approach in the face of unprecedented, anti-democratic onslaught.

A second camp, represented by a younger cohort of Democrats, wants to counter the GOP blow for blow, trolling back hard in the hopes it will bring press attention to the unfolding national crisis. For example, Rep. David Garcia recently presented a photo of Elon Musk on the House floor as a “dick pic.” And Rep. Jasmine Crockett famously fired back at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene during a hearing, calling her a “bleach blond butch bad built body.” These are admittedly headline-grabbing moves, which in this attention economy has some real value. They also demonstrate to Democratic voters that someone is fighting back, an important reassurance at this time. But while these counterpunches may feel good in the moment, there is little evidence they actually do anything to make MAGA stop behaving so terribly. If anything, they encourage more bad behavior in an endless cycle. If the other side is behaving like spoiled children, and our side does it, too, the fear is we will be locked forever in a schoolyard fight.

Perhaps there’s a third way, best represented by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s style of discourse. He combines a willingness to engage and actually listen to the other side with a sturdy defense of Democratic values. Buttigieg is not afraid to go on Fox News and other outlets where Republicans are tuned in. He looks past the bad behavior and taunts of the MAGA right and tries instead to get at the heart of why they feel aggrieved, even when that grievance is tainted with racism and misogyny. He then seeks to find common ground, at least on some level. He always presents a path forward, even if it is an aspirational one, where the two sides can treat each other as people caught in the same dysfunctional system, yet all with a shared need for security, health, and community.

It may be too lofty for these rough and tumble times. And there are few in the Democratic Party who can actually step into this role with the skill of Buttigieg and consistently resist the urge to condemn the other side as irredeemable monsters. Few leaders will bother to try and unpack whatever it is that drives the dangerous nihilism at the core of the MAGA right.

But considering the incredibly high stakes, more Buttigieges may be sorely needed if we are ever to escape the downward pull of Trumpian nihilism.

SOURCE: The Big Picture newsletter  Feb. 19, 2025

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Sharing with Thankful Thursday

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Today's quote: 

Thich Nhat Hanh writes:

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle but I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.”

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Today's art:

Art by Sophie Blackall from If You Come to Earth.1