Hope

Light in the darkness. (Flag flying in Kingston, New York.)

Cause-and-effect assumes history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later, sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal, and change comes upon us like a change of weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope.

~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine act of insurrection.

~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark 

An evening stroll in Kingston

On the dock by Rondout Creek in Kingston, New York.

My day is done, and I am like a boat drawn on the beach, listening to the dance-music of the tide in the evening.

~ Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Travels and adventures

On the road, somewhere in the Catskills (New York).

If the Internet were everything it is cracked up to be, we would all stay at home and be brilliantly witty and insightful. Yet with so much contradictory information available, there is more reason to travel than ever before: to look closer, to dig deeper, to sort the authentic from the fake; to verify, to smell, to touch, to taste, to hear and sometimes – importantly – to suffer the effects of this curiosity.

~ Paul Theroux

A not at all wordless Wednesday

Now blooming.

For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.

~Lily Tomlin

Relaxation means releasing all concern and tension and letting the natural order of life flow through one’s being.

~Donald Curtis

If we were having coffee: Sharing a sunset

Yesterday’s sunset.

Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.

~Abraham Joshua Heschel

Songbirds

The Great Crested Flycatcher.

Remember this guy from yesterday’s post?  It’s one of a pair of Great Crested Flycatchers building a nest in the wren house near the garage.  In light of today’s events regarding the withdrawal of the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement (yes, I know, I’m not supposed to be paying attention to the news but the news butted in while I was watching something else), I want to feature this bird today because the Great Crested Flycatcher is listed as one of nine songbirds unable to keep up with the shift in spring due to climate change.

I hope they’re settling in nicely in their new home.

There is an interesting article about climate change and songbirds here.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  And stand up for the songbirds and other critters if you can.