A red sunrise can mean that a high pressure system (good weather) has already passed, thus indicating that a storm system (low pressure) may be moving to the east. A morning sky that is a deep, fiery red can indicate that there is high water content in the atmosphere. So, rain could be on its way. https://www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/meteorology-climatology/item/is-the-old-adage-red-sky-at-night-sailors-delight-red-sky-in-morning-sailors-warning-true-or-is-it-just-an-old-wives-tale/#:~:text=Learn%20how%20the%20colors%20of%20the%20sky%20can%20indicate
I forgot about the lenten roses that I planted years ago and have to remember to have a look see because of where they’re planted. They have green foliage year round and bloom in February? Not for sure on that, but they look like they’ve been blooming for a while.
Initialisms–frustrating when people do not bother to write out words but use the initials of each of the words in whatever they’re referring to. Then they mislabel the initialism as an acronym. Tiresome having to look up the initialism. What’s so difficult about writing out the words?
I found out about William Edmonson, the Black folk art sculptor, back in the 1980s. I went to an exhibit of his sculptures. Anyway, there was an article in the March 17, 2025 Nashville Scene about an unclaimed tombstone that he carved that is now part of the State’s museum collection. The tombstone was for Bernice Williams February 2, 1906-January 9, 1931. The nephew from whom the headstone was acquired said that Bernice’s husband commissioned the headstone but never came for it.
However, after researching the name Bernice Williams, the author could find no death certificate or other official record for a woman named Bernice Williams. However, the author did find the records of a Birdie Compton who fit the data. Seems like Birdie’s and William’s ancestors were owned by the same Slaver and worked on the plantation after slavery ended. However, Birdie’s ancestors were mulattoes and William’s were not, and they were treated accordingly. The author says that William carved the headstone because of that ancestral link and the ill feelings between the mulattoes and their darker kin that was cultivated and exacerbated by the Slaver.
However, I think there is a much simpler explanation. Mind doodle! Birdie was married and had a child. She was also ill with tuberculosis. However, she lived near William. It’s known that he carved tombstones for people he knew. Is it possible that William loved Birdie? There was an age difference and she was married, but that wouldn’t have been an impediment to his feelings. (Aside–I had a great great grandfather who married younger and younger women and the last wife was probably fifty years younger than he. So young that his daughter, my great grandmother, took exception to the marriage and got hit over the head with an umbrella or cane for the unwanted opinion. This would have been in the early 1900s.) That would be the reason why he kept the headstone he had carved. A memorial to the woman he loved. He could not have anyone know–maybe the love was unrequited, maybe even unknown to Bernice.
We all know that back in the day sometimes we changed our names (An aside: one of my aunts did not like her birth name, so she changed it, probably not officially, but no one knew her by her birth name and, on the census, when she had her own household, she always gave her chosen name.). Also, family and friends had pet names or nicknames for each other. (Another aside: I had an aunt that we knew as “Betty”. It wasn’t until I was grown that I learned her birth name. Nothing like “Betty” or any of the names usually shortened to “Betty”.) Anyway, “Bernice” could have been Birdie’s birth name, middle name, or pet name that only family and certain friends knew. And the “Williams”–his first name as her last name? How romantic! Why would one carve a headstone because of a grudge rooted in ancestral trauma? However, one would carve a headstone for a loved one. William never married and maybe it was because the love of his life died on January 9, 1931.
We live in an era where fear mongering is an avenue to power and a means to retain power. No one seems to remember that the only thing to fear is fear itself. But, we also live in an era of ignorance and stupidity, so there is no rational thought to counter the fear mongers.
We hear hyperbolic political propaganda and, unless one is savvy and has the motivation to seek multiple sources, the lies inherent in the propaganda prevail. I read comments to posts just to see for myself what people are writing. Many times, all I see are lies that could easily be debunked if one merely googled the subject. When did we become so comfortable in spreading outright lies, misinformation that can be easily verified as false, overtalking facts with information that has no basis in any rational reality? When did we become so complicit in the destruction of rational discourse, rational cooperation, rational thought? When did we forget that silence is golden? Better to be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and tell your listeners in no uncertain words that you are a fool. Sometimes the old adages have been passed to us for a reason.
When will we learn that there is no savior? Saviors will always come tomorrow and we don’t understand that tomorrow is a future term that we never experience. What we thought of as tomorrow is in actuality becomes the present today. Tomorrow is always a day away. There is no one to save us from our mistakes but ourselves. I keep hearing the undercurrents–wishing for a charismatic leader to gather the minions into a coherent resistance. I don’t think that person exists or should I say that “man” exists. For, in a patriarchy, only a man could be that kind of leader.
We will always have charlatans masquerading as saviors. “I do not want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith Maine But, that’s exactly what they did.
Calumny–the making of false and defamatory statements about someone in order to damage their reputation; slander. And we know what fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear are. The four horsemen of Calumny are the ethos of the United States in the year 2025 and we must add greed as the fifth horseman. How can the United States survive with such an evil ethos? These white horses have stampeded and pillaged through this stolen land and left their droppings for all to see, smell, and use as fertilizer to feed their hate, their othering, their thievery, their insatiable appetites, their emptiness, their lack of empathy. their envy.
I’ve come to realize that “white” is a social and economic construct by a group of people to promote and legitimize their greed and false sense of superiority in order to control and pillage this planet’s resources. White is not a race; white is whoever the current whites say is white. More like a club with ever changing rules of admission. That puts them in perspective.
So the United States is not a society, much more a conglomeration or an agglomeration and a patriarchal one at that. Conglomeration implies structure while agglomeration implies a lack of structure, a certain amorphousness. So both could apply. Because within the hierarchy there is chaos. Matter of perspective.
When fear is the base state of the people in power, you get the United States. Think, scary movies for entertainment, fear mongering–if it bleeds it ledes, praying for a savior, winner taken all, etc. An aside: If you give in to the bully, you lose; if you defy the bully, you lose. Where is the benefit of giving in? At least, if you defy, your pain will have some meaning. What I am seeing with the modern bully is after the bully gets what he wants, the bully has you murdered. That murdering could be economic or physical or both. Defiance causes the bully pain (psychological, if nothing else) and resources.
Every day the incompetence of the white male is televised for all to see. It would be amusing if they were not in power.
Last night, there was a thunder storm. I sat in my “peace” room and watched the lightning streak across the sky. It was nature’s light show and calming to watch.
Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln
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