My butterfly bush doesn’t appear to attract many butterflies. Not like the zinnias. And I’ve never seen any butterflies on the impatiens. Maybe, butterflies are selective! 
Dryad–a nymph that inhabits a tree. The Greeks had names for the dryads that inhabited the different trees. But, now, the nymphs that inhabit trees are generically know as “Dryads”. You know how you see something every day and one day you look at that same thing and it looks different? I was reading a book and looked up to rest my eyes and I saw two women joyfully, with no inhibition dancing and I think it actually came through in the above picture.
Saw a video on a Black woman pioneer I did not know. Her name was Maggie Lena Walker (1864-1934) Ms. Walker was the daughter of a washerwoman and she chartered a bank–the Saint Luke Penny Saving Bank in Richmond, Virginia. She was the first Black woman to charter a bank in the United States. Her motto was–Let’s have a bank that will take nickels and turn them into dollars. This bank later merged with the Consolidated Bank and Trust Company, the largest Black owned bank in the United States. Consolidated Bank and Trust Company continued in business until 2011 when it merged with another financial institution.
We need to revisit owning our own financial institutions, newspapers, and other businesses. Let’s reclaim the baby that was thrown out with the bathwater. We know what the white establishment will do. It is up to us to be creative to prevent them from succeeding. This racist United States wants the return of Jim Crow wherein we were invisible, except when a scapegoat was needed to appease the poor whites or to entertain the bourgeoisie and the rich. Therefore, we should review that time and what worked for us. Our own businesses and sources of information were crucial to navigating that racist time period. They didn’t need our pennies then and they certainly don’t need our pennies in 2025. We do need trusted sources of information. With the Internet, there is so much available information and, unfortunately, much of it is unreliable and deliberately false. So, identifying trusted sources of information will be a challenge, but we can do it.
Are most people good? That was the truism I heard today. I don’t think so. I suppose “good” is a societal value. How can most people be “good” if there is never a shortage of individuals willing to harm their fellow citizens for money or ego? The bad things happening today would peter out quickly if there weren’t many individuals willing to carry out bad acts. “Good” appears to be in the minority when there is always someone willing to participate in evil. When one exists in an “individualist” society, what is the definition of “good”? An individualist only cares for self, i.e., I have money; I can eat; I have healthcare; I have power, etc. Good, in this society, is therefore so entwined with “I” that there is no societal definition of “good”.
How else could these awfuls treat a fellow human being worse than a stray dog? Only if they are the “good”, then everyone else is bad.
On You Tube, I saw a video of a proposed platform for the upcoming elections. The video had four points, but there were more suggested in the comments: M=Medicare for all; A=Assault weapon Ban/Control; K =Kibosh kings and insurrectionists; E=Equal rights for all citizens and Eliminate Electoral college. L=Limit campaign monies and Length of campaigns; A=Abolish electoral college and gerrymandering; W=Well-defined term and age limits for the Supreme Court and all elected offices; S=Single subject legislation. I.E., MAKE LAWS. My thoughts added to video and comments–https://youtu.be/x5JaUcbaAUY?si=Kw2oOwQKy8X2jiOS
I’ve just finished reading Howard’s Zinn’s book–A POWER governments cannot suppress. This book was written in 2006 and it is as true today as it was then. What I gathered from this book is that the United States is stuck in a vicious loop of civil rights violations against anyone considered “Other”, corporate pandering, violent governmental actions toward immigrants, war mongering for greed and profit, blaming any vulnerable (powerless) “Other” for the problems faced and caused by the white majority–over and over again. There has been no learning curve.
I don’t know why, but when reading the aforementioned book, I kept thinking of the Lord of the Flies by William Golding. For some reason, the rotting pig’s head, surrounded by flies waiting for their turn to feast on the decaying flesh has always stuck with me. I read the book in high school. Required reading back then. I wonder if it still is.
No learning curve, stuck in a vicious loop of inhumanity and greed–the United States, in its two hundred plus years of existence, has not matured and shows no signs of doing so. In the far past, there were groups of people whose societies matured into civilizations, but, apparently, those civilizations existed before patriarchy took hold. Unfortunately, we have no clue as to how long it took those societies to mature. Our extant records only record their slow demise into patriarchy. Patriarchy has produced no great civilizations. Only societies bent on resource extraction, war, hierarchies, the devaluing of humans, and the glorification of a gender based on false credentials.
A past example–On September 26, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson wrote an article on the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre of Lakota Indians by the U.S. Army. (Heather Cox Richardson is on Substack.) The prior Secretary of Defense was reviewing the actions of the soldiers because he wanted the Medal of Honor that some of the soldiers received to actually mean something. The current incompetent in that same office summarily stated that the soldiers deserved the medal and there would be no review.
The article stated that some of the same issues we face today were occurring then. The Republicans had instituted tariffs which had raised the cost of living and the Republicans feared losing the elections and their power because if the Democrats won, the citizens might get some relief. The Republicans believed that the United States was created to further the interests of business, not its citizens, and that government monies were best used to fund patronage that would buy them friends and further enrich the rich.
The United States entered into a treaty with the Lakota which was promptly violated as the money intended for the Lakotas was used to fund political patronage intended to maintain the Republicans’ power. The government assigned incompetent in charge (failed doctor and drug addict) of the Lakotas asked for soldiers to stop the Lakotas from participating in the ceremonies the Lakotas had turned to in hopes that these ceremonies would ease their suffering brought about by the drought and the failure of the government to honor the treaty. A long story short, Sitting Bull was murdered, the Lakotas were ordered to cease their ceremonies, and, at some point, the Lakotas were ordered to turn over their guns. However, all was worked out and the Lakotas peacefully surrendered and were then slaughtered by the United States soldiers.
The article doesn’t say, but the soldiers given the Medal of Honor were probably the ones killed by friendly fire when the shooting, the result of the soldiers’ own actions, began. And, as the article stated, all those deaths, all the graft to stay in power, and the Republicans lost. The article went into much more detail. I just want to point out that nothing has changed and there has been no learning from multiple incidents like this.
Stunted trees rarely reproduce. There is usually something inherently flawed/mutated and causative in their genetics. Usually the genetic flaw/mutation is not conducive to its long term survival, but sometimes it is, However, the flaw/mutation is always evident, always endangering its existence. The tree is always, until its demise, stunted.
We have a Supreme Court that refuses to hold the Executive Branch accountable for its many violations of law and the Constitution and is in effect committing malfeasance (intentional wrong committed by a public official) as it is not exercising its duties in accordance with the Constitution. The fox is in the henhouse and the farmer is too busy counting the cash, paid to him by the fox, to take notice.
Unfortunately, according to Zinn’s aforementioned book, the Supreme Court has always committed malfeasance because the Court has not the maturity or the moral fortitude to reach a just conclusion if that conclusion is at odds with a society that caters to the rich and their business interest.
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If a citizen violates the law, he is punished by the government, who does the punishing when the government violates the law? Question sent to the judge by Samuel Braithwaithe, a Black taxi driver, army vet, and juror in the Camden 28 trial in 1973. (A POWER governments cannot suppress by Howard Zinn)
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