Check out all those images; so many interesting people, places, things, and ideas!
Hint: Hovering over an image will pop up a window with the title and source. If you want more info, click the image (a new round of related images will come up) and go to the top of the page. To right of the search field you’ll see a thumbnail of the image you clicked and (even further right) a “View on Wikipedia” link.
Ever have one of those days where you take a left turn at your to-do list and just keep going, as the fragments of your plans fall by the wayside? That’s my today.
That’s okay, it happens. Persistence equals progress, even if sometimes I have to take the long way.
“Whatever you do, keep walking.” — Raphael Warnock
Happy Father’s Day, fathers! And happy June Solstice, everyone!
The sun is at its northernmost position today, hovering over the Tropic of Cancer like a thrown ball at its apex. It’s the longest day of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere and is commonly treated as the first day of summer. As a child, my father painstakingly laid out the night sky with glow-in-the-dark stars on his bedroom ceiling. He passed that curiosity and joy in the world’s magic on to us.
It’s been storming here on and off, so Mr Man and I took advantage of a sunny break in the clouds to go for a walk in the neighborhood. The flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing, and summer is just around the corner. It was a lovely stroll, made even nicer by a short encounter at the park.
A man we didn’t know had a wheelbarrow and garden tools, and was trimming errant branches and vines by the walkway. We said hello (bonjour, actually) and he explained that he was a neighbor, just doing a bit of community service so that it would be easier for the city mowers to edge the pathways and open the way for the children who use the park.
How wonderful, I thought. How casually heroic.
“Heroism doesn’t always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history.” — Mary Roach
Happy Juneteenth, everyone! If you’re interested in the history behind the holiday celebrating the effective end of legalized slavery in the United States, I’ve written about it before.
This year, I’m marking the day with a biracial poem.
A storm rolled through today and now strong winds gust through the trees, making me more than usually aware of the weather. Which is why this bit of magic caught my eye.
At first glance, Water World looks more like a painting than satellite imagery. Deep teal and silver clouds swirl slowly across a darkened sky, creating a dreamlike atmosphere. But every formation seen in the film genuinely existed above Earth, recorded in remarkable detail by a weather satellite orbiting roughly 22,000 miles above the equator.
The article goes into more detail on the how and the why, or you could just put the video onscreen and let yourself chill.
So I would recommend that people read a lot, and as broadly as possible, and then I would suggest that people write a lot. You have to have written a very good deal in order to become really good at it. And if you do it often enough and pay sufficient attention, you’re much more likely to get somewhere than if you don’t.
Bloomsday celebrates Thursday, 16th June 1904 — the day immortalised in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The day is named after Leopold Bloom, one of the novel’s protagonists. The novel follows Bloom’s life and thoughts (as well as those of Stephen Dedalus and a host of other characters, real and fictional) from early in the morning to the twilight hours of the following day.
It may also be helpful for other writers to know that even Joyce worried about his work being forgotten.
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