Healing

Art convenes. It is not just inspirational. It is aspirational. It pricks the walls of our compartmentalized minds, opens our hearts and makes us brave.
~Anna Deavere Smith

Celebrating Joe Biden's inauguration today!

I love what they have done with flags in the National Mall. (If you haven't seen them, check them out.)

Sharing an excerpt by an Irish poet in his honor, since President Biden's ancestry is more than half Irish.

Eavan Boland from "A Habitable Grief":

This is what language is:
a habitable grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this

which hurts
just enough to be a scar.

And heals just enough to be a nation.

P.S. Time to revisit A BLESSING FOR ONE WHO HOLDS POWER by John O’Donohue?

On Being Studios · "A Blessing for One Who Holds Power" by John O'Donohue [bonus track]

Infinity Song

Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine.
~Steve Winwood/Will Jennings

For Music Monday, Infinity Song with Steve Winwood's Higher Love:

Whistling in the dark

I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it.
~Clara Barton

For Poetry Friday, Maya Angelou with "Life Doesn't Frighten Me." Time to muster up some courage!

brainpicker · Maya Angelou reads "Life Doesn't Frighten Me"

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Reflections on the Teche has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Margaret!

Kometenbuch

The president is a lethal danger to the American republic and the American people.
~Jamie Raskin

I haven't really posted since the attack on the Capitol because I just don't know what to say. The above quote from my beloved representative Jamie Raskin sums up a portion of my feelings.

Instead of thinking about the world on the ground, for Art Thursday here are some illustrations from an anonymous medieval book on comets. This predates the first telescope by about twenty years and has a poetic touch.

The Comet Book (1587):

Holding my breath

If the US has someone whom historians will look back on as the gravedigger of American democracy, it is Mitch McConnell.
~Christopher Browning

For some reason, this song started going through my head this evening. I am hopeful! And grateful.