Flowers

I don't usually steal from my other blog, but since I'm into close-up flower photos and bees these days, here are a few images from Germany (more here and here).

Sunday night on the town

Cat lessons

Blazing amber 

kitty eyes-- 

behind them, 

sentiments so wise: 

"The sun has set, 

the crickets chirp, 

now is the time 

to get to work! 

You humans need 

to learn a lesson 

beyond this

legislative session. 

There are still 

bigger fish to fry, 

more important 

things to try!" 

If Schroeder could 

but English speak, 

he'd say to us, 

"Let go your pique! 

Stop surfing 

NC politics! 

Forget th' impending 

'pocalypse! 

The situation 

may seem dire, 

but focus, focus: 

aspire higher!" 

He drops a fuzzwad 

at our feet, 

meows forcefully, 

"get off your seat! 

Now learn a skill 

with real merit: 

I'll teach you how 

to fetch a carrot!"

Moving forward

A little more Johann Sebastian Bach, and some Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck. Sweelinck was born 123 years before Bach and 405 years before me. That's a long time ago. What a legacy, centuries after your death, to have musicians around the planet not only play your compositions, but also digitally film the performances on pocket-sized devices and upload the data to this intangible thing called YouTube. What further excursions is this music destined for in the next few centuries?

Darkness descending

Man, a blogger leaves the country for a few weeks of family travel and comes home to discover her state has become an unabashed oligarchy. North Carolina is a scary place to live right now, but nothing that a little gerrymandering, voter suppression, and underfunded public education can't maintain for decades to come.

Today was my first day back on the organ-demo bench at Duke Chapel, so I dedicated part of my program to the self-serving Republicans in the state legislature. May we find our way out of their darkness.