Public Posts

Photo art “Miracles of nature” based on a yellow ginkgo leaf and intentional camera movement.

Dietmar Rabich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Did you hear the one about

Saratoga Passage - Camano Island

Bluespotted ribbontail ray (Taeniura lymma), Red Sea, Egypt.

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809) - Born Thomas Pain; was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. Paine emigrated to the British American colonies in 1774 with the help of Benjamin Franklin, arriving just in time to participate in the American Revolution. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and helped inspire the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain.

Quote Source: ― Thomas Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal on the Affairs of North America

This memento mori sculpture adorns the Tomb of Gisleni, at the Parish Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Today is All Souls' Day.

Alvesgaspar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

Detail of a stained glass window in St. Barbara's Church (Kutná Hora, Czech Republic). The window depicts St. Aloysius, St. Monica, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Joseph in prayer. Today is All Saints' Day.

Pudelek (Marcin Szala), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. View source.

                   Pity the Nation 

Pity the nation whose people are sheep
And whose shepherds mislead them
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars
Whose sages are silenced
and whose bigots haunt the airways
Pity the nation that raises not its voice
but aims to rule the world
by force and by torture
And knows
No other language but its own
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed
Pity the nation Oh pity the people of my country
My country, tears of thee
Sweet land of liberty! 

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti (1919 – 2021) was an American poet, painter, social activist, and co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Ferlinghetti was best known for his second collection of poems, A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), which has been translated into nine languages and sold over a million copies. He published his Poem " Pity the Nation in 2007 toward the end of Bob Bush second term to tell what he felt was wrong about the USA . It was also a response to Kahil Gibran’s 1933 poem Pity the Nation. Gibran’s poem was about Pakistan. Video of Ferlinghetti reading the poem