Corrupted by wealth and power, your government is like a restaurant with only one dish. They’ve got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic waiters on the other side. But no matter which set of waiters brings you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall Street kitchen.
~ Huey Long
Related reading:
Huey Long
Wikipedia
Why live in shame of what we have done, when we can live in awe of what we might do?
~ From Battlestar Gallactica
Cheetah by Follower of Giovannino de’Grassi
Anonymous Lombard (Workshop of Giovannino de’Grassi), Two studies of a cheetah, 1410 (detail).
Related reading:
Cheetah
From Wikipedia
Bastille Day is the French national holiday which is celebrated on 14 July each year. In France, it is formally called La Fête Nationale (National Celebration) and commonly le quatorze juillet (the fourteenth of July). It commemorates the 1790 Fête de la Fédération, held on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789; the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille fortress-prison was seen as a symbol of the uprising of the modern nation, and of the reconciliation of all the French inside the constitutional monarchy which preceded the First Republic, during the French Revolution. Festivities are held on the morning of 14 July, on the Champs-Élysées avenue in Paris in front of the President of the Republic.
When I stopped at Liverpool Station for coffee this morning, there was a gentlemen playing the street piano. I stopped to sit in the sun and listen to the music.
Many hours later after my meeting and dinner were over, I walked down to the station to get some air and enjoy the life on the streets of London before going to bed.
The same gentlemen was there playing at the piano. I stopped to thank him for his music which had added such joy to my day. We exchanged names. Upon hearing mine, he proceeded to play and sing an Irish ballad, “I’ll Take You Home, Kathleen.”
Oh! I will take you back, Kathleen
To where your heart will feel no pain
And when the fields are fresh and green
I’ll take you to your home again!
He said he had spent the day traveling among the 21 street pianos of Play Me, I’m Yours: London 2010.
Also a filmmaker, he told me that as soon as another musician came to one of the pianos, he would immediately turn over the piano to them so he could film them. He pointed to his bag and said that he had recently filmed 40 musicians playing the street pianos.
“The future is created by the people who build it, not the people who predict it will not exist.”
~ Catherine Austin Fitts
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
“WHEN IN the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
A Sunday in London
This morning, I attended the Eucharist at St. Paul’s Cathedral, including a celebration of Mozart’s sacred music, receiving communion with more than 1,000 worshipers. Our sermon was on forgiveness and the story of the good Samaritan.
We prayed for the vitality of London. This city is now 15 million. However, it is laced with flowers, trees and gardens throughout, and organized with squares, parks and crooked lanes, all making it feel quite human.
Then on to the British museum, for an extraordinary exhibit of Italian Renissance drawings and one on the history of money.
All day, I kept remembering the words of poet John Keats:
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”