The officer standing in the center of this group of Union soldiers after the battle of Antietam is Lt. Alonzo Cushing, who died less than a year after this group portrait while fighting in Gettysburg during Pickett’s Charge.
Sitting at left is Evan Thomas, who was killed in ambush by the Modoc Indians a decade later in California.
When you’re in a place of natural silence, you’re not alone, and you can feel it. Whether it’s birdcalls from miles away or the proximity of a giant tree whose warm tones you can feel, there’s a presence, It’s a quieting experience.
–Gordon Hempton, in August 2023 Sun Magazine
“You are old, Father William,” the young man said, “and your hair has become very white; and yet you incessantly stand on your head – do you think, at your age, it is right?”
In my youth,” Father William replied to his son, “I feared it might injure the brain; but now that I’m perfectly sure I have none, why, I do it again and again.”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (1865)
Five Good Minutes
by Brantley & Millstine @ New Harbinger Books
Using the language of topology to describe complex systems, leads to new insights about waves and weather patterns on earth. Some features of fluid flow on Earth can be explained by principles that traditionally apply to quantum systems.
Earth’s Oscillating Weather – Quanta Magazine
Copperplate engraving on paper, hand colored from the Atlas Coelestis seu Harmonia Macrocosmica (Amsterdam, 1660)
MACBETH:
Speak if you can. What are you?
FIRST WITCH:
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Glamis!
SECOND WITCH
All hail, Macbeth! Hail to thee, Thane of Cawdor!
THIRD WITCH
All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!
BANQUO
Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear things that do sound so fair? I’ th’ name of truth, are you fantastical, or that indeed which outwardly you show? My noble partner you greet with present grace and great prediction of noble having and of royal hope, that he seems rapt withal.
MACBETH
Stay, you imperfect speakers. Tell me more. A prosperous gentleman, and to be king stands not within the prospect of belief.
Witches vanish.
BANQUO
The earth hath bubbles, as the water has, and these are of them. Whither are they vanished?
MACBETH
Into the air, and what seemed corporal melted, as breath into the wind. Would they had stayed!
BANQUO
Were such things here as we do speak about? Or have we eaten on the insane root that takes the reason prisoner?
MACBETH
Your children shall be kings.
BANQUO
You shall be king.
It is the part of ourselves we do not normally admit to consciousness, let alone expression in action, that slips past the inner censor into our dreams and fantasies.
OUR REBEL EMOTIONS by Bernard Mobbs (1970)
This devilishly charming fellow is only a human nature characteristic. He is human nature itself; the corporeal personality honoring, respecting, reverencing, adoring and worshipping itself as king and as god in his own world.
THE WORD – A PHILOSOPHY (1958) by Edna Sarah Beardsley (re: devil)
View of SpaceX rocket launch from Vandenberg AFB, 235 miles away.
Fifteen satellites were carried to low-Earth orbit during last night’s mission.
There is also a band.