"A Look to the Heavens"

"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust. Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. 

The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210903.html

"I'm Sure..."

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not.

Both are equally terrifying."

"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life.

It's just been too intelligent to come here."

- Arthur C. Clarke

Chet Raymo, “To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”

“To Sleep, Perchance To Dream”

by Chet Raymo

“To sleep, perchance to dream

What is more gentle than a wind in summer?

What is more soothing than a pretty hummer

That stays one moment in an open flower,

And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing

In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?

More healthful than the leafiness of dales?

More secret than a nest of nightingales?

What indeed?”

"The poet Keats answers his own questions: Sleep. Soft closer of our eyes. I’ve reached an age when I find myself occasionally nodding off in the middle of the day, an open book flopped on my chest. Also, more lying awake in the dark hours of the night, re-running the tapes of the day. And, in the fragile moments of nighttime unconsciousness, dreaming dreams that reach all the way back to my childhood.

I’ve read the books about sleep and dreaming. There has been lots of research, but not much consensus about why we sleep or dream. Sleep seems to be pretty universal among animals. Who knows whether animals dream. Do we sleep to restore the soma? To knit the raveled sleeve of care? Process memories? Find safety from predators? After 50 years of work, the sleep researcher William Dement opined: “As far as I know, the only reason we need to sleep that is really, really solid is because we get sleepy.”

The Latin poet Martial supposed that sleep “makes darkness brief,” a worry-free way to get through the scary hours of the night when wolves howl at the mouth of the cave (and goblins stir under the bed). That hardly explains my dropping off after lunch into a dreamless stupor that I neither desire nor welcome.

“Low murmurer of tender lullabies!

Light hoverer around our happy pillows!

Wreather of poppy buds, and weeping willows!”

Not quite! There are the nightmares too. The tossing and turning. The hoo-has. But enough of this idle speculation. I’m getting sleepy.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"A Deep Attentiveness..."

“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”

- Scott Russell Sanders

The Daily "Near You?"

Lutz, Florida, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Things We Beg For..."

“These are the things we beg for. A root canal, an I.R.S. audit, coffee spilled on our clothes. When the really terrible things happen, we start begging the god we don’t believe in to bring back the little horrors, and take away this. It seems quaint now, doesn’t it? The flood in the kitchen, the poison oak, the fight that leaves you shaking with rage. Would it have helped if we could see what else was coming? Would we have known that those were the best moments of our lives?”

- “Meredith”, “Grey’s Anatomy”

“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”

“Mary Oliver On How to Live ‘Your One Wild and Precious Life’”

by Sanjiv Chopra, M.D.

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. 

It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

- Mary Oliver

“The quiet, plain-spoken poet Mary Oliver died on January 17, 2019. An outpouring of emotion and tributes spanned the globe. She was both mourned and wildly revered by those for whom her words were a totem. With stark simplicity, she offered us both spiritual guidance and common sense, all of which was garnered from lessons she learned while simply meandering in the woods.

Mary Oliver’s gift was her ability to marvel at the world with an unsentimental acceptance that it (and we) are temporary. She looked clear-eyed and with unflinching certainty at the impermanence of our existence. In it she found not despair but rather joy. She chose to live in the moment and to be dazzled by it.

Mary Oliver’s roots were thoroughly midwestern. She hailed from Maple Heights, Ohio, a leafy suburb of Cleveland. From all accounts, hers was a difficult childhood. She wrote in “Blue Pastures” (winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award): “Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them.”

This darkness of her youth led her to escape into nature and into books. Words and woods offered her solace. She fiercely embraced them, noting that “the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst stung heart.”

We know, and she acknowledged, that overcoming adversity isn’t easy: “There are stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet.” But she persisted. She said she read, “the way a person might swim, to save his or her life,” and that nature offered her “an antidote to confusion.”

She advised, “you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” And in saving her life, she rekindled so many of ours, using words that were deceptively simple but that had the power to shine a bright light into the dark crevices of our pain and misfortune and to set us free from the past. She gave us clear instructions for living a life:

“Pay attention. 


Be astonished. 


Tell about it.”

And for her- and for so many of us who have long sat at the knee of her prose – it worked. Mary Oliver wrote, “Having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life. And can do what I want to with it. Live it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.” And when she died, she gave it back.

Mary Oliver’s religion was simple. It could best be described as “gratitude.” And so, as she departed this world leaving for us so many gifts, we offered this prayer for her – thank you. To honor her, we share here one of Mary Oliver’s most powerful poems, one that offers sage advice about accepting imperfection.”

“The Ponds”

“Every year


the lilies


are so perfect


I can hardly believe

their lapped light 

crowding
the black


mid-summer ponds.


Nobody could count all of them -

the muskrats swimming


among the pads and the grasses


can reach out


their muscular arms and touch

only so many, 

they are that 
rife and wild.


But what in this world 
is perfect?

I bend closer and see


how this one is clearly lopsided -


and that one wears an orange blight -


and this one is a glossy cheek 

half nibbled away -


and that one is a slumped purse


full of its own
 unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life


is to be willing


to be dazzled - 


to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even


to float a little


above this difficult world.


I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire 

of a great mystery.


I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -

that the light is everything - 

that it is more than the sum 


of each flawed blossom rising and fading. 

And I do.”

-  Mary Oliver

- https://www.psychologytoday.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"If you saw Atlas, the giant who holds the world on his shoulders, if you saw that he stood, blood running down his chest, his knees buckling, his arms trembling but still trying to hold the world aloft with the last of his strength, and the greater his effort the heavier the world bore down upon his shoulders - what would you tell him to do?"

"I... don't know. What could he do? What would you tell him?"

"To shrug."

- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged "

○

"Learn to distinguish the difference between errors of knowledge and breaches of morality. An error of knowledge is not a moral flaw, provided you are willing to correct it; only a mystic would judge human beings by the standard of an impossible, automatic omniscience. But a breach of morality is the conscious choice of an action you know to be evil, or a willful evasion of knowledge, a suspension of sight and of thought. That which you do not know, is not a moral charge against you; but that which you refuse to know, is an account of infamy growing in your soul. Make every allowance for errors of knowledge; do not forgive or accept any break of morality."

- Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged"

○

Freely download or read online "Atlas Shrugged", 

by Ayn Rand, here:

- https://booksvooks.com/

Greg Hunter, "Desperate Money Printing Leads to Depression"

"Desperate Money Printing Leads to Depression"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Legendary investor, economist and market forecaster Dr. Marc Faber thinks central banks (CB) are not going to cut back the money printing. Just the opposite. He predicts CBs are going to print even more money at a faster pace to hold the failing economic system together for a little while longer. Dr. Faber explains, “What is perceived to be safe, namely cash, isn’t safe anymore. It is unsafe. You ask me what is safe? I don’t know what is safe anymore when you have money printers who print money indefinitely. I don’t think they can stop. I actually think they have to accelerate their money printing. So, stocks may go up, but in real terms, it doesn’t mean your standard of living will go up. Maybe the standard of living of the 50 richest people in the world will go up, but not the standard of living of the typical American, or the average American. That standard of living will go down. All the money printing is a desperate measure to keep the voters from rebellion.”

Dr. Farber predicts that not only are we going to see more asset inflation, but dramatic wage inflation too. Dr. Faber, who holds a PhD in economics, says, “What I think will happen, and most people have not really considered, we will get wage inflation. For the first time since the late 1970’s, we will get accelerating wage inflation, and in some cases, quite dramatic. In some states, the minimum wage is $15. I could see that going up to $30 per hour very quickly. I don’t think inflation is ‘transitory’ (as the Fed proclaims). We will not have stagflation. We will have something worse. We will have rising prices and a depression in the standard of living of most people.”

Dr. Faber says the U.S. stock market is “overpriced and over-owned.” He likes stocks in foreign countries, real estate “far outside the cities” and physical gold, silver and some cash. Faber also likes some crypto currency in one’s portfolio.

Dr. Faber is less worried about the economic picture and more worried about the rise of socialism and communism in the western world. Faber contends socialism destroys economies and liberty. Faber points out, “I can tell you one feature of all the socialist countries I have visited in my life, and all of them had less freedom, less happiness than we have, and the standards of living were substantially, not a little bit, but substantially lower than they are in the free capitalistic world. I am sorry to say that I think the western world has gone down a very dangerous path where essentially, through zero interest rates, everything is free. Then you get the unintended consequences.”

So, with inflation going up and the standard of living going down in the West, is the possibility of war going up? Faber says, “Correct. I think once this Covid19 thing is over, the elite, the ones who make the money, will go to war. That is the last recipe to keep the population together.”

- https://usawatchdog.com/

"Join Greg Hunter in Rumble as he goes One-on-One

 with Dr. Marc Faber of the “Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.”

- https://rumble.com/

○

Related, highly recommended:

"Who’s Going to Be Left Holding the Bag?"

"The elite, the ones who make the money, will go to war..."

"Over 2 Decades The US’s Global War In Terror 

Has Taken Nearly 1 Million Lives and Cost $8 Trillion”

“Collapse In Confidence As Jobs Hammered; Stock Market Should Have Collapsed; Economy Is Being Doped”

Jeremiah Babe, PM 9/4/21:

“Collapse In Confidence As Jobs Hammered; 

Stock Market Should Have Collapsed; Economy Is Being Doped”

Musical Interlude: The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

Full screen recommended.

The Traveling Wilburys, "End Of The Line"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Large galaxies and faint nebulae highlight this deep image of the M81 Group of galaxies. First and foremost in the wide-angle 12-hour exposure is the grand design spiral galaxy M81, the largest galaxy visible in the image. M81 is gravitationally interacting with M82 just below it, a big galaxy with an unusual halo of filamentary red-glowing gas.

Around the image many other galaxies from the M81 Group of galaxies can be seen. Together with other galaxy congregates including our Local Group of galaxies and the Virgo Cluster of galaxies, the M81 Group is part of the expansive Virgo Supercluster of Galaxies. This whole galaxy menagerie is seen through the faint glow of an Integrated Flux Nebula, a little studied complex of diffuse gas and dust clouds in our Milky Way Galaxy."

- http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080512.html

Chet Raymo, "Away Above The Chimney Pots "

"Away Above The Chimney Pots"

by Chet Raymo

"So Oz finally became home; the imagined world became the actual world, as it does for us all, because the truth is that once we have left our childhood places and started out to make up our lives, armed only with what we have and are, we understand that the real secret of the ruby slippers is not that "there's no place like home", but rather that there is no longer any such place as home: except, of course, for the home we make, or the homes that are made for us, in Oz: which is anywhere, and everywhere, except the place from which we began. 

In the last paragraph of his delightful meditation on the film "The Wizard of Oz", Salman Rushdie, himself an immigrant to another land, takes gentle issue with the concluding cliche: "There's no place like home." If the net result of Dorothy's technicolor adventure is to end up where she began, in gray old Kansas, then what was the point? asks Rushdie.

Poor Dorothy, waking up in bed with Auntie Em and the others clustered around her, born again, so to speak, into the same old life. "It wasn't a dream, it was a place," she cries, piteously. "A real, truly live place! Doesn't anyone believe me?" She must begin her rebellion all over again.

Visitors here will have observed that I have reached a stage in life where I am prone to look back on the journey, reflect somewhat nostalgically upon the place I came from, and try to ascertain where it is I have ended up. It is clear that the destination was in part determined by where I began, as is true, I suppose, for all of us. We are armed, after all, only with "what we have and who we are." But it is clear too that having experienced the technicolor universe of the galaxies and the DNA, there is no going back to the dusty, gray dogmas of my youth. 

The Emerald City may indeed be over the rainbow, but it is still in the here and now. The Wizard's powers may not be supernatural, but his translucently turreted city sure beats Kansas. Science was my Yellow Brick Road. I'm still a "Kansas" boy, so to speak, but with no desire to be born again. For better or worse, home is here, now, in a universe of a grandeur of which I had no idea at the beginning, at a place along a Yellow Brick Road that reaches tantalizingly into the future, with no foreseeable terminus in an ultimate Oz." 

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"

"A Life of Learning: Earth School"

by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOm

"Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul. Life is the province of learning, and the wisdom we acquire throughout our lives is the reward of existence. As we traverse the winding roads that lead from birth to death, experience is our patient teacher. We exist, bound to human bodies as we are, to evolve, enrolled by the universe in earth school, an informal and individualized academy of living, being, and changing. Life’s lessons can take many forms and present us with many challenges. There are scores of mundane lessons that help us learn to navigate with grace, poise, and tolerance in this world. And there are those once-in-a-lifetime lessons that touch us so deeply that they change the course of our lives. The latter can be heartrending, and we may wander through life as unwilling students for a time. But the quality of our lives is based almost entirely on what we derive from our experiences.

Earth school provides us with an education of the heart and the soul, as well as the intellect. The scope of our instruction is dependent on our ability and readiness to accept the lesson laid out before us in the circumstances we face. When we find ourselves blindsided by life, we are free to choose to close our minds or to view the inbuilt lesson in a narrow-minded way. The notion that existence is a never-ending lesson can be dismaying at times. The courses we undertake in earth school can be painful as well as pleasurable, and as taxing as they are eventually rewarding. However, in every situation, relationship, or encounter, a range of lessons can be unearthed. When we choose to consciously take advantage of each of the lessons we are confronted with, we gradually discover that our previous ideas about love, compassion, resilience, grief, fear, trust, and generosity could have been half-formed.

Ultimately, when we acknowledge that growth is an integral part of life and that attending earth school is the responsibility of every individual, the concept of "life as lesson" no longer chafes. We can openly and joyfully look for the blessing buried in the difficulties we face without feeling that we are trapped in a roller-coaster ride of forced learning. Though we cannot always know when we are experiencing a life lesson, the wisdom we accrue will bless us with the keenest hindsight."

- http://www.dailyom.com/

•

"Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have 

drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you."
- Richard Bach

•

"Ten Rules For Being Human"

Rule One: You will receive a body. You may love it or hate it, but it will be yours for the duration of your life on Earth.

Rule Two: You will be presented with lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called 'life.' Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

Rule Three: There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation, a series of trials, errors, and occasional victories. The failed experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that work.

Rule Four: A lesson is repeated until learned. Lessons will be repeated to you in various forms until you have learned them. When you have learned them, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule Five: Learning does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule Six: 'There' is no better than 'here'. When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain a 'there' that will look better to you than your present 'here'.

Rule Seven: Others are only mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about  another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule Eight: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you.

Rule Nine: Your answers lie inside of you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

Rule Ten: You will forget all of this at birth. You can remember it if you want by unravelling the double helix of inner knowing.

- Cherie Carter-Scott, 

From "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules"

The Daily "Near You?"

Belleville, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Essence Of Human Existence..."

"Curiosity is the essence of human existence.

'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'

I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions.

I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out."

- Eugene Cernan

“As I’ve Aged”

“As I’ve Aged”

- Author Unknown

“You ask me how it feels to grow older. I’ve learned a few things along the way, which I’ll share with you…

As I’ve aged, I’ve become kinder to myself, and less critical of myself. I’ve become my own friend. I don’t chide myself for eating that extra cookie, or for not making my bed, or for buying that silly cement gecko that I didn’t need, but looks so avante-garde on my patio. I am entitled to a treat, to be messy, to be extravagant.

I have seen too many dear friends leave this world too soon; before they understood the great freedom that comes with aging. Whose business is it if I choose to read or play on the computer until 4 AM and sleep until noon? I will dance with myself to those wonderful tunes of many years ago, and if I, at the same time, wish to weep over a lost love… I will.

I will walk the beach in a swim suit that is stretched over a bulging body, and will dive into the waves with abandon if I choose to, despite the pitying glances from the jet set. They, too, will get old.

I know I am sometimes forgetful. But there again, some of life is just as well forgotten. And I eventually remember the important things. Sure, over the years my heart has been broken. How can your heart not break when you lose a loved one, or when a child suffers, or even when somebody’s beloved pet gets hit by a car? But broken hearts are what give us strength and understanding and compassion. A heart never broken is pristine and sterile and will never know the joy of being imperfect.

I am so blessed to have lived long enough to have my hair turning gray, and to have my youthful laughs be forever etched into deep grooves on my face. So many have never laughed, and so many have died before their hair could turn silver.

As you get older, it is easier to be positive. You care less about what other people think. I don’t question myself anymore. I’ve even earned the right to be wrong. So, to answer your question, I like being old. It has set me free. I like the person I have become. I am not going to live forever, but while I am still here, I will not waste time lamenting what could have been, or worrying about what will be. And I shall eat dessert every single day (if I feel like it). May our friendship never come apart especially when it’s straight from the heart!”

The Poet: Charles Dickens, "Things That Never Die "

"Things That Never Die"

 "The pure, the bright, the beautiful

that stirred our hearts in youth,

The impulses to wordless prayer,

The streams of love and truth,

The longing after something lost,

The spirits longing cry,

The striving after better hopes -

These things can never die.

The timid hand stretched forth to aid

A brother in his need;

A kindly word in griefs dark hour

That proves a friend indeed;

The plea for mercy softly breathed,

When justice threatens high,

The sorrow of a contrite heart -

These things shall never die.

Let nothing pass, for every hand

Must find some work to do,

Lose not a chance to waken love -

Be firm and just and true.

So shall a light that cannot fade

Beam on thee from on high,

And angel voices say to thee -

 These things shall never die. 

- Charles Dickens (1812-1870)

"How It Really Is"

 

Free Download: “State Of Insecurity: The Cost Of Militarization Since 9/11”

“State Of Insecurity: 

The Cost Of Militarization Since 9/11”

"Twenty years after 9/11, the war on terror has remade the U.S. into a far more militarized actor, both around the world and at home. The human costs of this evolution are many - including mass incarceration, widespread surveillance, the violent repression of immigrant communities, and hundreds of thousands of lives lost to war and violence. But of course, this militarization also has financial costs too. Over 20 years, the U.S. has spent more than $21 trillion on militarization, surveillance, and repression - all in the name of security. These investments have shown us that the U.S. has the capacity and political will to invest in our biggest priorities.

But the COVID-19 pandemic, the January 6 Capitol insurrection, wildfires raging in the West, and even the fall of Afghanistan have shown us that these investments cannot buy us safety. The next 20 years present an opportunity to reconsider where we need to reinvest for a better future."

Freely download this complete report here:

-https://ips-dc.org/wp-content/

"Rental Policy Shock – 750,000 Face Eviction As Housing And Rent Prices Explode"

Full screen recommended.

"Rental Policy Shock – 750,000 Face Eviction 

As Housing And Rent Prices Explode"

by Epic Economist

"Although our politicians and policymakers insist that the runaway inflation ravaging our economy is merely "transitory", millions of Americans will soon be living under a bridge as both home prices and rents are now skyrocketing at breakneck speed. At the rate house prices are climbing right now, it won't take long before most part of the American population gets completely priced out of the market. Even the record-low mortgage rates are not being effective in helping Americans to become homeowners anymore, which means they will be doomed to pay inflated prices for rent for years if not decades to come. To make things worse, as the Wall Street Journal reported recently, would-be home buyers that have been priced out of the housing market this year are finding little consolation when they turn to the rental market. That's because rents are soaring and hitting record-breaking levels as well.

Real-estate data company Yardi Matrix found that asking rents for houses jumped nearly 13% for the year to date through July, the highest annual increase in the past five years. Since the beginning of 2021, the national median rent went up by a shocking 13.8%. As a comparison, in the pre-outbreak years from 2017-2019, rent price growth from January to August averaged just 3.6%. Given that rents are rising virtually everywhere, even small and mid-sized markets are recording an unprecedented boom. For example, in Boise, Idaho, rents have shot up by 39 percent since March 2020. This year, rent growth is largely outpacing pre-outbreak averages in 98 of the nation’s 100 largest cities. One of the most remarkable aspects of the current market is the fact that, unlike previous price bubbles, this time around the price increase is has been consistent, with not a single downward turn over the past 9 months. This is a big change from 2020 when rents sharply dropped in expensive markets while growing aggressively in more affordable ones. In 2021, the boom is affecting every major market in the country -- rents are rising across the board.

To add insult to injury, while middle-class Americans become increasingly poorer as they are forced to spend a larger share of their disposable income on rent and other living expenses, Wall Street is, of course, getting remarkably richer with this crisis. Several wealthy investors and Wall Street firms have been buying entire neighborhoods just so that they can rent the housing units at a big, big profit. The timing is also perfect for Wall Street players since the eviction moratorium has expired and the supply of available rental units is about to go up as millions of Americans get kicked out of their homes. Throughout the past year, corporate landlords were unable to evict non-paying tenants, which left them with less supply to offer those who can actually pay. To make up for their losses, they have been raising rents on every property they can, knowing that demand in the market will support the increases.

Now that the Supreme Court struck down the federal eviction moratorium for good, millions upon millions of Americans lost the only social safety net keeping a roof above their heads. A new analysis released by Goldman Sachs on Sunday suggested that without congressional action or faster disbursement of rental assistance, about 750,000 households will face eviction by the end of the year. The analysis also highlighted that due to the strength of the housing and rental market, landlords will try to evict tenants who are delinquent on rent as fast as they possibly can. The rate of evictions could be alarmingly high in cities hardest hit by the health crisis, considering apartment markets are actually tighter in those cities. Goldman also noted that an eviction episode of this magnitude will lead to a drag on consumption and job growth all across the economy, but that will be nothing compared to the implications it will have on new virus infections and public health.

On the other hand, institutional landlords are arguing that there's a 'silver lining' in throwing hundreds of thousands of people out in the street: The mass evictions would allegedly ease the imbalances created by the housing shortage since several units would be brought back into the market. On Twitter, Darrell Owens, a housing policy analyst at California YIMBY, wrote: “750,000 households don’t just magically disappear. So why would aggregate vacancies increase under stagnant housing? Because the plan is to make them homeless". Sadly, he's right. Housing in the U.S. is about to become completely unaffordable to anyone outside of the top 1%. This means that the original American Dream of owning a home has faded away and turned into a nightmare scenario for millions of Americans."

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! Be Ready For Anything! Expect Something Dramatic To Occur Relatively Soon"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/3/21:

"Alert! Be Ready For Anything! 

Expect Something Dramatic To Occur Relatively Soon"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Cycle of Time"; "Challenge From Heaven"

2002, "Cycle of Time"

Full screen mode recommended.

2002, "Challenge From Heaven"

Full screen mode recommended.

Beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Sculpted by stellar winds and radiation, a magnificent interstellar dust cloud by chance has assumed this recognizable shape. Fittingly named the Horsehead Nebula, it is some 1,500 light-years distant, embedded in the vast Orion cloud complex.

About five light-years "tall", the dark cloud is cataloged as Barnard 33 and is visible only because its obscuring dust is silhouetted against the glowing red emission nebula IC 434. Stars are forming within the dark cloud. Contrasting blue reflection nebula NGC 2023, surrounding a hot, young star, is at the lower left. The gorgeous color image combines both narrowband and broadband images recorded using three different telescopes.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100513.html

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light: Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

"When the Sky Is No More Than Remembered Light:

Mark Strand Reads His Poignant Poem 'The End'”

- by Maria Popova

“Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing,

when the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.”

“It’s such a lucky accident, having been born, that we’re almost obliged to pay attention,” the Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Strand (April 11, 1934–November 29, 2014) observed in contemplating the artist’s task to bear witness to the universe. And yet this universe in which we live is predicated on impermanence, and the lucky accident of our existence is crowned with the certitude of its end from the start. Why, then, are we always so shocked by the finitude of all we hold dear and, above all, by our own mortality? Few are those who can say with sincerity, like Rilke did an exquisite 1923 letter, that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love.” Instead, we spend our lives shuddering at any reminder of our inevitable end, unsalved by the miracle of having lived at all.

Montaigne articulated the central paradox of being perfectly in 16th-century meditation on death and the art of living: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” Still, lament we do, and some of our greatest art gives voice to that lamentation.

That paradox is what Strand explores with transcendent courage and curiosity in his poem “The End,” found in his "Collected Poems" (public library) - the trove of truth and beauty that gave us Strand’s love letter to dreams.

In this hauntingly beautiful recording, courtesy of The New York Public Library, an aged Strand reads his poignant poem shortly before he repaid his own debt to mortality:

"The End"

by Mark Strand

"Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,

Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like

When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,

Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,

When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down

No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.

When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus

And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,

Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing

When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end."

Complement with the lyrical "Duck, Death and the Tulip", Marcus Aurelius on mortality and the key to living fully, and the great Zen master Seung Sahn Soen-sa’s explanation of death and the life-force to a child, then revisit Strand’s celebration of clouds and everything they mean."

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

Chet Raymo, “Try To Remember…”

“Try To Remember…”

by Chet Raymo

“In a sleepless hour of the night, I was trying to remember the last name of a person I have known well for more than forty years. When my spouse stirred in her sleep, I asked her. She couldn't remember either. One again I started mentally through the alphabet. "I think it starts with B," I said. Ten minutes later she rolled over and said, "The next letter is R." Bingo! The name popped into my head. Or I should say, "popped out of my head." Because it was in there somewhere, recorded in a tangle of neurons as materially as if it were written on a piece of paper.

There was a time, back when I was a young man, when some scientists thought memory might be molecular - stored as proteins or RNA molecules that have somehow been modified by experience. The molecule theory of memory rested on experiments with worms (I remember the cover illustration on Scientific American). The worms were taught to navigate a simple maze. Then they were ground up and fed to untrained worms, which seemed to navigate the maze without training. Only molecules, it was thought, could have survived the transfer. Those experiments have been discredited. Scientists now overwhelmingly believe that memories are stored as webs of connections between spider-shaped brain cells called neurons. Each neuron is connected through electrochemical connections to thousands of others. According to the current view, experience fine-tunes the connections, strengthening some, weakening others, creating a different "trace" of interconnected cells for each memory.

But truth be told, memory is still deeply mysterious. How exactly are a lifetime of memories stored and retrieved at will? We know how it works for computers, but how for the human brain? What is self-consciousness? What are dreams? This is the primary scientific agenda for the 21st century. In the middle of the night I go fishing, in that sea of potentiated synapses that are the human soul, for a name that becomes ever more difficult to extract as I get older. I troll the alphabet: A, B, C, D… The name is in there, along with a face and more that forty years of interactions. The Nobel Prizes are waiting.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

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Graphic: Salvador Dali, "The Persistence of Memory"