"Economic Market Snapshot 5/4/26"

"Economic Market Snapshot 5/4/26"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

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Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

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"Iran's Next Move Will Shock The World, Israel Has No Answer"

Scott Ritter, 5/3/26

"Iran's Next Move Will Shock The World,

 Israel Has No Answer"

"Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and military analyst, breaks down Iran's latest strategic moves and what they mean for Israel and the entire Middle East. Is the IDF truly prepared for what's coming? Scott Ritter shares his expert analysis on Iran's military capabilities, regional alliances, and the geopolitical shifts reshaping the world order."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Shock Netanyahu Didn't See Coming, Now Israel Is At Risk"

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, 5/3/26

"A Shock Netanyahu Didn't See Coming,

 Now Israel Is At Risk"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Stipendium peccati mors est, Israel, and it's coming...

"Iran Cuts 90% of IDF Supply Routes, 120,000 Troops Starve As Israel's Army Collapses in 5 Days"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 5/3/26

"Iran Cuts 90% of IDF Supply Routes,

 120,000 Troops Starve As Israel's Army Collapses in 5 Days"

"For the first time in modern warfare, Iran severed 90% of IDF supply routes in a single coordinated campaign - leaving 120,000 Israeli soldiers stranded without fuel, ammunition, or food across five active fronts. No emergency resupply reached them. No American airlift broke through. No diplomatic intervention reversed the collapse. Within five days, the most American-backed army in the Middle East was operationally paralyzed not by battlefield defeat but by systematic logistical demolition. This is the unfiltered breakdown of how Iran executed the most devastating supply chain interdiction campaign in modern military history - and why the Pentagon had no answer."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, 5/3/26

"Iran Cut Every IDF Supply Line, 

120,000 Soldiers Starving, Israel Crumbles"

"Iran has reportedly cut every major IDF supply line, leaving over 120,000 Israeli soldiers without food, fuel, and ammunition. Is Israel's military on the verge of total collapse? Lawrence Wilkerson breaks down the shocking geopolitical fallout."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"LEGO Rap: An Iranian Message to America, We Never Hated You"

 

Full screen recommended.

"LEGO Rap: An Iranian Message to America, 

We Never Hated You"

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Full screen recommended.

USA Vs Iran: We Bleed The Same Blood As You"

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Courting the Moon"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Courting the Moon"

"A Look to the Heavens"

Full screen recommended.

Sir David Attenborough, 

"The Truth About Trillions of Galaxies"

"Some Of Us..."

"We are all in the gutter,

 but some of us are looking at the stars."

- Oscar Wilde

“The Myth of Human Progress”

Full screen recommended.

“The Myth of Human Progress”

By Chris Hedges

“Clive Hamilton in his “Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change” describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that “catastrophic climate change is virtually certain.” This obliteration of “false hopes,” he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth – intellectually and emotionally – and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.

The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth – as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury – as well as unrivaled military and economic power – for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.

Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in “The Collapse of Complex Societies,” Charles L. Redman in “Human Impact on Ancient Environments” and Ronald Wright in “A Short History of Progress” have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship.

“There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating,” Wright said when I reached him by phone at his home in British Columbia, Canada.

“They tend to collapse quite soon after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity. That pattern holds good for a lot of societies, among them the Romans, the ancient Maya and the Sumerians of what is now southern Iraq. There are many other examples, including smaller-scale societies such as Easter Island. The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in ‘A Short History of Progress’ the ‘progress trap.’ We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature. We have failed to control human numbers. They have tripled in my lifetime. And the problem is made much worse by the widening gap between rich and poor, the upward concentration of wealth, which ensures there can never be enough to go around. The number of people in dire poverty today – about 2 billion – is greater than the world’s entire population in the early 1900s. That’s not progress.

If we continue to refuse to deal with things in an orderly and rational way, we will head into some sort of major catastrophe, sooner or later. If we are lucky it will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out. That is the best we can hope for. We must transcend our evolutionary history. We’re Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we’re not doing that.”

Wright, who in his dystopian novel “A Scientific Romance” paints a picture of a future world devastated by human stupidity, cites “entrenched political and economic interests” and a failure of the human imagination as the two biggest impediments to radical change. And all of us who use fossil fuels, who sustain ourselves through the formal economy, he says, are at fault.

Modern capitalist societies, Wright argues in his book “What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order,” derive from European invaders’ plundering of the indigenous cultures in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries, coupled with the use of African slaves as a workforce to replace the natives. The numbers of those natives fell by more than 90 percent because of smallpox and other plagues they hadn’t had before. The Spaniards did not conquer any of the major societies until smallpox had crippled them; in fact the Aztecs beat them the first time around. If Europe had not been able to seize the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, if it had not been able to occupy the land and adopt highly productive New World crops for use on European farms, the growth of industrial society in Europe would have been much slower. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.

Wright explained this further on our call. “The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever. It is an absurd myth. We live on this planet. We can’t leave it and go somewhere else. We have to bring our economies and demands on nature within natural limits, but we have had a 500-year run where Europeans, Euro-Americans and other colonists have overrun the world and taken it over. This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal. We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again. 

We have to readjust our entire civilization to live in a finite world. But we are not doing it, because we are carrying far too much baggage, too many mythical versions of deliberately distorted history and a deeply ingrained feeling that what being modern is all about is having more. This is what anthropologists call an ideological pathology, a self-destructive belief that causes societies to crash and burn. These societies go on doing things that are really stupid because they can’t change their way of thinking. And that is where we are.

And as the collapse becomes palpable, if human history is any guide, we like past societies in distress will retreat into what anthropologists call “crisis cults.” The powerlessness we will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist belief in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us.”

As Wright told me: “Societies in collapse often fall prey to the belief that if certain rituals are performed all the bad stuff will go away. There are many examples of that throughout history. In the past these crisis cults took hold among people who had been colonized, attacked and slaughtered by outsiders, who had lost control of their lives. They see in these rituals the ability to bring back the past world, which they look at as a kind of paradise. They seek to return to the way things were. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the 19th century, when the buffalo and the Indians were being slaughtered by repeating rifles and finally machine guns. People came to believe, as happened in the Ghost Dance, that if they did the right things the modern world that was intolerable – the barbed wire, the railways, the white man, the machine gun – would disappear.

We all have the same, basic psychological hard wiring. It makes us quite bad at long-range planning and leads us to cling to irrational delusions when faced with a serious threat. Look at the extreme right’s belief that if government got out of the way, the lost paradise of the 1950s would return. Look at the way we let oil and gas exploration rip when we knew that expanding the carbon economy was suicidal for our children and grandchildren. The results can already be felt. When it gets to the point where large parts of the Earth experience crop failure at the same time then we will have mass starvation and a breakdown in order. That is what lies ahead if we do not deal with climate change.

If we fail in this great experiment, this experiment of apes becoming intelligent enough to take charge of their own destiny, nature will shrug and say it was fun for a while to let the apes run the laboratory, but in the end it was a bad idea.”

- https://www.planetaryphilosophy.com/

The Poet: David Whyte, "The Opening of Eyes"

"The Opening of Eyes"

"That day I saw beneath dark clouds

The passing light over the water,

And I heard the voice of the world speak out.

I knew then as I have before,

Life is no passing memory of what has been,

Nor the remaining pages of a great book

Waiting to be read.

It is the opening of eyes long closed.

It is the vision of far off things,

Seen for the silence they hold.

It is the heart after years of secret conversing

Speaking out loud in the clear air.

It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees

Before the lit bush.

It is the man throwing away his shoes

As if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished,

Opened at last,

Fallen in love

With solid ground."

~ David Whyte

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths

We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

by Angel Chernoff

“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  

We are going to get through this, I promise, 

and we’re going to get through it together. “

- Dr. Jon LaPook

“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all…

1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.

Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new, passionately engage in each moment.

2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event, and these events are always happening. 

So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.

3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.

And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)

4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.

Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.

Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.

5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner.  It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.

All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”

- https://www.marcandangel.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Life Is Never Fair..."

"Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a 

good thing for most of us that it is not."

- Oscar Wilde

"You Won't Believe How Much We Spent On Groceries, This Is Shocking"

Adventures With Danno, 5/3/26

"You Won't Believe How Much We 

Spent On Groceries, This Is Shocking"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Point Of No Return..."

”There is a point of no return, unremarked at the time, in most lives.”

- Graham Greene

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“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. Your only choice is to swim forward into the unknown… and pray for an exit.” - Dan Brown

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“And it was pointless… to think how those years could have been put to better use, for he could hardly have put them to worse. There was no recovering them now. You could grieve endlessly for the loss of time and for the damage done therein. For the dead, and for your own lost self. But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. And those old ones knew a thing or two and had some truth to tell… for you can grieve your heart out and in the end you are still where you were. All your grief hasn’t changed a thing. What you have lost will not be returned to you. It will always be lost. You’re left with only your scars to mark the void. All you can choose to do is to go on or not. But if you go on, it’s knowing you carry your scars with you.” - Charles Frazier

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“Never be ashamed of a scar.

It simply means you were stronger than whatever tried to hurt you.”

- Unknown

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Kansas, "Point of No Return"

"How It Will Never Really Be"

That'll be the day! Read a book? God forbid!

"Banks Are Canceling Credit Cards, This Is A Bad Sign"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 5/3/26

"Banks Are Canceling Credit Cards, 

This Is A Bad Sign"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 5/3/26

"Americans Can't Pay Their Bill - 

This Is Only The Beginning"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "They're Dumping Houses"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 5/3/26

"They're Dumping Houses"

"The “silver tsunami” has officially arrived, and it’s about to reshape the housing market in ways most people aren’t prepared for. Millions of Americans over 65 are selling their homes, cashing out equity, and downsizing due to rising costs, inflation, property taxes, and healthcare expenses. With nearly one-third of all U.S. homes owned by this group, a surge of listings is hitting the market - especially in states like Florida and Texas - creating potential oversupply and shifting real estate dynamics nationwide. At the same time, major real estate brokerages are merging in what’s being sold as a “power move,” but the reality tells a different story. Deals like the RE/MAX consolidation reveal shrinking margins, fewer active agents, and an industry struggling to survive. This isn’t growth - it’s contraction. In this video, Dan from i Allegedly breaks down why the housing market, real estate agents, and the entire system are undergoing a massive reset driven by economic pressure and demographic change."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Think..."

"Think of your many years of procrastination; how the gods have repeatedly granted you further periods of grace, of which you have taken no advantage. It is time now to realize the nature of the universe to which you belong, and of that controlling Power whose offspring you are; and to understand that your time has a limit set to it. Use it, then, to advance your enlightenment; or it will be gone, and never in your power again."   

-  Marcus Aurelius

"Right Before Everything Collapses People Act Like Nothing’s Wrong"

Full screen recommended.

Historian Catalogue, 5/2/26

"Right Before Everything Collapses

 People Act Like Nothing’s Wrong"

"Why do people keep living normally - drinking coffee, booking holidays, buying luxury items - right before a financial collapse? The answer isn't ignorance. It's a deeply wired psychological mechanism called Normalcy Bias. And it has destroyed the finances of millions throughout history. In this video, we unpack the psychological forensics behind financial crashes - from the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany in 1923, to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis that wiped out trillions globally. We explore why the human brain is literally wired to deny incoming threats, how Pluralistic Ignorance makes entire societies freeze together, and how the Boiling Frog Syndrome silently erodes wealth one ignored signal at a time. This isn't a doom video. This is a pattern recognition video."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Foreclosures Sweep Across America! Hundreds Of Thousands Of Families Will Lose Their Homes"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 5/2/26

"Foreclosures Sweep Across America! Hundreds

 Of Thousands Of Families Will Lose Their Homes"

"Foreclosures are rising across the United States, and for many families, this is already a reality. In this video, we take a closer, more human look at what’s really happening behind the numbers. From rising mortgage payments and job loss to increasing living costs, more people are finding themselves in situations they never expected to face. As we react to a series of TikTok clips, the focus isn’t just on statistics, but on the emotional weight of what people are going through. You’ll hear stories of individuals on the brink of losing their homes, families asking for help, and homeowners sharing how quickly things can spiral when life becomes more expensive. These moments highlight how fragile financial stability can feel in today’s economy.

We also explore the growing conversation around veteran foreclosures, where those who once served their country are now struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Whether it’s policy changes, financial hardship, or broken expectations, these stories raise deeper questions about trust, stability, and support systems in uncertain times. Another key theme in this video is the idea that this housing crisis feels different from past ones. Many homeowners aren’t losing their properties due to reckless decisions, but because costs like insurance, taxes, and basic living expenses have increased faster than income. It’s a quieter kind of pressure, but one that’s affecting millions of people.

Throughout the video, we reflect on what these stories reveal about modern life - the shrinking margin for error, the stress of staying afloat, and the importance of being prepared for the unexpected. This is about understanding the reality many people are facing and recognizing that you’re not alone if you’ve been feeling the pressure too. If you’ve noticed changes in your own financial situation, or if these stories resonate with you in any way, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. Your perspective matters, and these conversations can help others feel less alone during difficult times."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"What Will Food Prices Look Like This Summer? Prepare For The Worst"

Adventures With Danno, 5/2/26

"What Will Food Prices Look Like This Summer?

 Prepare For The Worst"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "A Dream"

Full screen recommended.

Peder B. Helland, "A Dream"

"Beautiful Relaxing Music • 

Norwegian Nature & Violin, Flute, Piano & Harp Music"

- https://pederbhelland.lnk.to/websiteYL

"A Look to the Heavens"

Full screen recommended.

"Stunning Stargazing In Yosemite National Park"

"Far away from light pollution and high up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range, Yosemite National Park's stunning views of the night sky and majestic natural wonders attract astronomers, photographers and city dwellers from around the country."

Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”

“Into The Night”

by Chet Raymo

“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.

Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.

Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.

The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.

In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.

One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.

That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.

That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: David Whyte, "Sweet Darkness"

"Sweet Darkness"

"When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."

- David Whyte,

"House of Belonging"

“Life, Explained To You”

“Life, Explained To You”

Author Unknown

“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed.

On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed.

On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again.

On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.”

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”

“Life has now been explained to you.”

Free Download: Jack London, "The Iron Heel"

"I know nothing that I may say can influence you. You have no souls to be influenced. You are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy." 

- Jack London

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Freely download "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:

- https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/iron-heel-ebook.html

Read online The Project Gutenberg eBook 

of "The Iron Heel", by Jack London, here:

- https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1164/1164-h/1164-h.htm

"Iran's Air Defense Wall Kills 2000 Israeli Drones & 40 Jets - Nothing Got Through"

Scott Ritter Insight, 5/2/26

"Iran's Air Defense Wall Kills 2000 Israeli Drones

 & 40 Jets - Nothing Got Through"

"I spent thirty years studying aerial warfare. I have read every major air campaign assessment of the past century. What happened over Iranian airspace last night has no historical parallel. Israel launched its maximum offensive aerial effort - two thousand UAVs and forty F-5E strike aircraft - the largest single strike package in Israeli military history. Iran stopped every single one. Not most. Not the majority. Every drone. Every jet. Zero penetrations. The analytical community told you Iranian air defense was insufficient. Last night's engagement answered that assessment permanently. Tonight I explain exactly how Iran built the wall that nothing could breach - and what that means for everything that follows."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

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Dialogue Works, 5/2/26

"Ray McGovern: Israel’s Worst Defeat: 

New Wave of Attacks That Could END It All"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

San Luis Obispo, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!