best birthday wishes to you, juliania

a delph and a swallowtail for you, juliania, and may it be a good day, a good week, a good month…a good life for you, or at least: good enough for who it’s for.  ;-)  but seriously, your glass isn’t always half-full, as the homily contrasts, it seems too be two-thirds full,  for an example: you see heroes, where i see…their feet of clay.

born on this date, you were born under the sun sign Leo (fire); your sister told me that in new zealand, under the sign of the Chinese Dragon, also fire, i assume.  had she meant your year of birth? I’d forgotten to ask.  Leo can easily be identified by its ‘backwards question mark’; it’s one of my favorite constellations.

from cathy lynn pagano (astrologer) at opednews.com, fwiw:  ;-)

“In Leo, we look to the characteristics of the lion to understand why Leo is associated with the Sun as well as the Heart. While male lions are often solitary, groups of lionesses live together with their cubs and a few lions, forming a pride. Male lions protect the pride, and it is in this role of defender that we see Leo’s leadership ability. Both male and females hunt for the entire pride and perhaps that’s where Leo’s well-known generosity is rooted. Lions are also playful — one of the ways lionesses teach their young. Just as humans play with their kittens! Don’t forget, fun is definitely a Leo word! And passion ! Another good Leo word, for passion ignites consciousness!”

Red Bird Explains Himself

‘Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bring sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.
But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed that, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”

~ Mary Oliver ~

juliania was born a new zealand kiwi, and emigrated to this country, although i dunno how old she was.  but i do know that she went to st. john’s college in santa fe, a perfect fit for her, as the main curriculum was Great Books “from the Western canon of philosophical, religious, historical, mathematical, scientific, and literary works; it is probably for this program that the school is best known)” (wikipedia).  And oh, does she know dostoyevsky, tolstoy, and other russian greats, plus plato, poets galore…like jason knows melvillve, the bard, the greeks, and other literary giants.  her written prose seems to have been influeced by those russian authors, i think.  her café  oeuvre is here, and one diary is from notes she took at a speech given to a st. john’s graduating class (hers?  i’ve forgotten) by one of her favorite teachers. the talk was awesome.

she’s russian orthodox, and paints and sells exquisite icons like these three that she so generously gifted us a few years ago.  how tenderly she paints them, and with such devotion…

she’s fervently anti-war, anti-imperialist, and anti-nuclear.  as she’s said, she now lives ‘in the shadow of los alamos national laboratory’, birthplace of the manhattan project and the first atomic bombs.

now it’s hard to say when juliania might be back online.  as i hadn’t seen her here or a MOA for some time, i’d emailed to see if she were okay.  after not hearing back for a week or so, i grew uneasy, as the last time this had happened, i later discovered that she’d taken a fall, broke her hip, and had gotten plunked into a hospital in santa fe.  so yeah, i was uneasy enough to call the phone number i had for her, got a ‘this # is no longer in service’ message: uh-oh.   zo, i emailed her sister in kiwi-land, and she told me that juliania’s laptop had committed hara-kiri, as all do eventually, if not sooner, the cursed machines.  but she did tell me that her kids (shhhhh…) might get her a new one for her birthday…today.  even if she’s unable to get online for some days to come, i did want to post this…today to welcome her back to the woild of the berserk blogosphere.

now this journalist author has given us all a gift with his stellar prose and historical narratives in his August 4, 2017 ‘Dark Mesas Under an Ancient Light: Southwest Under Siege’ by Jeffrey St. Clair; i think you’ll love it witless’.

also, this most excellent polemicist seems to live on your street: ‘Empire’s Day of Reckoning’, John Rohn Hall / August 4th, 2017

but what’s a birthday w/o a funny or two?  (h/t jason)