I Plan to "Be Here Now" for the Rest of the Summer. No Travel. No Buying Gas. No Airport Madness. I'm Already Here and it's Great!

We had a great 4th of July party here... 

In my Suburban neighborhood, the families go out in the middle of the street and set off fireworks... It's a giant block party... And out in the middle of the street is probably the safest place to play with fire... Considering that it's hot and there's a drought and California has tendency to burn like crazy... 

I'm certain that on TV news there will be reports of people who are unhappy at the airport... They should have flown on a Jefferson Airplane instead... DUH... 

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Rich White Men are created equal, [NOT Blacks, Women, Indians or Landless Peasants] and that they are endowed by their Creator [Named Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, Odin, Thor, KRSNA, Buddha or a Thousand Other Names] with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” [Unless your Pursuit uses Marijuana or Psychedelics as a Sacrament] - DANG... So Many Disclaimers... Was This Written by a Freaking Lawyer?

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And then I read on the internet... 

https://www.tumblr.com/power-handmaiden

When I was in high school I had a literature teacher who had a policy of unlimited extra credit. All you had to do was read a book by a notable author (his discretion) and have a little chat with him after school to prove that you read it. No limits, no need for variety (one month I decided I really loved Kurt Vonnegut and just read everything of his I could get my hands on).

Yes, I was tearing through books constantly, and talking to this teacher at least weekly. Because even though I always loved reading as a kid, literature was always a very weak subject for me in terms of a teaching-to-standardized-test school setting (I just do awful on "what color were the curtains" type multiple choice questions. Those details don't stick in my memory THEY JUST DON'T). But that didn't matter for this class. I could just read my way out of any bad test score. I have always had fond memories of how I "fudged" my way through that class and "abused' the extra credit policy.

I was thinking about it again today, and only just now realized that he absolutely tricked me into being well-read, while my teenage self thought I was totally getting away with something. THAT MOFO! I hope he's doing well.

Dear Diary 2020 Edition:
In January, Australia caught on fire. I don’t even know if that fire was put out, because we straight up almost went to war with Iran. We might actually still be almost at war with them. I really don’t know, because Jen Aniston and Brad Pitt spoke to one another at an awards show and everyone flipped the fuck out, but then Netflix released Cheer and everyone fell in love with Jerry, but then there was this thing happening in China, then Prince Harry and Megan peaced out of the Royal family, and there was the whole impeachment trial, and then corona virus showed up in the US “officially,” but then Kobe died and UK peaced out of the European Union.
In February, Iowa crapped itself with the caucus results and the president was acquitted and the Speaker of the House took ten years to rip up a speech, but then WHO decided to give this virus a name COVID-19, which confused some really important people in charge of, like, our lives, into thinking there were 18 other versions before it, but then Harvey Weinstein was found guilty, and Americans started asking if Corona beer was safe to drink, and everyone on Facebook became a doctor, who just knew the flu, like, killed way more people than COVID 1 through 18.
In March, shit hit the fan. Warren dropped out of the presidential race and Sanders was like Bernie or bust bitches, but then Italy shut its whole ass down, and then COVID, not 1 through 18, officially become what everyone already realized, a pandemic, and then a nationwide state of emergency was declared in the US, but it didn’t really change anything, so everyone was confused, or thought it was still just a flu, but then COVID not 18 was like ya’ll not taking me seriously? I’m gonna infect the one celebrity everyone loves and totally infected Tom Hanks, but then the DOW took a shit on itself, and most of us still don’t understand why the stock market is so important or even a thing, but then we were all introduced to Tiger King. (Carol totally killed her husband), and Netflix was like you’re welcome, and we all realized there was no way we were washing our hands enough in the first place because now our hands are dry and gross.
In April, Bernie finally busted himself out of the presidential race, but then NYC became the set of The Walking Dead and we learned that no one has face masks, ventilators, or toilet paper, or THE GOD DAMN SWIFTER WET JET LIQUID, but then Kim Jong-Un died, but then he came back to life… or did he? Who knows, because then the Pentagon released videos of UFOs, and we were like man, it’s only April….
In May, the biblical end times kicked off historical locust swarms and then we learned of murder hornets and realized that 2020 was the start of the Hunger Games, but people forgot to let us know, but then people legit protested lockdown measures with AR-15s, and then sporting events were cancelled everywhere, but then people all over America finally reached a breaking point with race issues and violence. There were protests in every city, but then people totes forgot about the pandemic called COVID not 1 through 18. Media struggled with how to focus on two important things at once, but then people in general struggle to focus on more than one important thing, and a dead whale was found in the middle of the Amazon rain forest after monkeys stole COVID 1 Through 19 from a lab and ran off with them, and either in May or April (no one is keeping track of time now) a giant asteroid narrowly missed earth.
In June, science and common sense just got thrown straight out the damn window and somehow wearing masks became a political thing, but then a whole lot of people realized the south was actually the most unpatriotic place ever and actually lost the civil war, and there is a large amount of people who feel that statues, that they don’t even know the name of, are needed for…history reasons, but then everyone sort of remembered there was a pandemic, but then decided that not wearing a mask was somehow a god given right (still haven't found that part in the bible or even in the constitution), but then scientists announced they found a mysterious undiscovered mass at the center of the earth, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE TOUCH IT, but then everyone took a pause to realize that people actually believed Gone With The Wind was like non-fiction, but then it was also announced that there is a strange radio single coming from somewhere in the universe that repeats itself every so many days, and everyone was like DON’T YOU DARE ATTEMPT TO COMMUNICATE WITH IT, but then America reopened from the shut down that actually wasn’t even a shut down, and so far, things have gone spectacularly not that great, but everyone is on Facebook arguing that masks kill because no one knows how breathing works,
—but then Florida was like hold my beer and let me show you how we’re number one in all things, including new Not Corona Beer Corona Virus, Trump decides now is a good time to ask the Supreme Court to shut down Obama Care because what better time to do so than in the middle of a pandemic, but then we learned there was a massive dust cloud coming straight at us from the Sahara Desert, which is totally normal, but this is 2020, so the ghost mummy thing is most likely in that dust cloud, but then I learned of meth-gators, and I'm like that is so not on my fucking 2020 Bingo card, but then we learned that the Congo's worse ever Ebola outbreak is over, and we were all like, there was an Ebola outbreak that was the worst ever?
In July…. Aliens? Zeus? Asteroids? Artificial Intelligence becomes self aware?
And there's still an election that will determine the future of democracy coming....

It is becoming harder and harder to exist in a country where cruelty has become so normalized that people justify it because of one man in power. Every day, thousands of people on my page tell me they’re skipping meals, struggling to survive, watching their families fall apart, losing lifelong friendships, and wondering how they’re going to make it through another month. At the same time, strangers tear each other apart in the comments as though human suffering is entertainment.
That is not leadership. That is division by design.
A good president does not convince neighbors to hate one another. A good person does not make millions of Americans feel like they no longer belong in their own country. Leadership should unite people through difficult times, not reward cruelty and encourage people to see anyone who disagrees with them as an enemy.
So let me ask a question.
If you knew that the babies you are fighting so hard to “save” would one day grow up to be Democrats, criticize Donald Trump, or refuse to worship your politics, would you still want them to be born?
Because the way many of you speak to those exact people in my comment section tells a very different story. You mock the poor. You belittle disabled people. You shame the hungry. You ridicule anyone who needs help. You treat people who disagree with you as though they deserve to suffer.
If your “pro-life” ends the moment that life disagrees with you, needs assistance, or votes differently than you do, then you are not pro-life. You are pro-control.
All of this is happening while that same "man" has been found liable for sexual abuse in civil court, convicted on multiple felony counts, and continues to face questions surrounding unreleased Epstein-related records and a justice system that still has not held every responsible person accountable. Meanwhile, he continues to label political opponents as “enemies,” invent new insults, and fuel a culture where cruelty is celebrated and empathy is treated as weakness.
There is no version of good leadership that depends on convincing half the country that the other half is evil.
What makes it even harder to understand is that many of the people defending all of this wrap themselves in Christianity and claim it is justified because they oppose abortion. They proudly call themselves “pro-life,” but they don’t want to feed the child once that child is born. They don’t want that child to have a birthday cake. They don’t want struggling families to receive food assistance. They accuse disabled people of not working hard enough. They accuse elderly people of not working long enough. They call poor families lazy instead of acknowledging that millions of Americans are trapped in a system that often makes it nearly impossible to get ahead.
If you truly value life, how can you ignore the lives already here?
So I’ll ask the question one more time.
If you knew those children would grow up poor, need government assistance, become disabled, or vote against Donald Trump, would you still fight just as hard for them to be born?
Because judging by what I see every day in my comment section, it doesn’t seem like you would.
You say you want more life, but you don’t want to support that life, feed that life, protect that life, respect that life, or even listen to that life once it grows up and starts thinking for itself.
Make it make sense.

Address by NYC Mayor Mamdani - Insightful Wisdom - Really Needed Today - Every Word of his Speech!

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York Harbor. Long before the name “New York” had ever been spoken, Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazzano and Hudson after whom we’ve named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs.

When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land, lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising, a city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing world-wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.

Tomorrow, our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. Two hundred and fifty years of a grand experiment in self-governance — an experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. Two hundred and fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together — both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see?

Here at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City.

The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington. In July of 1776, our city simmered under the yoke of oppression. The British had imposed a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers, and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self-evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill.

The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governors Island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned and we were soundly defeated. After only a few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse.

But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat-bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental Army survived to fight another day. Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river’s edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City’s waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since — an opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities — like everything in New York City — are not given. They are won.

In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a recently emancipated Black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well — and to help hundreds of others do the same. He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York Harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before: a home. Weeksville still stands today — a living, breathing testament to what we know America to be: a place each of us has the power to make.

The Harbor was busy those years, as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today, Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island — Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity.

Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew.

Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of Black Americans north during the Great Migration; it drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War;

it invited countless others from the West Indies, and South Asia, and West Africa, and across the world. And it is what brought my family to this city when I was seven years old.

My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America — the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of
one day moving here.

And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.

How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty [...] hither have they fled.” And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see?

We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.

Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.

Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family.

Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.

We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods.

We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots.

We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.

There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: “Love it or leave it,” they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?

Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July — I think too of the ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons — today, we call it City Hall Park.

There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow — that we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison — grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name: America.

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.

What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.

Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.

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PBS documentary about the British side of the story the American Revolution... 

https://www.pbs.org/about/about-pbs/blogs/news/lucy-worsley-investigates-the-american-revolution/

Historian Lucy Worsley Explores One of History’s Most Explosive Breakups and How the British Empire Lost the War for America’s Independence Against a Ragtag Band of Rebels

New Two-Part Series, Filmed on Both Sides of the Atlantic

ARLINGTON VA; February 18, 2026 – On the eve of America’s 250th anniversary, popular British historian Lucy Worsley investigates the sabotage, espionage, and unrest that led to the birth of a new nation. In 1776, 13 American colonies declared independence from one of the most powerful empires in the world, igniting a bloody eight-year war that claimed thousands of lives and ended in Britain’s humiliating defeat. But how did this historic rupture come to pass, and could it have been avoided? Over two episodes, Lucy delves deeper into the American Revolution by examining it from the British perspective, discovering the human drama, radical ideas, and political missteps behind this seismic split, and revealing how losing America changed Britain forever. Part of the PBS America @ 250 special programming lineup, LUCY WORSLEY INVESTIGATES: THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION premieres Tuesday, April 7 and 14, 2026, at 9:00 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS,PBS.org and the PBS app.

Chanting OM for Peace - July 4th 2026 - Needed Now More than Ever...

https://youtu.be/UYjQReEYFL4?si=nSdW92I5HCRSMP3b

Listen and Participate... Worldwide... 

Did You Know?: It is Possible to Participate In the Rainbow Gathering July 4th OM Chant from Any Location on Earth. The Main Meadow is in Pennsylvania.... The Chant Starts about NOON Eastern Time... After a Morning of Silence... And Now it's Really Important that the World Pray for Peace...

This was the last photo I took before I put the camera in my pocket and joined the people chanting... Because there is a time to document life and then there's a time to actually live life...

Karin's Rainbow Gathering 2026 news and ideas https://newsylvania.blogspot.com/
My favorite website for info about the Gathering... She really knows what's going on!

Update June 29

Days are getting warm. Remember to hydrate. The meadow is beautiful. Full moon tonight. Join is at the heart fire. Do not leave anything visible that is not legal in the national forest. The LEOs are training on us. They come through the woods at 2 am. All parking is road parking. Make sure all 4 wheels are off the road. Energy is high and beautiful. Meadow is lovely. Pay attention to Milkweed . Please do not trample them. Baby bats are being born now in standing dead. Please don’t cut or camp near them. Both bats and butterflies are endangered. Live lightly on the land.

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Annual Rainbow Family Gathering of the Tribes

Autumn Wanderlust Vinson 

Hello family,
I have been on the land for two days. For those who were reading all the stories of harassment by the incident team (like I was), I was also nervous because of the posts I had read.

I had zero problems getting in. In fact, as I made a left/right onto the last FS road, and first saw the rangers, I gave a wave, and one of the female rangers yelled to me, ‘Welcome Home’.

Nothing past that, and seeing that a team from the Forest Service has marked off delicate ecological areas…..which family is respecting.

Just be smart, respectful of the land and all people, (and baby bats in standing dead trees) of course.

So…Ignore All Rumors. WELCOME HOME!

What IS the Rainbow Gathering? To me, it's Woodstock with Amateur Musicians and I'm in the Band! Held at a Different Location in a National Forest in the USA...

It's a backpack trip for up to 20,000 hippies... Many people bring in a lot of equipment to build kitchens to feed the hungry... Giant bonfires... Drum circles... Healing rituals... Barter trade circles... And a lot of people with guitars... Big fun!

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Free art! Pirate this Image and Use it Everywhere.