Wait - what ?

Notes and Messages

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Talking Dog For Sale.

A guy is driving around the backwoods of Montana and he sees a sign in front of a broken down shanty-style house: 'Talking Dog For Sale.'

He rings the bell and the owner appears and tells him the dog is in the backyard.

The guy goes into the backyard and sees a nice looking Labrador Retriever sitting there.

"You talk?" he asks.

"Yep" the Lab replies.

After the guy recovers from the shock of hearing a dog talk, he says, "So, what's your story?"

The Lab looks up and says, "Well, I discovered that I could talk when I was pretty young. I wanted to help the government, so I told the CIA. In no time at all they had me jetting from country to country, sitting in rooms with spies and world leaders, because no one figured a dog would be eavesdropping, I was one of their most valuable spies for eight years running... but the jetting around really tired me out, and I knew I wasn't getting any younger so I decided to settle down. I signed up for a job at the airport to do some undercover security, wandering near suspicious characters and listening in. I uncovered some incredible dealings and was awarded a batch of medals. I got married, had a mess of puppies, and now I'm just retired."

The guy is amazed. He goes back in and asks the owner what he wants for the dog.

"Ten dollars" the guy says.

"Ten dollars? This dog is amazing! Why on Earth are you selling him so cheap?"

"Because he's a liar. He's never been out of the yard."

(Ian Sanders)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 11, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 12, 2026

Last night the Department of Justice subpoenaed reporters from the New York Times over a story the newspaper published on Wednesday. Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt reported that the Secret Service had security concerns about the new Air Force One Boeing 747-8 given to the U.S. by Qatar. So, when tensions escalated with Iran while Trump was in Türkiye for the NATO summit, they asked the president to use one of the other, older, Air Force One planes for his return journey.

Trump and White House officials pushed back strongly against the idea that the new plane had any security problems after pouring what appears to have been hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into renovating the plane. But, according to Adam Gramegna of Military . com, U.S. officials told CBS News that the speed with which the plane was rushed into service meant that it does not have the same protections as the older planes.

According to Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, and Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, the story that his prized plane was not as good as the older ones enraged Trump, and the White House called in FBI director Kash Patel to find the two anonymous sources who leaked it. Patel spent about 8 hours on Friday running an investigation from the White House, rather than FBI headquarters, before the reporters received the subpoenas.

U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton, whom Trump has nominated to be the next director of national intelligence, issued the subpoenas. The reporters are ordered to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” The Department of Justice said the subpoenas are related to “the crime of leaking national security information.”

The Justice Department emphasized that “reporters are not the targets. Those leaking classified information are.” But issuing subpoenas to U.S. journalists, who are protected from government interference by the First Amendment, is a huge red flag. As former Time magazine editor Rick Stengel noted: “The reporting that the Times journalists have been subpoenaed for is exactly the kind of journalism the First Amendment is designed to protect: matters involving national security and taxpayer dollars. Reporting that embarrasses a president is protected speech.”

David McCraw, senior vice president and deputy general counsel for the Times, said: “The appearance of Federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects. Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used. This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”

By 11:18 PM on Friday, Trump’s fury had turned back to Iran. He posted on social media that if Iran tried to assassinate him, “Locked and Loaded” missiles would begin to rain down on the country “to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran—PRAISE BE TO ALLAH!”

Today he turned his anger toward those questioning his mental acuity, particularly New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman, who commented on MS NOW about his reference in Türkiye to the “Islamic State of Japan.” At 12:23 PM he lashed out at “Maggot Hagerman” and then, to refute her claims, wrote that he “just finished a perfect physical at Walter Reed, I do it every six months, and I requested another Cognitive Test, the only President to do so, three times, and I aced them all—Got every question right. Few people in Washington, D.C., could do so, including Maggot and her flunky associate, Jonathan Swan. I would be willing to bet they couldn’t get 50% of the questions right.”

The White House said Trump was referring to a physical he underwent in May.

Then, at 3:16, the president’s account posted a screed of almost 450 words complaining angrily that “I win the Election IN A LANDSLIDE against the entire Dumocrat Party,…against almost 100% negative press and Fake News,…especially Maggot Hagerman, one of the most unattractive people in the News “Business,” and her lightweight assistant, Jonathan Swan…. All I do is WIN, often against all odds,” yet no one compliments him on his great successes.

Here he may have had in mind Thursday’s news story from Catherine Rampell of The Bulwark about his claim on social media on Monday that Walmart would be “dropping the price of ground beef by almost 15 percent” “at my Administration’s request.” Rampell reported that a Walmart spokesperson told her a different story: the price cuts were part of usual summer rollbacks, which had begun the week before Trump took credit for them. Rampell noted that Trump “looks for opportunities to slap his name on politically useful things that companies were already planning to do—seasonal sales, major investments, hiring, et very much cetera.”

White House spokesperson Kush Desai clarified on social media that the president’s “announcement was that the sale is extending all summer long,” adding, “The media’s obsessive need to try to undermine any good news when it affects President Trump is pathological.”

A rant about the news media took up most of Trump’s long post, as he insisted that those reporting his bad poll numbers and policy failures “have no credibility…. If the Election was held again today, I would win by even more—Actually, much more!” he posted. “The Dumocrats don’t have what it takes, their Policies are wrong, and they are, generally, stupid people. They are going COMMUNIST because they are a desperately ‘sinking ship,’ and there’s not a thing they can do about it.

“Instead of writing inaccurate, false articles, for over 10 years now, shouldn’t it be time that they say, ‘We give up, we can’t beat him, there seems nothing we can do.’ Isn’t it time they say, ‘TRUMP IS THE BEST POLITICAL ATHLETE OF ALL TIME! CONGRATULATIONS, MR. PRESIDENT. YOU HAVE BEATEN US FOR 10 YEARS, AND WE ARE NOT GOING TO WASTE OUR TIME FIGHTING YOU ANY LONGER. WE CAN’T WIN. DO A GREAT JOB, SIR, RUNNING OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!’”

Journalist Aaron Rupar used a common meme often used to respond to unreasonably long posts. “I ain’t reading all that,” he commented. “I’m happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened.” Conservative lawyer George Conway wrote: “A severely mentally ill man has control of the launch codes for America’s nuclear arsenal, but it doesn’t seem that many people care.”

Almost 450 words evidently weren’t enough. At 4:54 he reiterated the themes of the long post in a shorter one, then a minute later, accused “the Dumocrats” of being communists. A minute after that, he claimed: “The Radical Left Lunatics, often referred to as Dumocrats, have lost control of their Party.”

Apparently, media criticism still stung. At 5:27, Trump took on reports of the high cost of his damaging renovations in Washington, D.C. Posting photos of what he said was “the horrible front of the White House,” he continued: “The Radical Left Dumocrats criticize me for spending so much time bringing our White House back to the Glory of 100 years ago—Actually, it will be far better than that, and they will not shame us for bringing our Great and Brilliant Monuments to the past and the future back to levels never seen before. This is what we are doing all over Washington, D.C., and, in different ways, with our Country, itself!”

But his confidence that American voters will support Republicans in the 2026 elections is shaky enough that he continues to call for the Senate to rig them. At 6:07 he reposted what purported to be a poll from right-wing loyalist Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) claiming that 97.2% of supporters want the Senate to take up the voter suppression SAVE America Act when it goes back into session next week, while only 2.8% want the Senate to take up “Anything else.”

Meanwhile, on Friday a Pentagon official told Rebecca Turco of WJLA 7News in Washington, D.C., that National Guard troops will stay activated in Washington through Inauguration Day 2029 “until law and order are fully restored in our Nation’s Capital.”

“So,” Bill Kristol of The Bulwark commented. “[M]ilitary troops under the direct control of Trump and Hegseth will be on the streets of our nation’s capital for the rest of Trump’s term. The rationale—they’re here to help with a crime emergency—is laughable. But of course the real reason is ominous.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[weonsinnombre]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * * * “You could create a mechanical ballet by programming a group of rolling robots to move in sync. But your program would be a closed system designed from the outside—one robot would get bumped an inch out of place, and the whole thing would fall apart. You can do it cheaper and faster just by letting a dozen of those little vacuum cleaner robots loose together in a space to move randomly. At first they will just clean the floor individually, but over time maybe the rhythms of creation will begin to move them together, as they start to dance in patterns that are more startling than anything a single programmer might design, like schools of fish in the sea. Consider boids, which are digital objects that move on a screen. When you place a number of boids on a screen with three or four simple rules telling each to match the velocity of the others, move randomly, and avoid collisions, after a while they will begin to move together as a group in complex patterns resembling the flocking of birds. These patterns cannot be programmed but must emerge within the system organically—a process that is called “random” in Western worldviews but is in fact following the patterns of creation.”

Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World

by Tyson Yunkaporta

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

a brief history

Skating with my siblings: from my files

* * * * 

“If you’ll excuse a brief history lesson: most people didn’t experience ‘the sixties’ until the seventies. Which meant, logically, that most people in the sixties were still experiencing the fifties–or, in my case, bits of both decades side by side. Which made things rather confusing.”

― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Ian Sanders

"First, my child," said Old Turtle, "remember that there are truths all around us, and within us. They twinkle in the night sky and bloom upon the earth. They fall upon us every day, silent as the snow and gentle as the rain. The people, clutching their one truth, forget that it is a part of all the small and lovely truths of life."

~ Douglas Wood, 'Old Turtle And The Broken Truth''

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Tony Bennett (feat. The Woody Herman Orchestra) "If I Ruled The World" on The Ed Sullivan Show

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral."

and

"A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

and

"He who would travel happily must travel light."

and

"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together."

and

"One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author and aviator (29 Jun 1900-1944)

(Thanks Ian Sanders)

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Carlos Schwabe (1866-1926), “La femme au luth”

* * * *

“I salute thee, beautiful Sun, and thou, white Earth, fair and cold! Perhaps I shall never see thee again covered with green, and the sweet flowers of the coming spring will blossom on my grave. I am about to leave thee; soon this living spirit which is ever busy among strange shapes and ideas, which belong not to thee, soon it will have flown to other regions and this emaciated body will rest insensate on thy bosom . . .” ― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

From a video on famouspainterwombat

* * * *

“Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Don Nace- Just Passing Through

* * *

TG: Does The End of Beauty feel like it's simply suspending closure or does it feel like it's doing something else?

JG: No, I wouldn't say it's managing to suspend closure. It might be trying to. But what I discovered in trying to write those poems was that the suction of closure was enormous – the desire to wrap it up into the ownable meaning – and that doing away with it wasn't as easy as I had imagined. That was, for me, a very moving discovery. It was Demeter and Persephone, if you will – with the pull from the end, the suction towards closure, and the voice trying (quite desperately in spots) to find forms of delay, digression, side-motions which are not entirely dependent for their effectiveness on that sense-of-the-ending, that stark desire. Side-motions which actually move off a piece, and do not necessarily feed back into it – in the way I had always experienced poems moving before, sort of wrapping the poem down towards closure.

TG: Those side motions keep the gap alive?

JG: Yes. But they keep it alive, hopefully – or ideally – as a real gap, not one invented for the purposes of extending the delicious moment between the beginning and the ending. The deliciousness of that moment was the thing I was trying to mess with. The imperialist pleasure...

TG: So you want it to be extended because in doing so you gain what?

JG: Let's put it this way: as a gap, an open field, so that one is at least aware of the wages, the responsibilities (as well as the incredible freedoms) of that opening. After all, the sensation of closure is primarily powerful for the ways in which it permits us to inhabit delay and feel that we are safe inhabiting delay.... I guess I wanted it to feel not safe – but real, open. Can we use the word being? The ground of being. The river of rivers. The gash of the present as not simply timeless but as the rip that affords a glimpse into a more genuine reality?

Jorie Graham interviewed by Thomas Gardener in Regions of Unlikeness: Explaining Contemporary Poetry

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

Zen Master Dogen has pointed out that anxiety, when accepted, is the driving force to enlightenment in that it lays bare the human dilemma at the same time that it ignites our desire to break out of it.

— Roshi Philip Kapleau (1912 - 2004), American Zen Master

[Thanks to Alive On All Channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Dans la forêt

From my files

* * * *

“Dans la forêt, je suis mon entier.” —René Ménard, Le Livre des arbres (1956) In the forest, I am my entire self. [exhaled-spirals]

[via alive on all channels]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Your brain is not designed to make you happy.  That's your job.

- Anthony Robbins

[mournfulroses]

Ch'iu Chin, from a poem titled "Two Poems to the Tune of Narcissus by the River," featured in Women Poets of China

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rudolf Nureyev photographed

by Richard Avedon 1961

(Follies of God)

* * * * 

“Many people are seeking deeper meaning in their life and looking for what they value most. By relying on body awareness, an avenue to inner knowledge of the emotions and the spirit is created. This helps people find their true direction and purpose in life.” - Marion Rosen, P.T.  [Body Alive]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jim Wright

So ... how's the world peace going? I've been on the road for a month, so I don't know but I assume Mr. President Big Deal Maker has made a lot of progress in bringing security to the entire re... What? He what now? Oh. Well, at least we got a super secure brand new Air Force O... What? Huh. Well, at least eggs are cheap now, amiright?