cakcak

proud mom, proud midwesterner, proud liberal. #universalheathcare No DMs.

[sailor mars @raeviolis]

Daily you say? Never followed an account faster

[Jocelyn Anderson Photography @JocAPhotography]

Red-headed Woodpecker family ♥️♥️🩶

[JP @catholicjps]

Great Lakes Nationalism

[Norm Clark @Normsmusic]

James Robison
What Joyce Carol Oates wrote to Elon Musk on Twitter. I am told it rattled him. I love it.
“So curious that such a wealthy man never posts anything that indicates that he enjoys or is even aware of what virtually everyone appreciates – scenes from nature, pet dog or cat, praise for a movie, music, a book (but doubt that he reads); pride in a friend’s or relative’s accomplishment; condolences for someone who has died; pleasure in sports, acclaim for a favorite team; references to history. In fact he seems totally uneducated, uncultured. The poorest persons on Twitter may have access to more beauty & meaning in life than the ‘most wealthy person in the world.’”

[cakcak @prncsCharlie]

@RobertAKoch001 @DonaldJTrumpJr Too much nose candy.

[Roddy 🇨🇦 @RodKahx]

This is why I haven't left Twitter.

[cakcak @prncsCharlie]

@EastRockDon @ProfMJCleveland Nobody in Chicago says that. 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

A hot dog stand in Chicago. I reached for the ketchup.

The man behind the counter said one word. "No."

I froze. I understood. I had nearly broken a sacred law.

His name was Sal. He held a mustard bottle in each hand and had the calm of a man who has turned away kings. He told me the dog already had mustard, relish, onion, tomato, a pickle, peppers, and celery salt. He told me it was "dragged through the garden." He told me ketchup would never touch it.

I bowed. I had been shown the code.

I asked Sal who decreed this law. He shrugged. "That's just how it is here." A law so old its author is forgotten. The strongest kind.

Then a man two stools down asked for ketchup for his child. Sal allowed it. "Eight and under," he said.

So the law holds one mercy. Below eight winters, a child is innocent. At eight, he becomes responsible for his own honor. I found this more beautiful than anything in my own country.

I have not put ketchup on anything since.

Not on eggs. Not on rice. A vow does not check what is on the plate.

I flew home. At a stand in my own city, a boy reached for the red bottle. I caught his wrist. "You are over eight," I said. He did not know what I meant. His mother was upset. I tried to explain the garden. I tried to explain Sal.

I am now asked not to return to that stand.

I have appointed myself guardian of a law from a city I visited once, for a single afternoon.

So tell me, America.

Who forbade the red sauce on the sausage, and in what year?

And if no one remembers, who am I now serving?

[cakcak @prncsCharlie]

@WestLoopTom Who knew the mayor arrested people? I wasn’t aware that was his job. What a clown.

[Bill Kristol @BillKristol]

This is pretty great.

[Lynn Becker @LynnBecker]

Sunset

[Bird Talk 🛜🦅🪺🦉🐦🦜🪿🦢🦆🦃 @birdtalkX]

Male Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) feeding chicks. Credit: Hal and Kirsten Snyder, Florida, USA.

[Jocelyn Anderson Photography @JocAPhotography]

A male Red-bellied Woodpecker with his ruby eyes checking out the nature trail from the far side of the tree.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I once sat at a table in the southland when a woman spoke a word that felt like a sudden embrace, though I had done nothing to earn it.

"What can I get y'all?"

Y'all. I knew the word from television. I did not know it could HOLD people. My friends ordered. I sat there, freshly contained, working out what I had just been counted into.

In Japan, inclusion is earned slowly. Years of shared seasons before a group says "we" and means you. This woman did it in one syllable, between refills, without checking my paperwork.

"You good, hon?" she asked.

"You included me."

"In what?"

"In y'all."

She looked at my friends. My friends looked at the table. "He's from Japan," one offered, as if that explained it, because it did.

"Well," she said, "y'all want biscuits or not?"

TWICE. Contained twice in one minute. The biscuits arrived and I ate them as a member.

I have since studied the grammar. Y'all: two or more souls, bound. All y'all: an entire room, gathered into one word like rice into one bowl. There are scholars who say "all y'all" is excessive. Those scholars have never needed a word big enough for everyone they love.

"Y'all come back now," she said when we left.

We. I am a we, in Tennessee.

A word does not ask permission to include you. It opens like a door, and you are already inside.

I am practicing saying it. My accent makes it formal, "you all", which my friends say defeats the purpose. The purpose survives. The purpose is everyone.

[Jocelyn Anderson Photography @JocAPhotography]

A male Red-bellied Woodpecker stops by for suet nuggets.

[Scott Dworkin @funder]

Federal Judge Richard Stearns just protected your right to donate. He blasted Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against ActBlue as having "overwhelming" bad faith, ordering him to drop the case permanently. Read the decision: 👇 https://t.co/TELyr4FaLt

[Black Hole @konstructivizm]

The Northern Lights at an altitude of 12 kilometers, captured by pilot Guillaume Laffont from the cockpit of a Boeing 777.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Stateside, a gas station. I drank a frozen blue beverage too quickly, and was struck down by a punishment this entire nation knows, and accepts, and has named.

The drink is called a slush. Ice, sweetness, and a blue that does not occur in nature. The day was hot. I was thirsty. I drank like a soldier at a river.

The pain arrived in my skull like a war horn.

Behind the eyes. Above everything. Total. I gripped the roof of my car. I may have made a sound.

"Brain freeze," said the cashier through the door, with no urgency whatsoever.

It has a NAME. The affliction is so common it has a household name, like a cousin.

"Tongue on the roof of your mouth," called a man at the pumps. He did not look over. He prescribed the remedy mid-pump, casually, the way one mentions weather.

I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth. The war horn faded. The healer nodded at his pump, finished, and was gone in a Chevrolet.

In my land, punishment follows crime by way of courts and seasons. Here, the sentence is instant. Drink with greed, and the ice strikes the mind directly. No trial. No appeal. Perfectly fair.

And here is what moves me. EVERYONE has felt it. The cashier. The healer. Children. Elders. An entire nation united by the same small lightning, all taught the same cure, all passing it on to strangers at gas stations, free of charge.

You cannot fully distrust a country once you know it shares one pain.

The freeze does not punish thirst. It punishes haste.

I finished the slush slowly, like a scholar. Blue tongue. Clear mind.

Then at the door I forgot everything, drank deeply, and was struck down again.

"Tongue, hon," said the cashier, without looking up.

Discipline is a journey.

[Andrew McCarthy @AJamesMcCarthy]

In case you needed an existential crisis today, here’s footage of the sun I captured using a modified telescope that shows flares erupting that are larger than our entire planet