Opinion | On Independence Day, People in Tennessee Are Not Free – The New York Times

We live in two countries now: one where basic civil and human rights are recognized and another where ideological extremists can decide how everyone else lives.
— Read on www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/opinion/tennessee-trans-lgbtq-health-records-vanderbilt.html

HEPA rights and invasion of privacy rights of patients as well as doctors – AG STFU!

Poem About a Crow: a work by the killed Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina | Ukraine | The Guardian

About a Crow

Crying her sisters’ names

Like a bird in the empty sky

She’ll cry them all out of herself

The one that flew away too soon

The one that had begged to die

The one that couldn’t stop death

The one that has not stopped waiting

The one that has not stopped believing

The one that still grieves in silence

She’ll cry them all into the ground

As though sowing the field with pain

And from pain and the names of women

Her new sisters will grow from the earth

And again will sing joyfully of life

But what about her, the crow?

She will stay in this field forever

Because only this cry of hers

Holds all those swallows in the air

Do you hear how she calls

Each one by her name?

Source: Poem About a Crow: a work by the killed Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina | Ukraine | The Guardian

Supreme Court affirmative action, student debt rulings ahistorical – Los Angeles Times

…A nation without an official history is vulnerable to interpretations that upend meaningful attempts to repair and transform systemic inequality. Without an official national record of atrocities, of the enslavement at the root of systemic racism and poverty, programs designed to redress any kind of inequality through education will not withstand attacks — nor the test of time. Source: Supreme Court affirmative action, student debt rulings ahistorical – Los Angeles Times

A Wagner ex-convict returned from war and a Russian village lived in fear. Then he killed again – Los Angeles Times

Despite police promises to keep an eye on the 28-year-old former inmate, he was arrested in a nearby town on charges of stabbing to death an elderly woman from whom he once rented a room. He reportedly confessed to committing the crime, less than 10 days after his return.

Rossomakhin’s case is not isolated. The Associated Press found at least seven other instances in recent months in which Wagner-recruited convicts were identified as being involved in violent crimes, either by Russian media reports or in interviews with relatives of victims in locations from Kaliningrad in the west to Siberia in the east.

Source: A Wagner ex-convict returned from war and a Russian village lived in fear. Then he killed again – Los Angeles Times

Charles Barkley Leaving $5 Million for Black Students at Auburn

He told the Alabama-based site, “In my will, I am leaving Auburn $5 million. I’m going to change it to be just for scholarships for Black students. That’s just my way of trying to make sure Auburn stays diverse.”

He continued, “I love Auburn. I’ve actually changed it to be used for kids from poor homes. But after that ruling yesterday, my phone was blowing up. I was talking to my friends and said, ‘I need to make sure Black folks always have a place at Auburn. So, I’m gonna change my will and make it exclusive for Black students—all $5 million.’ It’s just for me the right thing to do. I always want to make sure that Auburn’s diverse.”

While Barkley’s goal is to keep Auburn diverse, he hasn’t necessarily reached it yet. In November 2022, it was reported by the university’s student-run newspaper, The Auburn Plainsman, that the Alabama school is the most segregated university in the state, with Black students making up only 3% of the school’s entire population.

Source: Charles Barkley Leaving $5 Million for Black Students at Auburn

July 2, 2023 – by Heather Cox Richardson 

On July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress passed a “Resolution for Independence” declaring “That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

…While we celebrate the signing of the final form of the declaration two days later, the adoption of the Lee Resolution marked the delegates’ ultimate conviction that a nation should rest not on the arbitrary rule of a single man and his hand-picked advisors, but on the rule of law. Source: July 2, 2023 – by Heather Cox Richardson

Kindness…by Magic Mixture – Magic Mixture

Doing good has different paths, different facets and a single purpose: the joint improvement and evolution of all. Doing charity with totally selfish goals, or to show others that we are good, this is not doing good. Good must be done first to ourselves, like a balm that the soul experiences for the simple fact of serving a greater purpose. Through a prayer on behalf of the entire planet, through charitable works and donations to those in need, a kind and sincer smile that we allocate to a less favored brother. All this and much more is doing good, the Universe lights up with light through each one of us, and then we fulfill our most sacred mission: to be one!

重️Magic Mixture

Source: Kindness…by Magic Mixture – Magic Mixture

♫ (Last Night) I Didn’t Get To Sleep At All ♫

Filosofa's Word

In a comment yesterday … or was it the day before … Larry (justdrivewillyou) mentioned that this is his favourite song by the 5th Dimension, so since Larry absolutely hated Good Morning Starshine when I played it a couple of days ago, I figured I owed him one!

This song was written by Tony Macaulay and performed by The 5th Dimension with instrumental backing from L.A. session musicians from the Wrecking Crew.  The song appeared on the band’s album Individually & Collectively, produced by Bones Howe and arranged by Bill Holman. The song was a top 10 hit for the group in the U.S., and their sixth and final platinum record.

SongFacts doesn’t even have an entry for this one, so what little background I found came from Wikipedia:

Tony Macaulay began work on the song while in Tokyo for the World Popular Song Festival of 1972. He met fellow attendees the Carpenters and was inspired to…

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Greek Study Notes, Page 1

Context, Thought, and Learning: ShiraDest Offers Project Do Better

      Ministry Mondays Amelia  will be back some time relatively soon, I do promise, but first, I need to get these notes up, since I have the episodes of El Ministerio del Tiempo saved from years ago, and need to work on my Greek  while I still have a bit of time, whereas my Spanish is quite safe.  Here are a few more hints on how I learn languages more quickly now than I did when I first started learning them, despite being older.  Some are obvious ideas that have gained traction in the last twenty or thirty year, like using the similarities between the first four letters of the modern Greek and Hebrew alphabets, or Greek and French feminine gender for the sea, or Turkish lack of gender for the neutral gender vocabulary in Greek, and of course drawing bad grMustBeP1  but mostly recognizable pictures of a fig, the…

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