Frank Zappa knew it.

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐒𝐀𝐈𝐃 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐍

 

𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐒𝐀𝐈𝐃 𝐊𝐄𝐄𝐏 𝐎𝐔𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐀𝐑𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐎𝐆 𝐃𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐍

Granny always said to keep out of the briars and high weeds once the Dog Days set in. She’d lean her elbow on the porch rail, squint toward the treeline, and say the world got touchy this time of year. Said the air turned heavy enough to press on your chest, and the creeks went still like they were holding their breath.

Old‑timers believed the heat made things go wrong in quiet ways. Wounds wouldn’t heal clean. Dogs lost their good sense. And the snakes, Lord help us, the snakes went blind. A copperhead that can’t see will strike at the sound of a footstep, a breath, even the brush of your shirt against a leaf.

So when Dog Days settled over the holler, folks minded themselves. You stayed close to the porch where the boards knew your weight. You walked the same worn paths your people walked before you. You didn’t go rustling through weeds taller than your knees, and you sure didn’t go poking around in briar patches where the heat pooled thick.

Granny said caution was its own kind of ritual. A way of showing respect when the world got unsettled. Keep your eyes sharp. Keep your steps light. Keep your ears open for that dry whisper in the grass.

Because once the Dog Days take hold, even the shadows get short‑tempered. And a blind copperhead don’t care who you are. It’ll strike at anything that stirs the stillness.

Source: Appalachian Root & Ritual on Facebook

Act of Friendship

 

At precisely 3:15 p.m. on May 14, 1965, a Rolls-Royce carrying Queen Elizabeth II rolled to a stop on the damp grass of Runnymede, and waiting beside the temporary platform, dressed in a dark suit and holding the hands of her two children, stood Jacqueline Kennedy, the woman who had crossed the Atlantic not to receive condolences but to accept a gift no American president had ever been given before.

The acre of meadowland stretching behind her, the very ground where King John had affixed his seal to Magna Carta in 1215, had been permanently transferred by an act of the British Parliament to the people of the United States, and in less than an hour the Queen would speak words that turned that legal document into a living memorial.

John, Jr just four years old, tugged at his mother's sleeve while Caroline, seven, stared silently at the rows of dignitaries, and the Queen, upon stepping from her car, walked directly to the small family without ceremony, her first gesture a quiet word spoken close enough that only Jackie could hear.

The memorial itself, a simple Portland stone tablet designed by Sir Geoffrey Jellicoe, sat at the edge of the sloping field, chiseled with the inscription from the inaugural address of the president whose voice had been silenced seventeen months earlier in Dallas.

When the Queen rose to deliver her dedication, her voice carried across the assembled crowd of statesmen and citizens, and she declared that this acre of English soil was given in perpetual memory, a phrase that carried the full weight of sovereignty, because what she was actually doing was ceding a tiny pocket of her realm to a foreign nation in an act of friendship that had no modern precedent.

The Union Jack was lowered, the Stars and Stripes rose on a freshly planted pole, and for a single suspended moment a corner of England became, legally and irrevocably, American territory. Jackie did not speak publicly that afternoon, but a British newsreel camera captured her fingers brushing the stone after the ceremony had ended, tracing the carved letters with the same deliberate tenderness she had shown when editing her husband's speeches in the White House solarium.

The crowd dispersed slowly, and the children were permitted to run across the grass, their footsteps crossing back and forth over the invisible boundary line that now separated two allied nations, a border drawn not by conflict but by collective sorrow.

The stone still stands, weathered now by more than fifty winters, and the National Park Service maintains it as American soil to this day, a quiet patch of English countryside where the simple act of passing through a wicket gate carries a traveler into the jurisdiction of the United States.

Source: US History on Facebook

Overthink the Best

 

Source: Learning and Exploring Through Play on Facebook

All My Tears Be Washed Away Mark Bishop

 

Dean Martin & Ricky Nelson - My Rifle, My Pony & Me

 

Weathering the Storm

 

Weathering the Storm

There are days
when grief moves quietly beneath the surface,
waiting in the smallest details
to be felt again.

A familiar sound.
A passing moment.
A memory that arrives
without warning.

When the tears come,
do not resist them.

They are not signs
that you are moving backward,
but reminders
that love has left
its sacred imprint.

Pause.
Breathe.

Let the wave
rise and fall.

You need not chase it away,
nor surrender
to its depths.

Simply be gentle with yourself,
until the storm
becomes
a gentle rain.

Every trigger
carries two voices.

One whispers,
"Someone precious is gone."

The other replies,
"Someone precious was here."

Hold them both.

For grief
is the echo of love,
and love
does not disappear
when a life ends.

In time,
the storm grows quieter.
The winds begin to ease.
The clouds slowly part.

The tears remain,
but they are joined
by gratitude.

The ache remains,
but so does
the quiet strength
to carry it.

Walk gently.
Rest often.
Trust your heart
to find
its own rhythm.

For healing
is not forgetting.

It is learning
to meet each memory
with compassion,
to welcome each echo
without fear,
and to discover,
again and again,
that even after the storm,
love
still speaks.

~ 'Weathering the Storm' by Spirit of a Hippie on Facebook

 Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art by Olami