"A happy heart is good medicine." - Proverbs, 17:22
To feel better, find your joy. Something, anything that makes you happy. And I promise, it doesn't have to be much. Coke in the glass bottle. One perfect yard of grosgrain ribbon for a hair bow. Giving your dog a little piece of meat. How slowly the clouds cross the sky. The smell of warm laundry. A favorite song, poem, painting, old movie. It's just a matter of not forgetting what stirs you, and surrendering to what makes you happy in the moment.
Modern Hymns - Darrell Scott
His songs have been embraced by Keb Mo, Maura O'Connell, Patty Loveless, Kathy Mattea and the Dixie Chicks. He writes with Guy Clark. He sings like the walls of the fortress after the siege, slightly worn and strong without needing to flex. Given his eye for truth, for falter, for courage in common places, to record an album of others songs - even songs by Kris Kristofferson, Hoyt Axton, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and even the slightly unlikely Pat Matheny/Lyle Mays - is the highest sacrament, and Scott does them proud.
Unvarnished music, grounded in raw organic performances, Scott is joined by De, McCoury, Sam Bush, Tim O'Brien, Stuart Duncan, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Mary Gauthier, and Allison Krauss. It is about songs well-turned, honest performances and it reminds you of the higher purpose music can serve. A restoration of faith in these wildly synthetic times.
Part of the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy T-Shirt - DailyKos.com
In a world overrun with political paranoia, this is a tongue in chic Daily Kos t-shirt that mocks the entire hysteria that's now permeating our dialogue. So caught up on labels, epithets and not hearing, this punches a hole in the hippo in the Democratic side of the living room. Vast? Left Wing? Conspiracy? These are people you know, you cherish, you believe in - and who, most likely, share the same desire for a united thriving nation. If you can get past the pejorative, perhaps we can all get closer to the kind of discussion that compromises and dissolves the divisiveness - because a house divided, as the Civil War showed us, can't stand.
Convergence of Dragonflies
They are in season, hovering everywhere weightless, graceful, shimmering. Playing tag, hovering as a cloud of glistening thinner-than-paper wings, circling you as you walk. It is as if fairies were working, stitching together the moment with some kind of sparkle dust needles. Dragonflies suggest creation, creativity, perhaps even unfettered joy.
To watch the dragonflies dart about, wings moving so fast, you almost can't see them is a reason to pause. Pause and watch, consider and smile. This is the magic of insects with soap bubble wings, something that converges and swirls and soaks up every bit of nature while it's theirs for the taking. Take in the beauty of this buzzing here'n'there, and be humbled.
"Splendor in the Grass"
Before there was John Hughes, there were serious movies that cast teen angst in a dramatic light - and this, like "Rebel Without A Cause," is a high water mark of rebellion, rejection and the toll extracted. Warren Beatty as the golden boy child of small town privilege who is decent but average and his adoring good girl (friend) Natalie Wood, who is eschewed per Beatty's domineering father's wishes foreshadow the depth of their work to come. Both impossibly perfect specimens of youth's pinnacle, they also embrace the conflicting emotions that underscore coming of age: doubt, rage, frustration and even powerlessness.
With lovingly framed shots, richly toned color and a sense of scene composition, this is a visual feast as well as a passion play that plays out as anything but happily ever after. Consequences, shattered hopes, situational determination and in the end a stoic acceptance of how it now is creates a sense that a truth of motives in the moment may be the most critical element for truly finding peace with the least amount of personal compromise possible.
Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster - Dana Thomas
Somewhere along the way, luxury brands - priced for the quality of the workmanship and materials - went from being the brands of the elevated few and became something geared for faux glamour for the hoi polloi. That which is luxe is now a brokered reality, designed to reinforce a self-assigned sense of entitlement more than it is to provide the highest levels of craftsmanship imaginable.
Newsweek's Paris-based fashion critic Thomas goes beyond the catwalk to look at not just the erosion of high end lines - often shoddily made at what remains a nosebleed price point - to consider the deglamming of what was once the province of only the richest and most elevated. When teens and 20-somethings are wandering the mall with Chanel bags and D and G sunglasses, one can only wonder what they're thinking. And in that brink, post Aaron Spelling's "Dallas/Dynasty" vortex, the designer dazzle has been brokered as a make-up commodity for actual substance. Riveting, nauseating and frighteningly indicting so much of how we consume.
by Holly Gleason, Huffington Post.com and www.theyummylist.com
July's New Moon in Cancer arrives on the 2nd. July's Full Moon in Capricorn occurs on the 18th. Mars enters Virgo on the 1st and Mercury enters Cancer on the 10th. Venus enters Leo on the 12th, and the Sun enters Leo on the 22nd. Fast moving Mercury enters Leo on the 26th
