John Teets

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"We live in a world where amnesia is the most wished-for state. When did history become a bad word?" — John Guare
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"You can build walls all the way to the sky and I will find a way to fly above them. ... And there are many of us out here, more than you think. People who refuse to stop believing. People who refuse to come to earth. People who love in a world without walls, without fear." — Lauren Oliver
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A pale pink phalaenopsis orchid with a bright magenta throat blooms next to a porch.

It's a spare season for these. Some of my favorites are recovering from storm damage. Others were stripped from their trees by falling fronds. A reminder of transience, as if I needed one.🌱📷

Thanks on both counts.

Lots of painters and photographers — think of Georgia O'Keeffe as just one example — remind us that at their most basic level flowers are sex organs. Some go to great lengths to invite pollinators to come in for a little fun.

I see you went mild instead of wild. We once took two teenage nephews to the Rodin Museum in Paris not realizing they were also running a Mapplethorpe exhibition... until we turned a corner and came face to face with a giant enlargement of "Man in a Polyester Suit."

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"We've become an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life." — Jimmy Carter
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves and focused on happier things than 'politics.' They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren’t nice people? Resisters." — Naomi Shulmam
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph." — Haile Selassie
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Gotta say, Orpheus beats a garden cherub any day.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness." — Alexis de Tocqueville🌱📷

They need to call in the specialists from Worsham College. IYKYK.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." — Barbara Jordan
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They need to switch to hypoallergenic embalming fluid, stat

The blossom of a night-blooming cereus.

Monochrome Monday.
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This group, more than the second, shows the early genre's frequent use of clumsy, amateurish illustration rather than at least a fleeting acquaintance with figurative technique. Ditto the work with words inside, everything on the cheap to maximize profit from exploitation.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

“We always feel younger than we are. I carry within myself my earlier faces as a tree contains its rings. The sum of them is ‘me.’ The mirror sees only my latest face, while I know all my previous ones.” — Tomas Tranströmer
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"May we ever be vigilant and potent to defeat the swallowing up of any nation, at any time, by any means — by armies with banners, by force or by fraud, by tricks or by midnight treachery." — Henry Cabot Lodge
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Glorious.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

“When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it. ” — Boris Pasternak
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I think Zora, a Floridian who became one of the lights of the Harlem Renaissance, was just about everyone's best company, blessed with soulful panache.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me." – Zora Neale Hurston
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

“America is not like a blanket — one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.” — The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"The difference between a bagpipe and a windbag? The bagpipe eventually runs out of air." — Anu Garg
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The flowers, the mirrors, the brickwork in the maze, the ribs — what exquisite detail.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"The government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens." — Lydia Maria Child, journalist, novelist, feminist, abolitionist, advocate for Indigenous Americans' rights (1802-1880)
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Light through a balcony railing casts shadows on a cottage wall. Overhead, the bright moon shines through a window.

Monochrome Monday.
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There are several local environmental groups where I live, probably some where you live, too. Fertilize the grassroots.

Nightly votive in the porch garden.

"Love — whether friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other's light. It is lifesaving in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back." — James Baldwin
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That sidelong glance in the picture with the self-portrait is so wonderfully sly.