Daniel Rafinejad

A baby okapi looking behind its right shoulder. Such an adorable giraffe/zebra hybrid.

I’m irritable today, so here’s a baby okapi for anyone else who needs it! 🦒🦓🧡💚

Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy

This will be a vote to erase 50 years of medical and psychiatric knowledge and kill gay and trans kids, because MAGA Republicans feel that in a better world, fewer of them would exist. It is that simple. Democrats must make SCOTUS expansion part of the party platform. www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

“When will Daniel Rafinejad finally be done with his book?”
I know. I get that a lot.

I’m still waiting for the Vengabus.

I stand with PBS.

I stand with NPR.

I stand with Stephen Colbert.

I stand with Jimmy Kimmel.

I stand with the First Amendment.

PERIOD.*

*Also #ReleaseTheEPSTEIN_Files

Lemming Suicide Myth, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Alaska Wildlife News is an online magazine published by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game

Fun fact: Disney invented the myth about lemmings.
www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?ad...

"Not that the summer is less pleasant now
Than when her mournful hymns did hush the night,
But that wild music burdens every bough,
And sweets grown common lose their dear delight.
Therefore, like her, I sometime hold my tongue,
Because I would not dull you with my song."
—Shakespeare #poetry

“I need to stop backpedaling into the present.
In my old life people would straighten

the truth, but the river
flows in curves…

The distance between me and the mountains
measures an uneven thought: I feel like an orphan.”
—James Masao Mitsui #poetry

“But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean”
—Gwendolyn Brooks #poetry

"To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time,
Without that monument of cat,
The cat forgotten in the moon;

And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light,
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained;

Then there is nothing to think of."
—Wallace Stevens #poetry

Work by Vishnu M. Nair

"In the land where all is forgotten, where no one remembers anything,
birds cut off their beaks to share your sorrow, Little Torn Shoe.
Twice of half a moon throbbed, swollen. I don’t know what
you mourned."
—Maggie Smith #poetry

“The incubus of a tree.
He did not fear the eyes,
nor the void life refused to fill,
but leaned against the nothingness,
trusting the rope,
the ring of union.

– Mash the bunched fruits for oil.
Knife the trunk’s neck for sap.
The palm wine tapped,
tangy and breast-milk-like.”
—Nithy Kasa #poetry

“She came—she came—and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor,
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.”
—Mary Elizabeth Coleridge #poetry

I guess 1987 was a good year for film!

“The story is familiar
Everybody knows it well
But do other enchanted people feel as nervous
As I do? The stories do not tell,

Ask if they will be happier
When the changes come
As already they are fairly happy
in a frog's doom?”
—Stevie Smith #poetry

"Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man."
—Li-Young Lee #poetry

"Faith" by Kevin Young (2025), with its distinctive spacing and punctuation.

—Kevin Young

"They pick them up at night
prisoners furtively
the world in the tower
distribute them evenly
among themselves
In the morning is everything
cleared away without a trace
the cells are back
dark rectangles
without birds and waterfalls"
—Rose Ausländer #poetry

"I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets,
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river."
—James Wright #poetry

“A mix of continuity and flux, what flows
and what remains. What should we do
with this change, these cycles, this stone
and water, this autumn in the air?
Who knows? It doesn’t really matter.
Look, the starlings have returned,
filling the quince tree, waiting to be fed.”
—Pàdraig MacAoidh #poetry

I don’t know whether we’re all born poets or whether poetic verve is something we can be taught.

But poetry! We need it. Here are some that are helping me get through. To somewhere. #alsoapoet

Now you see, sir, how your fooling grows old, and people dislike it.

Hollyhocks don’t do well if the salinity of the soil is high. Coconut coir might help!

others were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces

YouTube video by M. Remaili Ismaël Lô - Tajabone (clip officiel)

My mood on this summer night: #tajabone
youtu.be/Ycm_Y9EENec?...

Wow, for a full minute I sat in wonder that I didn’t know Lloyd Richards, the great director of Hansberry and Wilson, was a theatrical consultant on All About Eve, then I realized that’s Hugh Marlowe’s character’s name.

YouTube video by AllanWo Cleo Laine - No One Is Alone

I love #CleoLaine! #RequiescatInPace
youtu.be/z7aHCv2TRlo?...

"Accept certain inalienable truths: prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were
noble and children respected their elders."
(Words by Mary Schmich)

My cat Nigel and I are doing a production of THEY’RE PLAYING OUR SONG this summer. In rep with last summer’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN. If you buy tickets for both, you get the THEY’RE PLAYING OUR DEATH combo package. #cats #summerstock 🎶👨🏼‍💼🎭🐈‍⬛