Virginia, it is our turn now. We are swearing in our new governor this weekend, a woman and a Democrat. These are both things that MAGA hates. As such, we have seen a rise in the number of ICE agents patrolling and seizing people. Document everything. Let your neighbors know if you see ICE. Be vigilant, be safe.
Seed 561113025751
The winter solstice arrived quietly this year, as it usually does around here. Blue peaks rose like folded blankets against the sky, layered and patient, the same way winter has stacked itself on this place in years past. The day tucked itself inward, becoming small and careful. Even at noon the light felt borrowed, a pocket-sized sun smiling from just above the ridgeline, its rays loose and playful, mostly at rest on the mountains.
I have written before about this day, about how it never announces itself with certainty, only with a sense of having reached the bottom of something. The solstice does not knock. It simply finds you already inside the longest night, sitting quietly, waiting for you to notice.
For now, the sun does not blaze or command. It grins. Its wandering lines spill outward like hair or roots or thoughts, reaching over the mountains and into the forest without urgency. This feels right for the solstice. The sun is still here, even on its shortest day, but it is relaxed about it. It knows the schedule. It knows it will be back. It always is.
Below, the trees gather in dark silhouettes, firs and pines standing shoulder to shoulder. Some are nearly black, some softened into green, all of them anchored. They look like they are listening. Forests always seem to understand timing better than people. I have trusted them before on days like this, and they have never been wrong.
Winter always feels like a negotiation between patience and faith. The mountains wear streaks of white like remembered snowpaths, evidence of where water and time have traveled before. I recognize these shapes. I have followed them through other winters, other solstices, when the cold pressed in and the light felt thin but persistent.
We light candles not because they conquer the night, but because they echo that smiling sun: a small, friendly presence saying, “I am still here.” This site has accumulated a fair number of these small lights over the years. Notes made in the dark. Observations written low and slow. They add up.
This is the hinge of the year, drawn simply but honestly. From here on, the light begins its slow return, not in leaps but in increments so small you have to trust they are happening. Tomorrow will be longer by a breath, by the width of a pine needle, by one more playful line added to the sun’s reach. That has always been enough.
The old stories knew this moment mattered. They built fires, told tales, sang songs that looped and curved the way those sunrays do, circling around the same idea. The dark is not an ending. It is a holding pattern. Against it, even a simple smile shines.
So tonight I greet the solstice the way I have before, and likely will again: quietly, attentively, grateful for the pause. The night can have its full say. The sun is already practicing its return, smiling above the forest.
Happy winter solstice.
May your mountains remain steady, your forests attentive, and your light return slowly, surely, and on its own time.
There is a story that lives along the bends of the old creek, the one that looks shallow until you step in it and vanish to the knee. People here do not tell it outright. They gesture instead. A pause in conversation. A glance toward the waterline when the fog comes down early and wrong.
They say there was once a path that crossed the creek where the stones were set just so, like a sentence someone meant to finish later. At dusk, if you followed that line of rocks, you could hear your own name spoken softly from downstream. Not shouted. Not sung. Just stated, as if it were being checked off a list.
The elders, the quiet ones, say it was never a ghost. Ghosts want to be remembered. This thing wanted only acknowledgment. Step onto the stones, look down, and you would see the creek reflecting not the sky but another season entirely. Late summer light. Cicadas. The promise of warmth you had already used up.
One man supposedly crossed halfway and stopped. He came back older by several years, hair gone gray in a way that did not match his face. He refused to explain, only saying that the water had shown him a version of his life that kept going without him, and it seemed to be doing just fine.
These days the stones are scattered. Or maybe they only show themselves when they feel like it. The creek freezes in winter, but not all at once. There is always a moving seam, a dark V cutting through the ice, like the water is breathing under glass.
This morning there was frost on the grass and the sky had that pale, rinsed look it gets before snow that never quite arrives. I stood on the bank and listened. No voice. Just the creek doing what it does best, pretending to be ordinary.
Still, I did not step in. Some paths are not lost. They are simply waiting for the right name to be spoken back.
I confess, this is my favorite doodle of the ochre jelly, even if he doesn’t look sufficiently evil here.
Via
cool winds and checkups
Started the day early, the kind of morning where the light slants just right and the air carries a whisper of cooler times ahead. A string of doctor visits had me pinging across town—one stop, then another, and another still. Everyone kind, mostly. Long waits balanced with short conversations. Questions asked, vitals taken, a nod here, a hmm there.
There’s something about medical errands that wears you out differently—not dramatic or loud, just a quiet drain that settles in the shoulders. I’m feeling it now. A little wrung out. Tired and sore.
But the weather helped. Cooler today, like the first leaf of fall might peek out if you looked hard enough. The kind of breeze that doesn’t push, just glides by and lets you know things are changing. No crunch underfoot yet, but it’s coming. I can feel it in my back.
Home now. Cat curled up beside me like she’s guarding the perimeter. I’m looking forward to more days like this—less the appointments, more the cool air and slowing down. The edge of summer is softening. Autumn is lining up backstage, waiting for its cue.
#windingdown
#coolbreeze
#almostautumn
#longdayquietnight 🍂
Drove over to Crystal Spring Market this afternoon. Just wanted a few things—vegetarian curry rice for me, a turkey sandwich for my date, mineral water, and some chocolate chunk cookies for later. Ate the curry at the window inside the store, watching the slow rhythm of the neighborhood shuffle past. No chickpeas, no sweet potato, just rice and sauce—plain and grounding.
Book club met in the evening, though there were far fewer folks than usual. Summer colds, the lack of a light fiction book, or schedule tangles, maybe, or just the pull of a quiet Monday. We gathered anyway, circling up to talk about Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green—a nonfiction dive into how disease doesn’t move evenly through the world. How race, poverty, and systemic neglect decide who suffers longer, who gets overlooked, who’s left in the waiting room too long. No easy answers, just a lot of hard truths strung together with clarity. A few of us sat with that silence you get when a book says something you always knew, but didn’t have the words for until now.
Afterward, my date and I shared the cookies back home. Soft, just enough chocolate. A small sweetness at the end of a dense day.
The cat blinked at us like we’d come back from something important. Maybe we had.
August 2nd — morning washed past unnoticed, the alarm dismissed or never heard, sunlight already pooling golden across the floorboards when I finally stirred. No rush to remedy it. No guilt, either. Just the soft stretch of limbs and the rumble of a hungry cat beside me, kneading the blanket like she was trying to start a fire.
Stayed in, mostly. Let the outside world whirl on without me. It can do that sometimes — spin its errands and alerts, calls and clicks — while I remain in sanctuary. A thick book in hand, the one with the creased spine and the smell of old paper. Stories folded in like origami secrets, each page a quiet hour.
Cat got her zoomies around noon. Dashed from one end of the apartment to the other like a tiny lion with invisible prey. He’s learned how to open cabinet doors, now. Keeps trying to break into the snacks — smart paws, soft menace.
Shared a little tuna as a peace offering. Sge forgave the late breakfast.
No mail worth mentioning. No visitors. Just the wind at the window and the occasional creak of a settling building. Sometimes, the best days don’t go anywhere. They just hold still and let you breathe.
Day 20,634
Scribbling for #oddgust / @flakesartstudio – August 1 2025 – #straythought
Had one of those mornings where the light hit just right, gold filtering through the blinds, casting lines across the floor like quiet Morse code. The cat followed the sunbeam from room to room, eventually curling up on my arm while I tried to write. Productivity: paused, but heart: full.
The neighborhood’s been especially green after last week’s rain. That stretch between 4th and Main is nearly overgrown now, the kudzu creeping like it’s got a plan. I kind of like it, honestly. There’s something comforting about nature pushing back a little. Spotted three rabbits by the empty lot behind the old laundromat. They didn’t seem too concerned with me, just nibbling and blinking in that deliberate bunny way.
Enjoyed a breakfast with my sweetheart of splitting a chocolate scone and london fog pastry. Not life-changing, but pleasant. A soft sweetness with a little tart bite, like late summer should be. Swung by CVS to get my meds and the older gentleman who plays harmonica near the benches was out again, he always finishes with Shenandoah and tips his hat like he’s closing a show. It gets me every time.
Back home, I sorted through some of my old notebooks ; little scribbled ideas, half-formed stories, sketches of bears in top hats, and robots with coffee mugs. There’s a kind of comfort in seeing your past self try. Like looking at your own roots.
Anyway, not much else to report… just a soft day, in a soft season. I’ll take it.
Be well, stay kind, and if you pass by the harmonica man, drop a quarter for me.
Until later, dear journal.
Please have a safe and sane Fourth of July.
Remember, it’s about the pursuit of liberty and self-governance, marking the beginning of the American Revolution and the birth of a new nation.
No kings. No despots.
Let’s keep it that way now and forever. Keep fighting the good fight, however you can.
Every Republican who “had to speak out” about the catastrophe of the massive fugly as hell bill and then voted for it anyway. You chose your political life over people’s actual lives. There is a special place in Hell reserved for you.
Random health update – I have discovered that my local Y has a pretty amazing pool that has very light usage from 9-11 am
This has done wonders for my daily workout options. The exercise machines are also new and/or well-maintained. The monthly cost is very reasonable, too.
Fireflies tonight!
Just a fun day: my wife and I went off to cruise yard sales, farmers’ markets, get frozen lemonade, and frozen custard.
Things seen today –
random wedding at moment of rice toss, and then the reception later on in a different location
Several adult and baby geese
So many dogs
Fireflies!
A deer in the in-laws front yard
Sweet cotton clouds on the mountains
Food eaten today –
2 bananas
Curry veggie empenada
Leftover slice of pizza
2 soft pretzels
A waffle cone with choc / van swirl
Not the healthiest, but tasty on a warm day.
Sketch of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Roanoke, Virginia
why bears get cranky.
pen, ink, coloured pencilbefore a bear, sleeps over winter, it eats stuff like pine-cones that it can’t digest, forming an internal plug.
however. when it wakes up it has to pass this plug and that is why bears get cranky.view a high resolution version or order a print of this and many others from my sketchblog;
sainthilaire.tumblr.com (followers welcome)