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Best Street Guitar Player Ever?

January 11, 2017, 10:55 pm
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Trevor Noah Denounces Trump's "Authoritarian" Press Conference

January 12, 2017, 7:49 am
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Trevor Noah Denounces Trump's "Authoritarian" Press Conference


Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Russian Electoral Manipulation




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NPR: Bipartisan Legal Panel Explains Trump's Illegal And Unconstitutional Business Interests

January 12, 2017, 8:50 am
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Princeton Researches Conclude That U.S. Is No Longer A Democracy

North Carolina Is No Longer A Democracy, Report Says
The Analysis Likens The Tar Heel State To Countries Like Iran, Cuba and Venezuela

Alan: Trump's team argues that he should not be obliged to sell off his business interests because he would lose considerable value tied up in "the Trump brand." 

However, Ethical Standards, The Law and The Constitution are all clear: Trump ran for the presidency (presumably) knowing that his decision to run implied his willingness to suffer personal loss in order to conform to the legalities that protect the integrity of The Oval Office. (It is a real question whether Trump will have read The Constitution before inauguration...)

It may come as "news" to Donald but public service entails personal sacrifice. Presidential hoopla is not all strutting-the-stage, striking populist poses and bragging about the size of his penis.

That said, there is little doubt that "The System" will exempt Trump from his clear-cut legal obligations, obligations he implicitly chose to shoulder when he declared his candidacy. Letting Trump "slide" constitutes another nail in the closing coffin lid on American Democracy and Rule of Law.

The following NPR discussion by legal and ethics experts (who served in previous Republican and Democratic presidencies) is eye-opening.

However, it must be said -- as a leit-motif-critique of Trump's cocksure arrogance and determination to trash ethics, law, tradition and The Constitution itself -- that Trump's followers are not now, nor have they ever been, willing to open their eyes. 

On November 8th, all-white s-Trump-ets flocked to an autocrat who promised rectification of socio-political calamities arising from their own civic irresponsibility. 

Aggressive Ignorance Is An All-American Pastime | Conservatives Are Angry At What Happened After They Behaved Irresponsibly. True To Form, They Elected Donald Trump | image tagged in politics,trump,morans,morons,ignorance,stupidity | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Now that they have surrendered democratic responsibility to the "miraculous machinations" of a moral-monster-masquerading-as-savior, they will "triple down" on their boastful ignorance (having already exhausted the recourse of "doubling down").

We are not dealing with anything like "politics-as-usual." 

We are dealing with Bad Religion, rooted in the "blood red"Bible Belt from which the poison spread.

Former White House Ethics Lawyers Parse Trump's News Conference

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Elizabeth Warren, The Greatest Generation And Cowboy Capitalism's Betrayal Of That Generation

January 12, 2017, 9:09 am
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My friend Tarantino posted the above quotation on his Facebook page.

Here is how I "fill in the blanks" of the long, degrading process Elizabeth Warren outlines...

When "The Greatest Generation" came back from World War II, they assumed -- as did everyone -- that labor and capital were collaborating in building a "new world" and that the fruits of their joint productivity would be shared more or less equitably.

Then, as automation, robotization and software enhancement eliminated need for much of the manower that formerly ran "the wheels of production," Cowboy Capitalists (a ruthless pack of jackals insightfully revealed in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf Of Wall Street") decided to sequester an ever larger slice of the pie for themselves.

"Automation, Robotization, Software-Enhanced Productivity And Permanent Job Loss"

Simultaneously, "the wolves of Wall Street" shredded The Social Contract and hurled now-unneeded workers into the bloody maw of Social Darwinism.

Remarkably, the workers who were dispossesed by grab-it-all capitalists began to ally with the very plutocrats who were systematically depriving them of their livelihoods.

The first meme on the following webpage encapsulates this bizarre situation as well as I can. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-1-smart-enough-to-know-youre-stupid.html




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Trump's Approval Nosedive (Qunnipiac Poll)

January 12, 2017, 9:18 am
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"Lock Him Up!"

January 12, 2017, 9:26 am
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Fact-Checking Donald Trump's First News Conference As President Elect (Washington Post)

January 12, 2017, 9:28 am
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Stellar Interview With American Investment Banker (And Former Putin Fan) Who Now "Tells All"

January 12, 2017, 10:43 am
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Marco Werman Interviews Bill Browder, MD, Founder Of Hermitage Capital Management, A Fund Management Company Specializing In Russian And CIS Equity Markets
PRI
(Alan: Unfortunately, there is no dedicated URL to Browder's interview so you will have to use "the whole show" link below, then proceed to the 37:37 mark. Beware that fast-forwarding through this audio file may "take time." On my computer, there is about 10 seconds of "dead air" before the PRI webpage catches up with my request to fast-forward.)



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Article 1

January 12, 2017, 3:24 pm
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"Ben Carson Knows Nothing"

January 12, 2017, 8:41 pm
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New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest #553, January 16, 2017 My Submission

January 13, 2017, 7:11 am
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"Yeah... But the Dow hit 50,000!"



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Donald Trump's Karmic Payback: BuzzFeed Reflects His Own Outrageous Conspiracy Theories

January 13, 2017, 7:32 am
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Trump's Blizzard Of Bullshit And The Corrosion Of Traditional Norms | The Blizzard Of Bullshit Swirling Around Trump Induces Despair At Disentangling Truth From Swaggering Falsehood | image tagged in trump's lies,trump's falsehood,trump's manipulation | made w/ Imgflip meme maker

Donald Trump's Karmic Payback: BuzzFeed's Recklessness Reflects His Outrageous Conspiracy Theories Back At Him

Trump is right to be outraged about media irresponsibility, but the birther-in-chief brought this fiasco on himself


Pulitzer Prize-Winning PolitiFact Finds That Only 1% Of The Things Trump Says Are Entirely True

Hey! Deceiver-in-Chief!
Here's some more karmic blowback.
(Or, in Christian terms, "you reap what we sow.")


Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Russian Electoral Manipulation

Faith and Falsehood



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The New Yorker: "The Music Trump Can't Hear." (Why Musicians Shun The Inauguration)

January 13, 2017, 12:47 pm
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"Will Donald Trump Start A War?" International Business Times

January 13, 2017, 10:12 pm
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Trump Says He'd Force U.S. Military To Commit War Crimes, Killing Wives And Kids Of Terrorists

January 14, 2017, 5:19 pm
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Trump Says He Would Force U.S. Military To Commit War Crimes
"They’re not going to refuse me. If I say do it, they’re going to do it"


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This 80 Year-Old Woman Is Going To Heaven Because She's Already There. What A Dance!!!

January 15, 2017, 12:23 pm
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Young Since 1934: A Dancer Proves You’re as Young as You Feel


Alan: My sister Janet's Catholic pastor says: "We are already living in heaven and it will only get deeper when we die."

Just in case "spirit" is a pre-requisite for passing through "The Pearly Gates," do something creative now. 

Creativity And "Salvation"

Alan: If we are co-creators, then -- to be "true to our nature" and perhaps to merge with our Creator  -- maybe we must be creative.

"John Ford, John Wayne, Aquinas And Theosis (Christian Divinization)"





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Fred Owens'"Frog Hospital" Just Turned 18: If You Haven't Tuned In, It's High Time

January 15, 2017, 1:43 pm
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FROG HOSPITAL --  January 15, 2017
Celebrating 18 Years at Frog Hospital
By Fred Owens
Frog Hospital started in 1999 as a paid subscriber email newsletter, publishing about 700 issues since that beginning. Many readers have been with us for all 18 years and we greatly appreciate that support. We try to keep it interesting. I rummage through some of the back issues and I find nothing to regret or retract. As for integrity, Frog Hospital adheres to two bedrock principles -- tell the truth and don't waste anyone's time.
It's always been one day at a time, but here's hoping for another 18 years.
Here's a story about Frog Hospital that appeared on the front page of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on November 24, 2000, written by Candy Hatcher.


Life lessons via e-mail from La Conner. The story behind Fred Owens' Frog Hospital. 'It’s just how I think'

Friday, November 24, 2000 SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER STAFF LA CONNER -- Lessons on life flow from here, and they're free for the asking. Once a week, sometimes not that often, Fred Owens fires up his computer, writes nine screens full of history and politics and wit, and sends the musings by e-mail to 300 friends, acquaintances and strangers.

Welcome to Frog Hospital, a reading experience that will take you from a parking lot in La Conner to a children's hospital in New York to the White House to the local library and back. It is journalism, in a sense, but not in the form we usually get it. Owens, 54, claims he doesn't even know how to write a true lead -- the opening paragraph of a news story. He starts with Woody Allen, for example, then rambles about The New York Times and libraries, which leads him to Franklin Roosevelt, which brings him to the subject at hand: courage. "I don't do this on purpose," he said. "It's just how I think."

Frog Hospital is like the Internet. "You can go from chairs to hippopotamus to spark plugs to China and back to chairs again. That's the way I write.""Thanksgiving is approaching in every family. It is the time to express gratitude and act in harmony, but we are faced with this damnable tie vote. If Gore had simply lost, I would stay at home and sulk and paint the bedroom, and let the other side have their parade -- at least I wouldn't have to talk with those people.

"The limits of accuracy and technology have already been reached in Florida. Out of 6 million votes cast, I estimate that 500 voters were legally drunk at the time and don't even remember who they voted for. Roughly 1,500 voters, highly informed and motivated, were unable to vote because of traffic jams or last-minute family emergencies.

"Error is a minor deity, at whose shrine we now light incense, because error will not be banished."

Owens, an unassuming, thoughtful man who still appreciates life's little joys, has been writing these missives, in one form or another, for 16 years. He's a fisherman, cook and landscaper, a storyteller and journalist. The words come slowly, carefully. He doesn't want to offend; he wants people to think, to laugh. Mostly, he wants them to talk to each other. He sends his thoughts from froghospital911@gmail.com to childhood friends in Chicago, former neighbors in Boston and Africa, residents of Skagit Valley, anyone who asks to be on his mailing list. He e-mails the newsletter rather than posting it on a Web site. That way, he knows the people he's writing to. He loosely follows a format and includes no more than one local joke. The tone is friendly, sometimes conciliatory, sometimes frustrated, occasionally angry. He doesn't write about class issues, and he's careful about broaching controversies involving race. But most anything else -- foreign policy, country music, universal health care -- is fair game for this observer of politics and history.

Owens met President Kennedy at a rally in 1960. In 1962, he went with his high school class to city hall in Chicago on election night to help count ballots. Four years later, he participated in civil rights marches and, in 1968, he was in Chicago for the Democratic convention. He admits to being a Berkeley hippie, and there are telltale signs. He's still a student, studying at Western Washington University for a master's degree in history. He worked for the U.S. Forest Service, and on a daffodil farm. And he still yearns to create a buzz with his writing, to bring an issue to people and get them talking about it. "It's like a party -- introduce people, and they start talking." That's what he wanted in 1984 when he started a quarterly fishing newspaper, the Northwest Fishing Forecast. He'd been a sport fisherman, and when he wrote a story about it, he knew nobody would publish it "because it didn't fit the type."

"I wrote about sport fishing and tribal fishing and commercial fishing. I was writing about three communities that wouldn't speak to each other. I said, 'You guys ought to talk to each other,'" and he put their stories on the same page. Commercially, he said, the Forecast was a disaster. So he turned to newspapers, hoping they'd be more lucrative.

His monthly newspaper, Puget Sound Mail, lasted four years until he ran out of money. Then he turned it into a newsletter, which morphed as he moved from La Conner to Boston to Zimbabwe and back. In Boston, inspired by Malcolm Forbes' success with Forbes magazine, he called his publication Owens. He wrote about gardening and cooking. "I was cooking a lot of the time, so I wrote a cookbook. But it was more like a story with recipes. I kept a cooking journal and worked it up as a story."

In Africa, it was The Zimbabwe Edition, a marriage of horticulture and journalism. And then he moved back to the Skagit Valley and his missives became Frog Hospital.

Frog Hospital was a nickname for the old grocery store in La Conner, he said. That wasn't its real name, but that's what people called it. "There is a story behind this name, and I don't know it," Owens said. "It's a local name, a hippie name, an Internet name. With a name like Frog Hospital, I can be serious, but I don't have to be." His goal has always been the same: to put things in perspective and provide background. "The name's changed, and the focus, but this linkage is steady. The idea is to communicate. I've always seen relationships where other people don't seem to see them. So I stick with that. I'm happy to point them out, and if I do my work right, other people will see them, too."

"I know about autism. Years ago I worked at Rockland State Hospital (in New York) . . . a huge place back then, with thousands of patients, many warehoused. I worked in the children's autistic ward or 'cottage 4.'"I remember Randy, who was a small, very handsome boy, very graceful and coordinated in his movement, and he looked so intelligent. I just knew he was smart, but he never said a word to anybody, hadn't spoken in years. Randy liked to run away. He would scamper out the door, if he could sneak by, then streak across the lawn, and start taking his clothes off, and then run naked through traffic and down the street. It made me feel like a real killjoy because it was my job to catch him and bring him back, when I wanted to run naked through the street myself. "From autism, I learned two things: You can care about somebody even though they are not able, or not willing, to care for you. And you can ask somebody a question, and there is no promise on heaven or earth that says you are entitled to an answer."

It's important to care, Owens said. It's important to have fun but not to provoke people for no reason. He likes La Conner because he knows nearly everybody, and "because it's home, and I know how to live there." He's bought a house, finally. He's enjoying transplanting the rhododendrons in his own yard. That's what he does to relax. When things get too stressful, or someone sends hate mail, "it's time to play in the dirt."

There's some frustration with Frog Hospital. He has no editor to keep him in check. He has no affiliation, no publisher to back him or provide insurance. His landscaping paychecks don't provide the stability he'd like. Still, he perseveres. "I have never published anything without annoying somebody," he wrote in September. "Besides making a general apology and saying, 'Excuse me for living,' I'm going to proceed."

This feature story was written by Candy Hatcher. Her name didn't appear on the byline because the staff of the P-I was on strike at the time. Candy is still in journalism. She left the P-I and worked at the Chicago Tribune for a few years. Currently she is working for a daily newspaper in the tidewater region of Virginia.Candy has been a Frog Hospital reader all this time. She and I continuously disagree on the merit of mainstream journalism.
You can read almost the whole thing at Frog Hospital. The blog goes back to 2004. The years 1999 to 2004 are saved on the laptop and in printed form.




thank you,
Fred

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The Borowitz Report: "Karaoke Machine Backs Out Of Performing At Inauguration"

January 15, 2017, 2:00 pm
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The New Yorker
Karaoke Machine Backs Out Of Performing At Inauguration

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump’s plans for a triumphal Inauguration were upended over the weekend when a karaoke machine that had been engaged to perform at the event abruptly backed out.

In an official statement, the karaoke machine said that it was withdrawing because it “did not want my participation at the Inauguration to in any way be construed as an endorsement of Donald Trump.”

The President-elect wasted no time in lashing out at the karaoke machine, taking to Twitter in the early hours of the morning to call the entertainment device a “loser” and “sad.”

But Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s adviser, attempted to minimize the machine’s departure in an appearance on Fox News. “Naturally, we’re disappointed in the karaoke machine’s decision, but we still have Jackie Evancho,” she said.



Compilation Of Pax Posts On Similarities Between Hitler And Trump

Compendium Of Best Pax Posts About The Relationship Between Trump And Putin

Compendium Of Pax Posts About Russian Electoral Manipulation

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"Citing Trump's "Fascism" And "Tyranny," Mormon Tabernacle Chorister Resigns," Time Magazine


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Martin Luther King, Jr.: The 6 Pillars Of Nonviolent Resistance And The Greek Idea Of "Agape"

January 15, 2017, 7:56 pm
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An Experiment In Love: Martin Luther King, Jr. On The Six Pillars Of Nonviolent Resistance And The Ancient Greek Notion Of "Agape"

Although Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929–April 4, 1968) used Christian social ethics and the New Testament concept of “love” heavily in his writings and speeches, he was as influenced by Eastern spiritual traditions, Gandhi’s political writings, Buddhism’s notion of the interconnectedness of all beings, and Ancient Greek philosophy. His enduring ethos, at its core, is nonreligious — rather, it champions a set of moral, spiritual, and civic responsibilities that fortify our humanity, individually and collectively.

Nowhere does he transmute spiritual ideas from various traditions into secular principles more masterfully than in his extraordinary 1958 essay “An Experiment in Love,” in which he examines the six essential principles of his philosophy of nonviolence, debunks popular misconceptions about it, and considers how these basic tenets can be used in guiding any successful movement of nonviolent resistance. Penned five years before his famous Letter from Birmingham City Jail and exactly a decade before his assassination, the essay was eventually included in the indispensable A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. (public library) — required reading for every human being with a clicking mind and a ticking heart.
In the first of the six basic philosophies, Dr. King addresses the tendency to mistake nonviolence for passivity, pointing out that it is a form not of cowardice but of courage:
It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight… The way of nonviolent resistance … is ultimately the way of the strong man. It is not a method of stagnant passivity… For while the nonviolent resister is passive in the sense that he is not physically aggressive toward his opponent, his mind and his emotions are always active, constantly seeking to persuade his opponent that he is wrong. The method is passive physically but strongly active spiritually. It is not passive non-resistance to evil, it is active nonviolent resistance to evil.
He turns to the second tenet of nonviolence:
Nonviolence … does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent, but to win his friendship and understanding. The nonviolent resister must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but he realizes that these are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.
Illustration by Olivier Tallec from ‘Waterloo and Trafalgar.’ Click image for more.
In considering the third characteristic of nonviolence, Dr. King appeals to the conscientious recognition that those who perpetrate violence are often victims themselves:
The attack is directed against forces of evil rather than against persons who happen to be doing the evil. It is the evil that the nonviolent resister seeks to defeat, not the persons victimized by the evil. If he is opposing racial injustice, the nonviolent resister has the vision to see that the basic tension is not between the races… The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness…. We are out to defeat injustice and not white persons who may be unjust.
Out of this recognition flows the fourth tenet:
Nonviolent resistance [requires] a willingness to accept suffering without retaliation, to accept blows from the opponent without striking back… The nonviolent resister is willing to accept violence if necessary, but never to inflict it. He does not seek to dodge jail. If going to jail is necessary, he enters it “as a bridegroom enters the bride’s chamber.”
That, in fact, is precisely how Dr. King himself entered jail five years later. To those skeptical of the value of turning the other cheek, he offers:
Unearned suffering is redemptive. Suffering, the nonviolent resister realizes, has tremendous educational and transforming possibilities.
The fifth basic philosophy turns the fourth inward and arrives at the most central point of the essay — the noblest use of what we call “love”:
Nonviolent resistance … avoids not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. The nonviolent resister not only refuses to shoot his opponent but he also refuses to hate him. At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love. The nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or indulging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate. This can only be done by projecting the ethic of love to the center of our lives.
Illustration by Maurice Sendak from ‘Let’s Be Enemies’ by Janice May Udry. Click image for more.
Here, Dr. King turns to Ancient Greek philosophy, pointing out that the love he speaks of is not the sentimental or affectionate kind — “it would be nonsense to urge men to love their oppressors in an affectionate sense,” he readily acknowledges — but love in the sense of understanding and redemptive goodwill. The Greeks called this agape — a love distinctly different from the eros, reserved for our lovers, or philia, with which we love our friends and family. Dr. King explains:
Agape means understanding, redeeming good will for all men. It is an overflowing love which is purely spontaneous, unmotivated, groundless, and creative. It is not set in motion by any quality or function of its object… Agape is disinterested love. It is a love in which the individual seeks not his own good, but the good of his neighbor. Agape does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people, or any qualities people possess. It begins by loving others for their sakes. It is an entirely “neighbor-regarding concern for others,” which discovers the neighbor in every man it meets. Therefore, agape makes no distinction between friends and enemy; it is directed toward both. If one loves an individual merely on account of his friendliness, he loves him for the sake of the benefits to be gained from the friendship, rather than for the friend’s own sake. Consequently, the best way to assure oneself that love is disinterested is to have love for the enemy-neighbor from whom you can expect no good in return, but only hostility and persecution.
This notion is nearly identical to one of Buddhism’s four brahmaviharas, or divine attitudes — the concept of Metta, often translated as lovingkindness or benevolence. The parallel speaks not only to Dr. King’s extraordinarily diverse intellectual toolkit of influences and inspirations — a high form of combinatorial creativity necessary for any meaningful contribution to humanity’s common record — but also to the core commonalities between the world’s major spiritual and philosophical traditions.

In a sentiment that Margaret Mead and James Baldwin would echo twelve years later in their spectacular conversation on race — “In any oppressive situation both groups suffer, the oppressors and the oppressed,” Mead observed, asserting that the oppressors suffer morally with the recognition of what they’re committing, which Baldwin noted is “a worse kind of suffering” — Dr. King adds:
Another basic point about agape is that it springs from the need of the other person — his need for belonging to the best in the human family… Since the white man’s personality is greatly distorted by segregation, and his soul is greatly scarred, he needs the love of the Negro. The Negro must love the white man, because the white man needs his love to remove his tensions, insecurities, and fears.
Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen for a vintage children’s-book adaptation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Click image for more.
At the heart of agape, he argues, is the notion of forgiveness — something Mead and Baldwin also explored with great intellectual elegance. Dr. King writes:
Agape is not a weak, passive love. It is love in action… Agape is a willingness to go to any length to restore community… It is a willingness to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven to restore community…. If I respond to hate with a reciprocal hate I do nothing but intensify the cleavage in broken community. I can only close the gap in broken community by meeting hate with love.
With this, he turns to the sixth and final principle of nonviolence as a force of justice, undergirded by the nonreligious form of spirituality that Dani Shapiro elegantly termed “an animating presence” and Alan Lightman described as the transcendence of “this strange and shimmering world.” Dr. King writes:
Nonviolent resistance … is base don the conviction that the universe is on the side of justice. Consequently, the believer in nonviolence has deep faith in the future. This faith is another reason why the nonviolent resister can accept suffering without retaliation. For he knows that in his struggle for justice he has cosmic companionship. It is true that there are devout believers in nonviolence who find it difficult to believe in a personal God. But even these persons believe in the existence of some creative force that works for universal wholeness. Whether we call it an unconscious process, an impersonal Brahman, or a Personal Being of matchless power of infinite love, there is a creative force in this universe that works to bring the disconnected aspects of reality into a harmonious whole.
A Testament of Hope is an absolutely essential read in its totality. Complement it with Dr. King on the two types of law, Albert Einstein’s little-known correspondence with W.E.B. Du Bois on racial justice, and Tolstoy and Gandhi’s equally forgotten but immensely timely correspondence on why we hurt each other.


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Rachel Carson And Dorothy Freeman: When "The Platonic" And "The Romantic " Begin To Blur

January 15, 2017, 8:03 pm
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Rachel Carson's Touching Farewell To Her Dearest Friend And Beloved

As if classifying platonic relationships weren’t complex enough a task — one that requires a taxonomy of friendship types — what happens when the platonic and the romantic begin to blur? In his exquisite love letter to Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre spoke of “turning abruptly from friendship to love.” And yet what if friendship and love weren’t opposite points between which to pivot but loci that overlap in varying degrees? Under the Romantic ideal of love, we’ve come to expect that every great romance should also contain within itself, in addition to erotic passion, a robust friendship. But we hold with deep suspicion the opposite — a platonic friendship colored with the emotional hues of romantic love, never given physical form but always aglow with an intensity artificially dimmed by the label of plain friendship. Perhaps we need not label these kaleidoscopic emotional universes after all; perhaps resisting the urge to classify and contain is the only way to do justice to their iridescent richness of sentiment and feeling.

A heartening testament to that possibility comes from the life of the pathbreaking marine biologist, conservationist, naturalist, and wonder-wielder Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907–April 14, 1964), who has contributed more than any other person to awakening the modern environmental consciousness — her 1962 book Silent Spring, published eighteen months before her life was cut tragically short by cancer, led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and sparked the sustainability movement as we know it today.
But beneath Carson’s blazing intellect and her protective affection for the natural world lay an interior world as rich and passionate, animated by the same intensity of intelligent love.
In late 1952, just before Carson moved to Maine’s Southport Island with her mother, a local housewife named Dorothy Freeman wrote her a warm letter welcoming her to the close-knit island community. (Carson was already a famous author — her 1951 book The Sea Around Us had broken records by remaining on best-seller lists for eighteen months.) Their correspondence blossomed into a fast friendship aglow with anticipation of their first in-person meeting.
On December 30, 1953, Carson visited the Freemans’ home and stayed for a night. “Reality can so easily fall short of hopes and expectations, especially where they have been high,” she wrote to Freeman as soon as she returned home. “My dear one, there is not a single thing about you that I would change if I could!” She enclosed a Keats verse — “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: / its loveliness increases; it will never / pass into nothingness; but still will keep / a bower quiet for us, and a sleep / full of sweet dreams.” — and added: “I am certain, my dearest, that it will be forever a joy, of increasing loveliness with the years, and that in the intervals when being separated, we cannot have all the happiness of Wednesday, there will be, in each of our hearts, a little oasis of peace and ‘sweet dreams’ where the other is.”
Rachel Carson at her microscope, 1951
Freeman was married and devoted to her family, but she soon took on a centrality in Carson’s life that was unparalleled. Although their relationship was mostly epistolary, it grew replete with such intense tenderness and was articulated in such romantic language that the label “friendship” fails to contain it — Carson addressed Freeman as “darling,” often “my very own darling.” The closing sentiment of a letter penned in February of 1954 — “Darling — always and always — I love you so dearly” — was typical of their mutual tenderness. In another letter planning their first visit since that initial meeting, Carson exhales: “But, oh darling, I want to be with you so terribly that it hurts!”
Rachel Carson with Dorothy and Stanley Freeman, Southport Island
And yet their relationship was never a secret. Freeman shared their letters with her husband, to which Carson responded with sincere gladness:
How dear of him to say what he did. Perhaps this is the final little touch of the perfection in the whole episode… It means so very much to me to know that you have such an understanding, loving and wonderful husband… I want him to know what you mean to me.
For the remaining twelve years of Carson’s life, it was Freeman’s love and daily devotion that warded off the scientist’s aching loneliness and her struggles with depression, fomented her creative and intellectual imagination, and nourished her visionary spirit as she gave form to some of the most influential ideas of the twentieth century in her writing. In early February of 1954, she articulated Freeman’s centrality in her world in an immeasurably beautiful letter, found in Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964 (public library):
I don’t suppose anyone really knows how a creative writer works (he or she least of all, perhaps!) or what sort of nourishment his spirit must have. All I am certain of is this; that it is quite necessary for me to know that there is someone who is deeply devoted to me as a person, and who also has the capacity and the depth of understanding to share, vicariously, the sometimes crushing burden of creative effort, recognizing the heartache, the great weariness of mind and body, the occasional black despair it may involve — someone who cherishes me and what I am trying to create… The few who understood the creative problem were not people to whom I felt emotionally close; those who loved the non-writer part of me did not, by some strange paradox, understand the writer at all! And then, my dear one, you came into my life! … I knew when I first saw you that I wanted to see much more of you — I loved you before you left Southport — and very early in our correspondence last fall I began to sense that capacity to enter so fully into the intellectual and creative parts of my life as well as to be a dearly loved friend. And day by day all that I sensed in you has been fulfilled, but even more wonderfully than I could have dreamed…
I feel such a joyous surge of wonder every time I stop to think how in such a dark time and when I least expected it, something so lovely and richly satisfying came into my life.
This letter was intended as an answer to one penned a few days earlier, in which Freeman had contemplated their relationship and asked Carson in transcendent astonishment: “Don’t you ever marvel at yourself, finding yourself in such an overpowering emotional experience?” A week later, Carson revisited the question and offered an even more direct answer:
I have wondered since … whether I may have forgotten to make it clear that — besides all the intellectual satisfaction I perhaps dwelt on at great length — it truly is for me, as for you, “an overpowering emotional experience.” If I didn’t, I think I can now trust that your heart knows it. I was thinking today, with what depth of gratitude I hope you know, how wonderfully sustaining is the assurance of your constant, day-and-night devotion and concern. Without it, I truly don’t know what I would be doing now, when there are a good many otherwise dark days.
Perhaps the most beautiful aspect of their relationship was its deep mutuality and the enormous generosity of spirit with which each beheld the other. With a grateful eye to the immensity of what Freeman is contributing to her life, Carson wonders what she is contributing to Freeman’s in turn:
Since one of the things about you that impressed me from the beginning was the lovely quality of your family life, I knew … that it was not lack of love. No one could be with you and Stan even a short time without realizing how devoted and congenial you are. And I wonder whether the very fact that you have experienced, and have yourself poured out, so much love, has not made you all the more receptive to the devotion offered by this newcomer in your life. You wrote so beautifully, weeks ago, of how one’s capacity to give love grows with the exercise of it, so perhaps the more love we have received, the more we are able to absorb and in that sense no one ever has enough. And I do know that the facts that we are, to an incredible degree “kindred spirits,” and that for many reasons we need all that we mean to each other, probably lie at the heart of our love. But the more I think about all we both have said, the more I feel that there is something that perhaps will always remain elusive and intangible — that the whole is something more than the sum of the various “reasons.” Henry Beston [one of Carson’s favorite authors and heroes, who had recently reviewed her book Under the Sea-Wind] says in the review I’m sending you today: “the sun — is always more than a gigantic mass of ions, it is a splendor and a mystery, a force and a divinity, it is life and the symbol of life.” Our analysis has been beautiful and comforting and satisfying, but probably it will never be quite complete — never encompass the whole “splendor and mystery.”
This “splendor and mystery” continued to unfold and expand between them, growing only richer with time. Two years later, Carson writes to Freeman:
My own darling,
For your birthday, this is to tell you — as if you didn’t know — how dearly and tenderly I love you. You have come to occupy a place in my life that no one else could fill, and it is strange now to contemplate all the empty years when you weren’t there. But perhaps we shouldn’t regret those years — perhaps instead we should just give ourselves over to wonder and gratitude that a friendship so satisfying and so full of joy and beauty could come to each of us in the middle years — when, perhaps, we needed it most!
[…]
Darling, do you know how wonderful it is to have you? I hope you do.
I love you.
Rachel
In the spring of 1960, just as she was finishing the draft of the two chapters in Silent Spring dealing with the carcinogenic effects of chemicals, Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer. By December, despite surgery, it had metastasized. She continued to work tirelessly on the book and other projects through increasingly debilitating illness.

In September of 1963, shortly after her testimony before President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee became instrumental in the first regulatory policies on pesticides, Carson wrote a stunning letter to Freeman. It contained a contemplation of her own mortality so profound, so poignant, so tenderhearted and transcendent that it could only be articulated to the person who knew her heart most intimately. She writes:
Dear One,
This is a postscript to our morning at Newagen, something I think I can write better than say. For me it was one of the loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all the details will remain in my memory: that blue September sky, the sounds of the wind in the spruces and surf on the rocks, the gulls busy with their foraging, alighting with deliberate grace, the distant views of Griffiths Head and Todd Point, today so clearly etched, though once half seen in swirling fog. But most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force. We talked a little about their migration, their life history. Did they return? We thought not; for most, at least, this was the closing journey of their lives.
But it occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly — for when any living thing has come to the end of its life cycle we accept that end as natural.
For the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to an end.
That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it — so I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.
Rachel
In another letter written three months before her death but delivered posthumously, Carson revisits the subject of her mortality from the perspective of her relationship with Freeman, the great gift of her life:
Darling [Dorothy],
[…]
When I think back to the many farewells that have marked the decade (almost) of our friendship, I realize they have almost been inarticulate. I remember chiefly the great welling up of thoughts that somehow didn’t get put into words — the silences heavy with things unsaid. But then, we knew or hoped, there was always another chance — and always the letters to fill the gaps.
With a lucid and almost shockingly serene awareness of her imminent mortality, Carson adds:
I have had a rich life, full of rewards and satisfactions that come to few and if it must end now, I can feel that I have achieved most of what I wished to do. That wouldn’t have been true two years ago, when I first realized my time was short, and I am so grateful to have had this extra time.
My regrets, darling, are for your sadness, for leaving Roger [the eleven-year-old orphan son of Carson’s niece, for whom she was caring], when I so wanted to see him through manhood, for dear Jeffie [Carson’s cat] whose life is linked to mine.
[…]
But enough of that. What I want to write of is the joy and fun and gladness we have shared — for these are the things I want you to remember — I want to live on in your memories of happiness. I shall write more of those things. But tonight I’m weary and must put out the light. Meanwhile, there is this word — and my love will always live.
Rachel
In her final letter, written as Freedman was en route to a deathbed visit but only delivered two weeks after Carson’s death, she writes:
My darling,
You are starting on your way to me in the morning, but I have such a strange feeling that I may not be here when you come — so this is just an extra little note of farewell, should that happen. There have been many pains (heart) in the past few days, and I’m weary in every bone. And tonight there is something strange about my vision, which may mean nothing. But of course I thought, what if I can’t write — can’t see to write — tomorrow? So, a word before I turn out the light.
[…]
Darling — if the heart does take me off suddenly, just know how much easier it would be for me that way. But I do grieve to leave my dear ones. As for me, however, it is quite all right. Not long ago I sat late in my study and played Beethoven, and achieved a feeling of real peace and even happiness.
Never forget, dear one, how deeply I have loved you all these years.
Rachel
Always, Rachel is an achingly transcendent read in its entirety. Complement this particularly poignant portion with Oliver Sacks on the measure of living and the dignity of dying, then revisit Carson on why it is more important to feel than to know.




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