You are amazing to support us - we are growing in all the good ways - especially going into the mid-terms!! Thank you! I so appreciate it -- @peace2day.bsky.social
🌼Peace2Day🌼
@peace2day.bsky.social
🗽 🩷🧡💛💚💙💜 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🇺🇸(she/her) May peace be with & within you☮️ 🌼advocate🌼poet🌼photographer🌼 awarded/international poems/photos book: Natures Breath "on my back" in @MsMagazine.com Sheri Lynn-Artist site BreatheInsights.com Volunteer with @potomacdems.bsky.social
Attend This Protest With Us! On Sundays August 30 and September 6, we will join Woodbridge United’s weekly protest - signup link here: www.mobilize.us/princewillia... @indivisible.org
thank you for standing up!! for being on top of delicate threads which weave within abuse not just in this horrific situation but for raising awareness for what this looks like for so many unspoken victims & survivors & for many who did not survive or fear escape secure hotline www.thehotline.org
National Domestic Violence Hotline
24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, the National Domestic Violence Hotline provides essential tools and support to help survivors of domestic violence so they can live their lives free...
thehotline.org
Adam Mockler@adammockler.com · 2d agoMax Miller Lists Investigations Instead of Answering Tapper
"There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal." - Toni Morrison
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · yesterdayRIP writer Toni Morrison, died this day 2019. "Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all." “You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” “Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”
"...And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall From the depth of Heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest, As still as a brooding dove...." - Percy Bysshe Shelley from "Clouds"
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2d agohappy bday English writer Percy Bysshe Shelley, b.1792. “The sunlight claps the earth, and the moonbeams kiss the sea: what are all these kissings worth, if thou kiss not me?” “If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and...
".... birches cry and hemlocks by the brook stand hunched and downcast with their hands in their pockets..." - Hayden Carruth from If It Were Not for You #poetry
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 3d agohappy bday poet Hayden Carruth, b.1921, Waterbury, CT. “For your love given ask no return, none. To love you must love to love.” “Beauty was worth Its every sorrow, mind's fading or World's ending, As darkness covered the garden that is the earth.”
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubborn is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." - James A. Baldwin
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 4d agohappy bday a fav. James Baldwin, b.1924. "Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." "You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read." "Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”
"The house was just twinkling in the moon light, And inside it twinkling with delight, Is my baby bright. Twinkling with delight in the house twinkling with the moonlight, Bless my baby bless my baby bright, Bless my baby twinkling with delight..." - Gertrude Stein #poetry
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · last wk.RIP writer Gertrude Stein, died this day 1946. “One must dare to be happy." “Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” “A very important thing is not to make up your mind that you are any one thing.”
"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." - Aldous Huxley
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2w agohappy bday English writer Aldous Huxley, b.1894. "I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself." "One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them." “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
"It’s an odd thing but when you tell someone the true facts of a mythical tale they are indignant not with the teller but with you They don’t want to have their ideas upset It rouses some vague uneasiness in them, I think, and they resent it So they reject it and refuse to think about it" J Tey
TeeBo@texastob-24.bsky.social · 2w agoShe’s new to me! Good Saturday morning, MJD
"The greatest work that kindness does to others is that it makes them kind themselves." - Amelia Earhart
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2w agohappy bday the iconic Amelia Earhart, b.1897, Atchison, KS. “Never interrupt someone doing something you said couldn't be done.” “Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.” “A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions, and the roots spring up and make new trees.”
may we seek bridging opportunities for liberty🗽
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2w agohappy bday poet Emma Lazarus, b.1849, NYC. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
"Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good. " - Petrarch
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2w agohappy bday Italian scholar/poet Petrarch, b.1304. “How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence'; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe.”
"The sun was setting across the infinity of prairie to the west, in streaks of orange, vermilion, pink, and rose, and this light give a glow to all the colors on the people there." -Thomas Berger, from "Little Big Man"
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 2w agohappy bday writer Thomas Berger, b.1924, Cincinnati, OH. “I expect Custer was crazy enough to believe he would win, being the type of man who carries the whole world within his own head and thus when his passion is aroused and floods his mind, reality is utterly drowned.”
"Most of our love is shabby stuff, but there is always a thin line of gold, the bit of pure love on which all the rest depends -- and which redeems all the rest." - Iris Murdoch
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 3w agohappy bday Irish/British writer Iris Murdoch, b.1919. “People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” “We can only learn to love by loving.”
"I know you think this world is too dark to even dream in color but I’ve seen flowers bloom at midnight kites fly in gray skies - close to looking like the sunrise & sometime it takes the most wounded wings the most broken things to notice how strong the breeze is how precious the flight" A Gibson
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 3w agoRIP poet and activist Andrea Gibson, died this day 2025, too young at 49. “Autumn is the hardest season. The leaves are all falling, and they're falling like they're falling in love with the ground.” “I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.”
"I am a very curious person; I'll always ask: is this thing true, is it not true? And I use my own means to investigate and come to my conclusion." - Wole Soyinka 👇
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 3w agohappy bday Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, b.1934, awarded 1986 Nobel Prize Literature. “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny”. “Don't take shadows too seriously. Reality is your only safety. Continue to reject illusion.”
"You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, (1/2)...
TeeBo@texastob-24.bsky.social · 4w agoHappy Birthday Pablo Neruda, born OTD in Chile 🇨🇱 in 1904 🎂
"Believe in yourself, learn, and never stop wanting to build a better world." - Mary McLeod Bethune 👇
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 4w agohappy bday educator/civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune, b.1875, Mayesville, SC. "I leave you love. I leave you hope. I leave you... faith. I leave you racial dignity." “Invest in the human soul. Who knows, it might be a diamond in the rough.” “Cease to be a drudge. Seek to be an artist.”
"At first a small line of inconceivable splendour emerged on the horizon, which, quickly expanding, the sun appeared in all of his glory, unveiling the whole face of nature, vivifying every colour of the landscape, and sprinkling the dewy earth with glittering light." Ann Radcliffe 👇
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 4w agohappy bday English writer Ann Radcliffe, b.1764. “He loved the soothing hour, when the last tints of light die away; when the stars, one by one, tremble through æther, and are reflected on the dark mirror of the waters; that hour, which, of all others, inspires the mind with pensive tenderness,...
RIP Canadian artist Tom Thomson, died this day 1917. "Take everything as it comes; the wave passes, deal with the next one."
our history matters!! 👇 ***vote accordingly*** -> local to national <- "Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · 4w agoToday is the 150th anniversary of the Hamburg massacre where 100 white supremacists killed six Black men in attempts to suppress black civil rights and discourage voting. Took place in Hamburg, SC, a town populated by a majority of black freedmen. .
"Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts & opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power... & sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason... " - Frederick Douglass
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · last mo.on this day in 1852 "abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivers his "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" speech at a meeting organized by the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, NY." "I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within...
e pluribus unum important to our country's existence & title of book we launched in community & solidarity for the 250th anniversary of US🇺🇸 my poem - lineage - refers to our legacy & my ancestors may #independence #liberty & #freedom reign🗽 Thank you Nick, James, all at Bards & Local Gems Press
#HistoryMatters in our #independenceday250 journey 🗽 🇺🇸
Matthew Dowd@matthewjdowd.bsky.social · last mo.on this day in 1964 U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A big step towards equality for all. And we have many more steps to take, even while the GOP seeks to push back against equality and freedom for all.
