When we walk in forgetfulness, we imprint our anxieties and sorrows on Mother Earth and on those around us. But when we walk in mindfulness, each step creates a fresh breeze of peace, joy, and harmony.
This Day in Gay History
FRED HOLLAND DAY American photographer and publisher, born (d: 1933). He was considered by many to be the first in the U.S.A. to advocate that photography should be considered a fine art. Day's life and works had long been controversial, since his photographic subjects were often nude male youths. Pam Roberts, in F. Holland Day (Waanders Pub, 2001; catalog of a Day exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum) writes: "Day never married and his sexual orientation, whilst it is widely assumed that he was homosexual, because of his interests, his photographic subject matter, his general flamboyant demeanor, was, like much else about him, a very private matter." At the turn of the century, his influence and reputation as a photographer rivaled that of Alfred Stieglitz, who later eclipsed him.
The high point of Day's photographic career was probably his organization of an exhibition of photographs at the Royal Photographic Society in 1900. He was a major patron of Aubrey Beardsley. Now that the attitudes toward homosexuality have changed so radically, since the 1990s Day's works have been included in major exhibitions by museum curators, notably in the solo Day retrospective at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 2000/2001 and similar shows at the Royal Photographic Society in England and the Fuller Museum of Art.
Art historians are once again taking an interest in Day, and there are now significant academic texts on Day's homoerotic portraiture, and its similarities to the work of Walter Pater and Thomas Eakins.
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“A riqueza não monetária é muito interessante, porque ela pode quantificar o que perdemos na nossa vida quando nos ligamos à economia monetária, quando trocamos os parâmetros de qualidade de vida, sustentabilidade e sanidade do ambiente. Trocamos isso por uma aparente vantagem da riqueza monetária, mas na verdade estamos empobrecendo, ficando mais vulneráveis e mais infelizes.
Se olharmos, por exemplo, o que acontece quando ficamos presos a esse percurso da sociedade ligado à economia monetária, vamos entender que há um sofrimento muito amplo, que surge de algum modo ligado a coisas econômicas, mas que vai impactando também outras formas de funcionamento da própria sociedade. Quando a pessoa mergulha na visão do paradigma econômico monetário, é quase impossível entender a visão ecológica. Surge também uma sensação de que não há limites para esse crescimento econômico.
Quando começamos a estabelecer um tipo de sociedade, não conseguimos incorporar a visão de equilíbrio entre as múltiplas espécies e de limitação da atividade humana. Não perseguimos riqueza, nós passamos a perseguir números, como se fosse um jogo, e então a visão ecológica perde o sentido. Eu preciso atravessar a vida dos outros seres, preciso avançar sobre a liberdade dos outros seres para ampliar esses números.”
— Lama Padma Samten apresentando uma economia desde a visão budista na seção Palavras do Lama, na Revista Bodisatva 33.
On this day in 1855, WALT WHITMAN published the first edition of Leaves of Grass. The first edition consisted of twelve poems, and was published anonymously; Whitman set much of the type himself, and paid for its printing. Over his lifetime, he published eight more editions, adding poems each time; there were 122 new poems in the third edition alone (1860-61), and the final "death-bed edition," published in 1891, contained almost 400. The first edition received several glowing — and anonymous — reviews in New York newspapers. Most of them were written by Whitman himself.
The praise was unstinting: "An American bard at last!" One legitimate mention by popular columnist Fanny Fern called the collection daring and fresh. Emerson felt it was "the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom America has yet contributed." This wasn't a universal opinion, however; many called it filth, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier threw his copy into the fire.
When you look at the world, you will see that there are many different levels of spiritual evolution. They are merely stages of development. Be careful not to impose values of 'better' or 'worse'. It is no better to be an adolescent than to be a child. It is no better to be an old person than middle age. These are just different stages of development.
- Ram Dass -
