Good Morning, Digital Neighbors! ✝️ TGIF! I try my best to thank the Luminous all the time, but I understand the joy of Friday and the promise of the weekend ahead for so many people. Today’s word is one familiar to many of us who grew up in the ’70s and enjoy the rock and pop of that decade. My musical taste is eclectic, to say the least. My parents were into big band, jazz, swing, and lounge music, with a great love for the crooners of the ’50s. Dad had a personal fondness for Tony Mottola and his easy guitar playing. Tony was late-night music for Mom and Dad on the turntable.
My older siblings—4 brothers and 1 sister—were very much into the pop and rock of the ’60s and ’70s. Their musical tastes became mine, and finally, throw in the neighbors in the little country town we moved to in 1970, and country slowly filtered into that mix. It was a wonderful childhood of music. Mom would have her elevator-music station on downstairs with easy pop hits, while upstairs Joe & Jerry ...
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
6:00 AM - 8:00 AM (CST)
Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
White Pilled Wednesday - A break from the heaviness of news and current events to focus upon things more personal & positive for the first hour of Coffee Talk.
Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
Quite apart from the fact that I utterly admire, even love, her, this is the best possible response to an idiot, who, in his defense, asked a pretty good question.
https://x.com/TBifford/status/2087992591279407133/video/1?s=61
The Beautiful
Said the Disciple to the Lover, “Sir, before I left the world I heard certain men who were held in high esteem and thought to know the will of the Beloved say that those who loved the Beautiful did not love the Beloved but loved idols, yet in the Garden of the Beloved we are ever striving to create beauty for the pleasure of the Beloved. Were they then speaking the truth?”
The Lover answered, “Those who said this had never glimpsed the form of the Beloved nor ever truly sought Him, for all beauty is but the reflection of the beauty of the Beloved, although seen very dimly as in a dark and faulty mirror, even as all goodness is a dim reflection of the goodness of the Beloved. So it is that those who love beauty and goodness recognize dimly in them the form of the Beloved and though often in ignorance those who are seeking the Beautiful and the Good are seeking after the Beloved.”
