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John Teets

@suenitos.bsky.social

1.5K followers 1K following 2.8K posts

Elderqueer (he/him) out since the '70s. Former Chicago newspaper guy, from copy boy to editorial board via points between. Friend of facts, foe of fascists. At home in Key West, missing my late husband after 38 years together. 🌈

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John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 7h

Think of arousal as a BOGO.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 8h

I look up and sigh, tapping into a rapture that eons of ancestors have known.
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Pink and gray clouds in a pale twilight sky flirt with the full moon. Below are the crown of a palm tree and a slanting slice of a cottage's tin roof.

Reposted by John Teets

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 1d

i desperately want everyone involved in the destruction of USAID to have to, st the very least, answer to the american people for the suffering and misery they have caused apnews.com/article/myan...

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 18h

... where denunciation, without specification or backing, takes the place of evidence; where orthodoxy chokes freedom of dissent; where faith in the eventual supremacy of reason has become so timid that we dare not enter our convictions in the open lists, to win or lose." — Judge Learned Hand

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 18h

"That community is already in the process of dissolution where each man begins to eye his neighbor as a possible enemy, where nonconformity with the accepted creed, political as well as religious, is a mark of disaffection....
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 1d

Nonbinary by nature.
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A blossom of an Aechmea fasciata bromeliad, sharp pink spikes radiating from a tight center, interspersed with small pale blue flowers.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 1d

.
... uses media to polarize the nation, punishes academics and scientists, all while the party officials get rich and promote their own interests. Be vigilant and if you see any of this happening, know these people are commies! They want to pollute our precious bodily fluids. They must be stopped!"

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 1d

... exerts control over the economy, destroys free enterprise and hands out subsidies, suppresses the media, has unidentified law enforcement show up at people's homes and on the street and detain them without judicial process, blames minorities and political opponents for creating the situation...

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 1d

My brilliant friend Joe, a retired U.S. diplomat, has a dire warning: "Some of my old buddies worry about communism, where the government suppresses dissent, controls universities, uses the military against civilians it deems its political enemies, intervenes in commercial activities...

A bold poster of a grinning skull over the classic Soviet hammer and sickle with the warning "BEWARE OF COMMUNISM."

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 1d

"Prejudice is the child of ignorance." — William Hazlitt (1778 - 1830)
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 2d

Several orchids, as it says in the alt text.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 2d

Send the proper model and I'll re-create No. 1 for you.

A small swimming pool bordered by tropical vegetation.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 2d

Timeline cleanse. Take as needed.
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White phalaenopsis orchids rooted to a palm tree in my porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 2d

"It's said that power corrupts, but it's more true that power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by other things. When they do act, they think of it as service, which has limits. The tyrant, though, seeks mastery, for which he is insatiable, implacable." — David Brin
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 3d

Monochrome Monday.
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A gecko, a bug-eyed gray lizard about the size of your index finger, waits at an edge of my porch light for dinner to fly in. They're the only variety of lizards that are mostly nocturnal, heard much more than seen, serenading the night with quacking rasps or two-note calls that sound for all the world like "GECK-oh." In fact, their name comes from the Malay word mimicking their calls.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 3d

"When guiding questions are future oriented, as in 'What’s possible?' and 'How do we create it?' people are mobilized to focus on more transformational change. Focusing on problems is limiting; focusing on possibilities is liberating." — David Ehrlichman
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

Reposted by John Teets

Wajahat Ali @wajali.bsky.social · 3d

Everything by Trump and Miller right now is weakness.

They know they've lost the majority and their policies are unpopular and they've F'd up the economy.

So, they'll use the military and threats and unleash their Reeks.

But, they don't have the numbers.

All hands on deck resistance.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 3d

"It hurts too much to laugh, but I'm too old to cry." — Adlai Stevenson quoting Abraham Lincoln.

Hanging from the Department of Labor Building in Washington, a giant banner has an image of Trump with the legend "American Workers FIRST."

Reposted by John Teets

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 3d

Where are the commanding officers of those sailors in the background. How are they letting this happen?

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 3d

Trump to the Navy: "We have to take care of this little gnat that's on our shoulder called the Democrats."

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 4d

Every time I really look at the Licualas, I see new tricks of lines and light. I'm relieved, though, that color remains a constant.
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Ribbed fronds radiate from stems at the the crown of a Licuala palm in this view looking down into the plant. They are a brilliant green.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 4d

"The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” — George Santayana
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 5d

The big plumerias here, the rubra variety, are packing it in for the winter, but my obtusa at the driveway keeps on truckin'. It suffers regular bouts of rust disease, but after a certain age, don't we all?
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Buds on a dwarf Singapore Pink plumeria are tight swirls of petals-to-be in a shade that gives the plant its common name. The resulting flowers are white in bright sunlight, but reveal a faint blush at dusk and dawn.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 5d

"Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to bring the truth back." — Gore Vidal
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Nightly votive in the porch garden.

John Teets @suenitos.bsky.social · 6d

These birds were at eye level when we put them in, and now I need the neck of a crane to spot them. Onward and upward.
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A blossom in the clump of giant birds of paradise (Strelitzia nicolai) at one end of my front picket fence. It has a pointed horizontal pod, 18 inches or so long, that sports jaunty white plumes at the stem end. Behind it are multiple trunks of a yellow elder tree that long predates our residence.

Reposted by John Teets

The Mouthy Renegade Writer @mouthyrenegade.bsky.social · 6d

That's unbelievable. This is the world we live in.