I initially thought these were ferns, but they’re really clever impostors. Canadian lousewort, or wood betony, is found all over the East Coast in a wide range of habitats, although the ones shown here seemed quite happy in their cozy forest home.
Unlike ferns, lousewort produces flowers, which are apparently quite popular with pollinators. I heartily approve.
An observer more astute than I noted that life is a process of having your illusions destroyed, one after another, until you die.
I read that recently and knew it to be true.
My mind is a mercurial trickster: a spinner of phantasmagorias that has enticed and seduced me with mirages and wild imaginings which I have long crystallized into illusory beliefs.
I cringe at the times I humiliated myself by running down a fruitless path, capriciously chasing after some juvenile fancy, while drunk on the self-assurance that I would cross the bridge to glory, only to dead-end at a wall of nothingness.
I know I’m not the only one who’s wasted precious years of my life like that — far from it.
The difference, I suppose, between myself and others is that when I’ve reached that point of humiliation — and I have, many times over — I’ve admitted my error and turned around, retracing my steps back to my place of solitude and retreat.
Most people, I’ve observed, remain on the familiar path and insist on their correctness until their final breath, pacing over the same worn ground while foolishly casting hope for a different outcome, lest they ever acknowledge their own ignorance and folly.
After years of futile wandering, having collapsed from mental exhaustion, what I now see clearly is that every path is an illusion.
There is no grand road to walk — only tiny movements in one direction or another, guided by whatever instruction is given in the moment.
The movements themselves aren’t constant: much of life is meant to be spent in the absence of motion, suspended in silence, waiting in expectation.
The problem, of course, is that serenity isn’t exciting. I must admit that in the nursery room of my mind, I’ve often found the essential retreat quite boring.
It’s more enticing to spend your days running through a disorienting maze of deafening distractions than to sit in the simplicity and stillness of truth.
Groundedness requires discipline and restraint: the hard-earned fruits of humility and endurance — infinitely rewarding but thoroughly unsexy in their countenance.
It’s no coincidence that those who derive their power from casting spells have warped “woke” into a pejorative utterance, and that so many under their sorcery have embraced the contortion.
It’s far easier to sleepwalk, to be in slumber and dreaming like a little titty baby, dazzled by fallacious projections that tickle the emotions and senses, than to be awake, alert, and attentive to the quiet machinations of the soul.
But now arrives a point of culmination: a time when enough people — although certainly not all — are rising as if from some absurd fever dream, groggy and stumbling in the waking moments of clarity.
What becomes evident in lucidity is that we have spun a nightmare of our own design, a childish and perverted distortion of our shared imagination to remain entrenched in a threadbare and monstrous delusion, thoroughly inadequate for the wisdom and maturity that will soon be required of each of us.
Not everyone will abandon the paths of illusion: There will always be the hollow walking characters who insist on the enchantment of their imagined course, loudly proclaiming their righteousness at every turn. I will no longer coddle or indulge them.
Indeed, the time for entertaining the infants is over, and I will spend the remainder of my life shattering their illusions at each appointed moment.
The babies will rage and scream, but their bellowing will not penetrate me. In the absence of direction, I will retreat to my place of seclusion and remain there, at peace.
This old parrot was recently toppled from its longtime perch on Atlanta’s Peachtree Street. Squawk!
The Bootery was a national shoe store chain that first opened in Atlanta in 1946, catering to “Boys and Girls of All Ages,”1 and later touting itself as “Atlanta’s Most Popular Children’s Shoe Store.”2
When the store moved to 81 Peachtree Street (previously 81 Whitehall Street) in August 1958,3 4 it was an exclusive seller of Poll-Parrot shoes, and the parrot was the brand’s mascot.5 6
The store closed sometime after 1996,7 but the sign was left to fade and rust for decades, and was finally removed in 2025 as the structure at 81 Peachtree was hollowed out to serve as a courtyard, part of a major renovation of the neighboring Bass Dry Goods building.8
The following article, published in The Atlanta Journal in October 1892, describes The Casino, a bar that operated inside the Kiser Law Building in Atlanta.
Five years after Atlanta’s failed prohibition attempt, its residents were drinking more than ever, and the city issued 80 saloon licenses in 1892.2
As the Journal noted in 1893:
“Now, there are about eighty saloons in Atlanta, and by calculating how many glasses of beer are drank an hour in each evening and then multiplying it by the number of saloons, those who do not think that beer drinking is vastly on the increase in Atlanta will find out their mistake.”3
The Casino tried to distinguish itself as a high-class establishment, and catered exclusively to “first-class trade,”4 but in a building full of lawyers, that was a lofty aspiration.
It isn’t clear who designed the bar, but the writer of the following article (I suspect it was Walter H. Howard) described the Casino’s interiors as “furnished like unto a king’s palace” and concluded objectively: “well, it is just a great place.”
A Constitution report from November 1892 provided additional notes, stating that the bar fixtures were “some of Rothschild‘s best makes”, and that the proprietor, Emil Selig, stocked “nothing but the very best to be had in choice brands of wines, liquors and cigars,” with attendants who were “willing to dispense the choicest drinks known to he barkeepers’ art.”5
The included menu below is, well, an interesting look at what people were eating at the time. Bet their shit stank something awful.
Of course, Atlanta always has to compare itself to the better cities of the North, and the Casino’s stated intent was to be “to Atlanta what the Hoffman house bar is to New York.”
That never happened. Despite early descriptions of the bar’s “crowds, who flock daily there”,6 The Casino was out of business by early 1894.7
This Palatial Bar Ready For Business.
Magnificent Saloon in the Kiser Building
To Atlanta What the Hoffman House Bar is to New York.
A Description of This Elegant Bar–A Rush at the Grand Opening Today–Catering for the Best Trade.
The magnificent Casino bar in the Kiser building was thrown open to the public today.
There was an immense gathering there at the time and all day the clerks have been as busy as bees.
Everybody admires the exquisite furniture and furnishings, the immense buffet of marble, antique oak and French plate glass mirrors with their mahogany finish and statuary ornaments.
The room is about 25×100 feet, and it is furnished like unto a king’s palace. The long, rich counters of antique oak with mahogany and marble finish, and the great mirrored sideboards and cabinets, the beautiful frescoed walls and statuary ornaments, the rich, dazzling curtains, the pretty linoleum floor, the costly buffet, the dainty sixteenth century chairs and tables, the smoking hot lunches and the sparkling wines and liquors–well, it is just a great place.
The Casino is a success from the very jump. It is such a place as has been demanded for a long time and of course it will be liberally patronized.
The Casino is now on full blast. The hot lunches will be one of its features will be served daily from 11 to 2 o’clock. Cold lunches will be served at all hours.
The very finest wines and liquors will always be kept in stock, as will also the best tobacco and cigars.
Following is the bill of fare as served today from 11 to 3 o’clock:
Cream of celery.
Peru tomato.
Cold slaw. Onions. Slice tomatoes.
Boiled snapper, Anchovy sauce.
Pickles. Olives. Diced potatoes.
Ham. Tongue.
Saut of kidneys au champignos.
Potato salad. Sous Herring.
Salmon. Ox maul salad.
Sirloin of beef (soured) a la Jardinare.
Ferris ham. Champagne sauce.
Smoke tongue. Ham.
Mash potatoes. Tomatoes. Stuffed peppers.
Edam cheese. Roquefort cheese.
Swiss cheese. Russian caviar crackers.
The drinks today were all to the health of Mr. Emil Selig and the Casino.
The very best clerks and attendants have been secured, Mr. R.J. Lewis, the well known club superintendent, being assistant manager.
Mr. Selig assures his friends and patrons that neither money nor pains will be spared to make the Casino not only the finest and most magnificent bar in Atlanta, but he don’t [sic] propose to let any place in the south eclipse it.
His purpose is to make the Casino to Atlanta what the Hoffman house bar is to New York.
The Casino has steam heat and both gas and electric lights. It will cater to the best trade and keep in stock such articles are demanded by that trade.8
Never tell anyone of your good deeds —
They will loathe and despise you for it,
Lest their own conscience be pricked.
Let your soul’s light shine,
But not for your fellow humans,
Who are too absorbed and enamored
With the comfort of their own darkness.
Most of them are hollow avatars, anyway —
One-dimensional specters void of creative power,
Having exchanged the robustness of their identities
For the passive ease of collective psychosis.
Nod along when they spout their nonsense
And let them believe their choices are their own,
Then quietly undermine them at every opportunity —
They’ll be too blind to notice it.
They always accept the path of least resistance:
That which is fated and familiar,
Leading to the old pain and destruction
With which they habitually identify.
Lacking courage and conviction,
They will find your choices puzzling —
That is, if they think about them all.
But if your presence is silent and stealthy,
They’ll never detect the true extent of your power
And you will be free to roam and create without restriction.
