Today's my birthday, my 75thโ€”impossibly old!โ€”and I'm receiving this wonderful video of John Lithgow reading Timothy Snyder's twenty lessons in tyranny as a birthday gift. Which I now offer to readers hereโ€ฆ.

#tyranny #authoritarianism #dictatorship #Trump #Musk #Republicans #TimothySnyder
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https://snyder.substack.com/p/twenty-lessons-read-by-john-lithgow

Twenty Lessons, read by John Lithgow

Key selections from On Tyranny, for viewing and sharing

Thinking about...

Another birthday gift I offer to readers here: the first rose of the season bloomed in our garden today. This is a fragrant old rose we've had since the 1980s, when a sweet elderly neighbor in New Orleans, a Black gentleman named Mouton Bickham, shared a cutting with us. For years, not knowing that the rose is called Louis Philippe, we called it the Mouton Bickham rose. I love seeing it in this hand-painted vase that my favorite aunt cherished.

#birthday #roses #gifts
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@wdlindsy Happy Birthday! Wishing you a lovely day and a joyful year ahead enjoyed in good health and good company. ๐ŸŽ‰๐ŸŽˆโœŒ๐Ÿป

@fsinn @wdlindsy

Happy birthday. Appreciate all you contribute here, William.

@wdlindsy Thatโ€™s a beautiful rose! I hope it has great fragrance too.
@wdlindsy Thank you! and ๐ŸŽ‰ HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!๐ŸŽ‰ You are loved and such a light in all this darkness!โค๏ธ

@wdlindsy

Happy Birthday William ๐ŸŽ‚๐Ÿฅณ

@wdlindsy Congratulations to you!
@wdlindsy happy birthday!๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿ™Œ๐Ÿฅณ

@wdlindsy
Thank you for your post.
Have a Happy Birthday in these trying times Enjoy peace where you can find it. I enjoy reading your posts.

Peace

@wdlindsy
Welcome to age 75, young fella!
A very happy birthday to you.
@wdlindsy
Happy birthday ๐ŸŽ‚๐ŸŽ‚
@wdlindsy happy birthday to my fellow 1950 person!
@wdlindsy Congratulations on those many journeys around the sun. As a contemporary, I agree that we are old, but not impossibly so. We are weathered, but still standing.
Thanks for the great work you do here. Do something nice for yourself today. ๐ŸŒž

@wdlindsy โ€œNon-cooperation is not a passive state; it is an intensively active state, more active than physical resistance or violence. Passive resistance is a misnomer.โ€

- Mahatma Gandhi

@wdlindsy

I hope you have a wonderful birthday!

@wdlindsy Happy three quarters of a century Bill!
@wdlindsy
Happy birthday!!๐ŸŽ‚๐ŸŽ๐ŸŽ‰๐Ÿฅณ๐ŸŽˆ

@wdlindsy This calls for cake!! ๐ŸŽ‚

And hugs. ๐Ÿซ‚

@wdlindsy Thank you! It is wonderful!

@wdlindsy

Happy Birthday, William!

And thanks for the Snyder/Lithgow link. An important manifesto by an important thinker, read simply and honestly by a fine actor.

Even more thanks for posting the photograph of your "Mouton Bickham" / Louis Philippe rose. Please allow me to pay tribute to your friendly former neighbour, by hashtag.

#MoutonBickham #TimothySnyder #JohnLithgow #WilliamLindsey #resistance

@the_roamer Thank you so much. Rather sad to remember the death of that kind neighbor. He was found dead, alone, in the half of a double house that he rented. I still remember with dismay seeing his body carried on a stretcher from his house as neighbors stood watching. He was a gentle, courteous elderly man of a kind one doesn't โ€” alas โ€” find so much in our world any longer.
@wdlindsy I listened. It was a little pontificatory but good to think about.
@wdlindsy (there are ways of not standing out that are *not* going along :P :P )
@geonz John Lithgow in pontificatory mode is my cup of tea.
@wdlindsy Happy Birthday, a little late. Birthday wishes always stay fresh. Love the rose and its origin.
@wdlindsy Happiest of birthdays, William! (mine is in a few daysโ€ฆ)

@wdlindsy

Happy Belated Birthday!