"Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise"
-Tom Flood

https://bikestylelife.com/2011/07/04/independence-and-freedom-courtesy-of-the-bicycle/

https://bikestylelife.com/2012/07/04/the-bicycle-and-womens-independence/

#BikeTooter #cycling #freedom #independence #WhyWeRide #BicyclesChangeLives #BikeEverywhere #WomenRide #history #feminism

"Service to the country you love often means telling that country when it is absolutely wrong.

And telling it again.

And again.

And again."

"We are all called to do the small right things. To be brave enough to know what the right thing is, and to do it, day after day, against the tide, against colonization and toward freedom."

-- @emmettoconnell
https://olympiatime.com/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php?action=tnp&na=v&nk=31-fcdaa3374b&id=26

#FourthOfJuly #BoldtDecision #TreatyRights #Salmon #Indigenous #freedom #justice

Years ago I wrote about the values in the 4H Pledge https://biketoworkbarb.blogspot.com/2011/02/head-heart-hands-and-health.html. Ever since then when I find a good pledge I drop it in the comments on that post. The poems make suitable reading for the Fourth of July, especially in these times. These aren't unthinking patriotism--they pledge to things like the soil in a garden and Janet Wong's "acceptance / of the views, / so different, /
that make us America."

#America #pledge #PledgeOfAllegiance #4H #poetry #poems #poem #PoemADay #TodaysPoem

The right poem for today: "Let America Be America Again" by Langston Hughes https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147907/let-america-be-america-again.

"I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak."

#poetry #poem #poems #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #LangstonHughes #freedom #America

Potato blossoms are beautiful.

#garden #gardening #potatoes #plants #flowers

Excerpt from "The Night I Fell in Love with the Whole World" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer:

"Each of you, too, longs to belong. No matter what our leaders do,
the light is right to see how much, you, too, long to be safe,
to be seen, to be kind, to be loved, to be trusted, to be home."

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2025/06/23/the-night-i-fell-in-love-with-the-whole-world/

#poetry #TodaysPoem #PoemADay #poem #poems #RosemerryWahtolaTrommer #immigrant #refugee #love #home