Father, friend, believe love conquers hate, and truth wins over prevarication. https://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmgraawzs22xhappy bday artist Mary Cassatt, b. 1844, Allegheny, PA. "Women should be someone and not something." "Acceptance, under someone else's terms, is worse than rejection."22 May 2026 10:50 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmgraawzs22xhttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmgqsfolh22xRIP French writer Victor Hugo, died this day 1885. “Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” “What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”.22 May 2026 10:42 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmgqsfolh22xhttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmeghp4r4222happy bday Australian poet/feminist Dorothy Hewett, b.1923. "The melancholy acres stretch away behind him the trees already dying a crow flaps crying along the boundary fence where once the timber stood."21 May 2026 12:32 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmeghp4r4222https://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmefqlejf22chappy bday Soviet physicist/human rights advocate Andrey Sakharov, b.1921. "Both now & for always, I intend to hold fast to my belief in the hidden strength of the human spirit." “We should not minimize our sacred endeavors in this world, where, like faint glimmers in the dark, we have emerged."21 May 2026 12:19 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmefqlejf22chttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmbtpwky3k2vhappy bday Norwegian writer Sigrid Undset, b.1882, she won Nobel Prize in Lit. in 1928. “It’s a good thing when you don’t dare do something if you don’t think it’s right. But it’s not good when you think something’s not right because you don’t dare do it.”20 May 2026 11:51 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmbtpwky3k2vhttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mmbsvzslqk2ghappy bday French writer Honoré de Balzac, b.1799. “The more one judges, the less one loves.” “Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.” “Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?”20 May 2026 11:37 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmbsvzslqk2ghttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm7cx56bjs2rRIP writer Sam Greenlee, died this day 2014. “Somebody has to try and change things.” “If we ever forget how to laugh we're finished.”19 May 2026 11:46 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm7cx56bjs2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm7c2imdw222happy bday writer Lorraine Hansberry, b.1930, Chicago, first African American to have play performed on broadway. “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing.” “That's what being eccentric means--being natural.”19 May 2026 11:30 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm7c2imdw222https://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm7bo2662k22happy bday the iconic Malcolm X, b.1925, Omaha, NE. “I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” “Truth is on the side of the oppressed.”19 May 2026 11:23 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm7bo2662k22https://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm4t3v3i2c2whappy bday Persian poet/polymath Omar Khayyam, b.b.1048. “I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After-life to spell: And by and by my Soul return'd to me, And answer'd: 'I Myself am Heav'n and Hell” “Dead yesterdays and unborn tomorrows, why fret about it, if today be sweet.”18 May 2026 11:57 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm4t3v3i2c2whttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm2c3hntqs2ahappy bday Irish writer/feminist Anna Brownell Jameson, b.1794. “What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.” “Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.”17 May 2026 11:47 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm2c3hntqs2ahttps://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm2bcceepc23on this day in 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court rules in an unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education, racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. "We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place."17 May 2026 11:33 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm2bcceepc23https://bsky.app/profile/matthewjdowd.bsky.social/post/3mm2ardb4xk23happy bday Mexican writer Alfonso Reyes, b.1889. "Indigo all the sky, all the house of gold. How it poured into me, the sun, through my eyes! A sea inside my skull, go where I may, and though the clouds be drawn, oh what weight of sun upon me, oh what hurt within me of that cistern...17 May 2026 11:23 +0000at://did:plc:lnapbhc6j7bau6t3cjvvnpbl/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm2ardb4xk23