The Magic Beach Motel is alive and well in St. Augustine, Florida.

An African white-bellied tree pangolin baby hitches a ride on its mother at Pangolin Conservation, a nonprofit organization in St. Augustine, Florida. The mammals are illegally killed for bush meat and their scales, which are claimed to have medical value.

This photo was originally published in “Documenting the World’s Animals, One Picture at a Time," in April 2016.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JOEL SARTORE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTO ARK

Just gonna drop this here in case any of you need a little beach in your life this morning. 🌊🐚🔊

Letter writing tips from St. Augustine of Hippo

The more self deprecating the better

You can show this by signing with something sensitive like “Yours Sinfully”

Add some teardrops to make it genuine

Have a friend hand deliver it

Include a loaf of bread, just in case

What remains today of Newton's fundamental breakthrough? Modern life, our system of education founded on the requirements of punctuality, scholastic exercises on the charts of train schedules, geographic maps—all this inculcates in us, from childhood, a very Newtonian idea of space and time. This is why we have such difficulty perceiving the absurdity of questions such as"What lies beyond the limits of the universe?" or "What existed before the creation of the world—or before the Big Bang?" We marvel at the apparent modernness of Saint Augustine, who was already addressing similar questions fifteen centuries ago: "Time did not exist before heavens and earth.” But few among us know or have really assimilated the Kantian critique of the concepts of space and time. Kant constructed this critique specifically to chart the boundaries between knowledge and faith, to free science from metaphysical presuppositions, to deliver geometry from the shadow of theology to which Newton had in fact ascribed it. For Kant, space and time are not things in themselves but "forms of intuition”—in other words, they constitute a canvas that allows us to decipher the existence of the world. According to Kant, things "in themselves" are neither in space nor in time. It is the human mind that, in the very act of perception, superimposes these categories, which are its own and without which perception would be impossible. This does not exactly mean that space and time are illusions or pure inventions of the human mind. These frameworks are imposed on us through empirical contact with nature and are not, therefore, "arbitrary.” They no more belong to things in themselves than they belong to the mind alone; rather, they exist because of the dialogue between the mind and things. They are, in the final analysis, an unavoidable product of motion itself by means of which the mind searches to apprehend—to understand—the outside world.

Rémy Lestienne, The Children of Time: Causality, Entropy, Becoming

The Hotel Ponce de Leon in St. Augustine, circa 1940

𝖲𝗍. 𝖠𝗎𝗀𝗎𝗌𝗍𝗂𝗇𝖾, 𝖥𝗅𝗈𝗋𝗂𝖽𝖺

"𝘏𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥;

𝘏𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘏𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦𝘯."

𝘚𝘵. 𝘈𝘶𝘨𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘦

I want to wander in my own way; I want to get lost in my own way.

~St Augustine

Saint Augustine of Hippo

Doctor of the Church

354 - 430 

Feast Day: August 28

Patronage: brewers, printers, theologians

St.  Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church, was the son of Saint Monica. He was raised a Christian, but lost his faith in youth and led a wild life. He lived with a woman from the age of 15 through 30 and fathered a son. After investigating and experimenting with several philosophies, he became a Manichaean but was converted by the prayers of his mother and the help of Saint Ambrose of Milan, who baptized him. He then spent the remainder of his life doing great things. His later thinking can be summed up in a line from his writings: "Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You."

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

“Him who the heavens cannot contain, the womb of one woman bore. She ruled our Ruler; she carried Him in whom we are; she gave milk to our Bread.”

St. Augustine

Unlike most Christmas trains this one is picking up toys. They are collecting toys from organizations that have collected them for the Santa train which will run later in the month. St. Augustine, FL December 8, 2012

Daily affirmation: even St. Augustine had impostor syndrome