Stranger

Wait, let me just double-check this with you real quick. "So I spent my weekend on the chemical intelligence of trees" doesn't sound, like, druggy or anything right?

What I feel is hatred and indignation, and I have those feelings both towards Hamas and towards the Israeli government, but ultimately, you know, if you ask me what is going on here, and whether there is anything broad and absolute and general and objectively important about those... then, I don't feel I need that to be indignant. Because my indignation carries with it the sense of conviction, so, you know, I'm pretty consistent on this. I feel conviction, and I view conviction as a subjective sense, I don't view conviction as an indication that I'm right.

--Daniel Kahneman

The problem with this society is that we live like chickens, but we're supposed to be elephants.

We scratch around in the dirt, we squawk and squabble and peck each other bald. We care only for fat grubs and social position.

Instead we should be roaming wide, led by our wise matriarchs, bonded in family, remembering our dearly departed. Helping form the landscape that nurtures us.

Elephants, not fucking chickens.

They thought the façades of the houses very magnificent – they could not praise them highly enough. But the sad decay, which buildings, bridges and church all displayed, seemed to charm them even more. They were Englishmen and, to them, the decline of other nations was the most natural thing in the world. They belonged to a race blessed with so sensitive an appreciation of its own talents (and so doubtful an opinion of any body else’s) that they would not have been at all surprized to learn that the Venetians themselves had been entirely ignorant of the merits of their own city – until Englishmen had come to tell them it was delightful.

-- Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell

It's still very cold in the mornings, but it does get warm in the sun. The birds are not exactly rioting, not yet, but they're certainly out and about. The woodcocks are courting, still a little shyly. They've already come to look at last year's nest.

The trees are all budding. Tiny, incipient buds. You might not notice them, but from a distance deciduous forests have clearly taken on a different look. They are softer, somehow, to the eye. Very subtle shades appear - reddish, the lightest green, a new grey that is not the grey of winter.

It is here, it is here! Spring is at the door.