Yesterday, it had snowed and there was plenty of cloud cover, but a little after 2 pm there was already a clear path to the mailbox. BUT it was NOT a dry path. Wet concrete is darker than dry concrete and this was quite dark. So no trip to the mailbox. A couple of packages came, but neither would fit in the mailbox, so they were left on my porch, and I got them in anyway. It had snowed more by then, also. I am sharing a non-weather story from Colorado, because even if I believed in coincidence, this one is way too big to believe in – and apparently it has happened elsewhere, and could happen anywhere. I don’t quite know how to prepare for it, other than to be able to recognize it if it comes.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Washington Post (no paywall) – Opinion – Biden’s Kyiv visit shows Putin seriously misjudged his courage
Quote – What many people fail to understand about Biden, the oldest president in our history, is the extent to which he is guided by a sense of mission. He came out of retirement and ran for the White House only because he believed he had the unique ability, and thus the obligation, to save the nation from another four years of Donald Trump. And he has faced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with the same burden of duty imposed by history.
Click through for full opinion. I don’t often get to see Eugene Robinson, but I always learn something, even if it’s just a new way of saying something I knew, or a position I hadn’t considered looking from. There’s a lot in here – I picked what I quoted because it made me think of “Rule 303,” which is the way Beau expresses duty. “If you have the means at hand, you have the responsibility to act.”
The New Yorker – Russia, One Year After the Invasion of Ukraine
Quote – I had immigrated to the U.S. as a child, in the early eighties. Since the mid-nineties, I’d been coming back to Moscow about once a year. During that time, the city kept getting nicer, and the political situation kept getting worse. It was as if, in Russia, more prosperity meant less freedom…. I asked [my friend Alexander] Baunov how long he thought it would be before he returned to Russia. He said that he didn’t know, but it was possible that he would never return. There was no going back to February 23rd [2022]—not for him, not for Russia, and especially not for the Putin regime. “The country has undergone a moral catastrophe,” Baunov said. “Going back, in the future, would mean living with people who supported this catastrophe; who think they had taken part in a great project; who are proud of their participation in it.”
Click through for full article. Every week in Everday Erinyes I quuote Masha Gessen on autocracy and autocrats. Keith, who wrote this, is her brother.
Food For Thought
