April 23, 2025

 Left a little before ten. Blacksmith. Fairly mild, with southeasterly breezes. Gray skies, but not as interesting as last week. Still, at the end of Gerverskop the light dropped down beautifully up ahead, toward Haarzuilens. All the early yellow daffodils alongside the bike path toward the Gele Brug are done, but later in the city I saw some new, white ones, amid some tulips. To be rid of the filthy crossing of the Thomas a Kempisweg is like living in a different world (here and there, things can still get better). Hermelijnvlinderpad, Alendorperweg, Rivierpad, Breukdijk. Koot off its nest at Gerverskop, but several more grebes nesting. Lambs everywhere, and some geese families (Scheendijk). A few young calves at the farm along the Middenweg, just past the Veenkade. Having the Zandpad open again makes life easier--as if a morning such as this one wasn't pleasant enough. Newspaper at Mos [highly irritating how Word for decades now, and ever more so it appears, makes it difficult to insert letters with accents and the like, such as the strike-through "o" in this case--forget on-line tools such as Blogger; it's how memories of WordPerfect stay alive]. We want to end the war, just that. We won't talk about the kind of war this has been, we just talk about ourselves, how we can't get what we think we need out of this. We just want this nuisance to go away, and if it means blaming--beating up on--the victim, that's what we'll do. So much easier than pressuring the aggressor. It's reminiscent (also in the paper) of how the old pope once said that Ukraine should have "the courage of the white flag." Or, as an old colleague (not a dumb or untrustworthy guy otherwise) repeated to me last week: if they lose, it doesn't affect me.