Otherwise known as the new season of spring.

Here it is, the first day of spring. The Equinox. The halfway point between there and there, winter and summer, cold and hot, light and dark.

It looks nice out. We are supposed to feel happy.

They say it is important to get outside. That’s probably true. Once the mask is on and you’ve steeled yourself for the outside world. There will be some fresh air.  Occasionally -no -every day, I miss gardens. A land of land – but few parks or gardens where they are needed most. Parks are most accessible to those with high income or educational status. What a surprise.

Yesterday, it was incredibly windy. People were out walking their dogs, who looked happy and playful – the dogs, not the people – in the same way that horses get energized and excited by windy weather.

Today, blue skies with the light hint of grey that is the overlap of pollution in the city. A truck is outside idling. It’s probably bringing fresh produce to the supermarket next door.

At night, the trucks come to take the garbage and recycling. During the day, they come to deliver the initial building blocks of garbage.

And in this way, we are all kept alive.

In America, blue skies are seen as some sort of reward. The acclamation of the birthright of the special exceptional energy of the country. American Exceptionalism. Blue skies. Exercise. Health. Freedom.

80 hour work weeks seen as normal. Mass shootings. Disenfranchisement of voters of color. Racism, and the rise of domestic terrorism, as shown through the incredible work of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Centers of violence – or a view of the US – with the accurate, but still Orwellian title of “Hate Map.” The murder of women seen through the prism of – the murderer was having a bad day. 10 years after Sandy Hook – and background checks of guns in the US still being discussed.

They pour more chemicals in our water and food and the end result – we are destroying ourselves.

Europe in confusion over vaccines. Stronger sentences in Britain for overturning a statue of a white man than attacking a woman. Here, the incredible Marina Hyde offers her take on this.

Spring.

I’ll go out, and look for flowers beginning to grow in the tiny gardens and dirt plots around the trees. What else is there to do but persist, and continue, like the weeds that grow between the cracks, and the people that work endlessly to try to improve things.

Spring, the season of renewal and birth, love and expansion. May it always be so. Without hope, we are truly lost.

But don’t tell me I need to cheer up because it’s a beautiful day.