Rolling in Petals at the End of the World

Olga was literally "in the pink" yesterday at the park. The cherry trees are dropping their blossoms and she had a great time rolling around in them.

My own recent "in the pink" experience -- my sunburn -- has faded. It was never very severe and not at all painful; I had no peeling and certainly no blisters. Knock on wood, I've never been sunburned badly enough to blister.

Apparently it's Easter weekend! Who knew?! Today and Monday are bank holidays in the U.K., so everything is closed. Just one more reason to hang out and take things slow before school resumes on Tuesday.

On a heavier note, I read an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine yesterday about a longtime environmental activist who says we humans have to stop deluding ourselves that we can stop or slow our current ecological crisis. He no longer believes we can turn the tide on global warming or mass extinctions. What we have to do now, he believes, is learn to live with what we've created:

“What do you do,” he asked, “when you accept that all of these changes are coming, things that you value are going to be lost, things that make you unhappy are going to happen, things that you wanted to achieve you can’t achieve, but you still have to live with it, and there’s still beauty, and there’s still meaning, and there are still things you can do to make the world less bad?”

It's a fascinating article, and perhaps it resonated with me because of my basic cynicism about the future of the planet. Other environmentalists criticize this guy's approach, saying he's given up -- but he says the only hope he has abandoned is false hope. Sounds reasonable to me. Maybe I'm a "crazy collapsitarian."

There is still beauty, though. Look at that dog! Look at those petals!