March 1--Yeah!!

I am amazed at how much my mood improves as I see how much of that snow has disappeared. I still have a huge pile on my patio and almost all my gardens are buried. But it does feel like Spring might be peaking around the corner.

David Kaiser has an interesting post today which echoes some thoughts I have been having over the last few years. Way back when I was studying history at Colorado State one of my professors introduced the concept of a "modal personality." He defined it as the type of personality best suited to the culture of the time. Each modal personality expressed certain virtues and those changed as the culture changed. In the late medieval through the early modern times the modal personality centered on honor which changed with the enlightenment through the Victorian age where the focus was on character, especially as expressed in self-control. Finally, with the 20th century the modal personality focused on personality. Those ideas track very neatly what Kaiser talks about in his essay. The rise of the victimhood personality signals another shift which will be interesting to both trace and follow. I look forward to Kaiser's promised future essays on this topic. I did look up the authors and books he cited but couldn't justify spending that much on them.

Andrea Mazzarino has a thought provoking piece  on Tomdispatch.com today. Wars of any kind tend to change the shape of a society and our has been changing in alarming and unpredictable ways. Unfortunately, getting into our "forever wars" was far easier than getting out of them will be.

March 2

Lovely sunny day with more of the snow melting. We did our grocery shopping yesterday though we didn't have much to get--unlike last week because we were replenishing after 2 weeks of not shopping because of the snow and digging out. It is nice enough that I am thinking about the gardens again. If the patio was clear of snow I might be tempted to go out and dig something. Last year I didn't get the last seeds in until June 1 because of cold temperatures in May. One of the gardening bloggers I look in on frequently mentioned having snow in mid may last year and she is south of me.

Mandy Smithberger has a post at Tomdispatch.com this morning that says a lot about our current situation with special reference to the military. I won't comment much because I have said here and elsewhere often that we need to rethink our spending priorities and philosophy. The military is a (or was) a good hammer but not all our problems in the world are nails. In fact most of our problems are diplomatic and economic for which the military hammer is definitely the wrong tool.