There is some kind of horrible irony in receiving biodegradable trash bags in an unbiodegradable plastic bag. 🤦🏼‍♂️

Browsing one day in a library, I opened a book in the stacks and found a passage on 1830s France by Charles Fourier, the utopian French philosopher, in which he talks about the dishonesty of business transactions, the tedium and deceit of family life, the hardship of small farmers, the miseries of the poor and near-destitute in great cities, the evils of naked greed, the neglect of genius, the sufferings of children and old people, the stupidity of war, the coercive mechanisms of society disguised as law, morality and the benefits of civilization. Can you believe this? I thought to myself. Everything this man said one-hundred-and-eighty years ago is true about us today. I had no choice but to write it down, so I could prove to my friends that nothing ever changes.

• Charles Simic, Take Care of Your Little Notebook

Any jackass can kick a barn down. But it takes a carpenter to build one.

• Lyndon Johnson

Finally, consider how lucky you are to have someone who still occasionally lets you perform a nearly useless act of love that you always try really hard to do well.

• Merlin Mann, How to Make A Proper Bedtime Bottle of Water

Celebrating the snow at the downtown ice festival.