Some music instead:

And pawpaws.  (I plan to plant two or three next year.)  And Daniel Larison on James Stavridis.

That civilisations fall, sooner or later, is as much a law of history as gravity is a law of physics. What remains after the fall is a wild mixture of cultural debris, confused and angry people whose certainties have betrayed them, and those forces which were always there, deeper than the foundations of the city walls: the desire to survive and the desire for meaning.

– The Dark Mountain Project Manifesto

I didn’t do nearly as much reading this week as most – busy with work, in bed early a few nights because I needed the sleep and, most significantly perhaps, I’m feeling burned out on politics.  I’m presently much more interested in science and – it being May – in planting.  Here are a few things on those themes and other ones:

• The Dark Mountain Project, The Humbling
• Bill McKibben, Being Good Enough
• dr24hrs, An Engineer’s Argument for Basic Research
• Ken Johnson (NYT), Richard Serra’s Steel Behemoths Get Into Your Head

Several weeks ago it was “Music Sunday” at church.  In lieu of a sermon the choir performed Mozart’s Requiem.  It was amazing.  Their performance of it isn’t up on YouTube yet so here’s one that is:

(Lyrics and English translation of Requiem here.)