Tags: seasons

It’s October. Autumn is wrapping itself around us, squeezing the leaves from the trees. Summer has slipped away, though it gave us a parting gift of a few pleasant days this week to sit outside at lunchtime.

I’ve got a bit of a ritual now for the end of September. I go to Spain and soak up the last of the sun. There’s an Irish music festival in the beautiful medieval town of Cáceres.

It’s not easy to get to, but that’s all part of the ritual. Set out for Madrid or Seville and spend a night there. Then get on a train for the long journey through a landscape straight out of a spaghetti western.

Once you get to Cáceres there’s nothing to do but enjoy the sun, the food, and the music. So much music! Open-air concerts in a medieval square that go well past midnight. Non-stop sessions scattered throughout the town’s pedestrianised streets.

For me, it’s the perfect way to see out the summer.

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad | The Orwell Foundation

After the sort of winters we have had to endure recently, the spring does seem miraculous, because it has become gradually harder and harder to believe that it is actually going to happen.

George Orwell on the coming of spring during the darkest of times:

It comes seeping in everywhere, like one of those new poison gases which pass through all filters.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.

This weekend it felt like Spring dropped like an unexpected new album from Taylor Swift or Beyoncé.

The weather turned nice and sunny. The clocks sprang forward an hour. I had my first asparagus of the year. Flowers are flowering. It’s all just very nice.

It’s like the year would like to make up for the disappointing performance in its first quarter and promises much better things for the quarter to come.

I understand now why a major religion would co-opt this time of year for a resurrection-themed shindig.

Goodbye Winter. Hello Spring. Nice to see you again.

Seasonal posts × Katy DeCorah

This is such a simple little adjustment, but I think it’s kinda brilliant: tweaking the display of your site’s maps to match the season.

A Breathing Earth

Beautiful animated GIFs showing the lungs of our planet.

I can tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in just 25 moves. | Chloe Weil

The way that Chloe has catalogued her music over time is fascinating. It’s like the Long Now opposite of This Is My Jam.