When it's this cold the creatures outside need fuel to keep the home fires burning, and the back patio, with its bird feeders, was a busy place today.

Showing up were sparrows of several varieties, house finches, juncos, chickadees, nuthatches abd doves, along with a downy woodpecker, a red-breasted woodpecker, a cardinal, and a jay,

And, of course, the squirrels, although none has yet attempted to climb the pole or to make a long leap from the housetop. Maybe this year's cohort is more sensible, or maybe it's not yet cold enough to provide sufficient motivation.

Finished Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. Heavy going in spots, heavier than I thought, but I blundered on. Out of the 500 pages between covers 100 are footnotes (in small type). I can't imagine sitting down to a task like that.

And here, my final quote:

To many people today it seems distastefully condescending or elitist to suggest that there is something flawed in the common consciousness of things, something that induces people to fight for their own destruction.

Yet the common man, stumbling through the distorted landscape of human passions, is prone to believe that piety means attacking those who believe differently, that the law is nothing more than a hindrance to personal satisfaction, and that virtue and happiness are necessarily opposed. How can such unreasonable and rebarbative individuals be included in a project to seek their own self-realization and that of their fellows in a political order that is organized around the pursuit of understanding?