Solitude

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Solitude

This is one of my favorite photographs. For me, it’s a metaphor of strength, permanence and resilience. As we pause to reflect on all that has happened over the last year, it is calming to know that this is part of the long arc of history.

I’ll leave you with wisdom from John Adams on civic virtue:

Obsta principiis [halt the beginnings], nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards…. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society.

— John Adams, Novanglus essays, February 6, 1775

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