Sunrise — 7:23.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. 

Bonus picture from yesterday, captured by Meade:

  

At the Black Ice Café... you can talk about whatever you want.

It finally warmed up enough that I could take an afternoon walk. I hadn't seen the lake in 7 days, and those very cold days had transformed the lake:

There's some beautiful glassy-clear ice on the lake. Look out there:

2 ice skaters with 2 dogs:

Higher up, the prairie and the sunset:

"Or take a young couple who are able to have children but who, for whatever reason — lack of affordable housing, usually — have decided to delay doing so and to get a rescue dog instead."

"How is that selfish, rather than prudent and responsible? You can’t go dropping babies everywhere just because you’re fertile, and, besides, women aren’t brood mares. Cat first, baby if and when the time is right is a perfectly reasonable approach."

From "Pets deserve worship, whatever the Pope says/Having dogs or cats instead of children isn’t selfish: it enriches our existence" by India Knight (London Times).

I think Pope Francis meant to reject exactly that "perfectly reasonable approach." That's not the meaning of life, to be prudently responsible and to wait until all your material conditions will make children comfortably manageable.

"The only thing I’ll tell you is she never spoke directly to a person. She always spoke through her dog, and in a baby voice. It was really bizarre."

Said a 60-year-old woman named Maria Meade, who lived near Amy Cooper, the woman in the story "How 2 Lives Collided in Central Park, Rattling the Nation/The inside story of the black birder and the white woman who called the police on him. Their encounter stirred wrenching conversations about racism and white privilege" (NYT).

Another neighbor, Marisol De Leon, 40, said Ms. Cooper frequently walked Henry unleashed, and became irate when told not to. “There was a sense of entitlement,” Ms. De Leon said.

Alison Faircloth, 37, a neighbor and dog owner, recalled that last winter, she came upon Ms. Cooper on the verge of tears outside the building’s lobby. A doorman had cursed at her for no reason, Ms. Cooper told her. Ms. Cooper vowed to get the doorman fired, Ms. Faircloth said. But when Ms. Faircloth asked the doorman what had happened, he told her that Ms. Cooper had complained about a broken elevator, then cursed at him after she barged into a security booth and had to be removed by a guard.

“There’s always a narrative from her about someone who has done her wrong,” Ms. Faircloth said.

ADDED: Bob Boyd said:

It's too bad nobody got her on video cursing the door man through her dog in a baby voice.

I'd like to see that.

"Simon told police that he was walking his dog with his girlfriend in the 3000 block of North Fox Street when he told the dog to poop."

"He then heard a voice from a ground-level apartment yelling at them and asking if they were going to train the dog or just yell at it, according to the probable cause statement. Simon said he tried to ignore the yelling but then saw the man point a gun at him."

From "Suspect in homicide near Coors Field opened fire because of dispute over dog poop, police say/Michael Close, 36, accused of firing on victims from his apartment while they were walking their dog" (Denver Post).

"I want a dog that doesn’t know it’s cute."

An overheard line, reported in the NYT's Metropolitan Diary.

I'm no dog expert, but this one is easy. The way a dog knows it's cute is that the people continually tell it it's cute. The same thing happens with children too. If you don't want to find yourself living with a dog/child that knows it's cute, you need to keep a straight face about the cuteness. That will preserve the cuteness of the cuteness.

"Jenzeers."

I turned on the car radio and CNN was talking about "Jenzeers." Jenzeers, in the aftermath of the coronavirus lockdown, were going to decide whether to abandon New York City and leave it hurting for population and economic vigor.

Jenzeers... Jenzeers... who the hell are Jenzeers?
Gen Z-ers.

The story I was hearing on the satellite radio corresponds to this text news report at CNN.com: "Coronavirus is making some people rethink where they want to live":

After years of growth, New York City's population had started to slowly decline in 2017. Chicago and Los Angeles also saw their populations dip in recent years as the economy picked up in the suburbs and elsewhere. Other big cities have seen growth virtually stagnate.

"It's not just a New York thing," says William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "It's a kind of softening of growth among cities all over the country.... People have always come back to cities during some of the biggest disasters we've had in our history. ... When we look ahead in the next year or two, I'm not so concerned that we're going to see decline in city populations long-term"...

Immediately after the Great Recession, millennials flocked into cities and spurred a period of growth and revitalization. And in the aftermath of this unfolding economic crisis, Frey says Generation Z could take a similar tack.... "If they follow in the footsteps of millennials during a similarly dim period, they could help invigorate city growth -- especially if opportunities dry up elsewhere," Frey wrote in a recent analysis on the Brookings website....

Lifelong New Yorker Chloé Jo Davis never imagined leaving her beloved city -- until now. Davis and her husband were already used to working from home, but weeks spent cramped inside their rented two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- homeschooling their three young sons and caring for four rescue pets -- have changed her calculation.... 

Four rescue pets... that got me. They had 5 human beings in a 2-bedroom apartment and they bring in 4 pets. That's got to be either dogs or cats, don't you think? There aren't rescue goldfish or rescue gerbils. We're talking about sizable mammals that have the run of the place and shed hair and vomit and let you know how they feel.

Anyway... city life. I've done it myself... done NYC for about 11 years of my life. I like it, but adding children — more than one — and throwing pets on top... that already makes it hard to breathe. And then you throw in a dangerous respiratory disease... At some point you've got to want out, and if the job you have is one you do from home — you and your mate.... You're so free to leave.

And yet people don't leave. I understand how some folks are about New York. Every place else seems too not New York to be acceptable. I lived in New York City because I married a person who came from New York and his preference for the place was so overwhelming compared to anything I in my head. I didn't want to go back to Delaware or New Jersey. My ideas were vague — drifting over the general landscape like a line in a Johnny Rivers song ("She wants to live in the Rockies/She says that's where we'll find peace...") — so of course, New York won.